Ignatius of Antioch - A painting of a man and a woman in a landscape with lions

Damnatio ad bestias is a Latin phrase that translates into English as 'condemnation to the beasts'. It refers to a form of capital punishment in ancient Rome where criminals, prisoners or slaves were condemned to be killed by wild animals, typically in public spectacles held in arenas such as the Colosseum. The condemned person would be forced to face dangerous and predatory animals such as lions, bears or leopards in an often brutal and gruesome manner. The practice was used as a form of entertainment and punishment, both to entertain the spectators and to act as a deterrent to potential criminals.

The manuscript is not technically a menologion, but a synaxarion: a liturgical book containing a list of the saints and their feast days with a short description of sixteen lines of text and a painting of a saint or grouping of saints. The more than 430 images are important examples of hagiography, the veneration of saints, in Byzantine illumination. Text and images cover only half of the religious calendar of the Byzantine liturgical year (September to February), so it is assumed that there was a second volume to the work, but this was probably never produced, since some pages within the manuscript were left unfinished. The miniatures themselves have no liturgical role—it is possible that their purpose was to act as protectors of the Emperor. The manuscript inspired the illustration of a number of subsequent menologia. The work glorifies Emperor Basil II showing him as a warrior defending Orthodox Christendom against the attacks of the Bulgarian Empire, whose attacks on Byzantium are graphically illustrated. Even figures like the archangels were depicted in military guise by the painters.