Responsible for untold humans suffering, affecting where people live and enabling shifts in power, disease has shaped our world. Since March of 2020, we have felt the full force of the covid-19 pandemic. As we enter our third pandemic year, with soaring infection rates, unemployment, high inflation rate and broken supply chains, we are witnessing firsthand how vulnerable our modern societies really can be.
The epidemic followed trade routes, from eastern parts of Asia where people had first become ill, and westwards to Europe. There it spread, with great force, to densely populated cities, especially to places where people had extensive contact with the outside world. There was no effective treatment for the disease, so streets and squares were quickly emptied of people. People stayed at home and protected themselves as best they could by keeping their distance from others. The economy stopped, and there was a shortage of food. This is what the historian Prokopios from Caesarea says, who himself observed the ravages of bubonic plague around the Mediterranean from 541 to 544.
For three years, the pandemic raged, which has been called the Justinian plague by later historians. That is, it was only the first wave of an epidemic that was to return at irregular intervals and in different places for a couple of hundred years.
The disease was named after the then Eastern Roman emperor (or Byzantine emperor, if you prefer) Justinian I, who ruled from his capital of Constantinople, today known as Istanbul. The emperor was one of the many who contracted the bubonic plague and among the few who survived.
What we have learned during the last couple of years is that social distancing is not sufficient to prevent a large-scale tragedy. Prokopios tells in his extensive work about Justinian warfare that at worst, 10,000 deaths were reported per day in the capital of the Byzantine Empire.
Asymptomatic spread also in the 5th century
Prokopios was a chronicler, paid the emperor to document campaigns. He wrote no less than eight books on Justinian’s military ventures. But war in particular also helped pave the way for the deadly virus in western Europe. According to Prokopios, soldiers – with and without symptoms – must have brought the infection with them to ever new areas.
He knew what he was talking about, for he personally followed the legendary Byzantine general Belisarius on his military campaigns aimed at recapturing the western parts of the Roman Empire that had been lost.
General Belisarius was an experienced army commander who, among other things, had fought against the mighty Persian Empire in the east. His list of merits from the year 533, when he mainly occupied areas in the western Mediterranean, included, among other things, the conquest of Carthage from the Vandals and the reconquest of the Italian peninsula where the Goths had taken power.
Migrants with ambitions
When the Justinian plague struck in the Mediterranean, armed conflicts raged between the the Goths and the Eastern Roman Empire.
The Goths were a Germanic people who in the third century were expelled from their original homelands north of the river Danube, in areas that today belong to Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. Many Goths moved south in Europe to regions that were part of the undisputed great power of the day: the Roman Empire.
In the beginning, the Goths were Roman subjects and at times allied with them, but the neighborly relationship soured and the Goths established an empire with its own king who in the 400s held court in the French city of Toulouse. The Goths had been enterprising enough to embark on unknown paths (or hit the road if you like) when they were threatened by the Huns in their original homelands. And they were far from unambitious in their new homeland.
The Goths crossed the Pyrenees in the early 400s and eventually drove the Romans from areas that are today Spain and Portugal. In 472, they had conquered all Roman territories on the Iberian Peninsula, and they came to play a central role in the collapse of the Roman Empire a few years later in 476.
In 507, by the way, the Franks expelled the Goths from almost all of the Goths’ possessions north of the Pyrenees, i.e. today’s France. And the Iberian Peninsula became the core area of the Goths, although at times they also grabbed lands in what we today know as Italy.
In the years just before the plague struck, General Belisarius was sent by Emperor Justinian to take back the lands the Roman Empire had lost to the Goths, including the capital Rome.
Climate change before the pandemic
It is strange to think about, but climate and climate change must have been a frequent topic of conversation among people during the time leading up to a major Justinian plague outbreak in Europe.
We have sources from the 530s which tell us that the sky was suddenly darkened and that the summers became so cold that it snowed in many places in southern Europe. The chronicler Prokopios says that without warning it became so dark that people did not cast a shadow even on sunny days.
