Justinian plague

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Justinian plague
St. Sebastian prays for the plague victims
St. Sebastian prays for the plague victims
Data
illness pest
Pathogens Yersinia pestis
origin Egypt
Beginning 541
The End 770

The Justinian plague is a pandemic that broke out at the time of the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian (527-565) , which historians saw for the first time in 541 Egypt , reached Constantinople in 542 and soon spread throughout the Mediterranean region of late antiquity . Perhaps indirectly contributing to the failure of the Restauratio imperii of Justinians and the end of antiquity , the pandemic is considered to be the largest ancient epidemic between northern and northwestern Europe, the Mediterranean and the Sassanid Empire . Up to the time after 770 there were irregular outbreaks of the disease, which were ascribed apocalyptic proportions. According to the current state of research, the plague was the plague .

Sources

In addition to the Eastern Roman (Greek) historian Prokopios , who witnessed the first appearance of the epidemic in Constantinople, the church history of Euagrios , the church history of John of Ephesus and the world chronicle of John Malalas are the most important narrative sources for the first outbreak of the pandemic. Euagrios Scholastikos reports from Antioch about an outbreak of the epidemic in 594, which for him was the fourth outbreak since that of 542, the first outbreak he had survived as a child.

Other sources beyond the Eastern Roman-Byzantine ones are also available for the later eruptions, such as Arabic ones. They report an eruption for the year 628, in the context of which the then Sassanid king Kavadh II may have died. From 628 onwards, the epidemic raged in Syria and Sassanid Mesopotamia , where numerous people are said to have fallen victim , especially in Ctesiphon . In 638, the Muslim invaders themselves encountered the plague for the first time, an outbreak that they called the Plague of Anwas after the place where they first met .

The lexicographer al-Asmai († 862) was the first to compile a list of the plague outbreaks. The historian, who worked independently from al-Asmai but on the basis of common sources, provided a detailed account of the plague in Basra . The work of al-Mubarrad († 899 or 900), which is only known from compilations from the 1360s, is indicative of the complicated situation of the Arabic sources, because they are all relatively late, but at the earliest from the 9th century . Your templates, however, are lost.

The main literary source for Western Europe is Gregory of Tours , who saw the first outbreak of the epidemic in Gaul as a young child. He reports how the plague raged in 543 in the Rhone valley . You have largely depopulated the region around Arles . The author's uncle, Bishop Gallus of Clermont , asked God to spare him, and Clermont was actually spared the plague. One of Gallus' successors, Bishop Cautinus , on the other hand, saw how unmistakable crowds fell victim to the pandemic and that in view of the lack of tombstones and coffins, more than ten people had to be placed in each grave. In St. Peter's Church, 300 corpses were reportedly counted on a single Sunday. Bishop Cautinus also died. In addition to Clermont, the cities of Lyon , Bourges , Chalon-sur-Saone and Dijon , but also Nantes were affected . It is possible that the plague reached Cornwall and Ireland from here. According to Gregory, Reims and Trier were spared by the intervention of saints. After him, a ship from Hispania brought the fatal disease (again) in 588 to Marseille. After the plague raged there, it disappeared after two months. But the residents came back too early because the returnees were killed by a new wave. Even later, the city was hit hard by the epidemic several times.

The angel on the Roman Castel Sant'Angelo puts his sword back in its sheath, a symbol for the end of the plague in 590. A statue was probably here as early as the 13th century, which was replaced in 1554 by a work by Raffaello da Montelupo , who in turn the current sculpture by Peter Anton von Verschaffelt in 1752 followed.

Gregor also reports about Italy: An informant by the name of Agiulf, who was supposed to get relics for Gregory in Rome, told him how the plague broke out in Rome in January 590 and Pope Pelagius II fell victim to it. His successor Gregory , known as the Great, prayed and initiated processions for forgiveness of sins, because it was common to see such catastrophes as God's punishment. Another source on Italy is Paulus Diaconus with his Historia gentis Langobardorum , which, however, was not created until the 8th century. Its sources for the 6th century are unknown. He mentions four outbreaks of the plague, the first of which occurred in Liguria in 565. He expressly describes how massive the effects were also on the countryside: the villages were therefore deserted. Like Gregory, Paul describes the eruption in Rome in 590, then one in 593 in Ravenna , Grado and Istria . Finally, he describes a severe eruption for the year 680 that hit Rome from July to September, but also Pavia .

