When the COVID-19 pandemic is behind us, the world is going to be a different place. In the past, massive disease outbreaks have changed the course of states, religions and society. The Justinian plague, a pandemic in the Eastern Roman Empire, changed the course of European history.
The Eastern Roman Empire, also called the Byzantine Empire, was what was left of the eastern Roman territories after the fall of Rome. The plague of Justinian is named after the emperor who ruled from 527 to 565 A.D., and it spread from the outer provinces of the empire to Constantinople, the capital, in 542. The Justinian plague continued in the Mediterranean region for the next 225 years.
Most believe that the Justinian plague was the bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Ultimately, the plague came from China, but the immediate source was probably Pelusium, a city near where the Suez Canal meets the Mediterranean today. The plague spread with trade and military movements to the entire Roman world, including its distant lands. Between a quarter and half of the population died, approximately 25 million to 100 million people.
The loss of so many lives crippled the economy and led to a financial crisis, which turned into a military crisis because of the lack of funds. Barbarian tribes from the north seemed to be less susceptible to the plague, so they retained their population and their military and overran the western Roman provinces. Victories by the Goths in Italy and the Vandals at Carthage removed most of the western region from the empire.
Enemies to the east, the Sasanian empire, were in a situation similar to the Romans and did not pose a threat until the Islamic Rashidun Caliphate emerged from the Arabian Peninsula. They conquered the entire Sasanian empire and much of the remaining Roman empire.
The great Roman empire was reduced to three separate areas: a Greek population in modern-day Turkey, parts of the Balkans including modern-day Romania and the eastern and southern Mediterranean. An entirely new world order had evolved.
Anxiety about the plague led to fear among the populace, who turned to religions for hope and solace. The plague transformed western Christianity into a distinctively European medieval church. The disruption of secular governments allowed the Catholic church to become the dominant power in medieval Europe.
The Roman economy was based on slaves, but without a sufficient supply of slaves from conquered territories, a new socioeconomic system began to emerge. Landowners began to grant workers plots of land to work in exchange for tithes, labor in the fields and sometimes taxes. The lord also provided military protection and justice. This was the foundation of feudalism, which became the norm in medieval Europe.
That left a new world order with three competing forces in the region that defined the medieval era and had an impact that lasted until today. We hope our post-pandemic world will be closer to the one before the pandemic than this example.
