Justinian Plague: An Epochal Watershed

Justinian bubonic plague, named after the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (527-565 AD), represents a major event in human history that radically reshaped societies, economies, and political structures across the regions affected by the disease. Justinian bubonic plague is a fascinating topic, puzzling scholars and researchers who try to find a solution to so a complicated enigma, considering dissenting opinions about whether Justinian Bubonic plague had really happened on worldwide scale, thus receiving the status of first pandemic, whether this disease had boosted the end of Ancient world, which aftermaths would fall into Darkness of Middle Ages, whether plague, on the contrary, had promoted further economic development across Mediterranean area, or, at least, Pandemic bubonic plague had not existed at all. Using works of Procopius of Caesarea, John of Ephesus, Evagrius, Paul the Deacon, and other authors, medical texts of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, the authors will scrutinize a large number of pieces of evidence collected from literary, scientific, archaeological, and historical sources, not just to pay attention to biomedical research focused on pathogenic factors that caused millions of casualties, but, more importantly, to take a closer look at the deep changes that occurred in the human world outlook between the fifth and seventh centuries AD. From a philosophical standpoint, the aftermath of the Justinian plague also had huge consequences, as the plague brought people into a new spiritual dimension that would find its highest expression in the Middle Ages. It mainly concerns questions about individual free will, which strengthened eschatological and providentialist sentiments, a major synthesis of theology and philosophy, becoming her “handmaiden”, and along with this, the long-term effects of the plague prompted reflection on the cyclical nature of history and the influence of large-scale disasters on the development of civilizations. The main goal of the Authors is both to literally chase Yersinia pestis across Europe and Middle Asia and to analyze in the conclusions what happened to them when the plague came and went several times.