Archaeological evidence and controversy over the number of victims

Many researchers basically follow the statements of the sources about the catastrophic consequences of the epidemic. As a result of the epidemic since May 541, the population of the Eastern Roman Empire was reduced by half, according to recent research, perhaps by 20 to 30 percent, others assume a quarter to half.

Chris Wickham attributed the population losses less to the epidemic than to politico-military events, at the same time he complained about the demand for apocalyptic explanatory models and the premature classification of recognizable drastic population declines, especially in regions of the Middle East.

A revision of these "hysterical" exaggerations, possibly overestimated population losses, began with an essay by Jean Durliat in 1987. Durliat was one of the first to doubt that the Justinian plague actually had the enormous proportions that had been read from the written sources. He speculated that the plague was, in truth, largely an urban phenomenon and that the country was little affected. Clive Foss, who had studied the course for Syria, later came to similar conclusions.

In fact, mass graves can hardly be found. But investigations on inscriptions from Palestine, which Yoram Tsafrir and Gideon Foerster carried out in Skythopolis , came to the conclusion that the accumulation of grave inscriptions from the second half of 541 was "very striking", ie "very noticeable". The construction activity also decreased insofar as there were additions and conversions, but after about 550 there were no more building inscriptions referring to the construction of entire houses. After 550, numerous village churches arose in the Syrian town of Hauran , which, in analogy to the Black Death of the 14th century, does not allow any statement, because in the years from 1347 hardly fewer churches were built than in the years before, despite huge population losses. How serious the losses from the epidemic were is therefore an unresolved question for the time being.

Spread of the disease (541–544)

Swelling (called bumps) in the groin area caused by the bubonic plague

About 15, possibly 17 waves of plague can be documented. These outbreaks affected the countries of the western Mediterranean, Rhenish Germania and around two thirds of Gaul and Hispania, as well as areas in the east such as Asia Minor , Syria , Mesopotamia and Persia. The Justinian plague also reached the Munich area north of the Alps.

Not all countries were equally affected; often the disease raged in a given area for two or three years and then weakened, often mutating. According to the contemporary witness Prokop, the disease first appeared in Pelusium (Tell el-Farama) on the eastern edge of the Nile Delta , where it was probably introduced from sub-Saharan Africa or via long-distance traders from India. According to John of Ephesus , only seven men survived there, plus a boy of ten years. According to Prokop, the epidemic spread first eastward to Gaza and westward to Alexandria , then throughout Egypt and Palestine.

In the spring of 542 she reached the imperial residence of Constantinople , which then had over 500,000 inhabitants, in the same year Antioch , Illyria , Tunisia, Spain, and finally in 543 also Atropatene , where she met the army of the Persians. In the same year it broke out in Italy and Gaul and spread to the Rhine and the British Isles. The Arabian Peninsula was apparently not affected. Like most authors, Prokop describes the symptoms of the disease: fever, followed by lump-like ulcers in the groin , armpits and neck. Emperor Justinian also fell ill, but miraculous healings by Kosmas and Damian are said to have saved his life. The emperor believed that in four cases he owed his salvation to the intervention of saints or the Mother of God. His powerful rival, the Persian king Chosrau I , also fell ill in 543, which is said to have led one of his sons to attempt usurpation .

In 544 Justinian announced the end of the plague epidemic, but it broke out again in 557, returned again in 570 and appeared again and again until about the middle of the 8th century, every 15 to 25 years before it disappeared again after about 770. The last great eruption from 746 to 748 was considered particularly devastating . In his continuation of Prokop's historical work, Agathias reported how the disease returned to the capital in 558 after it had left Constantinople and had spread in various areas. He also reported that those affected suffered from swellings and that they died with a steadily rising fever. However, some had neither fever nor pain, but simply fell dead.

On the basis of the sources, above all Prokop , the hypothesis could be confirmed that the plague had African origins, which was reflected early on in the declining source production, especially in the countryside, but also in the coins in circulation there. The thesis that the epidemic primarily spread in the cities (see above) thus seems to be refuted.

Climate-historical framework conditions and possible triggers

In 2005, one hypothesis was that the disease, which was not actually the plague, could be transmitted by large swarms of flies that haunted the kingdom at intervals. Their appearance was made possible by climatic changes. This minority opinion has not caught on in research, especially since it is now almost certain that the epidemic was the bubonic plague (see below); and this cannot be transmitted by flying.

