Johannes Malalas

The beginning of Book 18 of the Chronicle of Malalas in the Oxford manuscript, Bodleian Library, MS. Barocci 182, fol. 273v

Johannes Malalas ( Malálas = Syriac for rhetorician ; * around 490 in Antioch on the Orontes , Syria ; † after 570 in Constantinople ) was an Eastern Roman historian of the late late antiquity . His earlier often assumed identity with John III. Scholasticos, the Patriarch of Constantinople, or with the historian John of Antioch is usually no longer represented today. He is the author of a Christian world chronicle in Greek.

life and work

There is no reliable information about the biography of the author of the chronicle handed down under the name of Johannes Malalas , but conclusions can be drawn from his work in this regard. John was evidently well educated and apparently worked for several years in the imperial service. He evidently moved from Antioch to Constantinople after the catastrophic earthquake in 526 : From around 532 the focus of the work is on events in the capital.

Johannes is the author of the oldest almost completely preserved Greek-language world chronicle in 18 books. The main manuscript from the 12th century ( Bodleian Library , Codex Baroccianus graecus 182), which already contained an edited and no longer complete text, is partially damaged; The first book is missing (the content of which is known from two other, also edited manuscripts from the 10th century), parts from books 5 and 18 and the end. Some missing passages can be reconstructed thanks to a Church Slavonic translation of the work. The text of said main manuscript breaks off in 563, towards the end of the reign of Emperor Justinian († 565). It is unclear how far the chronicle went; The end date is often assumed to be the year 565, but 574 is also possible. The chronicle was available by 585 at the latest, since from this time there are references to other authors. The work enjoyed great popularity centuries later , precisely due to the fact that Greek, which was approximated to the late ancient vernacular, and found many imitators.

Books 1 to 6 deal with biblical, ancient oriental and older Greek history, with strong mythological descriptions being incorporated. Book 7 deals with early Roman history, book 8 with Hellenistic history . From the 9th book on, Roman history, omitting the republican period, is the focus of the presentation: From Augustus to the present in the middle of the 6th century. Except for the final part, the focus of the depiction is Antioch, then Constantinople. Apparently at least two versions of the Chronicle were made: an earlier one in Antioch (1st half of the 6th century) and a later one in Constantinople. As a historical source, compared to its literary historical value, the chronicle is largely less useful; nevertheless, historical research is dependent on the information from Malalas in many respects. The presentation from the 14th book in particular offers valuable information about the end of late antiquity in the east of the Mediterranean.

Malalas did not view its quite numerous sources critically, but offers a rather colorful story based on its historical and mythological material. However, the individual sources can hardly be identified with certainty; in addition to unknown or lost works (such as the chronicle of a certain domnino, who only mentions Malalas), he evidently consulted Eustathius of Epiphaneia . His style is understandable and the entertaining character of the presentation can sometimes be seen. Nevertheless, the work was viewed very critically in older research and was viewed as inadequate in part due to the lack of content-related penetration of the source material. In the more recent research, however, the special character of the work (whereby the historical information before the 5th century is less useful, but reveals something about the historical image of the end of antiquity) and the perception of the author's own present, which can be seen in the chronicle, are taken into account. In this respect, the chronicle is of particular value in terms of mentality. Warren Treadgold has recently taken a more critical look at the chronicle, but his often speculative assumptions are very controversial.

The work of Johannes Malalas was used extensively by many later authors, such as Johannes von Ephesos , the anonymous author of the Chronicon Paschale, and Theophanes , whose texts were also used to supplement the now authoritative Malalas edition by Hans Thurn . In addition, the chronicle was translated into several languages early on. A Latin version was printed in 1691. In modern research, however, Malalas was for a long time hardly noticed and little appreciated; this only changed with the growing interest in late antiquity from around 1980. Ludwig Dindorf published an edition of the Greek work as early as 1831, which was partly flawed but remained in use for a long time due to the lack of alternatives. The fundamentally improved edition by Thurn has only been available since 2000. The structure of the text does not follow Dindorf, but the counting method of the widely used English Malalas translation from 1986, which divides the chronicle into 18 books.

A project funded by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences to create a historical-philological commentary at the University of Tübingen has been in progress since 2014.

Editions and translations

Johannes Malalas: Chronographia . Edited by Hans Thurn ( posthumously ), Berlin 2000 ( Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 35). [basic text output; expertise. Book review ]
Elizabeth Jeffreys , Michael Jeffreys , Roger Scott: The Chronicle of John Malalas. A translation . Melbourne 1986, ISBN 0-9593626-2-2 ( Byzantina Australiensia 4). [an English translation that has been very well received by research and is still relevant]
Johannes Malalas: World Chronicle . Translated by Hans Thurn and Mischa Meier . With an introduction by Claudia Drosihn, Mischa Meier and Stefan Priwitzer and explanations by Claudia Drosihn, Katharina Enderle, Mischa Meier and Stefan Priwitzer (= Library of Greek Literature . Volume 69). Hiersemann, Stuttgart 2009. [German translation, which does not replace the English translation published by Jeffreys / Jeffreys / Scott, the structure of which it follows; Review at Plekos]

