MEIER, M. The Justinianic Plague The Economic Consequences of The Pandemic in The Eastern Roman Empire and Its Cultural and Religious Effects PDF

The ‘Justinianic Plague’: the economic
consequences of the pandemic in the

eastern Roman empire and its cultural
and religious effects
MISCHA MEIER
Taking as his starting point recent debates over the significance of the
‘Justinianic Plague’ to enquiries into the transition from late antiquity to
the early Middle Ages, the author aims to demonstrate that the widely sup-
ported relativizing position is untenable. The short-term demographic and
economic consequences of the epidemic must have been catastrophic; the
plague, however, seems to have affected the population of the Roman empire
in the east most of all in the cultural and religious sphere, in that it prompted
or reinforced processes of reorientation that were of fundamental significance
to the transformation of the eastern Roman into the Byzantine empire.
I. Introduction
At first sight, the two-line inscription on the southern façade of the

Church of the Prophet Elias in Azra‘a (Roman Zora, Arabia) in south-
west Syria seems less than spectacular:
The people of Zora have erected the Church of the Prophet Elias from
their own means, on the initiative of the deacon John, son of
Menneas, in the year 437, under Bishop Varus, most beloved of
God, on whom God has placed the mortal curse on his groin and
armpits (πóτμoν βoνβῶνoς (καὶ) μάλῃς).1
* The author and the editors of EME wish to thank Steve Robbie for his translation of this article.
1
The inscription reads: † oἱ ἀπὸ ζoρ(ᾶς) ἐξ ἰδίων ναὸν ἠλίoυ πρoφ(ήτoυ) | σπoυδῇ ἰωάννoυ μεννέoυ διαK
(όνoυ) ἐν ἔτ(ε)ι υλζ᾿ἔkτισαν ἐπὶ oὐάρoυ θεoϕ(ιλεστάτoυ) ἐπισkόπoυ | ᾦ ἐπήγαγ(εν) ὁ θ(εὸ)ς πότμoν
βoνβῶνoς (καὶ) μάλῃς. Reading as per J. Koder, ‘Ein inschriftlicher Beleg zur “justinianischen” Pest in Zora
(Azra‘a)’, in R. Dostálová and V. Konzal (eds), ΣTEΦANOΣ. Studia byzantina ac slavica Vladimíro Vavřínek
ad annum sexagesimum quintum dedicata (Prague, 1995) (= Byzantinoslavica 56 (1995)), pp. 13–18, at p. 13.
Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3) 267–292

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
268 Mischa Meier
This short inscription is of some significance. It is one of two known pieces

of epigraphic evidence in the eastern Mediterranean explicitly to mention
the first wave of the so-called Justinianic Plague in the years 541–4 (year
437 of the Bostran Era, as referred to in the inscription, is 542–3 CE).2 No-
tably, the disease is referred to as πóτμoς βoνβῶνoς καὶ μάλῃς (mortal
curse at groin and armpits): the use of the old poetic term πóτμoς (mortal
curse) points towards a certain level of education on the part of those who
commissioned the inscription, but it also makes plain that they lacked an
exact term for the disaster that afflicted the late antique world in the years
after 541. The choice of words is reminiscent of the expression lues or clades
inguinaria (calamity at the groin), used by Gregory of Tours amongst
others;3 Greek authors otherwise spoke more generally of λoιμóς
(epidemic), νóσoς (disease) or (μέγα) θανατικóν (numerous dying).4
I have not cited the Zora inscription for that reason, but primarily
because it ties in to two controversies that feature in the (mostly
relatively recent) specialist research on the Justinianic Plague.5 One is
the opposition of city and countryside: should the plague be seen as
2
The other inscription, from Aphrodisias in Caria, honours a certain Rhodopaios, who was praised
amongst other things for having driven away disease and hunger (λoιμὸν Kαὶ λιμόν); see C.
Roueché, Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity (London, 1989), p. 137, no. 86.
3
Gregory of Tours, Histories IV.5, X.1 (Gregor von Tours. Zehn Bücher Geschichten, ed. and German
trans. R. Buchner, 2 vols (Darmstadt, 1974–7)); see Victor of Tunnuna, ad ann. 542:2 (Chronica Minora
Saec. IV. V. VI. VII., Vol. II, ed. T Mommsen, MGH AA 11 (Berlin, 1894; repr. Munich, 1981), p. 201);
Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum II.4 (Pauli Historia Langobardorum, ed. G. Waitz, MGH
SRG 48 (Hanover, 1878)).
4
D. Stathakopoulos, ‘Die Terminologie der Pest in byzantinischen Quellen’, Jahrbuch der
Österreichischen Byzantinistik 48 (1998), pp. 1–7. The use of the traditional literary expression λoιμὸν
καἰ λιμόν in the text of the Aphrodisias inscription also points to a classical education, but confines
itself to λoιμός, which cannot be associated with any specific disease and is vague, having simply meant
‘deadly contagious scourge’ since the Iliad (1.61); Thucydides especially uses it in this sense (see e.g. History
of the Peloponnesian War 2.47.3, 2.54.3).
5
For an introduction to the literature on the sixth-century plague, see the overview of research in D.
Stathakopoulos, ‘The Justinianic Plague Revisited’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 24 (2000),
pp. 256–76. The following are important and/or influential works: J.C. Russell, ‘That Earlier Plague’,
Demography 5 (1968), pp. 174–84; J.-N. Biraben, Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays
européens et méditerranéens, Tome I: La peste dans l’histoire; Tome II: Les hommes face à la peste
(Mouton, Paris and La Haye, 1975/1976); J.-N. Biraben and J. Le Goff, ‘The Plague in the Early
Middle Ages’, in R. Forster and O. Ranum (eds), Biology of Man in History (Baltimore and London,
1975), pp. 48–80 (originally: ‘La peste dans le Haut Moyen Age’, Annales ESC 24 (1969), pp.
1484–1510); P. Allen, ‘The “Justinianic” Plague’, Byzantion 49 (1979), pp. 5–20; T.L. Bratton, ‘The Iden-
tity of the Plague of Justinian’, Transactions and Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia 5.3
(1981), pp. 113–24, 174–80; L.I. Conrad, ‘The Plague in Bilād al-Shām in Pre-Islamic Times’, in M.
Adnan Bakhit and M. Asfur (eds), Proceedings of the Symposium on Bilād al-Shām during the Byzantine
Period, Vol. II (Amman, 1986), pp. 143–63, 283–6; idem, ‘Epidemic Disease in Central Syria in the Late
Sixth Century. Some New Insights from the Verse of Ḥassān ibn Thābit’, Byzantine and Modern Greek
Studies 18 (1994), pp. 12–58; idem, ‘Die Pest und ihr soziales Umfeld im nahen Osten des frühen
Mittelalters’, Der Islam 73 (1996), pp. 81–112; K.-H. Leven, ‘Die “Justinianische” Pest’, Jahrbuch des
Instituts für Geschichte der Medizin der Robert-Bosch-Stiftung 6 (1987), pp. 137–61; idem, ‘Athumia
and philanthrôpia. Social Reactions to Plagues in Late Antiquity and Early Byzantine Society’, in P.J.
van der Eijk, H.F.J. Horstmannshoff and P.H. Schrijvers (eds), Ancient Medicine in its Social-Cultural
Context (Amsterdam and Atlanta, 1995), pp. 393–407; J. Durliat, ‘La peste du VIe siècle. Pour un
nouvel examen des sources byzantines’, in Hommes et richesses dans l’empire byzantin, tome I (Paris,
1989), pp. 107–19; D. Harrison, ‘Plague, Settlement and Structural Change at the Dawn of the Middle
Ages’, Scandia 59 (1993), pp. 15–48; E. Kislinger and D. Stathakopoulos, ‘Pest und Perserkriege bei
Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

The Justinianic Plague 269
an urban phenomenon concentrated in major trading centres and

entrepots, hence as a limited, sporadic phenomenon overall, or were ru-
ral areas and smaller settlements such as Zora affected too? The other is
the closely related question of the plague’s fundamental significance to
the broader history of the sixth century: can subsequent developments
in various areas be traced back to the effects of the scourge, or should
we instead regard the outbreak of the first of the three plague pandemics
in human history as inconsequential from the perspective of the longue
durée?
In what follows, I wish to tackle these tightly interwoven topics and
discuss them in the context of both older and more recent research.
My deliberations will pursue two aims: first, I shall provide a general
commentary on the current state of play in debates on the Justinianic
Plague; second, I should like to come back to the question of the funda-
mental significance of the pandemic. In so doing, I will begin by address-
ing specific economic and demographic effects of the plague. More
importantly, however, I will go on to examine previously underestimated
processes of long-term transformation in the history of culture and
mentalités, especially in religious practice. Within these debates, I myself
hold a very firm view that I have already developed in other publications6
and that I wish here, in the face of recent criticism,7 to expound and
Prokopios. Chronologische Überlegungen zum Geschehen 540–545’, Byzantion 69 (1999), pp. 76–98; J.
Atkinson, ‘The Plague of 542: Not the Birth of the Clinic’, Acta Classica 45 (2002), pp. 1–18;
M. McCormick, ‘Rats, Communications, and Plague: Toward an Ecological History’, Journal of Interdis-
ciplinary History 34 (2003), pp. 1–25; U. Schamiloglu, ‘The Rise of the Ottoman Empire: The Black Death in
Medieval Anatolia and its Impact on Turkish Civilization’, in N. Yavari, L.G. Potter and J.-M. Ran
Oppenheim (eds), Views from the Edge: Essays in Honor of Richard W. Bulliet (New York, 2004), pp.
255–79, esp. pp. 255–60; M. Meier, Das andere Zeitalter Justinians. Kontingenzerfahrung und
Kontingenzbewältigung im 6. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Göttingen, 2004), pp. 321–40, 373–87; idem, ‘Prokop,
Agathias, die Pest und das “Ende” der antiken Historiographie. Naturkatastrophen und
Geschichtsschreibung in der ausgehenden Spätantike’, Historische Zeitschrift 278 (2004), pp. 281–310; idem,
‘“Hinzu kam auch noch die Pest . . .”. Die sogenannte Justinianische Pest und ihre Folgen’, in M. Meier
(ed.), Pest – Die Geschichte eines Menschheitstraumas (Stuttgart, 2005), pp. 86–107, 396–400; idem,
‘Beobachtungen zu den sog. Pestschilderungen bei Thukydides II 47–54 und bei Prokop, Bell. Pers. II
22–23’, Tyche 14 (1999), pp. 177–210; D. Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence in the Late Roman and Early
Byzantine Empire. A Systematic Survey of Subsistence Crises and Epidemics (Aldershot, 2004) (problematic in a
variety of ways, see my review in Byzantinische Zeitschrift 97 (2004), pp. 627–9); P. Horden,
‘Mediterranean Plague in the Age of Justinian’, in M. Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age
of Justinian (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 134–60; A. Arjava, ‘The Mystery Cloud of 536 CE in the Mediterranean
Sources’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 59 (2005), pp. 73–94; L.G. Little (ed.), Plague and the End of Antiquity: The
Pandemic of 541–750 (Cambridge, 2007); R. Sallares, ‘Ecology, Evolution, and Epidemiology of Plague’, in
Little (ed.), Plague and the End of Antiquity, pp. 231–89; A. Kaldellis, ‘The Literature of Plague and the
Anxieties of Piety in Sixth-Century Byzantium’, in F. Mormando and T. Worcester (eds), Plague and Piety:
From Byzantium to the Baroque (Kirksville, 2007), pp. 1–22; H. Leppin, Justinian. Das christliche Experiment
(Stuttgart, 2011), pp. 206–15, 240–2.
6
See esp. Meier, Zeitalter; also idem, ‘Kaiserherrschaft und “Volksfrömmigkeit” im Konstantinopel des
6. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. Die Verlegung der Hypapante durch Justinian im Jahr 542’, Historia 51 (2002),
pp. 89–111; idem, ‘Das Ende des Konsulats im Jahr 541/42 und seine Gründe. Kritische Anmerkungen
zur Vorstellung eines “Zeitalters Justinians”’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 138 (2002), pp.
277–99; idem, ‘Prokop, Agathias, die Pest’; idem, ‘Hinzu kam auch noch die Pest’.
7
E.g. R.-J. Lilie, Einführung in die byzantinische Geschichte (Stuttgart, 2007), p. 260; on this topic, see
below.

