The illustration to the left is of Saints Cyril and Methodios, missionaries to the Slavs, from the Menologion of the emperor Basil II 'the Bulgarslayer' (976-1025). The manuscript (Vat. gr. 1613) is not in fact a menologion -- strictly a collection of Saints' lives arranged according to the date of their celebration in the church calendar -- but a version of the Synaxarion of Constantinople -- a collection of brief notices, mostly hagiographical, which inform us on which day and where in the city the commemoration of particular saints took place. The Meonologion of Basil II is the most lavishly illustrated of all extant Byzantine liturgical manuscripts. However, other beautifully illuminated manuscripts have survived, and some illustrations are posted here.
Eighty-five illuminated Byzantine psalters have survived, the earliest dating from the ninth century. A psalter is a liturgical book containing the 150 psalms attributed to King David, accompanied by the odes (canticles). Illustration reflected the psalter's central role in both public liturgical and private spiritual life. The surviving manuscripts have been divided into two groups on the basis of their illustration: "marginal" and "aristocratic." In marginal psalters the illustration consists of numerous small figures and narrative scenes in the margins of the pages, usually linked to the relevant psalter text by a system of sigla. One of the earliest and most beautiful examples is the Khludov Psalter, produced in the aftermath of the second period of political iconoclasm in Byzantium (AD 814-43). The illustration reproduced here is thought to be the Iconoclast Partriarch of Constantinople, John VII Grammatikos persoanlly whitewashing an image of Christ (Moscow gr. 129, fol. 67r). Aristocratic psalters form a less easily defined group: basically their illustration is non-marginal and usually contains one or more frontispiece pictures and major illustrations. The most exquisite exapmle is the tenth-century Paris Psalter (Paris BN gr. 139), although it is hardly representative in its size, the wealth of full page illustrations and the beauty of its script. Another beautiful psalter (Cod. Marc. gr. 17) was commissioned by the emperor Basil II, and contains a portrait of him on the frontispiece, generally, but wrongly, believed to represent his victory over the Bulgarians in 1018.
Illustrated secular manuscripts are very rare. The only surviving illuminated chronicle is version of John Skylitzes' Chronicle held in Madrid (Bibl. Nac. vitr. 26-2). The Madrid Skylitzes contains 574 miniatures; probably 100 fewer than in its original form. The pictures, which adhere closely to the narrative text, are rendered in a variety of styles concurrently practised in twelfth-century Norman Sicily. The manuscript is a unique source for our visualization of imperial ceremonial (triumphal processions, receptions, embassies), costume, weaponry and even technology (for example the illustration of the use of "Greek Fire"). We are also offered rare illustrations of other peoples: Byzantium's enemies, allies, mercenaries such as the Varangians, as well as Bulgarians and Arabs.
A far better idea of the range and nature of illustrated manuscripts can be had from browsing through The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. A. Kazhdan et al. Oxford 1991. Many more and far better illustrations can be found in the beautifully produced catalogue of the 1997 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC: The Glory of Byzantium, eds. H. Evans and W. Wixom, New York 1997.