6 Dark Ages - The Plague of Justinian
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The eastern emperor who harbor dreams
of a reunited Roman Empire.
While the glory days of Roman dominance
in Western Europe have long since passed,
Justinian is hell-bent on resurrecting them.
Town after town
village after village
falls to his formidable legions.
Just as they did in North Africa,
Sicily,
and Southern Italy.
One bloody battle at a time,
the Emperor is reconquering the west,
and it looks like Rome
will rise again.
The Italian campaign was one of the
nastiest wars of antiquity,
in terms of entire cities being depopulated,
entire population massacred,
and just the fact that the countryside
was fought over for 20 years
really destroyed Italy's productive capacity
for a couple of centuries afterwards.
While Italy bleeds,
the Emperor builds.
A thousand miles away
in Constantinople, he is dedicating a new
cathedral built over the ashes
of his charred capitol.
While the kings of northern Europe
are building drafty wooden dwellings,
Justinian is redefining the limits
of ancient architecture.
Justinian is able to use this chaos
to build his empire, and he builds his
empire by building the greatest symbol of
Christianity, the Hogia Sophia Church.
All of the rest of the mosques in
Constantinople,
If you want to go to Venice, St.Mark's,
if you want to go elsewhere, even to the Vatican
all of them are imitating Hogia Sophia.
Justinian spared no expense,
the best marble,
the best gold leaf,
the best artists,
anything that he could do to
increase the visual impact as one
walked into the cathedral.
It was meant to persuade contemporaries
that he was a figure who ought to be
thought of in biblical terms.
With his conquests and construction
projects proceeding according to plan,
Justinian had every reason
to feel a little cocky.
By 542, his domain extended farther
than any emperor in more than 2 centuries.
Encompassing Italy and North Africa
as well as Egypt,
Turkey,
Greece and Palestine.
The Mediterranean was once again
a Roman lake.
But somewhere in that vast dominion,
an invisible killer was making
its way towards Constantinople.
with enough ammunition to wipe out,
not just the capital city
but the entire continent.
That killer was Bubonic Plague.
This one was truly terrifying.
25 to 50% of the population at least in
urban areas like Constantinople,
was killed.
Ten people,
five of them are gone.
Think of that,
what that would mean in life,
if half of the people that you...
know today were dead tomorrow.
Symptoms would begin with a sudden fever,
followed by chills,
Vomiting,
and an increased sensitivity to light.
Within 3 days,
an excruciating pain would follow in
the groin,
the armpits, and behind the ears.
Then tumors would form all over the body,
and violent muscle spasms would erupt.
The luckier victims would fall into a coma
before the disease
stole their last breath.
There was of course no treatment.
This turns out to have been
one of the most virulent
pandemics in history.
The Plague's place of origin is a mystery,
but it arrived in Constantinople via cargo ship.
It was carried by infected fleas,
which hid in the fur of rats
that had hit right in from parts unknown.
In May of 542,
the first victims fell ill in the city's
waterfront district.
Within 4 months,
it infected nearly half of the city
including the Emperor himself.
A small percentage of those infected
managed to survive the plague.
Justinian was among them.
But as was the case with nearly all
plague survivors,
the disease permanently scarred both his
body and his mind.
By all accounts, after the plague
comes through, Justinian was not
the man he used to be.
Didn't have as much of energy,
or as much vigor.
Justinian was pretty much sick
during all these subsequent decades of his life.
We are told that he became increasingly
tyrannical, increasingly paranoid and
there's a memorable story about him sort
of never sleeping, but wandering the
halls of the palace at night.
And plotting new ways in which
to grind his subjects down.
As the pestilence reached a fever pitch,
the city of Constantinople went on lock down.
Shipments into and out of the city
were suspended,
and those citizens that did survive
quickly began running out of food.
Some citizens blamed the Plague
on the Empress Theodora
saying it was a punishment from God
for her sexual promiscuity.
But its affects reverberated far beyond
the boundaries of her domain.
When all was said and done,
up to half of the Empire's population
perhaps, one hundred million people
was struck down by the plague of Justinian.
It spread very rapidly,
in the course of a year or so all the way
as far as Britain and even Ireland.
And the devastation was such that
at least a third of population
in most cities was killed off,
and sometimes much more than that.
When you have that kind of devastating
population loss, mean think of it;
United States has 300 million people,
what if 150 million people died!
You couldn't even bury them all.
But worse than that,
your economic productivity tumbles,
your ability to defend yourself
becomes truly crippled.
And I think this is one of the
long term cascading effects.
And it literally took hundreds of years,
for the population of Europe to be restored.
If the future looked bleak for Europe before,
now it looked pitch black.
In 542,
the autumn chill brought an end
to the Plague in Constantinople.
But throughout the 6th, 7th, and 8th
centuries, new outbreaks would suddenly
resurface to ravage various pockets of Europe
and inflicted repeated suffering
on defeated dwindling populous.
If you'd gone to Europe
in the 6th and 7th centuries,
the thing that would struck you most
was how empty it was!
and how small the towns were
if you could find towns.
You would have been struck by
the towns in which only a small
sections inhabited and the rest
was now totally abandoned
and overrun by animals.
In 548 AD,
the Empress Theodora died of Cancer.
Justinian outlived her by 17 years.
Throughout his reign, his armies managed
to hold onto his conquests in
Western Europe.
But his dream of a reunited Rome
would die with him.
As soon as Justinian dies,
the Byzantine Empire decides that it
cannot fund these overseas forces
and so they simply pull back.
So while, Justinian may have had
this great influence..