270 Mischa Meier
justify again: I believe that the Justinianic Plague marks a significant

caesura in the transition from late antiquity to the Byzantine Middle
Ages – not necessarily because of its immediate effects such as the large
death toll and the collapse in trade, military capability and the geogra-
phy of settlement that most likely accompanied it, but because of its
indirect cultural consequences, in other words, because of processes that
in the medium term were either partly set in train or at least substan-
tially accelerated by the plague, to which scholars have paid insufficient
attention. I shall concern myself specifically with the following phenom-
ena: the rise of the Marian cult from the mid-sixth century onwards, the
emergence of iconolatry at around the same time, a resurgence in the
sacralization of the emperor from the 540s onwards, and – probably
the broadest of these changes – the phenomenon known as
liturgification, whose effects were already becoming increasingly visible
towards the end of Justinian’s reign. I should make it clear immediately
that my aim is not to present a monocausal or deterministic explanatory
model (no such thing could in any case be obtained from a study of
mentalités), but merely to draw a more precise profile of a few aspects
of a wide-ranging discussion to which, in my view, too little weight
has been attached up to now.
II. The ‘Justinianic Plague’ in scholarship: the controversy over its

economic and demographic consequences
A brief glance at scholarship on the ‘Plague’ shows that it is only in

recent years that the problems outlined above – the question of its fun-
damental significance and the urban vs. rural opposition – have been
explicitly considered and discussed. Whilst the majority of older depic-
tions of the ‘Justinianic era’ do mention the plague in passing, they do
not treat it as a problem in its own right; in consequence, they pass
over it without examining it in detail and inevitably ascribe a broadly
accidental character to the progress of the epidemic.8 This situation
only changed with a pioneering 1979 essay by Pauline Allen, who em-
phasized the extensive eyewitness account in Syriac by Bishop John of
Ephesos and thereby opened up the most important written source out-
side the well-known account in Prokopios’s Persian Wars.9 Thereafter
8
E.g. W. Schubart, Justinian und Theodora (Munich, 1943), pp. 165 f., 215; B. Rubin, Das Zeitalter
Iustinians, Bd. 1 (Berlin, 1960), pp. 341 ff. The first specific treatment of the Justinianic Plague is found
in V. Seibel, Die große Pest zur Zeit Justinians I. und die ihr voraus und zur Seite gehenden
ungewöhnlichen Natur-Ereignisse (Dillingen, 1857). Seibel, writing before microbiologists solved the ‘rid-
dle of the plague’ in 1894, was, however, still completely under the spell of the ancient sources and
largely followed their interpretation of events. His account is thus significant primarily from a
historiographical perspective.
9
Allen, ‘The Justinianic Plague’.

the plague gradually hove over the horizons of scholarship, prompting

the rapid development of some daring and largely untenable ideas
about its effects. In 1968, Josiah C. Russell had already hypothesized
that the Justinianic Plague, by causing a supposed 40–50% drop in
the population of the eastern Roman empire between 541 and c.600,
had ultimately abetted the seventh-century spread of Islam, the
(semi-)nomadic Arab tribes having supposedly been far less affected
by the disease than the urban cultures of late antiquity.10 Russell’s cal-
culations were cited repeatedly and developed further. In his 1996 book
on Justinian, James A.S. Evans proceeded from the assumption that the
plague and other disasters led to an estimated population decrease of
approximately 60% – close to the figure of 57% that Allen extrapolated
from the grossly exaggerated figures given by John of Ephesos.11 The
figures arrived at by Allen and Evans actually went beyond the
accusation made by Prokopios in the Anekdota that the plague had
annihilated half of humankind.12 Given the polemical nature of the
Anekdota, his vilification of Justinian, Prokopios’s statement is routinely
dismissed as pure exaggeration, which makes any mortality figure over
50% look fundamentally suspect.13 Despite this, the title of a recent
collection of conference papers, Plague and the End of Antiquity might
indicate a certain programmatic slant.
If the plague had really caused fatalities on anything even approaching
this scale, it must inevitably have had massive, indeed devastating effects
on every aspect of politics, the economy, religion and war.14 This would
make it essential to view significant individual factors in the transform-
ational process from the eastern Roman to the Byzantine empire primarily
in conjunction with the plague, which would thus stand out as one of the
decisive factors in the transition between the two eras. These are precisely
the kind of approaches, however, that tend to culminate in the monocausal,
deterministic explanations that scholars rightly caution us to avoid.15
10
See Russell, ‘That Earlier Plague’, together with the criticisms raised by Harrison, ‘Plague’, pp. 20 f.,
and Stathakopoulos, ‘Justinianic Plague Revisited’, pp. 261–4.
11
J.A.S. Evans, The Age of Justinian: The Circumstances of Imperial Power (London and New York, 1996),
p. 160; Allen, ‘The Justinianic Plague’, p. 11.
12
Prokopios, Historia Arcana [hereafter HA] XVIII.44 (Anekdota. Geheimgeschichte des Kaiserhofs von
Byzanz. Griechisch–deutsch, German trans. O. Veh, with notes, introduction and bibliography by
Mischa Meier and Hartmut Leppin (Düsseldorf and Zürich, 2005)). Prokopios’s complaint forms part
of his wider claim that Justinian’s allegedly demonic nature found expression in a series of disasters
and afflictions that befell the population of the empire; the plague thus formed the peak of these
calamities.
13
See also Leven, ‘Justinianische Pest’, p. 148.
14
D. Stathakopoulos, ‘Death in the Countryside: Some Thoughts on the Effects of Famine and
Epidemics’, Antiquité Tardive 20 (2012), pp. 105–14, at p. 109, assumes a death rate of around 20%
for Constantinople during the first outbreak of the plague.
15
E.g. Stathakopoulos, ‘Justinianic Plague Revisited’, p. 263; Stathakopoulos, ‘Death in the
Countryside’, p. 106.

272 Mischa Meier
The flood of plague-related theories in the last quarter of the twentieth

century provided the historiographical backdrop to an especially influential
piece published by Jean Durliat in 1989, in which Durliat, so to speak,
pulled the emergency cord. Pointing out that established scholarship on
the plague had hitherto been based principally on literary sources whose
representations were distorted, stylized (in imitation of Thucydides) and
frequently contradictory, Durliat argued that it was all but impossible to
assemble the plague passages in Prokopios, the chronicles of Victor of
Tunnuna and the epics of Corippus into a coherent overall view; the
exorbitant death tolls given by Prokopios and John of Ephesos (see above)
were highly suspect too.16 Put simply, a consistent estimate of the ‘plague’
phenomenon could not be extracted from the literary sources.17 Durliat’s
real point, however, was that studying the non-literary material produced
entirely different results. In fact, apart from the inscription cited at the
start of this paper, one other epigraph containing a reference to the plague
(see above) survived; no others existed. He argued that whilst it was true
that there was a significant increase in the numbers of grave inscriptions
in Palestine and Northern Arabia (Gaza, Nessana, Rehovot and Oboda)
for the second half of the year 541 which can be explained by the arrival
of the plague,18 the epidemic overall left no statistically relevant traces in
the sources.19 Very similar conclusions could be drawn from the
papyrological evidence, in which some examples (Antaiopolis) could even
be found to show that taxes stayed the same before and after the plague
and did not fluctuate in the midst of it either.20 The disease also had no
visible effect, or at any rate no visible long-term effect, on the circula-
tion of coinage,21 whilst neither urban nor rural archaeology offered
any obvious sign of a plague-induced caesura.22 Lastly, only sporadic
16
Durliat, ‘La peste’, pp. 114 f., citing Prokopios, De Bello Persico [hereafter BP] II.22–3 (Perserkriege.
Griechisch–deutsch, ed. O. VEH (Munich, 1970)); Victor of Tunnuna, ad ann. 542:2, ed. Mommsen,
p. 201; Corippus, Iohannis 3.343–400 (Flavii Cresconii Corippi Iohannidos seu De Bellis Libycis Libri
VIII, ed. J. Diggle and F.R.D. Goodyear (Cambridge, 1970)). However, Durliat fails completely to
take account of the differences in genres between these texts or the differing literary intentions of
the authors.
17
Durliat, ‘La peste’, pp. 114 f. (contradictions in the sources); p. 116 (imitation of Thucydides); p. 118
(dubious figures).
18
Gaza: C.A.M. Glucker, The City of Gaza in the Roman and Byzantine Periods (Oxford, 1987), pp. 124–7,
nos. 9–11; Nessana: G.E. Kirk and C.B. Welles, ‘The Inscriptions’, in H.D. Colt (ed.), Excavations at
Nessana, I (London, 1962), pp. 131–97, at p. 168, no. 80; at pp. 179–81, nos. 112–14; Rehovot: Y. Tsafrir,
Excavations at Rehovot-in-the-Negev, I: The Northern Church (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 160–1, nos. 10a and 11;
Oboda: A. Negev, The Greek Inscriptions from the Negev (Jerusalem, 1981), pp. 30–1, no. 17. See Conrad,
‘Pest und ihr soziales Umfeld’, p. 95; Kislinger and Stathakopoulos, ‘Pest und Perserkriege’, pp. 87 f.;
Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence, pp. 278–80, also Durliat, ‘La peste’, p. 108.
19
Durliat, ‘La peste’, pp. 108 f., see p. 109: ‘La peste n’a eu aucun effet visible dans une série relativement
longue.’
20
Durliat, ‘La peste’, pp. 109 f.
21
Durliat, ‘La peste’, pp. 110 f., esp. p. 111: ‘La peste a sans doute perturbé l’économie monétaire mais il
est difficile actuellement de préciser davantage.’
22