Modern scientists have extracted samples of some Antarctic ice and concluded that the dramatic climate changes may have begun with a violent volcanic eruption in an area that today is part of Indonesia. That eruption was followed by several similar phenomena in various places in the coming years, both in the south and north of the globe.
Today’s researchers believe the ash cloud may have stayed over Europe between 12 and 18 months. That assumption is supported by Prokopios, who describes that there was a veil over the sun that lasted for a whole year.
Volcanic ash from these eruptions, caused temperature drops that in turn caused crops in Europe to fail for not only one season, but for several years. Food shortages resulted in famine. Large parts of Europe’s population therefore faced the plague with an immune system that was in less than tip top shape.
Pandemics know no bounds
The coincidence of climate change and plague would also have political consequences. The main enemies in the area around the western Mediterranean – the Goths and the Eastern Roman Empire with its capital in Constantinople – were both severely weakened. Neither climate change nor the plague distinguished between Goths and Romans.
A period of great political unrest followed. The Byzantines, or if one prefers to call it the commanders of the Eastern Roman Empire, succeeded in capturing land south on the Iberian Peninsula in a belt that stretched roughly from Cadiz to Valencia, but they were far from achieving their goal of recapturing the entire formerly mighty Roman Empire’s possessions in Hispania.
The rest of the Iberian Peninsula was, with few exceptions, under the rule of the Visigoths, but neither were strong enough to make themselves sole rulers of these lands. In the northwestern part of Iberia, the Germanic tribe of the Suebi held an area similar to present-day Galicia and northern Portugal. It was and is a relatively barren landscape, not exactly attractive at a time when there was already a shortage of food. The Basques did not allow themselves to be coerced neither by the Visigoths nor anyone else for that matter.
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Threats from external enemies were one thing, but economic hardship and uncertain future prospects led to riots in the 5th century, especially in the cities. Those in power had their hands full keeping the calm at home. Territorial ambitions had to wait. Desperate people with little to lose posed a threat to the status quo then as well.
And conditions in the 540s must have given little cause for optimism for most people. Historians operate with different estimates as to how many lives were lost in the years the Justinian plague. Some believe that as much as half of the population died – whether the direct cause of death was the plague or of conditions caused by the pandemic or of climate change.
Archaeologists have found graves in Valencia, among other places, which may give an indication of the plague’s mortality. Valencia was a Roman metropolis with extensive trading relations throughout the Mediterranean. The city was hit early by the plague. From the time the plague makes its appearance, we suddenly start finding more people in each grave than previously, and the dead are buried in a seemingly random and rapid way. The important port city of Cartagena must also have had a tough early first wave of the plague. There, archaeologists have found a striking number of tombs dating from the first half of the 6th century and onward.
End time and religion
Some historians believe that the Justinian plague and the unrest that followed contributed greatly to the spread of Christianity in Europe. For those of us who are now experiencing the corona pandemic, it may not be as difficult as before to understand that a pandemic can give rise to a longing for new explanations, rituals and not least fellowship with other people. Thoughts of an imminent end time may also have played a role in the growth of Christianity, if we are to believe some history experts.
Christianity was still a relative newcomer in the 5th century, it was not too long since religion had found acceptance with the elite in power. The reasons for the progress of Christianity during the period may have been complex, but there is no doubt that the religion became significantly more widespread and influential in Europe following the ravages of the Justinian plague.
After the first wave of disease, which lasted for about three years, the Justinian plague returned in a series of outbreaks until 750 AD. In the following years the people of Europe got a long “pandemic break” – the bubonic plague did not experience any big outbreaks before the Black Death hit the European continent with full force in the 14th century.
The plague of the 5th century changed the course of history in several areas. These days, a number of countries are tightening restrictions on freedom of movement and assembly. The coronavirus is still with us and will in all probability change the way we modern humans live for some time to come. How will our societies be affected by pandemics? In the midst of the tragedy that is now unfolding, we can’t help but think that we are living in interesting times.
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