Manuscript production and Illumination
  In the second and third centuries, the book of bound pages (codex) began to replace the traditional papyrus scroll. It was a durable and easy to use vehicle for both text and illustrations. The sixth-century Vienna Dioskorides is the most luxurious of Byzantine scientific manuscripts. It contains several works of medicine and pharmacology, and numerous miniatures, mostly full-page illustrations of plants in alphabetical order, as well as pictures of snakes, insects, animals and birds. At the beginning of the manuscript, four miniatures with representations of the centaur Chiron, Galen and Dioscorides are references to the history of pharmacology. Another pictures Anicia Juliana, to whom the manuscript was dedicated, enthroned between the personnifications of Magnanimity and Prudence, and dropping gold on a copy of the book held by a putto. Within the octagonal frame, an inscription in silver letters praises Juliana for a church she built for the people of Honoratae, near Constantinople, sometime before 512. The book was probably their gift to Juliana. Putti are pictured building this church on the spandrels of the octagon. Among Early Byzantine religious manuscripts, the Rossano Gospel, Sinope Gospel and Vienna Genesis are the finest, with beautiful illustrations of the gospel and Septuagint narrative on luxurious purple-dyed parchment. The latter feature may indicate an imperial patron, since purple was a color reserved for the emperor. All three are attributed to the sixth century. The Rabbula Gospel is a Syriac manuscript, completed in 586 by the scribe Rabbula in the monastery of Zagba in Mesopotamia.