Malalas and the Debate over Chalcedon:
Tendencies, Influences, Sources
Pauline Allen

Abstract In this paper I am going to discuss Malalas in the context of a selection of other
sixth-century works, mainly but not totally historical, paying particular attention to the dispute
over Chalcedon in the first half of that century and to Kaiserkritik. In particular I wish to can-
vass the religious tendencies, influences, and use of sources of various writers of the period, in
the hope of bringing about a clearer picture of these aspects in Malalas’ Chronicle.
A concomitant question, and one that has been aired extensively over the past few
decades, concerns the nature of a chronicle, in particular the difference between a his-
tory, a chronicle, and a church history - if there is a difference, does it affect tendencies,
influences, and the use of sources? In considering this question I refer in particular to
the work of Brian Croke,1 Roger Scott,2 and David Dumville;3 but others have also
addressed the issue, for instance, Michael Kulikowski, Richard Burgess, Anne-Marie
Bernardi and Emmanuele Caire at the 2014 Malalas symposium in Tübingen.4 In the
interests of space let us pass over the histories of, e.g., Procopius and his continua-
tor, Agathias, which are chiefly concerned with war, and concentrate on the genre of
chronicle and church history, both of which, albeit sometimes in different ways and
at different levels, have the divine oikonomia as their basis.5 Common to both genres
is the inclusion of famous political and literary figures, political events, and natural
disasters or phenomena, the latter demonstrating the workings of the divinity in hu-
man affairs. A difference is that, whereas the chroniclers mostly excluded their own
commentary on events, church historians were free to dilate on the meaning behind
them.6 A similarity between the two genres is that chroniclers consciously continued
Eusebius’work, or in the case of Marcellinus that of Jerome, just as the Greek church
1 Croke (1990); Croke (1992); Croke (1995); Croke (2001).
2 Scott (1990); see also Mango/Scott (1997)· I am indebted to Professor Scott for reading a draft of this
paper and making helpful suggestions.
3 Dumville (2002).
4 Burgess/Kulikowski (2016); Bernardi/Caire (2016).
5 Croke (1982), p. 195, argues this for Eusebius’ Chronicle, but it was also true for Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical
History. On the term oikonomia see Richter (2005).
6 Croke (2001), p. 209, suggests that this subject-matter was peculiar to the chronicle genre. To my mind,
however, it is not the subject-matter that is different but its interpretation (in church histories) or lack
of it (in chronicles).