John Malalas (; ; – 578) was a Byzantine Empire chronicler from Antioch in Asia Minor.
Life
Of
Syrian descent,
Malalas was a native speaker of
Syriac language who learned how to write in
Greek language later in his life.
The name
Malalas probably derived from the Syriac word ܡܰܠܳܠܰܐ malolo '
rhetor,
orator'; it is first applied to him by John of Damascus. The alternative form
Malelas is later, first appearing in
Constantine VII.
[Thurn, Ioannis Malalae Chronographia, p. 1.]
Malalas was educated in Antioch, and was probably a jurist there, but moved to Constantinople at some point in Justinian I's reign (perhaps after the sack of Antioch by the Sasanian Empire in 540);[Geoffrey Horrocks, Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers (Longman Linguistics Library, 1997: ), p. 180.] all we know of his travels from his own hand are visits to Thessalonica and Paneas.[Thurn, Ioannis Malalae Chronographia, p. 1.]
Writing
He wrote a
Chronographia (Χρονογραφία) in 18 books, the beginning and the end of which are lost. In its present state it begins with the mythical history of
Egypt and ends with the expedition to Roman Africa under the tribune Marcianus, Justinian's nephew,
in 563 (his editor Thurn believing it originally to end with Justinian's death
[Thurn, Ioannis Malalae Chronographia, p. 2.]); it is focused largely on Antioch and (in the later books)
Constantinople. Except for the history of Justinian and his immediate predecessors, it possesses little historical value;
the author, "relying on Eusebius of Caesarea and other compilers, confidently strung together myths, biblical stories, and real history."
[Warren Treadgold, A History of Byzantine State and Society (Stanford University Press, 1997: ), p. 267.] The eighteenth book, dealing with Justinian's reign, is well acquainted with, and colored by, official propaganda. The writer is a supporter of Church and State, an upholder of monarchical principles. However, the theory identifying him with the patriarch John Scholasticus is almost certainly incorrect.
[Thurn, Ioannis Malalae Chronographia, p. 2.]
Malalas cites many sources, including the lost or fragmentary works of Brunichius, Charax of Pergamum, Domninus, Eustathius of Epiphania, Eutropius, Eutychianus, Nestorianus, Philostratus, Priscus, Sisyphus of Kos and Timotheus.[Elizabeth Jeffreys, "Malalas' Sources", in Elizabeth Jeffreys, Brian Croke and Roger Scott (eds.), Studies in John Malalas (Brill, 1990), p. 196.]
The work is important as the first surviving example of a chronicle written not for the learned but for the instruction of the monks and the common people,[Horrocks, Greek, pp. 179-81, q.v. for details of lexical and syntactic usage; see also pp. 181-82 for a passage of Malalas with interlinear translation and transcription showing how Horrocks believes it would have sounded in the spoken Greek of the day.]
It obtained great popularity, and was used by various writers until the ninth century; it was translated into Old Bulgarian probably in the tenth century, and parts of it were used for the Primary Chronicle.[Oleg Tvorogov, Хроника Иоанна Малалы .] It is preserved in an abridged form in a single manuscript now at Oxford
See also
Modern editions
- Text
-
Johannes Thurn (ed.) 2000, Ioannis Malalae Chronographia, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae (CFHB) 35 (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter)
- Translation
-
Elizabeth Jeffreys, Michael Jeffreys, Roger Scott et al. 1986, The Chronicle of John Malalas: A Translation, Byzantina Australiensia 4 (Melbourne: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies)
Further reading
-
E. Jeffreys, B. Croke, and R. Scott (eds.), Studies in John Malalas (Sydney: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 1990) (Byzantina Australiensia, 6), pp. 1–25.
-
David Woods, "Malalas, Constantius, and a Church-inscription from Antioch," Vigiliae Christianae, 59,1 (2005), pp. 54–62.
-
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, "Malalas on Antioch," in Idem, Decline and Change in Late Antiquity: Religion, Barbarians and their Historiography (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2006) (Variorum Collected Studies).
External links
