Page 28 - All About History - Issue 56-17

EpidEmics

5 shocking facts about… AT A GLANCE

THE JUSTINIAN PLAGUE The reign of Justinian I and

Theodora has been seen as a
golden age for the Byzantine
Empire, but its opulence was
overshadowed by a terrible
pandemic — the ‘Justinian
Plague’. Thought to have
originated in Asia or Africa,
BYZANTINE EMPIRE, 541-542 CE it spread quickly through the
empire and beyond, causing
millions of deaths.

Bodies stored Caused a End of Linked to the Killed half
01 en masse 02 crisis of faith 03 an empire 04 Black Death 05 the world
Once the Byzantine capital, The devastation not only Some see the pandemic as Modern scientists have proved The plague reappeared
Constantinople, was struck, heralded financial crisis contributing to the eventual that different strains of the intermittently across two
the plague ravaged the empire and devastating famine, it end of the Byzantine Empire bacterium Yersinia pestis were centuries, affecting Asia, North
with deadly speed — it’s also provoked a change in and the classical period, present in both the Byzantine Africa, Arabia and Europe.
estimated that at its peak religious worship. Emperor ushering in the Middle Ages. Justinian Plague and the Black Death estimates range from
10,000 people died every day. Justinian modelled himself as a It is claimed more than a Death in the Middle Ages. 25 to 50 million — the latter
The mounting toll was so huge paragon of piety — something third of Constantinople’s This connection was made would have been perhaps
that bodies were packed inside his immediate successors people perished, and even by testing the skeletons of half of the world’s population
buildings, or sometimes just continued — and the Cult of the emperor himself fell ill, plague victims struck down at the time. Curiously, the
left out in the open, according Mary gained prominence, as experiencing the buboes approximately 1,500 years Justinian Plague became a
to Procopius, a contemporary did idolatry, as citizens sought associated with plague, but he ago, who were buried in ‘dead end’; its strain didn’t © Getty Images
ancient historian. new divine inspiration. miraculously recovered. Bavaria, Germany. survive to the modern day.

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