However, it is quite conceivable that a period of cooler climates from 535/536 may have played a role. This well-documented cold period from 535/536 to around 550, which lasted in parts of the northern hemisphere until the middle of the 7th century and is also referred to in this context as LALIA ( Late Antique Little Ice Age ), was likely caused by multiple volcanic eruptions: one in 535/536 from an unknown volcano in northern latitudes, followed by an eruption of Ilopango in Central America in 540.

A temporary worsening of the climate could have led to crop failures and a weakened immune system. The prerequisite for the rapid spread of the disease and the high mortality rate was, in addition to the fact that the pathogen appeared for the first time in the Mediterranean region (see below), this general weakening of the population due to crop failures and wars. A main proponent of the climatic thesis is the ancient historian Kyle Harper , who points out that Justinian ordered food from distant regions to be imported because of the crop failure. Proponents of the thesis assume that reservoir hosts, perhaps the marmots in the Chinese steppes (which are still infected with bubonic plague today), were driven out of their caves. The plague bacterium, which cannot tolerate heat, was able to spread successfully via sea and land routes via ship rats and fleas, possibly due to the years of cool weather. Finally, the consequences of the climatic event could also have contributed to refugee and migration movements that spread the disease further.

Discussion about the pathogen

The Justinian plague was mainly due to the disease symptoms mentioned in the works of the late antique historians Prokopios of Caesarea , who described the plague in close reference to the famous depiction of the " Attic plague " in the work of Thucydides , and Euagrios Scholastikos , who was sick himself, early assigned to the plague pathogen ( Yersinia pestis ). As I said, Prokop mentions tumors which are characteristic of the bubonic plague, although the epidemic may have been accompanied by other epidemics. A Greek funerary inscription from 542 also reports that Bishop Varus of Zora in Roman Syria died of malignant "swellings on the loins and armpits". The coughing up of blood, also described by Prokop, could also indicate an occurrence of the lung plague .

However, for a long time it was disputed whether the epidemic was actually the plague in the true sense of the word. Studies from 2004 and 2005 supported the thesis for the first time that the pathogen causing the Justinian plague was a variant of Yersinia pestis : The DNA of the bacterium was detected in a mass grave near Sens , which stratigraphically dates back to the 5th or 6th Century has been dated. A molecular typing, however, resulted in the Biovar (BV) Orientalis, and since BV Orientalis only developed about 300 years ago, it can actually only have been a laboratory contamination. The question of the pathogen remained open at first. Yersinia pestis DNA was also detected in 2005 in two female skeletons from the second half of the 6th century from Aschheim in the east of Munich. A study from 2011, however, questioned this evidence and came to the result that Yersinia pestis was first transmitted to humans in the late 12th or early 13th century: The group around Johannes Krause from the University of Tübingen was able to Comparison of today's and medieval Yersinia pestis genomes initially found no strains that branched off from the family tree between the 4th and 12th centuries, which led to this assumption. In 2012, on the other hand, the same working group from Tübingen was able to show, with the help of a much more comprehensive data set of more than 300 plague strains, that at the time of the Justinian plague, contrary to the initial assumption, the Yersinia pestis family tree did branch off.

The first conclusive evidence as well as the exact molecular typing of the late antique plague virus from skeletons of the 6th century was achieved in 2013 by scientists from the State Collection for Anthropology and Paleoanatomy at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and the Institute for Microbiology of the Bundeswehr under the direction of Michaela Harbeck and Holger C. Scholz . The molecular typing of the plague pathogen from tooth material from skeletons of the early medieval burial ground in Aschheim (see above) now resulted in a new line in the family tree of Yersinia pestis , which is located between the early family tree branches N03 and N05, contamination was therefore excluded. In a subsequent study, the almost complete genome sequence of a Y. pestis strain from the Justinian era could be determined for the first time . In 2016, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Human History in Jena and the State Collection for Anthropology in Munich succeeded in further detecting and sequencing the whole genome of the plague pathogen from DNA material from skeletons from another burial ground in the greater Munich area (Altenerding). In 2019, an international team of researchers succeeded in detecting Yersinia pestis in a grave dated to the 6th century in Edix Hill, England, which was the first time that the epidemic of late ancient times was documented in Britain. According to the current state of research (as of 2019), it can therefore be considered certain that a pathogen from the Yersinia pestis tribe was at least prominently involved in the Justinian plague and that the devastating epidemic was indeed the plague.

