Giovanni di Efeso: lo storiografo e l’agiografo. La peste giustinianea nelle Vite dei Santi orientali, tra cenni e (re)interpretazioni

John of Ephesus, a Syriac miaphysite bishop, historiographer, and hagiographer, lived and wrote in the age of Justinian and was an eyewitness to the Great Pestilence of 542. This event touched him so deeply that he dedicated to the plague a juvenile work and a long description in his Ecclesiastical History. The same is not the case when he writes his hagiographic work, the Life of the Eastern Saints, composed in the same years; here the pestilence is mostly absent or barely hinted at, without dwelling on a possible etiological meaning of the event and an interpretation of it as a divine punishment. This article aims to make some considerations on John of Ephesus’ approach to the topic of the Great Pestilence, considering the differences in his attitude towards the tragic event of 542 in his historiographical and hagiographical works. The reasons for such a different approach to the subject should lie in the different aims of the two works. The plague is presented as a historical fact, and its causes are not to be investigated in hagiography.