Madrid Skylitzes
Type:
Illuminated manuscripts
Date:
ca. 1170
Location or Findspot (Modern-Day Country):
Italy
Medium:
Parchment,
Gold,
Lapis lazuli
Dimensions:
35.5 × 27 cm
Description:
The Byzantine historical chronicle written by a Constantinopolitan court official named John Skylitzes in the 1070s survives in over twenty manuscripts. Only one of these was illustrated: the copy now in Madrid (Biblioteca Nacional, MS Vitr. 26–2). This is the only historical manuscript in Greek that has extensive narrative illustrations. Skylitzes's history covers the years 811 to 1057, but the Madrid copy was made in the second half of the twelfth century in Sicily, probably in Messina, a formerly Byzantine city then held by the Normans. The expensive book may have been a gift to an important Orthodox monastery there, as indicated by marginal notes.
The codex contains 233 folios, with the text written by two scribes and the images executed by seven painters. The 574 extant illuminations narrate Byzantine history, but with some features that reflect multicultural Norman Sicily in the twelfth century. There are scenes of battles on land and sea (fol. 34v is the only extant image of the fearsome Greek fire), Byzantine court and liturgical ceremonies, urban life, and iconoclasm and its aftermath.
One of the first images (fol. 10v) shows an emperor or co-emperor being raised on a shield and crowned by a similarly dressed figure; both are nimbed. The use of a shield for this ceremony is attested between 361 and seventh century, after which it died out before being revived in the thirteenth century. The identities of the protagonists is unknown, and the anachronistic image does not correspond with the adjacent text.
On fol. 137r, Theophylakt, the patriarch of Constantinople, interrupts his celebration of the liturgy in Hagia Sophia on Holy Thursday when a deacon reports that his favorite horse has given birth. After viewing the newborn foal, he returned to the Great Church to continue the mass. The text tells us that Theophylakt had over two thousand horses and was very fond of them, feeding them exotic foods and spices—including pistachios, dates, saffron, and cinnamon—rather than hay and oats.
Fol. 131r depicts when "monstrous" conjoined twins from Armenia visited the Byzantine capital in the tenth century. The pair, joined at the belly, was considered an evil omen and expelled from the city. They later returned, and when one of the twins died, doctors tried to separate them surgically. The other twin survived for three days.
In the series of pictures about the reign of the last iconoclast emperor, Theophilos (r. 829–42), we see Theoktiste, mother of Theophilos's wife Theodora, secretly instructing her five granddaughters in the use of icons (fol. 44v). Theodora herself was caught in the act of icon veneration and explained her behavior as "playing with dolls" (fol. 45r). Theophilos was not fooled. After her husband's death, Theodora became an overt supporter of icons and eventually an Orthodox saint, but in the Madrid manuscript she is largely a passive figure.
Theophilos's patriarch, the fervent iconoclast John "the Grammarian," is shown in the Madrid Skylitzes not as a wild-haired heretic, as he is in other books, but as a haloed saint who brings imperial letters and gifts to turbaned Muslim rulers in Abbasid Syria (fol. 47r). His oratorical skills make him an effective diplomat who successfully secures the release of Byzantine prisoners—a positive figure, and one relevant to twelfth-century Sicily. After the end of iconoclasm, John was deposed and confined to a monastery, where he ordered a deacon to deface icons in a church (fol. 64v); as patriarch, he had attacked a pagan statue in the Hippodrome of Constantinople in a similar way (fol. 65r). The deacon climbs a ladder to scratch out the eyes of an icon depicting an archangel. When Theodora heard about this, she ordered John to be whipped, as shown in the second miniature on fol. 64v. Nevertheless, the generally positive, even un-Orthodox treatment of the iconoclast patriarch seems to be a product of the Sicilian milieu in which the manuscript was made.
The codex contains 233 folios, with the text written by two scribes and the images executed by seven painters. The 574 extant illuminations narrate Byzantine history, but with some features that reflect multicultural Norman Sicily in the twelfth century. There are scenes of battles on land and sea (fol. 34v is the only extant image of the fearsome Greek fire), Byzantine court and liturgical ceremonies, urban life, and iconoclasm and its aftermath.
One of the first images (fol. 10v) shows an emperor or co-emperor being raised on a shield and crowned by a similarly dressed figure; both are nimbed. The use of a shield for this ceremony is attested between 361 and seventh century, after which it died out before being revived in the thirteenth century. The identities of the protagonists is unknown, and the anachronistic image does not correspond with the adjacent text.
On fol. 137r, Theophylakt, the patriarch of Constantinople, interrupts his celebration of the liturgy in Hagia Sophia on Holy Thursday when a deacon reports that his favorite horse has given birth. After viewing the newborn foal, he returned to the Great Church to continue the mass. The text tells us that Theophylakt had over two thousand horses and was very fond of them, feeding them exotic foods and spices—including pistachios, dates, saffron, and cinnamon—rather than hay and oats.
Fol. 131r depicts when "monstrous" conjoined twins from Armenia visited the Byzantine capital in the tenth century. The pair, joined at the belly, was considered an evil omen and expelled from the city. They later returned, and when one of the twins died, doctors tried to separate them surgically. The other twin survived for three days.
In the series of pictures about the reign of the last iconoclast emperor, Theophilos (r. 829–42), we see Theoktiste, mother of Theophilos's wife Theodora, secretly instructing her five granddaughters in the use of icons (fol. 44v). Theodora herself was caught in the act of icon veneration and explained her behavior as "playing with dolls" (fol. 45r). Theophilos was not fooled. After her husband's death, Theodora became an overt supporter of icons and eventually an Orthodox saint, but in the Madrid manuscript she is largely a passive figure.
Theophilos's patriarch, the fervent iconoclast John "the Grammarian," is shown in the Madrid Skylitzes not as a wild-haired heretic, as he is in other books, but as a haloed saint who brings imperial letters and gifts to turbaned Muslim rulers in Abbasid Syria (fol. 47r). His oratorical skills make him an effective diplomat who successfully secures the release of Byzantine prisoners—a positive figure, and one relevant to twelfth-century Sicily. After the end of iconoclasm, John was deposed and confined to a monastery, where he ordered a deacon to deface icons in a church (fol. 64v); as patriarch, he had attacked a pagan statue in the Hippodrome of Constantinople in a similar way (fol. 65r). The deacon climbs a ladder to scratch out the eyes of an icon depicting an archangel. When Theodora heard about this, she ordered John to be whipped, as shown in the second miniature on fol. 64v. Nevertheless, the generally positive, even un-Orthodox treatment of the iconoclast patriarch seems to be a product of the Sicilian milieu in which the manuscript was made.
Relevant Textbook Chapter(s):
7,
8
Repository and Online Resources:
• The manuscript is digitized on the Library of Congress website at https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_10625/?st=gallery.
• Read a short analysis of the manuscript when it was rebound and displayed in Madrid in 2024: "A Universe of Images: The Madrid Skylitzes."
Image Credits:
Library of Congress
