John Scholasticus

d.577. Born at Sirimis, near Antioch, the son of a cleric, he was a lawyer at Antioch, where he made a famous collection (“Synagoge”) of canons, which he later re-edited and enriched from the Novellae of Justinian, so that the work became one of the primary sources for subsequent Eastern canon law. He was appointed patriarch of Constantinople by Justinian in 565, succeeding Eutychius who had been exiled for opposing Aphthardocetism, which Justinian had espoused. John became a close friend of Emperor Justin II and took an active part in trying to win over the Monophysites, but later carried out Justin's policy of suppression. He is said to have written a “Catechetical Oration” on the Trinity. He may be identical with John Malalas, the Byzantine chronicler, whose Chronography woven around the fortunes of Antioch, is a source of religious and secular history, written in the common Greek of the age.