(FWF-Project P 25485: 2014–2017)

The edition project addresses the long-standing need for a critical edition of a foundational text of late antique and early Byzantine historiography. The much-criticized 1832 edition published under the supervision of Ludwig Dindorf did not respect the manipulations in the main codex Vaticanus gr. 1941 of the end of the tenth century and thus presents a very problematic text. Moreover, this edition lacks a critical apparatus fontium and locorum. The project prepares a new edition according to the most exacting modern standards for the series Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, Series Vindobonensis, as well as accompanying studies in scholarly journals. The sources of the text are also analysed, in part in co-operation with the “Forschungsstelle der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften Historisch-philologischer Kommentar zur Chronik des Johannes Malalas” (head Mischa Meier). The project also co-operates with other experts of late antique and early medieval / Byzantine historiography.

In addition to the editorial work, the project also engages with the text representation connected with the author’s intention to enforce his dating system against other concurring dating models through his “annuarium” with the precise dating of central events for Christianity. The descriptive part of the chronicle varies substantially in detail and thus offers an interesting research field of illocutionary aspects (apart from its dependence on relevant sources). The analysis of the sources and of the very arbitrary selection of facts provides insight into the functioning of a selective memorial culture while raising new questions of open text theory. The text opens up a wide range of textpragmatical special investigations.

Project progress: problems which the project leader came across during the edition project of the Chronicon paschale (Textstrata, Codex Unicus errors, previous misinterpretations) led to the preparation of an additional monograph accompanying the edition: "Studies on the Chronicon Paschale". it will also relieve the otherwise necessary comment of the edition.

The project leader presents first results of a completely new interpretation of the chronicl'es "authorship" in the sense of an open text compilation in Malalas Studien 4 (2021/2022) and the Brill Companion to Byzantine Chronicles (2022).

As part of the project and the Computus-specific Byzantine literature, the project leader was able to discover the original text of the excerpt from Theophilos of Alexandria that is quoted in the Chronicon, in a palimpsest manuscript (the result appears in the Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 71, 2011).

In addition to the Greek edition, a commented German translation will be published separately in the series “Bibliothek der Griechischen Literatur” (publishing house Hiersemann) by Christian Gastgeber.

Publications


Contact


Christian Gastgeber (project leader)

Erika Juhász (collaborator, until 2016)