Justinian Plague And The Decline Of The Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire, it was a mighty civilization that lasted over a decade only to fall due to Ottoman armies in 1453. Historians believed that the Byzantine Empire went into a slow decline due to the political and the economic instability in the mid 1000’s. But there was an earlier historical point of time that laid the foundations for the decline and the eventual fall of the Byzantine Empire, it was the plague of Justinian which occurred around 541 it was the first recorded account of what was assumed to be of the bubonic plague in Europe. Modern historians named this plague after the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I . The plague of Justinian isn’t normally thought of as a factor for the decline of the byzantine empire, there were still moments of prosperity that occurred in the western roman empire after it struck, but the Plague of Justinian was a disaster for the Byzantine Empire because it was one the contributing factors for its decline. The Justinian plague caused a massive loss to the Byzantine population, it was comparable to the Black Death of the Fourteenth century. Procopius, an archivist for Emperor Justinian,

The empire relied heavily on its agriculture and its ability to tax, once the plague stuck the countryside it affected the empire in multiple ways, Trade throughout the empire was interrupted due to the massive die-off and the fear of catching the plague which kept people from conducting business, this lead to massive loss of tax revenue. The deaths of landlord who caught the plague caused a huge financial burden to the landlord’s neighbors as they were responsible to pay the deceased taxes. The loss of manpower caused by the plague caused severe work shortages which led to famines and inflation. In 544 and 545 Justinian has to issue edicts to help alleviate the financial burdens of surviving landlords, to curb inflation, and he froze both wages and prices to their pre-plague