Plague of Justinian

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A characteristic of the Plague of Justinian was hand necrosis

The Plague of Justinian (AD 541–542) was a pandemic that afflicted the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), including its capital Constantinople. It has been claimed as one of the greatest plagues in history. The cause of the pandemic has been confirmed to be bubonic plague,[1] and recent research confirms that it was bubonic plague related to both present and medieval plague infections.[2]The plague's social and cultural impact during the Justinian period has been compared to that of the Black Death. In the views of some 6th-century Western historians, the plague epidemic was nearly worldwide in scope, striking central and south Asia; North Africa and Arabia;[citation needed] and Europe all the way to Denmark and Ireland. Genetic studies point to China as having been the primary source of the contagion.[1]

Throughout the Mediterranean basin, until about 750, the plague returned in each generation[citation needed]. The waves of disease had a major effect 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 of the initial outbreak; he contracted the disease himself yet survived.

Contents

Origins and spread [edit]

The outbreak in Constantinople was thought to have been carried to the city by infected rats on 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, as the rat (and flea) population in Egypt thrived on feeding from the large granaries maintained by the government. The Byzantine historian Procopius first reported the epidemic in AD 541 from the port of Pelusium, near Suez in Egypt.[1] Two other first-hand reports of the plague's ravages were by the Syriac church historian John of Ephesus and Evagrius Scholasticus, who was a child in Antioch at the time and later became a church historian. Evagrius was afflicted with the buboes associated with the disease but survived. During the disease's four returns in his lifetime, he lost his wife, a daughter and her child, other children, most of his servants, and people from his country estate.[3]

Procopius,[4] in a passage closely modeled on Thucydides, recorded that at its peak the plague was killing 10,000 people in Constantinople daily, but the accuracy of this figure is in question and the true number will probably never be known. He noted that because there was no room to bury the dead, bodies were left stacked in the open. In his Secret History, he records the devastation in the countryside and reports the ruthless response by 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, farmers could not take care of crops and the price of grain rose at Constantinople. Justinian had expended huge amounts of money for wars against the Vandals in the Carthage region and the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy. He had dedicated significant funds to the construction of great churches, such as Hagia Sophia. As the empire tried to fund these projects, the plague caused tax revenues to decline, possibly due to the massive number of deaths and the disruption of agriculture and trade. 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, the struggling Goths gained an edge in their conflict with Constantinople. The plague weakened the Byzantine Empire at a critical point, when Justinian's armies had nearly retaken all of Italy and the western Mediterranean coast; this evolving conquest could have credibly reformed the Western Roman Empire and reunited it with the Eastern under a single emperor for the first time since 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 may have been enormous. Justinian's imperial gambit was ultimately unsuccessful. The troops, overextended, could not hold on. When the plague subsided, his troops regained Italy, but could not move further north. The eastern empire held Italy for the remainder of Justinian's life yet quickly lost all but the southern part after he died. Italy was ravaged by war and fragmented for centuries as the Lombards invaded the north.

Some scholars[8] have suggested 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 (as there are no sixth-century English documents). The Romano-British may have been disproportionately affected because of trade contacts with Gaul and other factors,[9] such as British settlement patterns being more dispersive than English ones, which "could have served to facilitate plague transmission by the rat".[10] The differential effects may have been exaggerated. In this era, British sources are more likely to report natural disasters than Saxon ones.[citation needed] In addition, "the evidence for artifact trade between the British and the English" implies significant interaction and "just minimal interaction would surely have involved a high risk of plague transmission".[10]

Virulence and mortality rate [edit]

The 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. The initial plague ultimately killed perhaps 40% of the city's inhabitants and caused the deaths of up to a quarter of the human population of the eastern Mediterranean.[11] Frequent subsequent waves of the plague continued to strike throughout the 6th, 7th and 8th centuries, with the disease becoming more localized and less virulent. One high estimate is that the Plague of Justinian killed as many as 25 million people across the world.[12] This outbreak seems to have left a trace in the genome of Y. pestis itself.[13]

After the last recurrence in 750, major epidemic diseases did not appear again in Europe until the Black Death of the 14th century.[dubious – discuss]

Cause [edit]

The Plague of Justinian is generally regarded as the first instance of bubonic plague. This conclusion is based on the historical description of the clinical manifestations during the epidemic[14] and the detecton of Y. pestis DNA from human remains at ancient grave sites dated to that period[15][16] . A genetic study of the bacterium causing bubonic plague based on samples taken from the remains of 14th-century plague victims in London and a survey of other samples[clarification needed] suggests[clarification needed] that the Plague of Justinian and others from antiquity arose from either now-extinct strains of Yersinia pestis genetically distinct from the 14th-century strain or came from pathogens entirely unrelated to bubonic plague.[17][18] However, further work by the same researchers noted that the spread of several unusual modern variants of plague worldwide can be dated to a radiation event approximately coinciding with the Plague of Justinian, supporting the notion that it was caused by a strain of bubonic plague.[19][16]

See also [edit]

