Jonas Borsch, Olivier Gengler, et Mischa Meier (éds.), Die Weltchronik des Johannes Malalas im Kontext spätantiker Memorialkultur
Jonas Borsch, Olivier Gengler, et Mischa Meier (éds.), Die Weltchronik des Johannes Malalas im Kontext spätantiker Memorialkultur, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2019, 372 p. / ISBN 9783515120111, 64 €
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1Like clockwork the Project Malalas, located at the University of Tübingen and sponsored by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, keeps churning out new volumes. Since its inception in 2014 the project group, led by Mischa Meier, has published three entries to the series “Malalas Studien”, with two more already in production. The present review is concerned with the third installment, based on a conference held in Tübingen in the autumn of 2016, entitled “Die Weltchronik des Johannes Malalas im Kontext spätantiker Memorialkultur”. In contrast to the first two volumes, that were focused on Malalas, the textual genesis of the chronicle and its source material, this book deviates from the author centric approach and instead paints a panoramic view of memorial culture in Late Antiquity. As the editors, Jonas Borsch and Olivier Gengler, explain in their introduction, this methodological shift is deemed necessary, because Malalas himself does not give us any explicit information on his view of the past. Therefore, they decided to take a detour and embed the chronicle as broadly as possible within the ancient memorial landscape to better comprehend (and expose) Malalas’ underlining historical conception as well as the resulting selection criteria of the Chronographia.
2The following “detour” consists of 13 contributions, further divided into six subsections: the rubric “Historiographie als memoria” is comprised of Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp’s study on the self-fashioning of the Republican gens Fabia. Three studies are dedicated to the theme of “Memoria und Kaisertum”. Jonas Borsch analyzes the over 100 physical descriptions of important individuals (mainly emperors and heroes, but also the apostles Peter and Paul) integrated into the chronicle. He argues that these “written portraits” were not simply copied from other sources but rather reflect Malalas’ attempt to create historical continuity through visual and topographical anchoring. The portraits thus form an ancestral gallery of Roman history. Laura Mecella then scrutinizes the account of Trajan’s Parthian campaign with an emphasis on the fictitious occupation of Antioch. She traces Malalas’ invention of this event to an Antiochene source that combined three different strains of local memoria. Hanns Christof Brennecke sketches the divergent paths of the Byzantine historio- and hagiographical tradition with a study of the (rare) positive image of the emperor Zeno displayed in the Life of Daniel the Stylite.
3The next two contributions are concerned with the “Ausformungen kirchlicher memoria”. Volker Menze looks at the reception of the Council of Chalcedon. Following Pierre Nora’s conception of lieux de mémoire, he argues that even one hundred years after its convocation the council remained a mémoire vivante that was continuously altered and (re-)interpretated by its proponents and adversaries alike. Therefore, Malalas only briefly discussed Chalcedon and refrained from including a clear doctrinal position in his chronicle. Sebastian Watta probes how material culture, specifically the mosaic floors of Near Eastern churches, could impact and influence individual and collective memory. Fueled by the strife for salvation, the mosaics were part of a complex system of sacralization of and within the churches that combined permanent visual stimuli with (frequent) liturgical acts to create a continuous “cultural memory”.
4The following section is concerned with “Die Stadt als Erinnerungsträger”. Emmanuèle Caire first undertakes a caste study of Antioch’s Epiphania area to demonstrate that despite the frequent mention of seemingly specific monuments Malalas’ chronicle neither was an architectural treatise nor a topographical guide. According to Caire, the names of these monuments were more important than their actual nature or present condition. Even after they had ceased to exist, they could still serve as a mental marker for contemporary readers.
5Thereafter, Philipp Niewöhner demonstrates that the preservation of the ancient cityscape of Milet throughout the early Byzantine period was intentional and should be viewed as an example of antiquarianism. This behavior was unrelated to paganism, but instead inspired by the numerous monuments themselves, which might also explain why Asia Minor developed no Byzantine architectural style of its own.
6The rubric “Memoria unter Justinian” consists of two entries: Raf Praet contextualizes the Chronographia within the intellectual milieu of sixth-century Constantinople. He proposes a direct social connection between Malalas, John the Lydian and Cassiodorus that is not simply based on their common bureaucratic experiences and erudite networks, but also palpable in their treatment of Roman history. Praet tries to exemplify his hypothesis through a case study of their respective treatment of the color purple. Olivier Gengler then discusses the historical references embedded into numerous Novellae of Justinian, which he interprets as a conscious strategy to build and fortify a continuous Roman imperial memoria.
7The last section “Die Chronik als Memorialgattung” starts off with an overview of the Latin chronicles of the fifth and sixth century by Carlo Scardino. Despite the conventions of the genre, Scardino clearly shows that each chronicler had ample opportunities to individualize and interpret the historical material. Christian Gastgeber discusses - and almost discards - the idea of a memoria of pagan history in the Chronicon Paschale. The interest in chronology trumped the notion of preserving pagan culture and ultimately drove the selection process of the author. Erika Juhász echoes this sentiment in her study of the Christian martyrs included in the Easter chronicle. The author seldomly strayed from the beaten paths of his main sources (in this case Eusebius and Malalas) and did so only to optimize his chronology, not for the sake of the glorification of the martyrs.
8The overall value of this entry to the “Malalas-Studien” derives from the interdisciplinary approach and wide range of topics covered under the umbrella of ancient memoria. The quality of the individual contributions is high as well, but for those strictly interested in Malalas-centric scholarship this volume offers only four new additions to the field and therefore acts more as a prelude to a forthcoming volume on Malalas as a contemporary historian.
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Référence papier
Christian Barthel, « Jonas Borsch, Olivier Gengler, et Mischa Meier (éds.), Die Weltchronik des Johannes Malalas im Kontext spätantiker Memorialkultur », Anabases, 34 | 2021, 274-276.
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Christian Barthel, « Jonas Borsch, Olivier Gengler, et Mischa Meier (éds.), Die Weltchronik des Johannes Malalas im Kontext spätantiker Memorialkultur », Anabases [En ligne], 34 | 2021, mis en ligne le 29 octobre 2021, consulté le 18 février 2025. URL : http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/anabases/13088 ; DOI : https://0-doi-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/10.4000/anabases.13088
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