marginal references were to be found in the legal sources, which thus

had ‘une place très limitée’ in the evidence as a whole.23 Overall, there
was a ‘silence des sources autres que narratives’.24 The problem was
exacerbated by the fact that even the literary sources were confined
to a small number of examples. The Liber pontificalis, for instance,
waxed at length on the woes that afflicted Italy over the course of
the sixth century, but conspicuously omitted the plague.25 Other texts
that might have been expected to mention the plague also contained
next to nothing on it; this was especially true of hagiography, in which
(Durliat claimed, although I would doubt this is universally true)
people’s everyday lives are traditionally reflected.26 All of this led
Durliat to conclude that ‘La peste ne constitue pas une préoccupation
majeure.’27
Although the same volume included a direct riposte to these inten-
tionally provocative theses by Jean-Noël Biraben,28 Durliat’s article was
influential and rapidly became established as a key point of reference
for anyone harbouring doubts about the universal effects of the
sixth-century plague.29 It was the basis, for instance, for Mark Whittow’s
1996 conclusion that ‘there is no evidence for this devastating impact’,
and that what could be seen in the post-plague period was rather just
‘business as usual’. This was not to deny the very existence of the epi-
demic, ‘but simply to doubt whether it had the catastrophic effects that
most modern historians [. . .] believe’.30 More recently, Chris Wickham
has concluded ‘that the sixth-century plague, however dramatic its local
incidences, was a marginal event in the demographic history of our
period’.31 Given these uncertainties, Andrew Louth in the Cambridge
History of the Byzantine Empire retreats to a purely descriptive standpoint:
‘Historians disagree about the probable effect of the plague [. . .]: some
take its impact seriously; others [. . .] think that the effect of the plague
has been exaggerated.’32
23
Durliat, ‘La peste’, p. 112, citing Novella Iustiniani 122.
24
Durliat, ‘La peste’, p. 112.
25
Durliat, ‘La peste’, p. 113, citing a single reference: Liber pontificalis, p. 297 (L. Duchesne (ed.), Le Liber
Pontificalis. Texte, introduction et commentaire, Tome I (Paris, 1955)).
26
27
Durliat, ‘La peste’, p. 114.
28
J.-N. Biraben, ‘La peste du VIe siècle dans l’empire byzantin’, in Hommes et richesses dans l’empire
byzantin, tome I (Paris, 1989), pp. 121–5.
29
Discussion in Harrison, ‘Plague’; Horden, ‘Mediterranean Plague’, pp. 155 f.
30
M. Whittow, The Making of Orthodox Byzantium, 600–1025 (Basingstoke and London, 1996),
pp. 66 f.
31
C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400–800 (Oxford, 2005),
pp. 548 f.
32
A. Louth, ‘Justinian and His Legacy (500–600)’, in J. Shepard (ed.), The Cambridge History of the
Byzantine Empire c. 500–1492 (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 99–129, at p. 123.

274 Mischa Meier
Given this lack of consensus, how should the economic and demo-
graphic consequences of the plague be assessed? In the following, I will
draw on the important and highly pertinent work of Peter Sarris33 to
show that the relativizing perspective of the economic and demographic
consequences of the plague put forward by Durliat and others is unten-
able. I will then set out my own position on the long-term effects of
the epidemic. First, however, I shall present a few general remarks so as
to elucidate the position of the plague in the history of the sixth century.
The Justinianic Plague first appeared in the Egyptian port of Pelusion
in the eastern Nile delta.34 From there it spread west (along the north
coast of Africa) and east (via Palestine and the Levant) throughout the
Mediterranean region. Contrary to Prokopios,35 it must have reached
the eastern Roman capital of Constantinople no later than the end of
541, not in the spring of 542;36 by 543 it had reached practically every part
of the empire, prompting Prokopios’s assertion that the scourge had
spread across ‘the entire Earth’ (τὴν γῆν σύμπασαν).37 As it spread over
the years 541–4, the plague became endemic in the Mediterranean world
(and further afield – see below) and flared up repeatedly in several waves
in a variety of places, including Constantinople in 558, until it disap-
peared around 750. Literary sources imply that the Persian empire, the
western Mediterranean (Gaul and Italy from 543 at the latest) and the
British Isles (Ireland, probably from 544) were affected;38 recent aDNA
studies (see below) indicate that what is now southern Germany was not
spared either, while plague epidemics from the seventh century onwards
are also attested in Scandinavia, primarily by archaeological indications.39
33
P. Sarris, ‘The Justinianic Plague: Origins and Effects’, Continuity and Change 17 (2002), pp. 169–82; idem,
Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian (Cambridge, 2006); idem, ‘Bubonic Plague in Byzantium: The
Evidence of Non-Literary Sources’, in Little (ed.), Plague and the End of Antiquity, pp. 119–32.
34
On the course of the plague, see esp. the sources cited in Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence, pp. 113 ff. and
277 ff. See also the papers collected in Little (ed.), Plague and the End of Antiquity and more recently Meier,
Zeitalter, pp. 326 ff.; Horden, ‘Mediterranean Plague’, pp. 134 ff. (with a map of the spread of the disease).
35
Prokopios, BP II.22.ix.
36
For reasons see Meier, Zeitalter, p. 326; Meier, ‘Hinzu kam auch noch die Pest’, pp. 92 f.
37
Prokopios, BP II.22.iii and vi; see John of Ephesos, Chronicle of Zuqnīn, p. 74 (Pseudo-Dionysios of Tel-
Mahre. Chronicle, Part III, trans. W. Witakowski (Liverpool, 1996)); Evagrios, Historia Ecclesiastica,
[hereafter HE] IV.29 (The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius with the Scholia, ed. J. Bidez and L.
Parmentier (London, 1898; repr. Amsterdam, 1964)).
38
Gaul: Gregory of Tours, Histories IV.5. Italy: Marcellinus Comes, ad ann. 543.2, p. 107 (Chronica
Minora Saec. IV. V. VI. VII. 2, ed. T. Mommsen (Berlin, 1894; repr. Munich, 1981) (= MGH AA
11)). British Isles: J.R. Maddicott, ‘Plague in Seventh-Century England’, Past and Present 156 (1997),
pp. 7–54; idem, ‘Plague in Seventh-Century England’, in Little (ed.), Plague and the End of Antiquity,
pp. 171–214; A. Dooley, ‘The Plague and its Consequences in Ireland’, in Little (ed.), Plague and the
End of Antiquity, pp. 215–28. Further evidence for plague outbreaks in Stathakopoulos, Famine and
Pestilence, pp. 277 ff.
39
Scandinavia: T. Seger, ‘The Plague of Justinian and Other Scourges. An Analysis of the Anomalies in the
Development of the Iron Age Population in Finland’, Fornvännen 77 (1982), pp. 184–96; Harrison, ‘Plague’,
pp. 22 f. Southern Germany: I. Wiechmann and G. Grupe, ‘Detection of Yersinia pestis DNA in Two Early
Medieval Skeletal Finds from Aschheim (Upper Bavaria, 6th Century A.D.)’, American Journal of Physical
Anthropology 126 (2005), pp. 48–55; D. Gutsmiedl, ‘Die justinianische Pest nördlich der Alpen? Zum
Doppelgrab 166/167 aus dem frühmittelalterlichen Reihengräberfeld von Aschheim-Bajuwarenring’, in B.
Päffgen, E. Pohl and M. Schmauder (eds), Cum grano salis. Beiträge zur europäischen Vor- und Frühgeschichte.
Festschrift für Volker Bierbrauer zum 65. Geburtstag (Friedberg, 2005), pp. 199–208.

Where the plague originated is difficult to ascertain. In the late sixth cen-
tury, the church historian Evagrios claimed its source was Ethiopia, but this
is unreliable: tracing epidemics back to Ethiopia had been de rigueur ever
since Thucydides cited it as the origin of the plague that famously raged
through Athens in 430–426 BCE.40 The current debate, which proceeds
from the regions in which the plague is endemic today (and may have been
since antiquity), that is, the great Eurasian steppe, the foothills of the
Himalayas and central Africa, is yet to produce a consensus. Historians
regard the lack of written references to the plague in China before 610 as
a particular sign that the epidemic cannot have reached the Mediterranean
from east or central Asia and must instead have spread eastwards from the
Mediterranean after 541. Peter Sarris, amongst others, thus argues for Africa
as the site of its origin. However, recent aDNA studies have shown that the
pathogen Yersinia pestis could have arisen in China several centuries before
the Justinianic Plague broke out. The debate thus remains open; at present,
there is no absolute certainty to be had.41
I shall refer only briefly to the problem of retrospective diagnosis, as
this too has now developed into a separate debate with effects, depending
on the position taken, on the assessment of the phenomenon as a whole.42
40
Evagrios, HE IV.29; see Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2.48.1.
41
See Sarris, ‘Justinianic Plague’, pp. 170–2; idem, ‘Bubonic Plague’, pp. 120–3. Sarris rules out the Eurasian steppe
as the source of the disease on the grounds that the plague is unattested there before the end of the sixth century
(admittedly a dangerous argumentum ex silentio). An origin in India or the Himalayas is superficially plausible, not
least because of trade between the eastern Roman empire and the Indian subcontinent during the sixth century
and corresponding coin finds; had the plague spread outwards from this region, it would have had to strike
China, whose links with India were much closer, and the Persian empire first before reaching the empire of
the Romans, but the plague is not attested in China until 610 (given the erratic, irregular spread of the disease,
this is also not completely convincing as an argument). An African origin, by contrast, fits not only with the
evidence in Evagrios but also with the intensification of contacts in the early sixth century between the eastern
Roman empire and the Christian Axumites in what is now Ethiopia. Horden, ‘Mediterranean Plague’, p. 153,
takes up this approach and speculates whether a temporary cooling of the climate in the 530s, caused by an
occlusion of the sun, which was probably due to volcanic activity (on which see Meier, Zeitalter, pp. 359–65;
D. Stathakopoulos, ‘Reconstructing the Climate of the Byzantine World: State of the Problem and Case Studies’,
in J. Laszlovszly and P. Szabó (eds), People and Nature in Historical Perspective (Budapest, 2003), pp. 247–61;
Arjava, ‘Mystery Cloud’), extended the spread of the Yersinia pestis bacterium from inland central Africa to the
eastern coast, whence ivory traders could have transported it to Egypt via the Red Sea (p. 250). Sallares, ‘Ecology’,
pp. 284–6, also takes the worsening of the climate during the 530s to have acted as a catalyst for the disease’s spread
and likewise argues for a spread of the pathogen outward from central Africa, despite noting that this would be a
secondary development as Yersinia pestis was actually Asian in origin. On the occlusion of the sun in 536–7, see
also D. Keys, Als die Sonne erlosch. 535 n. Chr.: Eine Naturkatastrophe verändert die Welt (Munich, 1999), who,
however, ascribes overly far-reaching consequences to the event. L.K. Little, ‘Plague Historians in Lab Coats’,
Past and Present 213 (2011), pp. 267–90, at p. 287, points out that the causal nexus occlusion – famine – in-
creased disposition to the plague is merely an unproved presumption.The scientific results that point to China
as the plague’s original source (most recently D. M. Wagner, J. Klunk et al., ‘Yersinia pestis and the
Plague of Justinian 541–543 AD: A Genomic Analysis’, The Lancet Infectious Diseases 14 (2014), pp.
319–26, at p. 323) are set out in Little, ‘Plague Historians’, pp. 282–4. Little sees no immediate contra-
diction with siting the origins of the Justinianic Plague in Egypt, as Yersinia pestis might first have spread
from East Asia to Africa over the course of several centuries. In his view, the results of palaeogenetic
analyses are primarily of importance to the history of China: ‘If the geneticists are right that Yersinia
pestis first evolved in, or near, China, we can reasonably expect that there were epidemics of plague
in that land not simply before AD 541 but possibly even centuries before’ (p. 284).
42
On this complex debate, see now Little, ‘Plague Historians’; also G. Christakos, R.A. Olea, M.L.
Serre, H.-L. Yu and L.L. Wang, Interdisciplinary Public Health Reasoning and Epidemic Modelling:
The Case of Black Death (Heidelberg and New York, 2005); K.-H. Leven, ‘Von Ratten und Menschen
– Pest, Geschichte und das Problem der retrospektiven Diagnose’, in M. Meier (ed.), Pest – Die
Geschichte eines Menschheitstraumas (Stuttgart, 2005), pp. 11–32, 377–81.

