Michael I Rangabe and Patriarch Nikephoros: Madrid Skylitzes Folio 10r
Michael I Rangabe, as the reign devoted to him opens on folio 10r of the Madrid Skylitzes, appears beside Patriarch Nikephoros I in the page’s principal miniature. The emperor and patriarch occupy separate thrones, flanked by compact groups of dignitaries, while Nikephoros raises his right hand in blessing. Painted in Sicily during the mid-twelfth century, the image introduces the first reign covered in John Skylitzes’ Synopsis Historiarum and has generally been interpreted as the enthronement or formal proclamation of Michael in 811.
The manuscript, preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional de España under the shelfmark VITR/26/2, contains 233 parchment folios and 574 miniatures. Its full digital record is available through BNE Digital. The historical event preceded the making of the codex by more than three centuries; the Michael I Rangabe represented here is therefore a figure of retrospective history, reconstructed through the visual language of medieval court ceremony.
Two Thrones and a Divided Assembly
The enthroned pair forms a broad central unit. Patriarch Nikephoros sits on the viewer’s left, distinguished by a large circular nimbus, episcopal vestments and the closed codex held against his body. His raised right hand supplies the principal action. Michael I Rangabe, crowned and dressed in blue beneath a broad gold-coloured ceremonial garment, occupies the more imposing throne on the right. Red footwear and the patterned surfaces of the seat complete the abbreviated vocabulary of imperial rank.
The two chairs are plainly distinct, their separation preserving the independence of the offices even as the figures are brought into close physical alignment. The patriarch’s nimbus creates the strongest circular form in the composition; the emperor’s throne, wide and angular, answers it with a heavier block of colour. Sacred dignity and imperial office are differentiated through shape, costume and gesture.
On either side, the attendants gather in dense, overlapping groups. Several wear long cloaks with rectangular ornamental panels resembling the tablia of Byzantine court dress. Red, deep blue, purple and grey alternate across the assembly, preventing the lateral clusters from collapsing into undifferentiated masses. The foremost figure on the right raises a hand towards the central pair, a gesture that may convey acclamation or formal address. Reduced to people, thrones and insignia, court and ceremony have no architectural setting here.
Michael I Rangabe and the Accession of 811
Michael I Rangabe came to power after the death of Emperor Nikephoros I in Bulgaria and the incapacitation of his son Staurakios. Severely wounded in the disastrous campaign against Krum, Staurakios was compelled to relinquish the throne on 2 October 811. Michael, his brother-in-law and formerly kouropalates, was then proclaimed emperor with the support of senior officials, the senate and the military establishment.
Patriarch Nikephoros, who occupied the see of Constantinople from 806 until 815, was closely involved in the change of government. The miniature does not describe a coronation through a crown being placed on Michael’s head, nor does it show the interior of Hagia Sophia. Its meaning is more compressed. The seated emperor, the blessing patriarch and the facing assembly combine several aspects of accession in a single ceremonial image.
That compression explains why the older catalogue cautiously described the scene as “probably” representing the enthronement of Michael I Rangabe. The miniature establishes legitimacy and public recognition without illustrating a narrowly defined instant.
Free Translation
The abbreviated red caption above the central figures reads:
“Μιχ(αὴλ) ὁ Ῥαγκαβέ”
“Michael Rangabe.”
The inscription identifies the emperor, leaving the patriarch’s identity to be conveyed by the narrative context and his episcopal appearance.
Patriarch Nikephoros as the Sacred Counterpart
Nikephoros is represented with a halo, a retrospective element consistent with his veneration by the time the manuscript was made. That sanctity changes the balance of the historical scene. His blessing does more than identify an ecclesiastical participant: it places the accession of Michael I Rangabe beneath visible patriarchal sanction.
The closed codex reinforces the patriarch’s teaching office, though it need not be understood as a specific Gospel book. Its rigid rectangular shape is set against the curved nimbus and the softer folds of the dark purple vestment. Much of the facial paint has been abraded, yet the silhouette remains intelligible, particularly the dark outline of the head within the halo and the raised fingers of the blessing hand.
Michael’s pose is quieter, dependent upon frontality, the crown and the ceremonial weight of the throne; Nikephoros supplies the gesture that activates the scene. Ecclesiastical recognition thereby becomes central to the illuminator’s pictorial account of political succession.
Page Architecture, Colour and Survival
The Michael I Rangabe miniature occupies a wide reserve between two blocks of Greek minuscule. Five lines of text run above it; beneath, a tall red initial opens the following textual unit. Image, rubric and chronicle remain closely interlocked, yet the miniature possesses enough unpainted parchment around it to function as an independent field.
Its space is exceptionally shallow. The figures stand or sit directly against the parchment, without landscape, pavement or architectural frame. Fine dark contours define the bodies, while folds are constructed from short linear accents. The palette remains vivid in the blue and red garments, although considerable abrasion has removed facial features, sections of the patriarch’s robes and parts of the throne decoration. Around the edges, creases, stains and later repairs disclose the physical history of the folio.
How economically individuality was handled becomes clearer in the closer view. Heads recur in overlapping sequences, their features reduced to a few dark lines and reddish touches. Greater attention was devoted to costume, rank and collective action, the distinctions necessary to this historical narrative.
A Different Scene from the Shield Raising on Folio 10v
This image is sometimes confused with the much-reproduced elevation on a shield found on the reverse of the same folio. The two compositions are separate. Folio 10r presents Michael I Rangabe already enthroned beside Patriarch Nikephoros; folio 10v depicts a ruler being raised on a shield and crowned, an image whose precise identification has itself generated scholarly disagreement.
The distinction matters. In the present miniature, authority is centred upon the paired seats of emperor and patriarch; on the following page, a military form of proclamation governs the composition. Read consecutively, the two sides of the folio offer different visual formulations of accession rather than two copies of the same ceremony.
A Sicilian Reconstruction of Byzantine Authority
The Madrid Skylitzes was produced in the multicultural environment of Norman Sicily, probably during the second quarter or around the middle of the twelfth century. Its illuminators worked in markedly different manners, drawing upon Byzantine, western Mediterranean and local artistic practices. Michael I Rangabe consequently appears in costume and ceremonial forms shaped by a much later pictorial world.
The lost exemplar from which the manuscript’s text was copied, Georgi Parpulov argues in his 2025 article Original or Copy?, was probably unillustrated. He concludes that the narrative miniatures were devised afresh under shared direction rather than copied from an older pictorial cycle. The Michael I Rangabe scene on folio 10r cannot by itself resolve every question surrounding the manuscript’s sources. Its paired thrones, sparse setting and tightly controlled assembly preserve an image of Byzantine authority as it was understood in twelfth-century Sicily.
(The translation was edited by A. Williams.)
