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Post by Admin on Oct 11, 2019 18:54:59 GMT
The Narrative of Gabriele De’ Mussi Thumbnail of The first page of the narrative of Gabriele de’ Mussi. At the top of the page are the last few lines of the preceding narrative; de’ Mussi’s begins in the middle of the page. The first three lines, and the large “A” are in red ink, as are two other letters and miscellaneous pen-strokes; otherwise it is in black ink. Manuscript R 262, fos 74r; reproduced with the permission of the Library of the University of Wroclaw, Poland. Figure 2. The first page of the narrative of Gabriele de’ Mussi. At the top of the page are the last few lines of the preceding narrative; de’ Mussi’s begins in the middle... The de’ Mussi account is presumed to have been written in 1348 or early 1349 because of its immediacy and the narrow time period described. The original is lost, but a copy is included in a compilation of historical and geographic accounts by various authors, dating from approximately 1367 (Figure 2). The account begins with an introductory comment by the scribe who copied the documents: “In the name of God, Amen. Here begins an account of the disease or mortality which occurred in 1348, put together by Gabrielem de Mussis of Piacenza.” The narrative begins with an apocalyptic speech by God, lamenting the depravity into which humanity has fallen and describing the retribution intended. It goes on: “…In 1346, in the countries of the East, countless numbers of Tartars and Saracens were struck down by a mysterious illness which brought sudden death. Within these countries broad regions, far-spreading provinces, magnificent kingdoms, cities, towns and settlements, ground down by illness and devoured by dreadful death, were soon stripped of their inhabitants. An eastern settlement under the rule of the Tartars called Tana, which lay to the north of Constantinople and was much frequented by Italian merchants, was totally abandoned after an incident there which led to its being besieged and attacked by hordes of Tartars who gathered in a short space of time. The Christian merchants, who had been driven out by force, were so terrified of the power of the Tartars that, to save themselves and their belongings, they fled in an armed ship to Caffa, a settlement in the same part of the world which had been founded long ago by the Genoese. “Oh God! See how the heathen Tartar races, pouring together from all sides, suddenly invested the city of Caffa and besieged the trapped Christians there for almost three years. There, hemmed in by an immense army, they could hardly draw breath, although food could be shipped in, which offered them some hope. But behold, the whole army was affected by a disease which overran the Tartars and killed thousands upon thousands every day. It was as though arrows were raining down from heaven to strike and crush the Tartars’ arrogance. All medical advice and attention was useless; the Tartars died as soon as the signs of disease appeared on their bodies: swellings in the armpit or groin caused by coagulating humours, followed by a putrid fever. “The dying Tartars, stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about by the disease, and realizing that they had no hope of escape, lost interest in the siege. But they ordered corpses to be placed in catapults1 and lobbed into the city in the hope that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside.2 What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city, and the Christians could not hide or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could in the sea. And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply, and the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee the remains of the Tartar army. Moreover one infected man could carry the poison to others, and infect people and places with the disease by look alone. No one knew, or could discover, a means of defense. “Thus almost everyone who had been in the East, or in the regions to the south and north, fell victim to sudden death after contracting this pestilential disease, as if struck by a lethal arrow which raised a tumor on their bodies. The scale of the mortality and the form which it took persuaded those who lived, weeping and lamenting, through the bitter events of 1346 to 1348—the Chinese, Indians, Persians, Medes, Kurds, Armenians, Cilicians, Georgians, Mesopotamians, Nubians, Ethiopians, Turks, Egyptians, Arabs, Saracens and Greeks (for almost all the East has been affected)—that the last judgement had come. “…As it happened, among those who escaped from Caffa by boat were a few sailors who had been infected with the poisonous disease. Some boats were bound for Genoa, others went to Venice and to other Christian areas. When the sailors reached these places and mixed with the people there, it was as if they had brought evil spirits with them: every city, every settlement, every place was poisoned by the contagious pestilence, and their inhabitants, both men and women, died suddenly. And when one person had contracted the illness, he poisoned his whole family even as he fell and died, so that those preparing to bury his body were seized by death in the same way. Thus death entered through the windows, and as cities and towns were depopulated their inhabitants mourned their dead neighbours.” (Reproduced with permission from Horrox, pp. 16–20 [4]) The account closes with an extended description of the plague in Piacenza, and a reprise of the apocalyptic vision with which it begins.