Possible longer term consequences

The food shortages associated with the pandemic, the drop in tax revenues and the increasing inability (although doubted by some historians) to muster enough soldiers to defend the empire's long borders, perhaps contributed to the fact that by 700 the eastern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean were under Arab rule and the Eastern Roman-Byzantine Empire was now limited to Constantinople, Asia Minor, the peripheral areas of the Balkans and various islands in the Mediterranean. However, the most important opponents of the Romans - Sassanids and Arabs - were also affected by the epidemic.

Şevket Pamuk and Maya Shatzmiller assume a causal connection between the Justinian plague and the economic strength of the Islamic empire. They argued that wages for the severely reduced number of ordinary workers rose significantly due to the reduced supply. At the same time, the first wave of invasions, which tended to move through sparsely populated regions, was less affected by the epidemic than the more urbanized areas of the great empires of Eastern Europe and Persia.

For Ireland and Great Britain it was assumed that the monastic communities were particularly badly affected by the plague and that the monks were often carriers of the pathogen. This led to major outbreaks around 664 and 684. On the other hand, the epidemic affected the community structures.

See also

literature

  • Pauline Allen: The Justinianic Plague. In: Byzantion. Volume 49, 1979, pp. 5-20.
  • Michal Feldman et al. a .: A High-Coverage Yersinia pestis Genome from a Sixth-Century Justinianic Plague Victim. In: Molecular biology and evolution. Volume 33, No. 11,1 (2016), pp. 2911-2923, doi : 10.1093 / molbev / msw170 , PMID 27578768 , PMC 5062324 (free full text).
  • Henry Gruber: Indirect Evidence for the Social Impact of the Justinianic Pandemic. Episcopal Burial and Conciliar Legislation in Visigothic Hispania. In: Journal of Late Antiquity 11, 2018, pp. 193–215.
  • Peregrine Hordes: Mediterranean Plague in the Age of Justinian. In: Michael Maas (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian . Cambridge 2005, ISBN 0-521-52071-1 , pp. 134-160.
  • Karl-Heinz Leven : The "Justinian Plague". In: Yearbook of the Institute for the History of Medicine of the Robert Bosch Foundation. 6, 1987, pp. 137-161.
  • Lester Little (Ed.): Plague and the End of Antiquity. The Pandemic of 541-750 . Cambridge 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-84639-4 .
  • Mischa Meier : Prokop, Agathias, the plague and the "end" of ancient historiography. In: Historische Zeitschrift 278, 2004, pp. 281–310, here pp. 301–303.
  • Mischa Meier: "There was also the plague ..." The so-called Justinian plague and its consequences. In: Mischa Meier (Ed.): Pest. The story of a human trauma . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-608-94359-5 , p. 86 ff.
  • Mischa Meier: The 'Justinianic Plague': the economic consequences of the pandemic in the eastern Roman empire and its cultural and religious effects. In: Early Medieval Europe 24, 2016, pp. 267–292.
  • Lee Mordechai; Merle Eisenberg: Rejecting Catastrophe. The Case of the Justinianic Plague. In: Past and Present 244, 2019, 3–50 (controversial article whose authors take the position that the extent and consequences of the disease are greatly overestimated in research.)
  • William Rosen: Justinian's Flea. Plague, Empire, and the birth of Europe . Cambridge 2007, ISBN 978-1-84413-744-2 (popular science and easy to read, but problematic, as it is sometimes very generalizing and too simplistic).
  • Dionysios Ch. Stathakopoulos: Famine and Pestilence in the Late Roman and early Byzantine empire. A systematic survey of subsistence crises and epidemics . Aldershot 2004, ISBN 0-7546-3021-8 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Gregory of Tours, Historiae IX 22.