276 Mischa Meier
My description of the Justinianic Plague some time ago as the first clearly
demonstrable plague-type pandemic (i.e. an infection caused by the bac-
terium Yersinia pestis) was perhaps a little over-optimistic.43 More recent
scholarship has cast doubt on the identification of the disease rampant
in the sixth century with the illness known as the ‘plague’ today, not only
for medical history reasons but also on fundamental epistemological
grounds.44 The debate on this topic, in which the possibility of several
overlapping diseases has also been discussed,45 is ongoing.46 It may be
noted, however, that DNA from Yersinia pestis has now been isolated in
human bone remains, including two skeletons from a grave dug in the
sixth century in what is now Aschheim in Upper Bavaria (a region for
which no written sources for the plague have thus far been found) as well
as three skeletons from Sens in France.47 Similar successes have already
been achieved (since 1998) for the late medieval Black Death.48 Although
the methodology of aDNA analysis has not been without its critics – the
current status of this debate was recently examined by Lester K. Little49 –
the results of Johannes Krause and his team especially provide striking
43
Meier, Zeitalter, p. 324; Meier, ‘Hinzu kam auch noch die Pest’, p. 92. For similar views see e.g. Allen,
‘The Justinianic Plague’, pp. 8 f.; Leven, ‘Justinianische Pest’, p. 140; Harrison, ‘Plague’, pp. 19 f.;
Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence, p. 110; Stathakopoulos, ‘Death in the Countryside’, p. 110;
Sarris, ‘Bubonic Plague’, p. 120.
44
See Horden, ‘Mediterranean Plague’, pp. 143–51.
45
See e.g. Horden, ‘Mediterranean Plague’, p. 150 and (on the Black Death) M. Vasold, Die Pest. Ende
eines Mythos (Darmstadt, 2003), p. 107.
46
See e.g. Sallares, ‘Ecology’, pp. 231–89; Little, ‘Plague Historians’.
47
Wiechmann and Grupe, ‘Detection’; Gutsmiedl, ‘Justinianische Pest nördlich der Alpen’ (Aschheim).
Wagner and Klunk, ‘Yersinia pestis’; M. Drancourt, D. Raoult et al., ‘Genotyping, Orientalis-Like
Yersinia pestis and Plague Pandemics’, Emerging Infectious Diseases 10.9 (2004), pp. 1585–92 (Sens).
See also Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence, p. 110 and n. 2; L.K. Little, ‘Life and Afterlife of
the First Plague Pandemic’, in Little (ed.), Plague and the End of Antiquity, pp. 3–32, at pp. 19 f.
On the potential insights and limitations of palaeomicrobiological analysis, see M. McCormick, ‘To-
ward a Molecular History of the Justinianic Pandemic’, in Little (ed.), Plague and the End of Antiq-
uity, pp. 290–312; Little, ‘Plague Historians’. A research group in Tübingen under the palaeobiologist
Johannes Krause now believes it has proved that Yersinia pestis is the pathogen behind the Justinian
Plague: K.I. Bos, J. Krause et al., ‘Yersinia pestis: New Evidence for an Old Infection’, PLoS ONE 7
(11) (2012): e49803. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0049803. See also M. Harbeck et al., ‘Yersinia Pestis
DNA from Skeletal Remains from the 6th Century AD Reveals Insights into Justinianic Plague’, PLoS
Pathog 9(5) (2013), e1003349. DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1003349.
48
M. Drancourt, D. Raoult et al., ‘Detection of 400-Year Old Yersinia pestis DNA in Human Dental
Pulp: An Approach to the Diagnosis of Ancient Septicemia’, Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the USA 95 (1998), pp. 12637–40; D. Raoult, G. Aboudharam et al., ‘Molecular Identifica-
tion by “Suicide PCR” of Yersinia pestis as the Agent of Medieval Black Death’, Proceedings of the Na-
tional Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 97 (2000), pp. 12800–3; M. Drancourt and D.
Raoult, ‘Molecular Insights into the History of Plague’, Microbes and Infection 4 (2002), pp. 105–9; M.
Drancourt, M. Signoli et al., ‘Yersinia pestis orientalis in Remains of Ancient Plague Patients’, Emerging
Infectious Diseases 13 (2007), pp. 332 f.; K.I. Bos, J. Krause et al., ‘A Draft Genome of Yersinia pestis
from Victims of the Black Death’, Nature 478 (2011), pp. 506–10; V.J. Schueneman, J. Krause, H.
N. Poinar et al., ‘Targeted Enrichment of Ancient Pathogens Yielding the pPCP1 Plasmid of Yersinia
pestis from Victims of the Black Death’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United
States of America 108 (2011), pp. 746–52.
49
Little, ‘Plague Historians’, esp. pp. 275 f. For examples of the severe criticism directed at aDNA analyses see
A. Cooper and H.N. Poinar, ‘Ancient DNA: Do It Right or Not at All’, Science 289 (2000), p. 1139; M.
Thomas, P. Gilbert, J. Cuccui et al., ‘Absence of Yersinia pestis-specific DNA in Human Teeth from Five
European Excavations of Putative Plague Victims’, Microbiology 150 (2004), pp. 341–54.

additional evidence to complement the descriptions of buboes (characteris-

tic plague symptoms) in contemporary reports whose authors are not
suspected of imitating older texts due to a lack of prototypes.50 It should also
be noted that the palaeobiochemist Robert Sallares has succeeded, in my
view convincingly, in linking both the descriptions in the sources of the
symptoms and course of the disease and the results of palaeobiochemical
analysis to the epidemiological characteristics of Yersinia pestis, thus demon-
strating clearly that Yersinia pestis must have been the pathogen behind the
Justinianic Plague,51 even if the relevant strain is probably not the same as
the one that caused the Black Death or the east Asian plague outbreak of
1894.52 The possibility that the sixth-century pandemic was indeed the
‘plague’ as we know it should therefore not be prematurely ruled out. Ulti-
mately, however, the problem of diagnosis is in any case irrelevant for my
historical analysis, so I can agree with Peregrine Horden when he maintains
that ‘The plague was what its sufferers said it was – no more, no less.’53
For contemporaries, the plague outbreak of 541–4 was at any rate a ter-
rible event, especially because of the huge loss of life it unleashed.
According to Prokopios, the disease raged for four months in Constantin-
ople alone, claiming 5,000 and then over 10,000 victims a day.54 John of
Ephesos also gives specific figures: the death toll reached 16,000 a day, he
says, and after 230,000 deaths the imperial officials gave up counting.55
Figures of this magnitude are suspicious and obviously overstated; if
one took them seriously as a basis for estimating the population of
Constantinople, the sums one would arrive at would be astronomical.
Nevertheless, as Karl-Heinz Leven has rightly pointed out, the intention
of the authors was probably not to provide a precise quantitative record
in the modern sense but rather primarily to convey the quality of the
event, the monstrousness of its dimensions.56 Contemporary descriptions
indicate clearly that the situation must have been chaotic, at least at cer-
tain times and in certain places. Their frequent discussion of the problem
of burials may be a widespread topos of plague literature, but it surely re-
flects reality at some level. No doubt the medieval chronicler Theophanes
lends a certain pathos to the text of his chronicle when he maintains that,
50
Esp. Prokopios, BP II.22.xv–xxxix; Evagrios, HE IV.29; see also, however, Gregory of Tours, Histories
X.1; Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum II.4. On this, see Sallares, ‘Ecology’, p. 236: ‘It is only in
plague epidemics that buboes appear in a large proportion of cases.’
51
Sallares, ‘Ecology’, pp. 232 f., 238 (‘There is no doubt that Y. pestis caused the Justinianic Plague’),
p. 243 (‘In any event, regardless of the relative importance of the various forms of the disease, the
historical documentary evidence overwhelmingly supports the common view that Y. pestis did indeed
cause the Justinianic Plague’).
52
Thus the most recent results of Wagner and Klunk, ‘Yersinia pestis’.
53
Horden, ‘Mediterranean Plague’, p. 143.
54
Prokopios, BP II.23.i–ii.
55
John of Ephesos, Chronicle of Zuqnīn, ed. Witakowski, p. 87.
56
Leven, ‘Justinianische Pest’, pp. 146–8.

278 Mischa Meier
when the second wave of plague hit Constantinople in 558, there were not
enough living left to bury the dead.57 Yet nevertheless, in 541/2 Justinian
saw himself forced to appoint one of his own officials, a certain
Theodoros,58 to bring the matter of burials under control.59 John of
Ephesos likewise reports that the people of Constantinople donned
armbands bearing name tags whenever they left their houses, so that if
they died suddenly of the plague they would not end up in an
anonymous mass grave or be left to rot in the streets.60
As indicated above, it was in particular the (obviously misunderstood)
figures of Prokopios and John of Ephesos from which overhasty infer-
ences about the scale of the epidemic were drawn, which ultimately trig-
gered Durliat’s hostile reaction. Scholarship has since shown, plausibly in
my view, that Durliat’s theses also go too far. I will confine myself to a
short summary, as these results merely form the starting point for my
own approach. First, Durliat’s epigraphic argument does not hold, as it
is now well known that any statistical analysis of inscriptions must first
grapple with the question of the ‘epigraphic habit’ of the society under
examination. Durliat failed to do this and reached unconvincing results
for this reason. There is also the aforementioned problem of burials,
which, given Justinian’s appointment of the referendarius Theodoros
(see above) and late medieval parallels,61 cannot simply be dismissed as
literary padding. One should instead take it seriously: it would have
produced a quite chaotic situation in which recording elaborate grave
inscriptions would have been the least of people’s concerns as they would
clearly have had bigger problems to deal with.62 Moreover, the plague, at
least initially, as John of Ephesos correctly remarks, primarily affected the
poor, who could not have afforded grave inscriptions anyway.63 The fact
that the plague makes no strong impression on the epigraphic material is
therefore perfectly insignificant at first sight.
57
Theophanes, anno mundi 6050 p. 232.14–15 (Theophanis Chronographia, Vol. I, ed. C. de Boor
(Leipzig, 1883; repr. Hildesheim, 1963)).
58
A.H.M. Jones, J.R. Martindale and J. Morris (eds), Prospography of the Later Roman Empire, 3 vols
(Cambridge, 1971–92) [hereafter PLRE], IIIB 1248 (Th.10).
59
Prokopios, BP II.23.iii–xii attempts to show that the extent and consequences of the burial problem in
Constantinople were by no means as devastating as Thucydides describes for Athens (see Thu-
cydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2.52–3) and therefore scarcely presents a realistic pic-
ture. Actual circumstances were probably much closer to the descriptions provided by John of
Ephesos; see esp. John of Ephesos, Chronicle of Zuqnīn, ed. Witakowski, pp. 90–1. On this topic,
see also Meier, ‘Beobachtungen’, pp. 200 f. and n. 109.
60
61
See N. Bulst, ‘Der Schwarze Tod. Demographische, wirtschafts- und kulturgeschichtliche Aspekte der
Pestkatastrophe von 1347–1352. Bilanz der neueren Forschung’, Saeculum 30 (1979), pp. 45–67, at p. 61.
62
On these lines see also Horden, ‘Mediterranean Plague’, p. 154; Sarris, ‘Justinianic Plague’, p. 174;
idem, ‘Bubonic Plague’, p. 126.
63
John of Ephesos, Chronicle of Zuqnīn, ed. Witakowski, p. 86, also Horden, ‘Mediterranean Plague’, p.
154. This was due to poorer hygiene, which facilitated the spread of rats (and thus fleas). It was, how-
ever, only a matter of time before the plague crossed over to the prosperous.

