Synaxis of the Archangels

The word in the title, synaxis, means a gathering, and that is what the panel shows. This is the feast kept on the 8th of November across the Orthodox world, when all the bodiless powers of heaven are honoured together, led by the archangels Michael and Gabriel. In icons of this subject the two stand shoulder to shoulder and hold up a round medallion between them. Inside it is Christ, shown as a young child, the one they serve. Michael's name is itself a question, meaning who is like God, a kind of war cry against pride. Painted around 1350, in the last century of the medieval Bulgarian kingdom, a panel like this would have stood among the ranked icons of a church screen, the one day of the year that gathered the whole angelic host into a single image.