literature

Joëlle Beaucamp et al. a. (Ed.): Recherches sur la Chronique de Jean Malalas . Vol. 1, Paris 2004.
Sandrine Agusta-Boularot et al. a. (Ed.): Recherches sur la Chronique de Jean Malalas . Vol. 2, Paris 2006.
Herbert Hunger : The high-level profane literature of the Byzantines . Vol. 1. Beck, Munich 1978, pp. 319-326.
Elizabeth Jeffreys et al. (Ed.): Studies in John Malalas (= Byzantina Australiensia 6). Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, Department of Modern Greek, Sydney 1990, ISBN 0-9593626-5-7 .
Elizabeth Jeffreys: The Beginning of Byzantine Chronography. John Malalas . In: Gabriele Marasco (Ed.): Greek & Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity. Fourth to sixth century AD Brill, Leiden et al. 2003, ISBN 90-04-11275-8 , pp. 497-527. [good overview of the state of research up to this point in time]
Mischa Meier , Christine Radtki, Fabian Schulz (Ed.): The world chronicle of Johannes Malalas. Author - work - tradition. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-515-11099-0 . [Collection of articles with a presentation of the history of research in the introduction]
Warren Treadgold: The Byzantine World Histories of John Malalas and Eustathius of Epiphania . In: International History Review 29, 2007, pp. 709-745.

Web links

Wikisource: Johannes Malalas - Sources and full texts

Literature by and about Johannes Malalas in the catalog of the German National Library
Research project at the HAW

Remarks

↑ Johannes Malalas: World Chronicle . Translated by Hans Thurn and Mischa Meier . With an introduction by Claudia Drosihn, Mischa Meier and Stefan Priwitzer and explanations by Claudia Drosihn, Katharina Enderle, Mischa Meier and Stefan Priwitzer. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 2009, p. 20.
↑ Review by Elizabeth Jeffreys: The Beginning of Byzantine Chronography. John Malalas . In: Gabriele Marasco (Ed.): Greek & Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity. Fourth to sixth century AD Leiden et al. 2003, here p. 501ff.
↑ Cf. among others Herbert Hunger: The high-level profane literature of the Byzantines . Vol. 1. Munich 1978, p. 320.
↑ Cf. in general Elizabeth Jeffreys: The Beginning of Byzantine Chronography. John Malalas . In: Gabriele Marasco (Ed.): Greek & Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity. Fourth to sixth century AD Leiden et al. 2003, here pp. 516–521.
↑ Elizabeth Jeffreys: The Beginning of Byzantine Chronography. John Malalas . In: Gabriele Marasco (Ed.): Greek & Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity. Fourth to sixth century AD Leiden et al. 2003, here p. 525f.
^ Warren Treadgold: The Byzantine World Histories of John Malalas and Eustathius of Epiphania . In: International History Review 29 (2007), pp. 709-745. Malalas was a swindler who pretended to have consulted multiple sources, according to Treadgold; In reality, his chronicle is little more than a summary from the work of Eustathios of Epiphaneia, supplemented by a few additions and a contemporary part. Unlike Eustathios, Malalas did not use a classical style, and he made several mistakes in the summary. For Treadgold it is also questionable whether the Malalas Chronicle was really as popular as is generally assumed.
↑ Research project at the HAW .

personal data
SURNAME	Johannes Malalas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Byzantine historian
DATE OF BIRTH	at 490
PLACE OF BIRTH	Antioch , Syria
DATE OF DEATH	after 570
Place of death	Constantinople

[1] Johannes Malalas: World Chronicle . Translated by Hans Thurn and Mischa Meier . With an introduction by Claudia Drosihn, Mischa Meier and Stefan Priwitzer and explanations by Claudia Drosihn, Katharina Enderle, Mischa Meier and Stefan Priwitzer. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 2009, p. 20.

[2] Review by Elizabeth Jeffreys: The Beginning of Byzantine Chronography. John Malalas . In: Gabriele Marasco (Ed.): Greek & Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity. Fourth to sixth century AD Leiden et al. 2003, here p. 501ff.

[3] Cf. among others Herbert Hunger: The high-level profane literature of the Byzantines . Vol. 1. Munich 1978, p. 320.

[4] Cf. in general Elizabeth Jeffreys: The Beginning of Byzantine Chronography. John Malalas . In: Gabriele Marasco (Ed.): Greek & Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity. Fourth to sixth century AD Leiden et al. 2003, here pp. 516–521.

[5] Elizabeth Jeffreys: The Beginning of Byzantine Chronography. John Malalas . In: Gabriele Marasco (Ed.): Greek & Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity. Fourth to sixth century AD Leiden et al. 2003, here p. 525f.

[6] Warren Treadgold: The Byzantine World Histories of John Malalas and Eustathius of Epiphania . In: International History Review 29 (2007), pp. 709-745. Malalas was a swindler who pretended to have consulted multiple sources, according to Treadgold; In reality, his chronicle is little more than a summary from the work of Eustathios of Epiphaneia, supplemented by a few additions and a contemporary part. Unlike Eustathios, Malalas did not use a classical style, and he made several mistakes in the summary. For Treadgold it is also questionable whether the Malalas Chronicle was really as popular as is generally assumed.

[7] Research project at the HAW .