  2. ^ Rene Pfeilschifter : The Emperor and Constantinople. Communication and conflict resolution in a late antique metropolis. de Gruyter, Berlin 2014, p. 62.
  3. ↑ Lawrence I. Conrad: The plague and its social environment in the Middle East in the early Middle Ages. In: Islam. 73, 1996, pp. 81-112.
  4. ↑ Chris Wickham: Framing the Early Middle Ages . Oxford 2005, pp. 548-550.
  5. ↑ Chris Wickham: Framing the Early Middle Ages . Oxford 2005, p. 13 f.
  6. ^ Jean Durliat : La peste du VIe siècle, pour un nouvel examen des sources byzantines. In: C. Morrisson, J. Lefort (eds.): Hommes et richesses dans l'empire byzantin I, IVe– VIIe siècle. Paris 1989, pp. 107-120.
  7. ^ Jean Durliat: La peste du VIe siècle .
  8. ↑ Clive Foss: Syria in Transition .
  9. ↑ Quoted from Hugh N. Kennedy : Justinianic Plague in Syria and the Archaeological evidence. In: Lester K. Little (Ed.): Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541-750. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, pp. 87-96, here: p. 88.
  10. ↑ Lauren A. White and Lee Mordechai: Modeling the Justinianic Plague: Comparing hypothesized transmission routes. In: PLoS ONE. 15 (4): e0231256, doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0231256 .
    New Call to Examine Old Narratives. Infectious disease modeling study casts doubt on the Justinianic Plague's impact. National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), May 1, 2020.
  11. ^ Ingrid Wiechmann, Gisela Grupe: Detection of Yersinia pestis DNA in two early medieval skeletal finds from Aschheim (Upper Bavaria, 6th century AD). In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 126/1, 2005, pp. 48-55. PMID 15386257 .
  12. ↑ Michaela Harbeck, Lisa Seifert, Stephanie Hänsch, David M. Wagner, Dawn Birdsell, Katy L. Parise, Ingrid Wiechmann, Gisela Grupe, Astrid Thomas, Paul Keim, Lothar Zöller, Barbara Bramanti, Julia M. Riehm, Holger C. Scholz : Yersinia pestis DNA from Skeletal Remains from the 6th Century AD Reveals Insights into Justinianic Plague. In: PLoS Pathog. 9, 5, 2013. doi: 10.1371 / journal.ppat.1003349
  13. ↑ Excavations and genome analyzes Altenerding: On the trail of the Justinian plague pathogen - First complete genome reconstruction ( memento of the original from September 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , September 9, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.archaeologie-online.de
  14. ↑ BP 2.22.6, p. 250.
  15. Jump up ↑ Costas Tsiamis, Effie Poulakou-Rebelakou, George Androutso: The Role of the Egyptian Sea and Land Routes in the Justinian Plague: the Case of Pelusium. In: Demetrios Michaelides (Ed.): Medicine and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean. Oxbow, Oxford 2014, pp. 334-338.
  16. ^ Lester K. Little: Plague and the End of Antiquity. The Pandemic of 541-750. P. 119.
  17. ^ Bernard S. Bachrach: Plague, Population, and Economy in Merovingian Gaul. In: Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association. 3, 2007, pp. 29-56.
  18. ^ Hugh N. Kennedy: Justinianic Plague in Syria and the Archaeological evidence. In: Lester K. Little (Ed.): Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541-750. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, pp. 87-96, here: p. 89.
  19. ↑ N. Stavrakakis: The miraculous cures for diseases of Emperor Justinian I (482-565 AD). In: Archives of Hellenic Medicine. 32, 2014, pp. 224-229.
  20. ^ Lester K. Little: Life and Afterlife of the First Plague Pandemic. In: Lester K. Little (Ed.): Plague and the End of Antiquity. The Pandemic of 541-750. Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 3–32, here: p. 8.
  21. ↑ Agathias 5,10,3f. Translated from: W. Frendo, The Histories (= Corpus Fontium Byzantinae IIA ). Berlin / New York 1975, p. 145.
  22. ^ Peter Sarris: The Justinianic plague: origins and effects. In: Continuity and Change. 17, 2002, pp. 169-182.
  23. ↑ Ioannis Antoiou, Anastasios K. Sinakos: The Sixth-Century plague, its repeated appearance until 746 AD and the explosion of the Rabaul Volcano. In: Byzantine Journal. 98, 2005, pp. 1-4.
