First plague pandemic: Difference between revisions

{{About|the series of outbreaks of plague, 541{{endash}}767|the first episode of the First Plague Pandemic, 541{{endash}}549|Plague of Justinian}}

 

The '''first plague pandemic''' was the first historically recorded [[Old World]] [[pandemic]] of [[Plague (disease)|plague]], the [[contagious disease]] caused by the [[Bacteria|bacterium]] ''[[Yersinia pestis]]''. Also called the '''early medieval pandemic''', it began with the [[Plague of Justinian]] in 541 and continued until 750 or 767; at least fifteen or eighteen major waves of plague following the Justinianic plague have been identified from historical records.<ref name="GlatterFinkelman2021">{{cite journal |last1=Glatter |first1=Kathryn A. |last2=Finkelman |first2=Paul |date=February 2021 |title=History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of COVID-19 |journal=[[The American Journal of Medicine]] |volume=134 |issue=2 |pages=176–181 |doi=10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.08.019 |pmid=32979306 |pmc=7513766 |s2cid=221882331 |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{Citation|last=Arrizabalaga|first=Jon|title=plague and epidemics|url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198662624.001.0001/acref-9780198662624-e-4645|work=The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages|year=2010|editor-last=Bjork|editor-first=Robert E.|publisher=Oxford University Press|language=en|doi=10.1093/acref/9780198662624.001.0001|isbn=978-0-19-866262-4|quote=The first - called the Plague of Justinian and described by Procopius - spread through Europe and Asia Minor from Egypt in 541 and included fifteen epidemics until 767|access-date=2020-05-16}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|last=Stathakopoulos|first=Dionysios|title=Plague, Justinianic (Early Medieval Pandemic)|url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198662778.001.0001/acref-9780198662778-e-3757|work=The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity|year=2018|publisher=Oxford University Press|language=en|doi=10.1093/acref/9780198662778.001.0001|isbn=978-0-19-866277-8|quote=bubonic plague that began in 541 and returned in some eighteen waves (approximately one every twelve years) until 750|access-date=2020-05-16}}</ref> The pandemic affected the [[Mediterranean Basin]] most severely and most frequently, but also infected the [[Near East]] and [[Northern Europe]],<ref name=":0">{{Citation|last=Stathakopoulos|first=Dionysios|title=Plague, Justinianic (Early Medieval Pandemic)|url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198662778.001.0001/acref-9780198662778-e-3757|work=The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity|year=2018|publisher=Oxford University Press|language=en|doi=10.1093/acref/9780198662778.001.0001|isbn=978-0-19-866277-8|access-date=2020-05-16}}</ref> and potentially East Asia as well.<ref name="CompleteHistoryoftheBlackDeath" /> The Roman emperor [[Justinian I]]'s name is sometimes applied to the whole series of plague epidemics in [[Late antiquity|late Antiquity]].

 

 

==Terminology==

 

In [[Syriac language|Syriac]], both [[bubonic plague]] and the [[bubo]]es themselves are called ''sharʿūṭā''. The ''[[Chronicle of Seert]]'' makes this term synonymous with Arabic ''ṭāʿūn''. Often, however, Syriac writers referred to an outbreak simply as a pestilence or mortality, ''mawtānā'', equivalent to Arabic ''wabāʾ''. In [[Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor]]'s ''Historia Miscellanea'', the clarifying combined form ''mawtānā d sharʿūṭā'' (plague of tumors) is found. The ''Chronicle of 640'' of [[Thomas the Presbyter]] dates the "first plague" (''mawtānā qadmayā'') to the year [[Anno Graecorum|AG]] 854 (AD 542/3).<ref name=Syriac>{{citation |author=Michael G. Morony |chapter=‘For Whom Does the Writer Write?’: The First Bubonic Plague Pandemic According to Syriac Sources |title=Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750 |editor=Lester K. Little |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2007 |pages=59–86}}, at 61–63.</ref>

In 590 Gregory records another plague epidemic at {{Lang-la|Vivarium|label=none}} ([[Viviers, Ardèche|Viviers]]) and at {{Lang-la|Avenio|label=none}} ([[Avignon]]) at the same time as the plague broke out in Rome under [[Pope Pelagius II]].<ref name=":1" />

 

{{Main|Roman Plague of 590}}

 

{{Main|Plague of Sheroe}}

 

 

== Plague of 664 ==

[[Category:First plague pandemic| ]]

[[Category:Plague pandemics| 1st]]