GIOVANNI MALALAS (Syriac malalā = “rhetorician”). - He wrote in the sixth century a Chronography that exerted great influence on Byzantine historiography.
There is only one manuscript of it in Greek (Oxon. Baroccianus gr. no. 182), and this too is mutilated; but it can, to a certain extent, be supplemented by means of the Slavonic translation, the Laterculus imperatorum Malalianus, and the Excerpta Constantini. The work of G. M. was excerpted by the Paschal Chronicle, by Giovanni Damasceno, Giorgio Monaco, Giovanni di Nikiu, and others. The author was a Monophysite; some identify him with Giovanni III Scolastico, patriarch of Constantinople (563–74). Of particular interest is his information concerning the city of Antiochia.
BIBL.: The edition by L. Dindorf in the Corpus scriptorum historica Byzantium, Bonn 1831 (reproduced in PG 97, 99), is inadequate. A critical text of books IX–XII by A. Schenk von Staufenberg, Die römische Kaisergeschichte bei M., Stuttgart 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 sg.; K. Wolf, Johannes M., in Pauly-Wissowa, IX, II (1916), p. 1793 sg.; W. Weber, Studien zur Chronik des M., in Festgabe für A. Deismann, Tübinga 1927, pp. 20–60. Erik Peterson