  24. ↑ Justinian Plague and Migration Period Is the result of a Little Ice Age? . In: Archeology online. February 12, 2016.
  25. ↑ Timothy P. Newfield: The Climate Downturn of 536-50 . In: The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History . Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978-1-137-43020-5 , pp. 447-493 , doi : 10.1057 / 978-1-137-43020-5_32 .
  26. ↑ Robert A. Dull, John R. Southon, Steffen Kutterolf, Kevin J. Anchukaitis, Armin Freundt, David B. Wahl, Payson Sheets, Paul Amaroli, Walter Hernandez, Michael C. Wiemann, Clive Oppenheimer: Radiocarbon and geologic evidence reveal Ilopango volcano as source of the colossal 'mystery' eruption of 539/40 CE . In: Quaternary Science Reviews . tape 222 , 2019, doi : 10.1016 / j.quascirev.2019.07.037 .
  27. ↑ Mischa Meier : History of the Great Migration - Europe, Asia and Africa from the 3rd to the 8th century AD. C.-H. Beck, 2019, ISBN 978-3-406-73959-0 , pp. 813, 953-973, 995 .
  28. ↑ a b c Kyle Harper: Fatum: The climate and the fall of the Roman Empire. CH Beck, Munich 2020, p. 379 ff.
  29. ^ A b Timothy P. Newfield: Mysterious and Mortiferous Clouds: The Climate Cooling and Disease Burden of Late Antiquity . In: Late Antique Archeology . tape 12 , no. 1 , October 2016, doi : 10.1163 / 22134522-12340068 .
  30. ↑ Prokop, Wars 2, 22 ff.
  31. ↑ Thucydides 2: 47-55.
  32. ↑ Johannes Koder : An inscribed document on the "Justinian" plague in Zora (Azra'a). In: Byzantinoslavica. 56, 1995, pp. 13-18.
  33. ↑ Michel Drancourt, Véronique Roux, Vu Dang et al: Genotyping, orientalis-like Yersinia pestis, and plague pandemics. In: Emerging Infectious Diseases . 10, 2004, pp. 1585-1592.
  34. ^ Ingrid Wiechmann , Gisela Grupe : Detection of Yersinia pestis DNA in two early medieval skeletal finds from Aschheim (Upper Bavaria, 6th century AD). In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 126/1, 2005, pp. 48-55. PMID 15386257 .
  35. ↑ Kirsten I. Bos, Philip Stevens, Kay Nieselt, Hendrik N. Poinar, Sharon N. DeWitte, Johannes Krause : Yersinia pestis: New Evidence for an Old Infection. In: PLoS ONE. 7 (11), 2012. doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0049803 .
  36. ↑ Michaela Harbeck, Lisa Seifert, Stephanie Hänsch, David M. Wagner, Dawn Birdsell, Katy L. Parise, Ingrid Wiechmann, Gisela Grupe, Astrid Thomas, Paul Keim, Lothar Zöller, Barbara Bramanti, Julia M. Riehm, Holger C. Scholz : Yersinia pestis DNA from Skeletal Remains from the 6th Century AD Reveals Insights into Justinianic Plague. In: PLoS Pathog. 9, 5, 2013. doi: 10.1371 / journal.ppat.1003349 .
  37. ↑ David M. Wagner et al: Yersinia pestis and the Plague of Justinian 541-543 AD: a genomic analysis. In: The Lancet. Infectious Diseases. 14, 2014, pp. 4,319-326.
  38. ↑ Excavations and genome analyzes Altenerding: On the trail of the Justinian plague pathogen - first complete genome reconstruction. ( Memento of the original from September 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. September 9, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.archaeologie-online.de
  39. ↑ Ancient Yersinia pestis genomes from across Western Europe reveal early diversification during the First Pandemic , in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2019).
  40. ↑ Şevket Pamuk, Maya Shatzmiller: Plagues, Wages, and Economic Change in the Islamic Middle East, 700–1500. In: The Journal of Economic History. 74, 2014, pp. 1 196-229.
  41. ↑ Sergio Sabbatani, Roberto Manfredi, Sirio Fiorino: Influence of the epidemic on the rise of the Islamic Empire. In: Le Infezioni in Medicina: Rivista Periodica di Eziologia, Epidemiologia, Diagnostica, Clinica e Terapia delle Patologie Infettive . 20, 2012, pp. 3 217-232.
  42. ↑ Craig A. Molgaard, Amanda L. Golbeck, Kerry E. Ryan: Justinian's Plague, Hagiography and Monasticism. In: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences. 6, 2011, pp. 10 67-80.