Notes [edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e Nicholas Wade (October 31, 2010). "Europe’s Plagues Came From China, Study Finds". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-11-01. "The first appeared in the 6th century during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian, reaching his capital, Constantinople, on grain ships from Egypt. The Justinian Plague, as historians call it, is thought to have killed perhaps half the population of Europe and to have enabled the Arab takeover of Byzantine provinces in the Near East and Africa." 
  2. ^ http://phys.org/news/2013-05-modern-lab-ages-plague-dna.html
  3. ^ Evagrius, Historia Ecclesiae, IV.29.
  4. ^ Procopius, Persian War II.22–23.
  5. ^ Procopius, Anekdota, 23.20f.
  6. ^ Justinian, Edict IX.3; J. Moorhead 1994; Averil Cameron, The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity, AD 395–600, 1993:111.
  7. ^ Rosen, William. Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe. Viking Adult, 2007. ISBN 978-0-670-03855-8.
  8. ^ John S. Wacher (1974, pp. 414-422); J.C. Russell (1958, pp. 71-99).
  9. ^ Josiah C. Russell, Medieval Demography, New York, AMS, 1987, p. 123.
  10. ^ a b Neville Brown, History and Climate Change: An Eurocentric Perspective, Routledge, London, 2001, p.94–95.
  11. ^ Cyril A. Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome (1980) emphasizes the demographic effects; Mark Whittow, "Ruling the late Roman and Byzantine city", Past and Present 33 (1990) argues against too great reliance on literary sources.
  12. ^ Rosen, William (2007), Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe. Viking Adult; pg 3; ISBN 978-0-670-03855-8.
  13. ^ Bos KI, Stevens P, Nieselt K, Poinar HN, Dewitte SN, Krause J (2012) Yersinia pestis: New evidence for an old infection. PLoS One. 2012;7(11):e49803. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0049803
  14. ^ Procopius, History of the Wars, 7 Vols., trans. H. B. Dewing, Loeb Library of the Greek and Roman Classics, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914), Vol. I, pp. 451-473.
  15. ^ Wiechmann I, Grupe G. Detection of Yersinia pestis DNA in two early medieval skeletal finds from Aschheim (Upper Bavaria, 6th century A.D.).Am J Phys Anthropol. 2005 Jan;126(1):48-55
  16. ^ a b Harbeck, Michaela; Seifert, Lisa; Hänsch, Stephanie; Wagner, David M.; Birdsell, Dawn; Parise, Katy L.; Wiechmann, Ingrid; Grupe, Gisela et al. (2013). "Yersinia pestis DNA from Skeletal Remains from the 6th Century AD Reveals Insights into Justinianic Plague". In Besansky, Nora J. PLoS Pathogens 9 (5): e1003349. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1003349. PMC 3642051. PMID 23658525. 
  17. ^ McGrath, Matt (12 October 2011). "Black Death Genetic Code 'Built'". BBC World Service. Retrieved 12 October 2011. 
  18. ^ Bos, Kirsten; Schuenemann, Verena J.; Golding, G. Brian; Burbano, Hernán A.; Waglechner, Nicholas; Coombes, Brian K.; McPhee, Joseph B.; Dewitte, Sharon N. et al. (12 October 2011). "A draft genome of Yersinia pestis from victims of the Black Death". Nature 478 (7370): 506–510. Bibcode:2011Natur.478..506B. doi:10.1038/nature10549. PMID 21993626. 
  19. ^ Bos, Kirsten; Stevens, Philip; Nieselt, Kay; Poinar, Hendrik N.; Dewitte, Sharon N.; Krause, Johannes (28 November 2012). "Yersinia pestis: New Evidence for an Old Infection". In Gilbert, M. Thomas P. PLoS ONE 7 (11): e49803. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0049803. PMC 3509097. PMID 23209603. 

References [edit]

  • Harbeck M, Seifert L, Hänsch S, Wagner DM, Birdsell D, et al. (2013) Yersinia pestis DNA from Skeletal Remains from the 6th Century AD Reveals Insights into Justinianic Plague PLoS Pathog 9(5): e1003349. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1003349
  • Wiechmann I, Grupe G. Detection of Yersinia pestis DNA in two early medieval skeletal finds from Aschheim (Upper Bavaria, 6th century A.D.).Am J Phys Anthropol. 2005 Jan;126(1):48-55
  • Drancourt M, Roux V, Dang LV, Tran-Hung L, Castex D, Chenal-Francisque V, et al. "Genotyping, Orientalis-like Yersinia pestis, and plague pandemics". Emerging Infectious Diseases.
  • Little, Lester K., ed., Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750, Cambridge, 2006. ISBN 0-521-84639-0.
  • McNeill, William H. "Plagues and Peoples." Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., New York, NY, 1976, ISBN 0-385-12122-9.
  • Moorhead, J., Justinian, London 1994.
  • Orent, Wendy. Plague, The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease. Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, 2004, ISBN 0-7432-3685-8.
  • Russell, J.C. (1958). "Late Ancient and Medieval Population," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. 48 pt. 3, (Philadelphia), pp. 71–99.
  • Wacher, John S. The Towns of Roman Britain, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.
  • Edward Walford, translator, The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius: A History of the Church from AD 431 to AD 594, 1846. Reprinted 2008. Evolution Publishing, ISBN 978-1-889758-88-6. [1]—The author, Evagrius, was himself stricken by the plague as a child and lost several family members to it.
  • Procopius. History of the Wars, Books I and II (The Persian War). Trans. H. B. Dewing. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Loeb-Harvard UP, 1954.—Chapters XXII and XXIII of Book II (pages 451–473) are Procopius's famous description of the Plague of Justinian. This includes the famous statistic of 10,000 people per day dying in Constantinople (page 465).
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