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John Malalas or Ioannes Malalas (or Malelas) (Syriac word for "rhetor", "orator") was a (Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: ) (c. 491 – 578), Byzantine
Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire and Eastern Roman Empire are conventional names used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople....
 chronicler. He was born at Antioch
Antioch

Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. It is near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey.Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the nearer East and was a cradle of gentile hi...
.

Works
He wrote a Chronographia in 18 books, the beginning and the end of which are lost. In its present state it begins with the mythical history of Egypt
Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
 and ends with the expedition to Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
 under Marcianus, the nephew of Justinian
Justinian I

Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus , AD 482 or 483 ? 13 or 14 November 565, was the second member of the Justinian Dynasty and List of Roman Emperors from 527 until his death....
.






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John Malalas or Ioannes Malalas (or Malelas) (Syriac word for "rhetor", "orator") was a (Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: ) (c. 491 – 578), Byzantine
Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire and Eastern Roman Empire are conventional names used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople....
 chronicler. He was born at Antioch
Antioch

Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. It is near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey.Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the nearer East and was a cradle of gentile hi...
.

Works


He wrote a Chronographia in 18 books, the beginning and the end of which are lost. In its present state it begins with the mythical history of Egypt
Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
 and ends with the expedition to Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
 under Marcianus, the nephew of Justinian
Justinian I

Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus , AD 482 or 483 ? 13 or 14 November 565, was the second member of the Justinian Dynasty and List of Roman Emperors from 527 until his death....
. Except for the history of Justinian and his immediate predecessors, it possesses little historical value; it is written without any idea of proportion and contains astonishing blunders. He was educated in Antioch and probably was a civil servant there, but moved to Constantinople
Constantinople

Constantinople was the empire capital of the Roman Empire , the Byzantine Empire , the Latin Empire , and the Ottoman Empire . Strategically located between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara at the point where Europe meets Asia, Byzantine Constantinople had been the capital of a Christendom empire, successor to ancient ancient Greece...
 early in Justinian's reign. Perhaps for that reason, the eighteenth book dealing with Justinian's reign (527-565) is well acquainted with, and colored by, official propaganda. The writer is a supporter of Church and State, an upholder of monarchical principles.

The work is rather a chronicle written round Antioch, which he regarded as the centre of the world, and (in the later books) round Constantinople
Constantinople

Constantinople was the empire capital of the Roman Empire , the Byzantine Empire , the Latin Empire , and the Ottoman Empire . Strategically located between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara at the point where Europe meets Asia, Byzantine Constantinople had been the capital of a Christendom empire, successor to ancient ancient Greece...
. It is, however, important as the first specimen of a chronicle written not for the learned but for the instruction of the monks and the common people, in the language of the vulgar, with an admixture of Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 and Oriental words. It obtained great popularity, and was conscientiously exploited by various writers until the ninth century, being translated even into the Slavonic languages. It is preserved in an abridged form in a single manuscript now at Oxford
University of Oxford

The University of Oxford , located in the city of Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation in the English-speaking world....
.

For the authorities consulted by Malalas, the influence of his work on Slavonic and Oriental literature, the state of the text, the original form and extent of the work, the date of its composition, the relation of the concluding part to the whole, and the literature of the subject, see Karl Krumbacher
Karl Krumbacher

Karl Krumbacher , Germany scholar, an expert on Byzantine Empire culture.He was born at Kurnach in Bavaria, and was educated at the universities of university of Munich and university of Leipzig, and held the professorship of the middle age and modern Greek language and literature in the former from 1897 to his death....
's Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897). See also the editio princeps, by Edmund Chilmead
Edmund Chilmead

Edmund Chilmead was an English writer and translator, who produced both scholarly works and hack writing. He is also known as a musician.He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he graduated M.A....
 (Oxford, 1691), containing an essay by Humphrey Hody
Humphrey Hody

Humphrey Hody was an England scholar and theology....
 and Bentley
Richard Bentley

Richard Bentley was an England theologian, Classics and critic....
's well-known letter to Mill
John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill , United Kingdom philosopher, political economy, civil servant and Parliament of the United Kingdom, was an influential liberalism thinker of the 19th century....
; other editions in the Bonn Corpus scriptorum hist. byz., by L. Dindorf (1831), and in J.P. Migne
Jacques Paul Migne

Jacques Paul Migne was a France priest who published inexpensive and widely-distributed editions of theological works, encyclopedias and the texts of the Church Fathers, with the goal of providing a universal library for the Catholic priesthood....
 Patrologia Graeca
Patrologia Graeca

The Patrologia Graeca is an edited collection of writings by the Christian Church Fathers and various secular writers, in the ancient Koine or Medieval Greek variants of the Greek language....
, xcvii.

Modern editions

  • Text:
    • Johannes Thurn (ed.) 2000, Ioannis Malalae Chronographia, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae (CFHB) 35 (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter) ISBN 3-11-008800-2


  • 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) ISBN 0959362622


Studies


  • E. Jeffreys, B. Croke, and R. Scott (eds.), Studies in John Malalas (Sydney: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 1990) (Byzantina Australiensia, 6).


  • 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