The Plague of Justinian was a pandemic that afflicted the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), including its capital Constantinople, in 541–542 AD. It was one of the greatest plagues in history. The most commonly accepted cause of the pandemic is bubonic plague, which later became infamous for either causing or contributing to the Black Death of the 14th century.[1] However, recent genetic studies of the bubonic plague germ, carried out from samples taken from skeletal remains in London by researchers from the University of Tübingen, suggest that the Justinian Plague (and others from antiquity) arose from either now-extinct strains of Yersinia pestis genetically distinct from the strain that broke out in the 14th century pandemic, or from pathogens entirely unrelated to bubonic plague.[2] The plagues' social and cultural impact during this period is comparable to that of the Black Death. In the views of 6th century Western historians, it was nearly worldwide in scope, striking central and south Asia, North Africa and Arabia, and Europe as far north as Denmark and as far west as Ireland. Genetic studies point to China being the primary source of the contagion.[1]
Until about 750, the plague returned with each generation throughout the Mediterranean basin. The wave of disease also had a major impact on the future course of European history. Modern historians named this plague incident after the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I, who was in power at the time. He contracted the disease yet survived.
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The outbreak in Constantinople was thought to have been carried to the city by grain boats arriving from Egypt.[1] To feed its citizens, the city and outlying communities imported massive amounts of grain—mostly from Egypt. Grain ships may have been the original source of contagion, with the massive public granaries nurturing the rat and flea population. The epidemic was first reported by the Byzantine historian Procopius in 541 AD from the port of Pelusium, near Suez in Egypt.[1] There are two other first-hand reports of the plague's ravages, by the Syriac church historian John of Ephesus and the church historian Evagrius of Antioch, who was a child in Antioch at the time. Evagrius was afflicted with the buboes associated with the disease, but survived; on the disease's four sweeping returns in his lifetime, he lost his wife and many of his children, a daughter and her child, his servants and country people.[3]
Procopius[4] recorded that, at its peak, the plague was killing 10,000 people in Constantinople every day, but the accuracy of this figure is in question and the true number will probably never be known; what is known is that there was no room to bury the dead, and bodies were left stacked in the open. In his Secret History he records its devastation in the countryside and reports a ruthless response of the hard-pressed Justinian:
"when pestilence swept through the whole known world and notably the Roman Empire, wiping out most of the farming community and of necessity leaving a trail of desolation in its wake, Justinian showed no mercy towards the ruined freeholders. Even then, he did not refrain from demanding the annual tax, not only the amount at which he assessed each individual, but also the amount for which his deceased neighbors were liable."[5]
As a result of plague in the countryside, the price of grain rose at Constantinople. Byzantine Emperor Justinian I had expended huge amounts of money for wars against the Vandals in the Carthage region and the Ostrogoth kingdom of Italy. He had dedicated significant funds to the construction of great churches, like Hagia Sophia. As the empire coped with these expenditures, the plague's effects on tax revenue were disastrous, although Justinian swiftly enacted new legislation to deal more efficiently with the glut of inheritance suits being brought as a result of victims dying intestate.[6]
As the disease spread to port cities around the Mediterranean, it gave the struggling Goths new opportunities in their conflict with Constantinople. The plague weakened the Byzantine Empire at a critical point, when Justinian's armies had nearly wholly retaken Italy and the western Mediterranean coast; this evolving conquest could have credibly reformed the Western Roman Empire and united it with the Eastern under a single emperor for the first time since the year 395. The plague may also have contributed to the success of the Arabs a few generations later in the Byzantine-Arab Wars.[1][7]
The long-term effects on European and Christian history were enormous. Justinian's imperial gambit was ultimately unsuccessful. The troops, overextended, could not hold on. When the plague subsided, they retook Italy, but could not move further north. The eastern empire held Italy for the remainder of Justinian's life, but the empire quickly lost all territory except the southern part after he died. Italy was ravaged by war and fragmented for centuries as the Lombard tribes invaded the north.
There has been some suggestion that the plague facilitated the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain, since its aftermath coincided with the renewed Saxon offensives in the 550s, after a period during which the Saxons were contained. British sources from this period report plague, but Saxon ones are silent. The Romano-British may have been disproportionately affected because of trade contacts with Gaul and other factors,[8] such as British settlement patterns being more dispersive than English ones, which "could have served to facilitate plague transmission by the rat".[9] Nevertheless it is possible that there has been a tendency to exaggerate the differential effects. British sources are more likely to report natural disasters than Saxon ones in this era. In addition, "the evidence for artefact trade between the British and the English" implies significant interaction and "just minimal interaction would surely have involved a high risk of plague transmission."[9]
The actual number of deaths will always be uncertain. Modern scholars believe that the plague killed up to 5,000 people per day in Constantinople at the peak of the pandemic. It ultimately killed perhaps 40% of the city's inhabitants. The initial plague went on to destroy up to a quarter of the human population of the eastern Mediterranean[10] New, frequent waves of the plague continued to strike throughout the 6th, 7th and 8th centuries AD, often more localized and less virulent. It is estimated that the Plague of Justinian killed as many as 25 million people across the world.[11]
After the last recurrence in 750, major epidemic diseases would not appear again in Europe until the Black Death of the 14th century.