The archaeology also defies an unambiguous interpretation of the

type proposed by Durliat. Hugh Kennedy has examined the situation
in Syria and reached the conclusion that ‘the archaeological evidence
is entirely consistent with a pandemic that caused massive loss of life
on repeated occasions’. Kennedy is clear that this is not proof positive
that the epidemic did happen, but, contrary to Durliat, he does not
believe there to be a contradiction between the archaeology and the
literary sources.64
The papyrological evidence provides the same impression. This is far
too incomplete for any plausible inferences to be drawn from its omis-
sions;65 at any rate, there is no usable serial data of the kind that exists
for late medieval or early modern periods.66 The evidence that is avail-
able, however, discloses an interesting trend: in Egypt, there was an
apparent shift towards long-term tenancy agreements from the mid-sixth
century onwards, reflecting a change in the appreciation of the value of
farmland that may be connected to experiences during the plague. If this
theory is correct, it would provide further evidence that the epidemic had
a considerable impact on rural regions as well as in the towns.67
One can go further still with the numismatic evidence, which now
enables Durliat’s arguments to be disproved and reversed. Peter Sarris has
drawn attention to a remark by Prokopios that upbraids Justinian for failing
to relieve landowners from tax, even though large tracts of land could no
longer be cultivated due to the plague-induced fall in population.68 This
casts a revealing light on the rural consequences of the plague and is consis-
tent with comments by John of Ephesos, who on his journey through the
eastern Roman empire saw villages wiped out and arable land and pasture
gone to seed, and whose impressions resemble the depiction of plague-hit
rural Italy (Liguria) given by Paul the Deacon.69 It also fits in with
Prokopios’s similar (albeit rhetorically overstated) remarks that no island,
no cave and no mountain peak was spared.70 It matches hints in the Chron-
icle of Theophanes that the plague that swept Constantinople in 747 also
had severe effects on the surrounding countryside.71 It matches Michael
64
H.N. Kennedy, ‘Justinianic Plague in Syria and the Archaeological Evidence’, in Little (ed.), Plague
and the End of Antiquity, pp. 87–95, esp. p. 95.
65
On the lack of explicit references to the Justinianic Plague in the papyri, see also G. Casanova,
‘Epidemie e fame nella documentazione greca d’Egitto’, Aegyptus 64 (1984), pp. 163–201, at p. 199.
66
Likewise Sarris, ‘Bubonic Plague’, p. 126.
67
On this theory, see Sarris, ‘Justinianic Plague’, p. 178; idem, ‘Bubonic Plague’, pp. 130 f.; idem,
Economy and Society, p. 224, drawing on J. Banaji, Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity (Oxford,
2001), pp. 237 f., Table 12.
68
Prokopios, HA XXIII.19–22; see Sarris, ‘Bubonic Plague’, p. 127.
69
John of Ephesos, Chronicle of Zuqnīn, ed. Witakowski, pp. 75, 77, 81; Paulus Diaconus, Historia
Langobardorum II.4.
70
Prokopios, BP II.22.viii.
71
Theophanes, anno mundi 6050 p. I 423.9–11, ed. de Boor.

280 Mischa Meier
Kulikowski’s findings on the situation in rural Spain during the Justinianic

Plague, as well as the conclusions of Dionysios Stathakopoulos for early
Byzantium and Lawrence Conrad for the Middle East.72 It matches the ob-
servation that many rural areas were affected during the second great plague
pandemic, the Black Death of the late medieval/early modern period
(assuming one attributes both pandemics to the same pathogen).73 In no
way, therefore, was the Justinianic Plague a purely urban phenomenon.
In a financial system that draws its revenues from the taxation of land
and persons,74 the failure in the face of mass fatalities, especially in rural
areas, either to expand the size of the overall taxable area or, as Prokopios
implies, reduce the demands imposed by central government must surely
have engendered a recognizable financial crisis. The same levies would
suddenly have had to be borne by a far smaller pool of taxpayers, inevit-
ably overburdening their resources and leading to financial difficulties at
the centre. In fact, Sarris is now able to demonstrate that the plague
brought a ‘period of major instability’ in its wake75 that was characterized
by food shortages and famine76 – consequences of the drop in production
caused by the large losses of humans and animals – as well as by serious
financial problems77 that manifested themselves inter alia in the issue of
underweight gold coins (solidi) (although Prokopios blamed this person-
ally on the financial expert Petros Barsymes, comes sacrarum largitionum
in the years 542/3 and 547–50).78 Sarris plausibly connects Prokopios’s re-
port with the surviving lightweight solidi, whose date of issue cannot have
been earlier than 538 and which – if they were indeed issued at the insti-
gation of Petros – belong to the post-plague periods of 542/3 or 547–50.
In other words, the Roman administration appears to have minted
poorer-quality gold coins in response to a drastic fall in its revenues.79
Copper coins also lost their stability in this period, giving further weight
to the impression that ‘a crisis in state finance’ broke out in the 540s in
the aftermath of the plague.80 Further evidence is furnished by imperial
72
M. Kulikowski, ‘Plague in Spanish Late Antiquity’, in Little (ed.), Plague and the End of Antiquity, pp.
150–70; Stathakopoulos, ‘Death in the Countryside’, p. 108; Conrad, ‘Epidemic Disease’, passim; Con-
rad, ‘Pest und ihr soziales Umfeld’, pp. 93–9.
73
See Sallares, ‘Ecology’, p. 271.
74
A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284–602, Vol. 2 (Norman, 1964; repr. Baltimore, 1986), p. 770.
75
Sarris, ‘Justinianic Plague’, p. 175; idem, ‘Bubonic Plague’, p. 127.
76
Evidence for 543, 545/6, 546/7, 556, 560 and 562 is collated in Meier, Zeitalter, p. 332, n. 164.
77
The latter is reflected in the effects of Petros Barsymes, the object of furious invective from Prokopios
in the Anekdota (Prokopios, HA XXII) from which it is nevertheless clear that Petros was concerned
specifically to limit military and administrative spending while simultaneously tapping into new
sources of finance (see Sarris, ‘Bubonic Plague’, pp. 127 f.; idem, Economy and Society, pp. 218 f.).
78
PLRE IIIB 999–1002. Prokopios, HA XXII.38.
79
Sarris, ‘Justinianic Plague’, pp. 175–7; idem, ‘Bubonic Plague’, pp. 128 f.; idem, Economy and Society,
pp. 218 f. See W. Hahn, Moneta Imperii Byzantini, 1. Teil: Von Anastasius I. bis Justinianus I.
(491–565) einschließlich der ostgotischen und vandalischen Prägungen (Vienna, 1973), pp. 25, 48 f.,
who, however, justifies the reduced-weight solidi on the basis of exchange-related requirements.
80
Sarris, ‘Justinianic Plague’, p. 177; idem, ‘Bubonic Plague’, p. 129; see Sarris, Economy and Society,
pp. 224 f.; Hahn, Moneta, pp. 59 f.

legislation, which is by no means as negligible as Durliat claimed. Thus

Justinian attempted to counteract famine-induced price rises in the
122nd novella (544 CE), whose praefatio refers directly to the plague as
cause and thus makes the link itself, and set rules in the 128th novella
(545 CE) for epibolé, that is, the allocation of deserted land (presumably
due to losses during the plague) to specific persons who would then have
to bear the tax burden incumbent upon it.81 Prokopios complained
bitterly about this too.82
The considerable losses caused by the plague also left traces in the
military sector. For one thing, the eastern Roman administration’s gen-
eral shortage of funds manifested itself here: we know of numerous com-
plaints about the failure to pay wages to the troops.83 For another, the
recruitment base for the army as a whole may have substantially dimin-
ished, although this contention, put forward by Sarris amongst others,84
is hotly disputed. Peregrine Horden recently pointed out that the eastern
empire successfully conducted wars both immediately after the first wave
of pestilence and during the subsequent decades85 – an argument that I
admittedly do not find wholly convincing, on the grounds that its oppo-
nents, particularly the Persians, also suffered under the pandemic.86
Unlike the fiscal sphere, which I believe, especially in the light of Sarris’s
research, clearly reflects the effects of the plague, the debate in relation to
warfare has yet to reach its conclusion.87
All in all it thus appears that Durliat’s scepticism is largely unfounded.
It is by no means the case that the literary evidence inordinately magnifies
an event that may actually have been rather trivial.88 Rather, it is precisely
the non-literary material that points to serious financial problems in the
eastern empire’s government in the aftermath of the plague, as well as
– again in rebuttal of Durliat, who preferred to see the epidemic, if it
existed at all, as a primarily urban phenomenon89 – to substantial effects
on the rural population. In both cases, the other evidence accords with
the literary sources, both Prokopios’s invective against the emperor’s
81
J.L. Teall, ‘The Barbarians in Justinian’s Armies’, Speculum 40 (1965), pp. 294–322, esp. p. 318; Sarris,
‘Justinianic Plague’, p. 177; idem, ‘Bubonic Plague’, p. 129.
82
Prokopios, HA XXIII.15–16.
83
See e.g. Prokopios, BP II.7.xxxvii; De Bello Vandalico, II.15.lv, II.18.ix, II.26.xii (Vandalenkriege.
Griechisch–deutsch, ed. O. Veh (Munich, 1971)); Bellum Gothicum III.6.vi, III.11.xiv, III.12.ii, III.12.
vii, III.30.viii, III.36.vii, III.36.xxvi, IV.26.vi (Gotenkriege. Griechisch–deutsch, ed. O. Veh (Munich,
1966)).
84
Sarris, ‘Justinianic Plague’, pp. 178 f.; idem, ‘Bubonic Plague’, p. 131.
85
Horden, ‘Mediterranean Plague’, pp. 155 f.; earlier but on similar lines, Stathakopoulos, ‘Justinianic
Plague Revisited’, p. 263.
86
See Prokopios, BP II.22.i–viii; John of Ephesos, Chronicle of Zuqnīn, ed. Witakowski, pp. 74–5.
87
On this debate, see the literature cited by Little, ‘Life and Afterlife’, p. 24, n. 52.
88
See also Horden, ‘Mediterranean Plague’, p. 155.
89

282 Mischa Meier
malign fiscal policies and the impressions formed by John of Ephesos as

he travelled through depopulated villages and lands.
III. The long-term perspective: the effects on mentalités of the

