“At this time (year 541) an epidemic of plague was declared that was about to end the entire human race” (Procope of Caesarea, History of Wars, II, 22. Translation taken from the Classical Library Gredos)
With this resounding paragraph, the most detailed narration of the so-called plague of Justinian begins, in reference to the powerful Roman emperor of the East in whose reign the pandemic took place. He himself fell ill, but he recovered and even reigned more than 20 years, in which, among other things, he had time to invade and occupy a part of the Southeast coast of the Iberian Peninsula, perhaps including Valencia.
According to Procopius, a direct witness to the events: “(the plague) spread throughout the entire earth, it fattened on any human life € without forgiving either natures or ages.”
“He attacked some in the summer, others in the winter and others in the other seasons of the year. So, everyone should say what they think about it, be it a charlatan or an astrologer (I guess) €
“This disease always started in the coastal areas and, thus, went up towards the interior regions. In the second year (542) he arrived in Constantinople €.
“The most reputable doctors predicted that many would die who, unexpectedly, would be healed soon after, and assured that many would be saved, but that they would perish very soon. So there was no cause of this disease that could be understood by the human reasoning, since in all cases the recovery took place most of the time in an unthinkable way €.
“€ the disease was infesting Constantinople for four months and during three of them it manifested itself with particular virulence. At first they died in a slightly larger number than usual, after which the losses increased to reach an amount of five thousand victims a day, until reach ten thousand or even more €.
“At that time all funeral rites were ruined. The deceased were not taken to bury with their courtship, as usual €”
“In those days it seemed that it was not easy to see anyone in public places €€ but that all who were healthy remained at home, caring for the sick or crying for the dead.”
“All activities ceased and the artisans abandoned all their occupations and the other jobs that each one had in their hands”
“(The plague) also fell on the Persian territory and on all the other barbarian peoples”
Procopius’ long text partly follows the literary model employed by Thucydides in the 5th century B.C. to describe the plague of Athens, which killed off its famous leader, Pericles. These excerpts from the description of the effects produced by the great bubonic plague pandemic, a disease very different from the current one, now seem suspiciously familiar to us, since they largely recreate the situation that Humanity is going through. Nothing new under the sun, we might think, despite being news from more than a thousand years ago.
This plague, believed to have originated in Egypt, produced a demographic collapse that depopulated most of the Mediterranean basin and especially affected the integrity and strength of the Eastern Roman Empire. In addition, the pandemic did not disappear soon, but several minor outbreaks were found during the following 200 years, up to 750.
The chronicles of the Visigoth era indicate briefly that all of Hispania was affected by the plague in 542-543, a few years before a council that was held in Valencia in 546, some of whose canons seem to make some reference to this episode.
The rapid spread of the pandemic was favored by the fact that, during this period, commercial, land and sea relations were highly developed, within a general context of economic and military expansion of the Eastern Roman Empire. This is another characteristic feature of the great pandemics, which spread when communications and business relationships are very fluid.
In 1986-1987, in the l’Almoina de València excavations, a strange mass grave appeared that contained the piled and scrambled remains of 15 individuals. Despite the apparent roughness and evident hasty execution of this grave, it was located in a privileged place, near the cathedral and next to a place highly revered by the first Christians, the prison where Saint Vincent was martyred to death. Around it, between the 5th and 8th centuries, a privileged cemetery developed. By studying and publishing the excavation, the time of formation of this mass grave was dated in the middle of the 6th century and was already interpreted as a probable consequence of the Justinian plague.
Due to the uniqueness and interest of these findings, a few years ago, the Secció d’Investigació Arqueològica Municipal (SIAM) in València was contacted to participate in a broad international and interdisciplinary scientific project in which several researchers and institutions participated, in the case of “Max Planck – Harvard Research Center for the Archeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean”, the “Department of History (Harvard University)”, the “Department of Archeology (University of Cambridge)” and several others from Austria, Belgium, Germany, Estonia and France,.
Its purpose was to trace through Europe the evidence of that great Justinian pandemic, well known by historical sources, but hardly by archeology. Obviously, the aforementioned l’Almoina mass grave was proposed as an object of study. The pertinent samples were taken at the SIAM facilities and it was also used to perform bone tests to test them with the carbon 14 dating system, which confirmed that the individuals had died in the 6th century. The analyzes, carried out in the laboratory of the University of Tübingen (Germany), detected the presence of the death-causing plague genome.
The results of this study have been published in the collective article: “Ancient Yersinia pestis genomes from across Western Europe reveal early diversification during the First Pandemic (541–750)”, which can be viewed and downloaded online: https: // www .pnas.org / cgi / doi / 10.1073 / pnas.1820447116
Take this example to show that the current situation is as terrible as it is repetitive throughout the history of Humanity, at least every certain period of time. Fortunately, thanks to advances in medical science and the existence of a healthcare system, it is nowhere near as deadly as before. In this case, any past time was worse.
For many centuries, at least since the aforementioned plague of the Athens of Pericles, great and deadly episodes have been known that had a negative impact on the demography of the moment, much more than now, of course. One could comment, among others, on the recently famous “Spanish Flu” of 1917-1918, the episodes of cholera in the 19th century, the terrible death toll that Europeans brought to America, which decimated indigenous populations or the numerous plagues of modern times and Medieval, especially the one from the middle of the 14th century, which has also left its archaeological mark in València, again in l’Almoina. But this would give for another very long chapter.
– .
