(Credit: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)Įven after the Black Death ended, bubonic plague continued to sporadically rear its ugly head in Europe for several centuries. The Italian Plague of 1629-31ĭrawing of the Great Plague in Milan. While the pandemic left much of the continent in disarray, many historians also believe that the labor shortages it caused were a boon to lower class workers, who saw increased economic and social mobility. The Black Death finally subsided in the West around 1353, but not before it killed as many as 50 million people-more than half the population of Europe. Some Christians even blamed it on Jews and launched bloody pogroms. “We see death coming into our midst like black smoke,” the Welsh poet Jeuan Gethin wrote, “a plague which cuts off the young, a rootless phantom which has no mercy or fair countenance.” Medieval physicians tried to combat the disease using bloodletting, lancing and other crude techniques, but with little understanding of its cause, most fell back on the belief that it was a divine punishment for their sins. The populations of whole towns were wiped out, and it was said that the living spent most of their time burying the dead in mass graves. This “Black Death” would eventually spend half a decade tearing across the continent. In 1347, a virulent strain of plague invaded Europe from the East, most likely via Italian sailors returning home from Crimea. It is believed to have killed at least 25 million people, but the actual death toll may have been much higher. Even after it subsided in Byzantium, the plague continued to reappear in Europe, Africa and Asia for several years, causing widespread famine and devastation.

Justinian himself was stricken and managed to recover, but over a third of Constantinople’s residents were not so lucky. According to accounts by the ancient historian Procopius, the victims demonstrated many of the classic symptoms of bubonic plague, including sudden fever and swollen lymph nodes. It reached the Byzantine capital of Constantinople in 541 A.D., and was soon claiming up to 10,000 lives per day-so many that unburied bodies were eventually stacked inside buildings or left in the open. The pandemic is believed to have originated in Africa and then spread to Europe through infected rats on merchant ships. Justinian I is often credited as the most influential Byzantine emperor, but his reign also coincided with one of the first well-documented outbreaks of plague. Painting showing the plague in Constantinople.

A plague year