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Post by Admin on Oct 12, 2019 18:20:20 GMT
Biological Warfare at Caffa de’ Mussi’s account is probably secondhand and is uncorroborated; however, he seems, in general, to be a reliable source, and as a Piacenzian he would have had access to eyewitnesses of the siege. Several considerations incline me to trust his account: this was probably not the only, nor the first, instance of apparent attempts to transmit disease by hurling biological material into besieged cities; it was within the technical capabilities of besieging armies of the time; and it is consistent with medieval notions of disease causality (22). Tentatively accepting that the attack took place as described, we can consider two principal hypotheses for the entry of plague into the city: it might, as de’ Mussi asserts, have been transmitted by the hurling of plague cadavers; or it might have entered by rodent-to-rodent transmission from the Mongol encampments into the city. Diseased cadavers hurled into the city could easily have transmitted plague, as defenders handled the cadavers during disposal. Contact with infected material is a known mechanism of transmission (8–11); for instance, among 284 cases of plague in the United States in 1970–1995 for which a mechanism of transmission could be reasonably inferred, 20% were thought to be by direct contact (24). Such transmission would have been especially likely at Caffa, where cadavers would have been badly mangled by being hurled, and many of the defenders probably had cut or abraded hands from coping with the bombardment. Very large numbers of cadavers were possibly involved, greatly increasing the opportunity for disease transmission. Since disposal of the bodies of victims in a major outbreak of lethal disease is always a problem, the Mongol forces may have used their hurling machines as a solution to their mortuary problem, in which case many thousands of cadavers could have been involved. de’ Mussi’s description of “mountains of dead” might have been quite literally true. Thus it seems plausible that the events recounted by de’ Mussi could have been an effective means of transmission of plague into the city. The alternative, rodent-to-rodent transmission from the Mongol encampments into the city, is less likely. Besieging forces must have camped at least a kilometer away from the city walls. This distance is necessary to have a healthy margin of safety from arrows and artillery and to provide space for logistical support and other military activities between the encampments and the front lines. Front-line location must have been approximately 250–300 m from the walls; trebuchets are known from modern reconstruction to be capable of hurling 100 kg more than 200 m (25), and historical sources claim 300 m as the working range of large machines (26). Thus, the bulk of rodent nests associated with the besieging armies would have been located a kilometer or more away from the cities, and none would have likely been closer than 250 m. Rats are quite sedentary and rarely venture more than a few tens of meters from their nest (27,28). It is thus unlikely that there was any contact between the rat populations within and outside the walls. Given the many uncertainties, any conclusion must remain tentative. However, the considerations above suggest that the hurling of plague cadavers might well have occurred as de’ Mussi claimed, and if so, that this biological attack was probably responsible for the transmission of the disease from the besiegers to the besieged. Thus, this early act of biological warfare, if such it were, appears to have been spectacularly successful in producing casualties, although of no strategic importance (the city remained in Italian hands, and the Mongols abandoned the siege).
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Post by Admin on Oct 13, 2019 18:50:34 GMT
Crimea as the Source of European and Near Eastern Plague There has never been any doubt that plague entered the Mediterranean from the Crimea, following established maritime trade routes. Rat infestations in the holds of cargo ships would have been highly susceptible to the rapid spread of plague, and even if most rats died during the voyage, they would have left abundant fleas that would infect humans unpacking the holds. Shore rats foraging on board recently arrived ships would also become infected, transmitting plague to city rat populations. Plague appears to have been spread in a stepwise fashion, on many ships rather than on a few (Figure 1), taking over a year to reach Europe from the Crimea. This conclusion seems fairly firm, as the dates for the arrival of plague in Constantinople and more westerly cities are reasonably certain. Thus de’ Mussi was probably mistaken in attributing the Black Death to fleeing survivors of Caffa, who should not have needed more than a few months to return to Italy (16). Furthermore, a number of other Crimean ports were under Mongol control, making it unlikely that Caffa was the only source of infected ships heading west. And the overland caravan routes to the Middle East from Serai and Astrakhan insured that plague was also spreading south (Figure 1), whence it would have entered Europe in any case. The siege of Caffa, and its gruesome finale, thus are unlikely to have been seriously implicated in the transmission of plague from the Black Sea to Europe. Conclusion Gabriele de’ Mussi’s account of the origin and spread of plague appears to be consistent with most known facts, although mistaken in its claim that plague arrived in Italy directly from the Crimea. His account of biological attack is plausible, consistent with the technology of the time, and it provides the best explanation of disease transmission into besieged Caffa. This thus appears to be one of the first biological attacks recorded (22) and among the most successful of all time. However, it is unlikely that the attack had a decisive role in the spread of plague to Europe. Much maritime commerce probably continued throughout this period, from other Crimean ports. Overland caravan routes to the Middle East were also unaffected. Thus, refugees from Caffa would most likely have constituted only one of several streams of infected ships and caravans leaving the region. The siege of Caffa, for all of its dramatic appeal, probably had no more than anecdotal importance in the spread of plague, a macabre incident in terrifying times. Despite its historical unimportance, the siege of Caffa is a powerful reminder of the horrific consequences when disease is successfully used as a weapon. The Japanese use of plague as a weapon in World War II (29) and the huge Soviet stockpiles of Y. pestis prepared for use in an all-out war (30) further remind us that plague remains a very real problem for modern arms control, six and a half centuries later (31). Emerging Infectious Disease Volume 8, Number 9—September 2002
