The best way to virtue and a good life (Psellos told Nikolaos Skleros) was devotion to the Theotokos, her icons and mysterious images like those of the Acheiropoietos monastery outside the capital. He should also use his office to help his friends, supporting the church there, beautifying it or caring for its lands (not just because it belonged to Psellos). He also wrote to Nikolaos about his monastery of Medikion. It had no place in a list of earthly delights, lying amid a crown of hills, with views blocked to land and sea, like a ship's hold; the worst is that the sea is very close, but invisible behind the hills