10 - Theodore and the Laterculus Malalianus

Summary

The Latin text known as Laterculus Malalianus is preserved in two manuscripts, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 277, written probably in Rome in the early eighth century, and a ninthcentury copy made from it, now Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Voss. misc. 11. It is very badly named, since the chronographer Malalas is only one of the author's sources, though admittedly a very important one, and it is not, even in the loosest sense, a laterculus. The attribution to Theodore of Canterbury which I propose to argue gives it an interest and importance out of all proportion to its modest length, since Canterbury was the first school of Christianity and Latin literacy in Anglo-Saxon England: first in time, and in importance second only to Wearmouth–Jarrow. Specific dating and localizing criteria are circumstantial, but various: they include two references to Irish scholarship, and one to the recent erection of a basilica to the Virgin in Rome. Laterculus was edited by Theodor Mommsen, for the Monumenta Germaniae Historia, as a ‘minor chronicle’; and it is certainly based in part on the Chronographia of John Malalas, written in Greek in Constantinople or Antioch in the later sixth century. But some two-thirds of its length is completely independent of Malalas, and although its Malalaian structure is a correlation of the gospels and Roman imperial history, its independent content is basically exegetical. If it is a chronicle at all, it is an extremely poor one. I hope to show that the historical element is merely an aspect of its real identity as a work of exegesis following the traditions of Antioch.