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Post by Admin on Dec 6, 2019 17:40:42 GMT
Abstract Existing mortality estimates assert that the Justinianic Plague (circa 541 to 750 CE) caused tens of millions of deaths throughout the Mediterranean world and Europe, helping to end antiquity and start the Middle Ages. In this article, we argue that this paradigm does not fit the evidence. We examine a series of independent quantitative and qualitative datasets that are directly or indirectly linked to demographic and economic trends during this two-century period: Written sources, legislation, coinage, papyri, inscriptions, pollen, ancient DNA, and mortuary archaeology. Individually or together, they fail to support the maximalist paradigm: None has a clear independent link to plague outbreaks and none supports maximalist reconstructions of late antique plague. Instead of large-scale, disruptive mortality, when contextualized and examined together, the datasets suggest continuity across the plague period. Although demographic, economic, and political changes continued between the 6th and 8th centuries, the evidence does not support the now commonplace claim that the Justinianic Plague was a primary causal factor of them. The 3 plague pandemics (caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis) are considered among the most infamous—and most fatal—biological events in human history. Significant recent scholarship has investigated the so-called First Pandemic, which began with the Justinianic Plague of circa 541 to 544 CE (hereafter JP), and reoccurred in western Eurasia and North Africa over the next two centuries (1⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓–8). The Second Pandemic, beginning with the Black Death, devastated late medieval and early modern Europe, southwestern Asia and North Africa, as well as other regions (9). The Third Pandemic globalized Y. pestis and killed millions in South and East Asia at the turn of the 20th century. Since research began on the Third Pandemic, scholars have used similar criteria and models to investigate the 3 plague pandemics, frequently making assumptions about the nature of 1 pandemic by drawing upon precedents from the others. Early researchers of the Third Pandemic explicitly connected it to the earlier two (10⇓–12). For decades now, research on prelaboratory plagues has been a multidisciplinary endeavor and scholarly cross-pollination has reinforced the consensus that the first 2 pandemics had similar outcomes (e.g., ref. 6). Recent isolations of Y. pestis DNA in prelaboratory European human remains has validated the long-held assumption that the same pathogen was present during the 3 pandemics (4, 13⇓⇓⇓–17). Based on molecular and historical research, a broad consensus (hereafter “the maximalist position”) has developed across disciplines that estimates JP mortality in the tens of millions, with numbers ranging between 15 and 100 million, or alternatively, 25 to 60% of the estimated population of the Late Roman Empire (for recent estimates, see refs. 3, 6, and 17). This conception of the plague’s impact has shaped modern histories of Eurasia. Plague mortality is alleged to have depopulated the “known world” and to have accelerated the transition to a “backward” “Dark Age” period, devastating the Late Roman Empire and extinguishing antiquity (e.g., refs. 5 and 6). Yet this narrative overlooks the fact that the political structures of the Western Empire had already collapsed in the 5th century and the Eastern Empire did not decline politically until the 7th century (18, 19). The extraordinary claims of plague’s effects demand extraordinary evidence, but the consensus maximalist position has offered little evidential support when evaluated critically (7). The existing direct evidence consists of several historical narrative texts and 2 inscriptions (for texts, see refs. 6, 20, and 21; for inscriptions, see ref. 1). Additional evidence, such as the recent molecular identifications of Y. pestis in late antique Europeans, suffers from low temporal resolution (uncertainty intervals of 50 y or more) and a minuscule number of known cases (∼45). Moreover, the presence of plague does not in itself confirm a vast mortality in any spatial or temporal terms. A small quantity of indirect evidence that correlates temporally with the First Pandemic, but is not necessarily causally related to it—ranging from ambiguous texts to cultural and economic trends—has also been gathered (e.g., refs. 5, and 22, 23). Problematically, these data are rarely contextualized; rather, they are cherry-picked to construct maximalist interpretations of the JP while overlooking their uncertainty and low temporal and spatial resolution (24). In this paper, we attempt to determine plague’s potential effects. We focus on quantitative measures that could reflect population size and illuminate the possible extent of the plague’s demographic toll. While methodological limitations do not allow us to establish the absolute size of late antique populations, the datasets we assess indicate there was no 6th century population collapse. By examining several higher-resolution (annual to decadal) datasets before, during, and after the onset of plague in the Mediterranean region in 541 CE, we can begin to determine whether there were significant changes in late antique population levels. In addition, we employ lower-resolution measures to support our argument that evidence for a demographically significant JP is lacking.
