Justinian's Plague

The Plague of Justinian started in 541 AD. This was the very first record of the Bubonic Plague. Justinian's Plague spread quickly, and left destruction and death wherever it went.


Justinian's Plague began its reign of terror in 514AD, when Justinian the First was in the fifteenth year of his reign.


The plague first hit Egypt, in its small town of Pelusium. Then it spread through Alexandria, Syria and Palestine. The plague traveled northward and soon ended up in Constantinople. Soon, ten thousand people would die each day in the city alone.


The cause of the plague came from fleas. The fleas would be carried by rodents, in fact many of the people with the plague had been bitten by a flea. However, being bitten was not the only way to get this disease, "by inhaling infected droplets from the lungs of someone whose plague infection has spread to the respiratory system." (source).


The Plague of Justinian started in 541 AD. This was the very first record of the Bubonic Plague. Justinian's Plague spread quickly, and left destruction and death wherever it went. Even though Justinian the First had built the Sancta Sophia during his reign (Mills 42), nothing could prepare him for this. The next time time the deadly disease would strike again with great force, would be called the Black Death (Blum Cameron Barnes 36).

Blum, Jerome, Rondo Cameron and Thomas G. Barnes. The European World: A History. Brown and Company, 1966.

Mills, Dorthy. The Middle Ages. G. P. Putnam's Sons: New York, 1935.