Justinianic Plague
Despite everything, severe population losses and the ensuing economic

and fiscal problems are only one side of the coin. These things alone
do not suffice to qualify an event as a sudden ‘hammer blow’90 that
marks a sharp caesura between two epochs. I therefore wish now to go
a step further and look principally at the consequences of the plague on
contemporary mentalities, since these, specifically from the perspective
of the longue durée, are what in my view played a decisive part in the
process of transformation during the subsequent decades.
Let us look first at an episode from the life of Evagrios (d. c.600),
whom we mentioned earlier. As a church historian and secretary to Patri-
arch Gregory of Antioch, Evagrios was by nature a pious man.91 This did
not, however, save him from being afflicted by the plague, which caused
him terrible suffering. Having caught it as a child and been fortunate
enough to recover, he went on to lose several children, his wife, other rel-
atives and slaves in his household and on his estates to the disease, as well
as another daughter and a grandson in later years.92 Apparently this was
enough to lead even a churchman into doubt. After the death of his chil-
dren, he openly raised the question of whether God was just, since ‘I sim-
ply could not grasp why the same thing did not happen to heathens with
many children.’ Although he kept these thoughts to himself, a letter came
to him from St Simeon Stylites that admonished him to desist from such
ungodly complaints.93 The Life of St Simeon picks up the episode and
discusses it in more detail: after the loss of one of his daughters, Evagrios
harboured blasphemous thoughts because another man whom the text
associates with paganism had not lost his children. This put Evagrios’s
90
Thus the nature of the plague as per Sarris, ‘Justinianic Plague’, p. 173; idem, ‘Bubonic Plague’, p.
124.
91
On Evagrios and aspects of his ecclesiastical history, see P. Allen, Evagrius Scholasticus the Church
Historian (Leuven, 1981), and more recent work by H. Leppin: H. Leppin, ‘Evagrius Scholasticus
oder: Kirchengeschichte und Reichstreue’, Mediterraneo Antico 6 (2003), pp. 141–53; idem,
‘Theodoret und Evagrius Scholasticus: Kirchenhistoriker aus Syrien zwischen regionaler und
imperialer Tradition’, in A. Goltz, H. Leppin and H. Schlange-Schöningen (eds), Jenseits der
Grenzen. Beiträge zur spätantiken und frühmittelalterlichen Geschichtsschreibung (Berlin and New
York, 2009), pp. 153–68, esp. pp. 158 ff.; idem, ‘Roman Identity in a Border Region: Evagrius
and the Defence of the Roman Empire’, in W. Pohl, C. Gantner and R. Payne (eds), Visions of Com-
munity in the Post-Roman World. The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1100 (Farnham
and Burlington, 2012), pp. 241–58.
92
Evagrios, HE IV.29.
93
Evagrios, HE VI.23.

salvation in jeopardy; Simeon realized this and therefore chose to admon-

ish him. When Evagrios thus came to recognize that nothing was hidden
from the saint, he hastened to him and begged forgiveness, awash with
tears. God, whom Simeon invoked in his prayers, granted him the
forgiveness he sought.94
This is a remarkable incident. It refutes Durliat’s assertion that hagiog-
raphy, the supposed mirror of the everyday, fails to reflect the effects of
the plague. Such references to the plague are indeed rare, but as the exam-
ple from the vita of St Simeon shows, they are certainly illuminating. The
episode in fact points to a dangerous consequence of the pestilence to
Christian society, namely a trend towards repaganization. It is not the
only instance of its kind. John of Ephesos reports how the plague-
afflicted residents of a Palestinian village briefly reverted to the worship
of pagan images and received terrible punishment from God.95 In
Antioch, as the author of the Life of St Simeon also reports, certain per-
sons banded together to lambast Christianity, claiming that earthquakes,
fornication, murder and indeed the plague were not caused by God but
by certain constellations.96 Similar trends in Constantinople expanded
into outbreaks of full-blown mass hysteria.97 These included, amongst
others, the phenomenon whereby the inhabitants of the capital, when-
ever they came across a monk or a priest, would howl and take flight
because they suspected him of being death incarnate, and in the presence
of a churchman would call out fearfully to the Virgin, the martyrs and the
apostles for protection. Such behaviour, according to John of Ephesos,
went on for two whole years.98
We need not dwell upon all this for our purposes. It is merely impor-
tant to me to illustrate how great the collective insecurity of the eastern
Roman population must have been during the successive waves of the
plague after 541. One should not overlook the fact that the sixth century
was marked by a quite extraordinary sequence of catastrophes that
reached their peak in the years 540–2. I demonstrated this on numerous
occasions some time ago and noted also that fears of the end times were
associated in these decades with quite specific expectations.99 What I did
94
La vie ancienne de S. Syméon Stylite le Jeune (521–592), vol. 1, ed. P. van den Ven (Brussels, 1962), pp. 210–11.
95
John of Ephesos, Chronicle of Zuqnīn, ed. Witakowski, pp. 79–80.
96
La vie ancienne de S. Syméon Stylite le Jeune, ed. van den Ven, p. 138.
97
John of Ephesos reports that one plague survivor claimed the scourge would leave the city if pots were
thrown out of the windows and allowed to break on the streets. At first only a few foolish women
followed his advice, but the rumour soon spread throughout the city so that eventually the entire pop-
ulation of Constantinople, insofar as they were still alive, threw pots incessantly into the streets for
three whole days (John of Ephesos, Chronicle of Zuqnīn, ed. Witakowski, p. 97).
98
99
For detailed discussion of disasters and expectations of the apocalypse in the sixth century, see Meier,
Zeitalter, passim. For the years 540–2 (several earthquakes, severe invasion by the Kutrigurs 539/40, be-
ginning of the Osthrogothic reconquest of Italy, Persian invasion and destruction of Antioch in 540,
plague), Meier, Zeitalter, pp. 307 ff. and Meier, ‘Konsulat’.

284 Mischa Meier
not appreciate then to the extent I do today was the fact that in the eastern
empire these apocalyptic speculations and the associated expectations were
concentrated primarily in the opening years of the century.100 The disasters
that were interpreted at that time as harbingers of the imminent end of the
world (which had been computed to occur in approximately 500 CE), actu-
ally continued while it became increasingly clear that the world was not go-
ing to end. This, however, prompted Christian chronology and eschatology
to go entirely off the rails, giving extra impetus to the general uncertainty.
From the perspective of mentalités, this was the background against which
the plague erupted in 541. Unfulfilled expectations thus magnified the
power of its effects. The entire religious system threatened to come away
from its moorings. Nothing appeared to happen any more in a way one
might have expected. Only in combination with this mental basis did the
Justinianic Plague unleash its particular force. Without doubt, it was an un-
usual and especially brutal pestilence, but it was not that alone; in the situ-
ation of 541/2 it simply spelt doom, since with the collapse of all religious
points of orientation it defied any attempt at explanation. The fact that this
situation was overcome is to me one of the greatest achievements of late
Roman society. Yet the reorientation could not occur without leaving last-
ing traces. These are reflected in a deep cultural, and in part a religious, ref-
ormation of Roman society, which may be described as Byzantine once the
process reaches its general completion in the latter part of the sixth century.
The most important signs of this rapid cultural shift are the rise in the cult
of the Virgin Mary, the emergence of iconolatry, the sacralization of the
emperor and the phenomenon known as liturgification. I will outline these
points briefly in conclusion.
Worship of the Virgin Mary in the Roman east had received enduring
momentum at the Council of Ephesos in 431, which had enshrined
Mary’s role as the Mother of God.101 This was a process of increasing dif-
ferentiation and complexity, reflected in Marian miracles, legends and
festivals, but also in the Kontakia of the popular poet Romanos Melodos
(himself regarded as a Marian-inspired lyricist), which accompanied the
elevation of the Virgin to the role of principal patron of Constantinople.
100
On this topic see M. Meier, ‘Eschatologie und Kommunikation im 6. Jahrhundert n. Chr. – oder:
Wie Osten und Westen beständig aneinander vorbei redeten’, in W. Brandes and F. Schmieder
(eds), Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen (Berlin and New York, 2008),
pp. 41–73.
101
On the Marian cult in late antiquity, particularly in the fifth century, see A. Cameron, ‘The Cult of
the Virgin in Late Antiquity: Religious Development and Myth-Making’, in R.N. Swanson (ed.), The
Church and Mary (Woodbridge and Rochester, 2004), pp. 1–21, who advises taking particular caution
when handling the surviving evidence (which is mostly late and may reflect later assumptions about
past events) and warns against over-simplistic explanations of the emergence of the cult; B.V.
Pentcheva, Icons and Power. The Mother of God in Byzantium (University Park, 2006); C. Maunder
(ed.), Origins of the Cult of the Virgin Mary (London and New York, 2008); L. Brubaker and M.
Cunningham (eds), The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium. Texts and Images (Aldershot,
2011).

In the early seventh century, Mary is even said to have stood in person
against forces besieging the city.102 However, it was in the sixth century that
this development gained particular impetus,103 and this occurred in connec-
tion with the plague. Especially significant in this regard is Justinian’s
movement – in the plague year of 542 – of Hypapante (known in the west
as Candlemas or the Presentation of the Lord) from the 14th to the 2nd of
February. The switch in the date of the festival forms part, in simplified
terms, of the transformation of what was originally a festival of Christ into
a festival of the Virgin, and was carried out, as indicated by a Marian legend
that refers to it, expressly as a measure to alleviate the plague.104 Later on,
this procedure was regarded as so successful that the Pope-designate
Gregory the Great, who spent several years in Constantinople and was
therefore aware of the city’s ‘successful’ defence mechanisms against the
disease, copied it in the face of the severe plague that afflicted Rome in
590.105 Significantly, in the late medieval period the Black Death also led
to intensification and differentiation in the cult of the Virgin.106 The in-
tense worship of the Mother of God by the population of the capital and
the empire at large that is also apparent in other sources (for example the
erection of theotokos churches such as the Nea in Jerusalem, consecrated
in 543),107 marks a clear distinction between medieval, Byzantine
Constantinople and its late antique predecessor.
A further area in which significant changes in religious practice can be
identified is the veneration of images.108 Icons – cultic religious images –
are a central element of Orthodox piety and certain pictures are still
prayed to with veneration in Greece and Russia today. Miraculous power
is ascribed to them, on the basis that they represent manifestations of an
essential image of the person represented, which are imbued with the
extraordinary abilities possessed by the persons themselves.
102
See C. Mango, ‘Constantinople as Theotokupolis’, in M. Vassilaki (ed.), Mother of God. Representa-
tions of the Virgin in Byzantine Art (Athens and Milan, 2000), pp. 17–25; Pentcheva, Icons of Power.
103
See A. Cameron, ‘The Theotokos in Sixth-Century Constantinople: A City Finds its Symbol’, Journal
of Theological Studies 29 (1978), pp. 79–108; eadem, ‘The Early Cult of the Virgin’, in Vassilaki (ed.),
Mother of God, pp. 3–15.
104
Adgar’s Marienlegenden. Nach der Londoner Handschrift Egerton 612 zum ersten Mal vollständig
herausgegeben von C. Neuhaus (Wiesbaden, 1886; repr. 1953), p. 220: ‘Die Häresie des Kaisers Justinian
zieht Gottes Rache und Strafen auf sich, so dass in des Kaisers Lande eine furchtbare Hungersnoth und
Pest ausbricht, an der Tausende der Unterthanen sterben. Durch Schrecken bewogen veranstalten die
Bewohner von Konstantinopel eine Prozession, in welcher sie das Muttergottesbild durch die Strassen
tragen. Alle Leute, die es kommen sehen, fallen nieder, beten und werden geheilt. Das Land aber
beginnt wieder Frucht zu tragen. Zum Andenken an die Rettung des Landes beschliessen der Kaiser
und der Patriarch das Fest der Purification [= Hypapante] einzusetzen, was noch jetzt von allen gefeiert
wird.’ On Justinian’s movement of the date of Hypapante and its implications for the plague, see
Meier, Zeitalter, pp. 570–86; Meier, ‘Kaiserherrschaft’.
105
Gregory of Tours Histories X.1. See Meier, Zeitalter, pp. 523 f.
106
See N. Bulst, ‘Heiligenverehrung in Pestzeiten. Soziale und religiöse Reaktionen auf die
spätmittelalterlichen Pestepidemien’, in A. Löther, U. Meier et al. (eds), Mundus in imagine.
Bildersprache und Lebenswelten im Mittelalter. Festgabe für Klaus Schreiner (Munich, 1996), pp. 63–91.
107
Evidence cited in Meier, Zeitalter, pp. 584–6.
108
Details and evidence for the processes outlined in the following can be found in Meier, Zeitalter,
pp. 528–60.