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Post by Admin on Dec 7, 2019 18:30:37 GMT
Textual (Historical) Evidence to Support Plague Severity Has Been Misused To date, 3 catalogs for the JP have been assembled, using late antique texts and inscriptions to trace plague outbreaks from circa 541 to 750/767 (6, 20, 21). They remain the key reference works for JP research. Although they differ in their methodology, all 3 point to repeated occurrences of the JP (termed “waves” or “amplifications”) following the initial outbreak of 541 to 544. The earliest catalog proposed 14 occurrences and the most comprehensive one has 18; others have argued for 21 (25). Each recurrence supposedly caused mass death, with a recent estimate of 10% population mortality per recurrence, keeping population levels low for two centuries (6). A quantitative examination of the original texts, however, casts doubts upon the purported gravity of most recurrences. The initial JP occurrence is documented at length in Procopius (26) and John of Ephesus (27). That this outbreak was a demographic watershed is based upon these authors’ writings, implying that late antique plague severity correlates with the quantity and detail of extant contemporary evidence. Following this line of thinking, one would expect that if recurrences were also catastrophic, contemporaries would have discussed them in similar detail. With a few exceptions, however, the recurrences are thinly documented and poorly understood, facts rarely acknowledged in JP research. Moreover, late antique plague narratives are complex literary accounts with multiple layers of rhetorical meaning. Their authors had political, ideological, and personal purposes for their writing and the texts contain significant biases that must be contextualized. An account of a catastrophic plague could reflect reality or be a gross exaggeration employed to underscore a particular point (e.g., divine disapproval). One key account of the JP, for example, asserts that the initial occurrence killed 99.9% of the population (28), while another influential late antique author claims that Emperor Justinian—whom the author claims was an “evil demon”—killed 1 trillion people during his reign in various disasters (29). As these examples imply, late antique claims that plague was omnipresent, or nearly so, must be treated suspiciously. Although each passage should be examined critically, both within the context of the work in which it is encountered and within the work’s particular cultural setting, maximalists tend to read plague passages positivistically and to accept late antique claims and commentary on the JP at face value. Although it has been argued that the JP garnered less attention over time because of the high frequency of plague recurrences, it is striking how numerous late antique texts, including several that purportedly overlook or skim lightly over later JP recurrences, treat other natural disasters, like earthquakes, in detail. Indeed, seismic events are thought to have been far more common and less lethal than outbreaks of the JP, yet they retained the attention of authors throughout late antiquity and beyond (cf. ref. 30). Contemporaries chose to remember and commemorate certain calamities, such as earthquakes and relatively minor volcanic eruptions, but did not memorialize plague (7). The plague catalogs group together different texts to reconstruct recurrences, implying that they were significant and that many authors wrote about them. Fig. 1 examines the 18 waves the most comprehensive catalog describes (21). The results reveal how scant the written evidence is for most of these recurrences, even after we have included sections in which the JP plays a tangential role and texts written centuries after these events. Only 2 short sentences, for example, discuss the supposed 17th wave (circa 732 to 735): “In this year there was a plague [thanatikon, literally a mortality] in Syria and many people died” (31) and “And in this year there occurred in Palestine and Egypt a severe pestilence [wabāʾ, literally an epidemic]” (32). Moreover, attempts to construct recurrences overlook the hundreds of contemporary texts in the 5 languages that do not discuss plague. As examples, 1 database has collected the works of approximately 120 authors in Greek in the 6th century alone (http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/); another reference work lists 107 Latin authors known in that period (33). As Fig. 1 demonstrates, only a handful of these authors refer to plague in their work. Moreover, the diagnosis of plague is far from clear; half the cataloged sources describe only a vague mortality that could refer to many diseases, and only 20% provide more than a single basic symptom (i.e., buboes) that scholars accept as sufficient for diagnosing plague (20, 21). Fig. 1. The number of texts referring to each plague “wave” (colored bars) and the total number of words in them (black line). For details, see explanation of the figure in SI Appendix, Materials and Methods. Within the historical texts, the attention given to plague is minimal. Procopius, the author of the most influential passage on the JP, discusses it in less than 1% of his work. Gregory of Tours, the key western European plague reference, similarly devotes at most 1.3% of his work to plague. With 1 or 2 exceptions, similar percentages are the norm. In addition, when there are multiple references to the same outbreak, most authors refer to plague briefly to convey broader ideological or pedagogical concepts and rarely provide details (e.g., mortality, symptoms; discussion in ref. 7, pp. 9–16). The quantitative approach to the written evidence suggested above reveals that the common maximalist JP narrative, which is based almost exclusively on the written evidence, was founded on weak premises. Although it is easy to draw a broad image of plague, portraying it as an almost unparalleled catastrophe, examining the evidence at a higher resolution demonstrates the fatal flaws in this hypothesis.
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