JOHN MALALAS (Syriac malala = "orator"). — In the 6th century he wrote a Chronographia which greatly influenced Byzantine historiography.
Only one manuscript of it survives in Greek (Oxon. Baroccianus gr. no. 182), and this is also mutilated, but can to some extent be supplemented by means of the Slavonic translation, the Laterculus imperatorum Malalianus and the Excerpta Constantini. The work of J. M. was excerpted from the Paschal Chronicle by John of Damascus, George the Monk, John of Nicaea and others. The author was Monophysite; some identify him with John III Scholasticus, patriarch of Constantinople (563–74). Of particular interest are his notices on the city of Antioch.
BIBL.: The edition by L. Dindorf in the Corpus scriptorum historiae Byzantinae, Bonn 1831 (reprint in PG 97, 99) is inadequate. A critical text of bks. XXII by A. Schenk von Stauffenberg, Die römische Kaisergeschichte bei M., Stockholm 1931, with an important commentary. Cf. also: M. Spinka, in collaboration with J. Downey, Chron. of John M., VIII–XVIII. Translated from the Church Slavonic, Chicago 1940. On the author and his work, V. Krumbacher, p. 325 sq.; K. Wolf, Johannes M., in Pauly-Wissowa, IX, 11 (1916), p. 1795 sq.; W. Weber, Studien zur Chronik des M., in Festgabe für A. Deissmann, Tübingen 1927, pp. 20–60. Erik Peterson