286 Mischa Meier
Christians initially rejected iconolatry in all its forms, seeing it as a per-

petuation of pagan practices. This outlook changed significantly, however,
in the sixth century. From the middle of the century onwards, venerated
icons began to appear abundantly in both the private and public spheres.
In 544, an icon of Christ is said to have saved Edessa from the Persians,
while a similar icon that appeared in Kamulianai in Asia Minor miracu-
lously reproduced itself. The icon of Mary in Sozopolis also enjoyed great
fame; further examples could be cited.109 The rise of iconolatry seems
directly connected with the severe disasters that afflicted the eastern Roman
empire in the sixth century. Entire communities, in particular Edessa,
home to one of the most famous icons, felt themselves protected against
outside attack by images with the power to work miracles. Whilst it was
principally external attacks that gave the decisive impulse to the cult of
icons, the plague does not seem to have been irrelevant to this process. St
Theodoros of Sykeon, for instance, is said (in a further hagiographical
source for the significance of the plague) to have been cured of the disease
by an icon.110 An important factor can thus be seen in the emergence of
iconolatry, namely that the plague must not be regarded as an isolated
phenomenon. Rather, its gruesome impact on contemporary perceptions
derived in part from the fact that it was contemporaneous with – and, as
many believed, causally linked to – other disasters, and that it came up
against, to underline the point further, a quite particular set of expectations.
People who place their salvation in the hands of new protectors, or
protectors who have hitherto not been evoked as such, would appear to
have lost faith in traditional guardians in times of need. These naturally
included the emperor, who must have appeared all but helpless in the
face of the disasters that erupted across the eastern empire in the sixth
century; ultimately, he even caught the plague himself.111 Had his
109
On early iconolatry, see esp. E. von Dobschütz, Christusbilder. Untersuchungen zur christlichen Legende
(Leipzig, 1899); E. Kitzinger, ‘The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm’, Dumbarton
Oaks Papers 8 (1954), pp. 83–150; A. Cameron, ‘The History of the Image of Edessa: The Telling of a Story’,
in C. Mango and O. Pritsak (eds), Okeanos. Essays Presented to Ihor Ševcenko on His Sixtieth Birthday by
His Colleagues and Students (Cambridge, MA, 1983), pp. 80–94. See also now L. Brubaker and J. Haldon,
Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c. 680–850. A History (Cambridge, 2011).
110
A.-J. Festugière (ed.), Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn, tome 1 (Brussels, 1970), p. 7.
111
Prokopios, BP II.23.xx; HA IV.1–3. Various copper folles minted in the fifteenth and sixteenth year of
Justinian’s reign (541–3), depicting the emperor with misshapen cheeks and jawline, are important here. H.
Pottier, ‘Justinien et la pandémie de peste à Constantinople (542)’, Bulletin de la Société française de
numismatique 64.5 (2009), pp. 86 f., speculated that Justinian deliberately had himself depicted as a plague
sufferer on these coins, an idea taken up by A.U. Sommer, Die Münzen des Byzantinischen Reiches 491–1453
(Regenstauf, 2010), p. 61 no. 4.21. This is far from certain, however: for one thing, the deformities are only
visible on ‘la moitié de la production totale des années 15 et 16’ (Pottier, p. 86), while for another, uneven
representations of the emperor’s face can also be seen on coins from other years. It seems more significant
to me that such an aggressive use by the emperor of his own illness ought surely to have elicited a response
beyond the numismatic evidence alone; there is, however, no trace of it. Moreover, Prokopios’s descrip-
tion of the emperor’s symptoms (BP II.22.xvii) only refers to swellings in the groin and armpits and behind
the ears (typical places where the lymph nodes may have swollen on the initial entry of the pathogen into
the body), but not to the cheeks or jaw.

personal failings caused him to lose the grace of God? Tentative hints
exist in the sources that criticism of the Emperor was beginning to
emerge.112 Justinian’s reaction to it was remarkable: not only did he
demonstratively acquiesce to the increasing popular veneration of Mary
by reordering the Hypapante as a penitential festival of the Virgin, by in-
stitutionalizing the festival of the Annunciation (Evangelismos), and by
having Prokopios remark in his eulogy of imperial buildings that it was
especially important to the emperor that he, Prokopios, should write ex-
tensively about the many churches of the Virgin Mary he had erected.113
Most of all, he pursued a remarkable policy of self-sacralization, appar-
ently as a strategy of inuring himself against persistent criticism. This is
reflected in a new form of self-representation: Justinian now assumed
for himself the role of the saints who, like Mary, interceded between
God and humankind, affecting also a similar lifestyle (asceticism) and
similar qualities (miracles) to these saints. In ritual he even had his own
picture placed level with that of Christ.114 No one now could dare accuse
Justinian of a lack of piety.115
Justinian’s successors initially maintained this sacral exaggeration of
the imperial office. In the case of Justin II, who assumed the throne on
Justinian’s death in 565, this is clearly attested by the eulogy written in
his honour by Corippus: the panegyrist regards the emperor as a saint.116
This tendency wanes again under later emperors, yet reversion to the
circumstances that prevailed in the early years of Justinian’s reign was
by then no longer possible. To this extent, the role of the plague and
its consequences for the emperor were ultimately not insignificant in
the development process of the Byzantine empire.
The bewildering scope of the calamity, its inexplicability and the
inescapable sight of mass fatalities had clearly shown up the limitations
of the figures traditionally called upon for help in times of need, such
as the saints, the representatives of the churches and not least, as we have
seen, the imperial government. New patrons, in the form of the Virgin
112
See John of Ephesos, Chronicle of Zuqnīn, ed. Witakowski, p. 83. On criticism of the emperor in
Justinian’s reign, see now Three Political Voices from the Age of Justinian: Agapetus, Advice to the
Emperor – Dialogue on Political Science – Paul the Silentiary, Description of Hagia Sophia, translated
with notes and an introduction by P.N. Bell (Liverpool, 2009); P.N. Bell, Social Conflict in the Age
of Justinian: Its Nature, Management, and Mediation (Oxford and New York, 2013), pp. 286–310.
113
Prokopios, De Aedificiis I.3.i (Bauten. Griechisch–deutsch, ed. O. Veh (Munich, 1977)).
114
Asceticism: Prokopios, HA XIII.28–30; De Aedificiis I.7.vii–xii. Miraculous powers: Prokopios, De
Aedificiis I.7.xiv–xvi. Proximity to Christ: H. Belting, Bild und Kult. Eine Geschichte des Bildes im
Zeitalter vor der Kunst (Munich, 1991), pp. 125 ff.
115
On this general topic, see Meier, Zeitalter, pp. 608–38, with additional evidence; idem, ‘Liturgification
and Hyper-Sacralization. The Declining Importance of Imperial Piety in Constantinople between the
6th and 7th Centuries AD’, in G.B. Lanfranchi and R. Rollinger (eds), The Body of the King,
(forthcoming).
116
Corippus, In laudem Iustini Augusti minoris 1.175 (Flavius Cresconius Corippus, In laudem Iustini
Augusti minoris Libri IV, ed. Av. Cameron (London, 1976)).

288 Mischa Meier
Mary and the icons, now emerged to stand alongside those afflicted by
the disasters. Hence the Christian religion itself was generally not called
into doubt, a few exceptions notwithstanding. However, the forms of
religious practice transformed and a shifting of emphasis occurred, a
process whose serious consequences can be summed up under the
heading ‘liturgification’.
Liturgification is a difficult phenomenon for analysis to pin down.117 It
first takes shape in the fact that religion plainly occupies a fundamentally
more significant role in every aspect of social life from the 540s onwards
than before. A considerable shift towards the religious penetration of so-
ciety as a whole – over and above the significant place already occupied
by religion in late antiquity – can be observed at every level to which
our sources give us insight. The methodological problem of capturing re-
ligion in quantified terms can be solved here inter alia by comparing texts
from the same genres from the early and late Justinianic periods (e.g. for
panegyrical texts, Agapetos’s Ekthesis and Paulos Silentiarios’s Ekphrasis of
Hagia Sophia). Whereas the earlier texts still look clearly to classical
models and attempt to harmonize them with Christian subjects, in the
later works, elements rooted in classical tradition increasingly slip into
the background as Christian symbolism comes to the fore. Such a
tendency can also be seen beyond literature. One need only compare
the triumph held to celebrate the defeat of the Vandals in 534 with the
triumphal imperial adventus of 559.
In 534, the imitation of classical tradition was virtually programmatic
in character. Prokopios, an eyewitness to the celebrations, lays specific
stress on the attempt that was made to connect the ceremony with the
old triumphal processions of the republican era (which did not wholly
succeed, owing to its excessive focus on the emperor).118 Belisarios’s
ceremonial procession through Constantinople, from his house to the
hippodrome, was likewise embedded in a broader context of measures
whereby the emperor fêted his own victoriousness in an entirely tradi-
tional way: for instance, the scholar Johannes Lydos was tasked with
117
One attempt to do so is M. Meier, ‘Sind wir nicht alle heilig? Zum Konzept des “Heiligen” (sacrum)
in spätjustinianischer Zeit’, Millennium 1 (2004), pp. 133–64; see also Meier, Zeitalter, pp. 608–14; also
especially A. Cameron, ‘Images of Authority: Élites and Icons in Late Sixth-Century Byzantium’,
Past and Present 84 (1979), pp. 3–35. Additionally: J.L. Nelson, ‘Symbols in Context: Rulers’ Inau-
guration Rituals in Byzantium and the West in the Early Middle Ages’, in D. Baker (ed.), The
Orthodox Churches and the West (= Studies in Church History 13) (Oxford, 1976), pp. 97–119,
esp. pp. 101, 114 f.; P. Magdalino, ‘The History of the Future and its Uses: Prophecy, Policy and Pro-
paganda’, in R. Beaton and C. Roueché (eds), The Making of Byzantine History: Studies Dedicated to
Donald M. Nicol (Aldershot, 1993), pp. 3–34, at p. 13; W.C. Schneider, ‘Der Kaiser im Geleit Gottes.
Der große Einzug in der Hagia Sophia Justinians und die Stellung des christlichen Kaisers in der
Spätantike’, Castrum Peregrini 247–249 (2001), pp. 5–39.
118
Prokopios, BV IV.9.i–iii, on which see M. McCormick, Eternal Victory. Triumphal Rulership in Late
Antiquity, Byzantium and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge and Paris, 1986), pp. 125–9.

