Malalas and the Debate over Chalcedon

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councils, even those of Nicaea, Ephesus I, and especially Chalcedon, given that the
latter was responsible for much of the ecclesiastical fall-out during Malalas’lifetime.16
Frederic Alpi, dealing with Books XVI and XVII, maintains that for Malalas imperial
power transcends christological differences and the figure of the emperor remains es-
sentially untouchable. According to him, Malalas is concerned with the legitimacy and
continuity of episcopal elections as an expression of imperial power, even in conten-
tious cases, like that of Severus of Antioch.1? Professor Alpi stands out among schol-
ars in advocating that Malalas possesses an in-depth knowledge of reported facts, to
which he joins a true sensitivity to religious questions (especially the case of Vitalian).
Another view, proposed by Philippe Blaudeau, is that Malalas could have been a
Chalcedonian who escaped the sectarianism of his contemporaries.18 Like Martin and
Alpi, Blaudeau believes that Malalas wants to show that church history is activated by
emperors, adding that in this light the chronicler tries to minimise confessional rival-
ries.19 I would like to suggest that this minimisation of confessional rivalries in Mala-
las comes very close to the neo-Chalcedonian movement and its attempt to reconcile
the differences regarding Chalcedon by taking the works of Cyril of Alexandria as
common ground. As pointed out by Professor Blaudeau, the Trisagion episode, which
is treated in surprising detail by Malalas (as it is in Marcellinus), seems to correspond
to an initiative of the emperor himself, who was worried about harmonising different
ecclesiastical customs.20 The detailed treatment of the Trisagion episode in both our
chroniclers demonstrates, as argued convincingly by Professor Meier, that it was not
the question of ecclesiastical alliances but also of political agendas; hence Marcellinus
and Malalas devoted more space to a riot over a liturgical formula than we would
have expected from chroniclers. I submit that Anastasius’ attempted harmonisation
of religious differences, which Professor Blaudeau detects, is an undercurrent of much
of the politico-ecclesiastical activities of the first half of the sixth century and beyond.
The fact that Evagrius uses the material of his fellow Antiochene, Malalas, with-
out problem and apparently had no qualms about its orthodoxy’ is telling, although
local information and Malalas’descriptions of buildings predominate in the borrowed
material that appears in the Historic/. Ecclesiastica. It is significant that at Historia Ec-
clesiastica III 10 Evagrius even uses Malalas to record the murder of the Chalcedonian
bishop, Stephen of Antioch, with a view to refuting the narrative of the Historia Eccle-
siastica of the anti-Chalcedonian church historian Zachariah, which omits the event.21
I wish to argue that all kinds of attitudes to Chalcedon were current in the first
half of the sixth century, especially but not solely in Constantinople during the reign of
16 See Croke (1990), pp. 14-15.
17 Alpi (2011). On episcopal elections in general in Antioch in the sixth century see Allen (2011).
18 Blaudeau (2006a), p. 243.
19 Blaudeau (2006a), pp. 244,254.
20 Blaudeau (2006a), p. 253. On the 512 riot see the exhaustive treatment by Meier (2007), who emphasises
the various problems at play in the riot, not all of which were concerned with religion - hence the ex-
tensive treatment by the chroniclers Marcellinus and Malalas.
21 On Evagrius’ use of Malalas see Allen (1981), p. 7; Whitby (2000), pp. xxvii-xxviii. See further below on
Zachariah and Ps-Zachariah.