Plague was a key factor in the waning of Antiquity and the
beginning of the Middle Ages. Eight centuries before the Black
Death, a pandemic of plague engulfed the lands surrounding the
Mediterranean Sea and eventually extended as far east as Persia and
as far north as the British Isles. Its persisted sporadically from
541 to 750, the same period that witnessed the distinctive shaping
of the Byzantine Empire, a new prominence of the Roman papacy and
of monasticism, the beginnings of Islam and the meteoric expansion
of the Arabic Empire, the ascent of the Carolingian dynasty in
Frankish Gaul and, not coincidentally, the beginnings of a positive
work ethic in the Latin West. In this volume, the first on the
subject, twelve scholars from a variety of disciplines???history,
archaeology, epidemiology, and molecular biology??? have produced a
comprehensive account of the pandemic??'s origins, spread, and
mortality, as well as its economic, social, political, and
religious effects. The historians examine written sources in a
range of languages, including Arabic, Syriac, Greek, Latin, and Old
Irish. Archaeologists analyze burial pits, abandoned villages, and
aborted building projects. The epidemiologists use the written
sources to track the disease??'s means and speed of transmission,
the mix of vulnerability and resistance it encountered, and the
patterns of reappearence over time. Finally, molecular biologists,
newcomers to this kind of investigation, have become pioneers of
paleopathology, seeking ways to identity pathogens in human remains
from the remote past.
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