composing a panegyrical history of the recent Roman–Persian war, while

an equestrian statue of Justinian was erected within the hippodrome.119
The adventus of 559 is quite different: the ceremony we see here is
deeply religious. At daybreak on 11 August of that year, the ‘God-fearing
emperor’ (εὐσεβὴς βασιλεύς), who had personally supervised the
restoration work of the ‘Long Wall’ at Selymbria (modern Silivri), passed
on horseback through the Charisios Gate in the northern part of the city
walls,120 where he was solemnly welcomed by senators and the city
prefect. From here, the procession went to the Church of the Apostles,
the site of the imperial tombs; Justinian paused, prayed and lit candles
at the sarcophagus of his wife Theodora (d. 548). Only then did the pro-
cession, now a steadily rising crowd that included other worthies, parade
troops (in white cloaks and carrying lanterns) and of course the towns-
folk, continue first to the capitol and thence, via the Mése (the main thor-
oughfare), to the imperial palace. As Justinian rode through the Chalke,
the splendid gates of the palace complex, he was met by the reverbera-
tions of the ritual triumphal chorus (ἔκραξεν τὸ θριαμβευτάλιoν).121
When set against the traditional arrangement of the ceremony in 534,
these events can be understood as symbolic of the deeply religious
atmosphere of the late Justinianic period: the entrance into the city,
climaxing in the emperor’s silent prayer in the Church of the Apostles,
points to an ostensive display of piety on the part of ruler, elites and
people, and marks the culmination of that ‘process of religious
intensification’ that characterizes liturgification.122
Imperial legislation likewise confirms this picture: laws issued in the
530s are full of references and allusions to the great Roman past,123
elements that gradually vanish from the 540s onwards. Similar tendencies
can even be observed in art. Ernst Kitzinger has repeatedly pointed out
that from an art-historical perspective, Justinian’s reign splits clearly into
two distinct phases: an initial attempt to synthesize classical and Christian
119
Panegyrical historiography: Johannes Lydos, Mag. III.28 (Ioannes Lydus: On Powers or The Magistracies
of the Roman State. Introduction, Critical Text, Translation, Commentary, and Indices, ed. A.C. Bandy
(Philadelphia, 1983)). Equestrian statue: R.H.W. Stichel, Die römische Kaiserstatue am Ausgang der
Antike. Untersuchungen zum plastischen Kaiserporträt seit Valentinian I. (364–375 n. Chr.) (Rome,
1982), pp. 104 f., no. 129; cf. Anthologia Graeca. Buch XII–XVI. Griechisch–deutsch, ed. H. Beckby (Mu-
nich, 1958), 16.62 Lemma, 16.63; and Scriptores Originum Constantinopolitanarum, Fasc. I–II, ed. Th.
Preger (Leipzig, 1901/7; Leipzig, 1989), p. I 60.11–13.
120
Identified with Edirnekapı. However, N. Asutay-Effenberger, Die Landmauer von Konstantinopel-Is-
tanbul. Historisch-topographische und baugeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Berlin and New York, 2007),
pp. 96–106, suggests Sulukulepapı instead.
121
De caerimoniis, appendix ad I p. 497.13–498.13 (Constantini Porphyrogeniti Imperatoris De Caerimoniis
Aulae Byzantinae Libri II, Vol. I, ed. J.J. Reiske (Bonn, 1829), pp. 138.707–140.723; Constantine
Porphyrogenitus. Three Treatises on Imperial Military Expeditions, ed. J.F. Haldon (Vienna, 1990); Mc-
Cormick, Eternal Victory, pp. 65–7).
122
See Leppin, Justinian, pp. 321 f.
123
On this topic, see M. Maas, ‘Roman History and Christian Ideology in Justinianic Reform
Legislation’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 40 (1986), pp. 17–31.

290 Mischa Meier
ideals, followed towards the end of his reign by the increasing promi-
nence of rigid, religiously stylized Christian modes of expression.124
Indeed, a brief comparative glance at, say, the so-called Barberini diptych
(a representation of the victorious emperor using traditional elements of
composition) as an example of early sixth-century art, and the deeply
religious venerational icons produced from the late sixth century onwards
at the monastery of St Catherine in the Sinai, should suffice to highlight
the extreme differences.
Yet the development thus outlined is most clearly expressed in an act
whose significance is more than merely symbolic: after 541, the position
of consul, the most central office of the ancient Roman res publica, ceased
to be filled. The plague had quite evidently pushed aside any interest in
it.125
Seen from a modern perspective, liturgification is a strange phenom-
enon that seems like the ossification of an entire society. It was, however,
decisively important for the continued existence of the eastern Roman /
Byzantine empire, as it stabilized a society that had been left reeling
and at the same time equipped it (although this was obviously not fore-
seeable at the time) for its fight for survival against the Arabs from the
630s onwards. Again, it is essential to picture the incertitude of the east-
ern Roman populace: the unpredictability of the plague, which struck
one man down and spared another, extinguished an entire village yet left
its neighbour untouched according to no visible plan, must have driven
contemporaries to despair.126 John of Ephesos wondered each morning
whether he would live to see nightfall.127 Even the different speeds at
which the disease claimed its victims – nothing was known of the various
manifestations of bubonic, pneumonic and septicaemic plague, or their
varying rates of lethality – led to insecurity at the deepest level. Desperate
attempts to rationalize it are consequently ubiquitous in the sources,
concealed behind the incidents of repaganization referred to above and
behind notions that the plague moved amongst the population in human
form. Prokopios in fact reports that transmission of the disease was ini-
tially blamed on spectres who infected their victims by striking them.128
John of Ephesos talks of spectral ships crewed by headless ghosts that
were supposedly sighted in a city prior to the advent of the plague.129
Prokopios, meanwhile, attempts to rationalize the plague by depicting
124
E. Kitzinger, Byzantinische Kunst im Werden. Stilentwicklungen in der Mittelmeerkunst vom 3. bis zum
7. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 1984), pp. 202 ff.
125
See Meier, ‘Konsulat’.
126
See Prokopios, BP II.22.viii; Evagrios, HE IV.29; Gregory of Tours Histories IV.5. Cf. Sallares,
‘Ecology’, pp. 258–61.
127
128
Prokopios, BP II.22.x.
129

it as a conscious entity that roamed the land and over time demanded its
tribute from every region as it saw fit.130 Evagrios similarly sought to infer
regularity by relating the periodic appearance of the plague with the
fifteen-year cycle of indictions.131 The historian Agathias, by contrast,
regards the search for reasons for the ultimately inexplicable calamity as
vain, and Evagrios finally comes only to the resigned conclusion that
the further course of things remains uncertain, as only God knows the
causes and all besides.132
A glance at the historiography of those decades reveals a process that
only begins to make sense against the background of the general condi-
tions outlined above: the Greek secular historiographical tradition, still
palpable in Prokopios’s historical works, begins to slip away and to con-
verge with the church historiography, into which it dissolves in the first
half of the seventh century. Closer examination of the works in question
reveals that authors from Agathias onwards despair of the claim, derived
from a tradition reaching back to Herodotos and Thucydides, to give
plausible explanations of historical events through chains of causes.
Agathias especially makes clear that the events unfolding before him have
simply ceased to be explicable.133 Everything is indeed, as Evagrios notes
(see above), in God’s hands. If one follows this logic, however, then the
need for classical secular history disappears. It duly ends – in the circum-
stances as a result, amongst other things, of the plague – for the time
being in the early seventh century. By this point liturgification had
penetrated every aspect of Byzantine life, even war.134
If one bears in mind the matters mentioned above, that is, the Marian
cult, iconolatry, sacralization of the emperor, the disappearance of classi-
cal secular historiography, and lastly the comprehensive liturgification of
east Roman/Byzantine society that ultimately rolled all these phenomena
into one, and if one further imagines the prominent role that the plague
must have assumed in people’s minds, then the answer to the question of
the significance of the pandemic is self-evident: it was to a large extent
jointly responsible for a process of cultural reconstruction that formed
part of the transition from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages.135 I
should like to conclude by emphasizing that these were structural
130
Prokopios, BP II.22.vii–viii.
131
Evagrios, HE IV.29.
132
Agathias 5.1.5–7 (Agathiae Myrinaei Historiarum libri quinque, ed. R. Keydell (Berlin, 1967)); Evagrios,
HE IV.29.
133
See Agathias 2.15.13; 5.4.3; 5.4.6. and esp. 5.10.7.
134
End of traditional historiography: Meier, ‘Prokop, Agathias, die Pest’. Warfare: M. Meier, ‘Der
christliche Kaiser zieht (nicht) in den Krieg. “Religionskriege” in der Spätantike?’, in A. Holzem
(ed.), Krieg und Christentum. Religiöse Gewalttheorien in der Kriegserfahrung des Westens (Paderborn,
Munich, Vienna and Zürich, 2009), pp. 254–78.
135
On this see Meier, ‘Ostrom-Byzanz, Spätantike-Mittelalter. Überlegungen zum “Ende” der Antike im
Osten des Römischen Reiches’, Millennium 9 (2012), pp. 187–253.

292 Mischa Meier
reconfigurations that come to light through the comparisons with previ-

ous decades that appear from time to time in the sources and can some-
times even be quantified (such as the increase in processions, miraculous
icons, Marian festivals, etc.). Hence my aim is in no way to use a psychol-
ogizing approach to explain a fundamental epochal transition, as I have
recently been accused of. In no way does my analysis require ‘an entire
people to lie down on the analyst’s couch’.136 One should, however, be
permitted to ascribe historical phenomena their proper worth, in due
proportion to the perspective of the examination and the question at
hand. It is my conviction that this, and not so much the death toll or
the ensuing economic problems, is the background against which the
impact of the Justinianic Plague must be stressed.
From this perspective, the plague inscription cited at the start of this
article exemplifies the transition from antiquity to the Byzantine Middle
Ages. As a classical architectural inscription in a learned style, it evokes
the enduring set pieces of a centuries-old tradition. Yet it does not dare
to give an exact term for the unspeakable fate. We have much still to
learn.
University of Tübingen
136
Thus Lilie, Einführung, p. 260.


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The ‘Justinianic Plague’: the economic

consequences of the pandemic in the

At first sight, the two-line inscription on the southern façade of the

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3) 267–292

This short inscription is of some significance. It is one of two known pieces

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

an urban phenomenon concentrated in major trading centres and

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

justify again: I believe that the Justinianic Plague marks a significant

II. The ‘Justinianic Plague’ in scholarship: the controversy over its

A brief glance at scholarship on the ‘Plague’ shows that it is only in

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

the plague gradually hove over the horizons of scholarship, prompting

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

The flood of plague-related theories in the last quarter of the twentieth

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

marginal references were to be found in the legal sources, which thus

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

additional evidence to complement the descriptions of buboes (characteris-

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

The archaeology also defies an unambiguous interpretation of the

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

Kulikowski’s findings on the situation in rural Spain during the Justinianic

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

legislation, which is by no means as negligible as Durliat claimed. Thus

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

malign fiscal policies and the impressions formed by John of Ephesos as

III. The long-term perspective: the effects on mentalités of the

Despite everything, severe population losses and the ensuing economic

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

salvation in jeopardy; Simeon realized this and therefore chose to admon-

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

Christians initially rejected iconolatry in all its forms, seeing it as a per-

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

composing a panegyrical history of the recent Roman–Persian war, while

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

reconfigurations that come to light through the comparisons with previ-

Early Medieval Europe 2016 24 (3)

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