The Madrid Skylitzes: Norman Interpretation in a Byzantine Chronicle
Arts
HAVC 190U
The Byzantines were an important force in the medieval Mediterranean, leaving behind an impressive and rich legacy of illustrated manuscripts. Many, if not most, of the manuscripts that survive from this period show how deeply Christianity permeated Byzantine culture and society, since most of these manuscripts are religious in nature (homilies, bibles, psalters, liturgical texts, moral treatises, etc.). For this reason, the Madrid Skylitzes, an illustrated copy of Ioannes Skylitzes’s Synopsis Historion, is exceptional partly because it is the only preserved illustrated historical chronicle written in Greek. The text itself covers Byzantine history from 811-1057 AD and discusses various notable historical events during the lives of the emperors of that period. Its earliest known location is Sicily, and is therefore also notable because of the unusual way in which it combines Byzantine, Western, and Arabic iconographic influences in depicting this Byzantine text. Therefore, the illuminations have been divided into a “Byzantine” and a “Western” group. Scholars have attempted to explain this iconographic discrepancy by employing theories either of lost archetypal models or of an ad hoc production. While there remains no conclusive proof of either theory, what cannot be denied about the Madrid Skylitzes is how it is a distinct product of Norman Sicily and the cultural and administrative agenda of the Norman kings—more specifically Roger II—and its heavy Byzantine and Islamic influences. The Madrid Skylitzes is a uniquely Norman Sicilian production, insofar as it reflects the hybridity of Norman Sicily and the imperial court and commissions of Roger II, the first Norman King of Sicily. It is the goal of this paper to show how the Norman Sicilian context of the Madrid Skylitzes informed the production of images therein, as well as their relationship to the text.
