The Power of Plagues. Irwin W. Sherman

but these individuals were neither moral nor spiritual. In time the emperor himself became a god, and so loyalty had to be sworn to him.

Then, in the 1st century A.D., there appeared a new kind of religion, preached by Jesus of Nazareth (the Christ) and his disciples. Although Jesus preached for less than 3 years in what is now Palestine, his many disciples traveled throughout the Roman Empire spreading the word of the Christian religion. Jesus’ preaching took the form of parables and miraculous healings; he encouraged the poor and the oppressed, spoke of forgiveness, and proselytized that there should be detachment from wealth and property and that the outcasts and sick of society should be given special care. Because the Roman Empire consisted of many cities, Christianity became an urban movement. (Indeed, because of this, those living outside the city were called rustic or, in Latin, paganus, from which the word “pagan,” meaning non-Christian, is derived.) Jesus gathered around him a community of followers who regarded themselves as God’s people, and they went forth establishing a missionary movement. The early Christians had a moral ideal: they separated themselves from pagan idolatry and they espoused universal salvation. Because Jesus’ disciples preached the coming of a new king, it appeared to the Romans that there might be a revolution in the making. But at the outset the Romans simply regarded Jesus as a minor political rebel whose followers could be used as convenient scapegoats. As a result, the Christians were blamed for all types of disasters, including plagues, inflation, fires, and even barbarian incursions. The reasons for this were many: the Christians did not worship the emperor, they did not observe the pagan ritual acts, they insisted that they alone possessed God’s truth, and Christ’s teachings were critical of the established order. Christ’s omnipotence was also believed to be demonstrable by those who had survived a debilitating or deadly disease.

      The rise and consolidation of Christianity may have also been affected by disease. The expectations of the poor Romans were that with Christ’s second coming they would be freed from their rich masters. Christianity, unlike paganism, preached care of the sick as a recognized religious duty. Those who were nursed back to health felt gratitude and commitment to the faith, and this served to strengthen Christian churches at a time when other institutions were failing. Another positive feature of Christianity was that the teaching of the faith made life meaningful even in the face of sudden death since it was perceived as a release from an individual’s suffering. The capacity of Christian doctrine to cope with the psychic shock of epidemic disease made it attractive for the populations of the Roman Empire. Paganism, on the other hand, was less effective in dealing with the randomness of death. In time the Romans came to accept the Christian view. Rome became the headquarters of Christianity, and in A.D. 337, with the conversion of Emperor Constantine, Christianity became the church of the empire.

      The Antonine Plague

The Roman Empire expanded its frontiers until A.D. 161. But from that time onward its defenses began to crumble. Toward the end of the 1st century A.D. a warlike people riding on horseback from Mongolia, the Huns, began a westward movement. The Huns brought to the Roman Empire new infections, but others such as the Roman fever also rebuffed them. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was born in A.D. 121, and throughout his reign as emperor (140-180) he was engaged in defensive wars on the northern and eastern borders of the Roman Empire. In A.D. 164 the Roman legions under the command of Avidus Claudius were sent to Mesopotamia to repel an invasion by the Parthians, and in this they succeeded. But the troops returned with a devastating plague that spread throughout the countryside and reached Rome by 166. This epidemic of Antoninus, the Antonine plague, spread to other parts of Europe, causing so many deaths that cartloads of bodies were removed from Rome and other cities. Within the city of Rome, Emperor Antoninus made administrative reforms; he concerned himself with famine as well as plague in the empire. A devotee of stoicism, he ruthlessly persecuted the Christians, believing them to be a threat to imperial power. In 161, when the Huns had reached the northeast border of Italy, Antoninus was forced to contemplate battle, but fear and disorganization delayed a direct confrontation with the Germanic tribes on the Rhine-Danube frontier until 169. When he and his legions moved into the northern frontier with the objective of securing the empire’s northwesterly boundaries (as far as the Vistula River), a plague broke out among the troops; it raged until 180 and affected not only the Roman legions but also the Huns. As the plague ravaged his army, Antoninus elected to retreat to Rome but was never to reach his destination. In Vienna, on the seventh day of his illness, May 17, 180, he died from this plague. The plague returned again in 189, and though it was less widespread than the first epidemic, at its peak there were more than 2,000 deaths a day in the city of Rome.

      The Antonine plague (A.D. 164 to 189) is also associated with the physician Galen of Pergamum (A.D. 129-216), whose ideas dominated medicine until the 16th century. Galen’s hero was Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.), who had laid down the principles of medicine in Greece. Galen was first appointed surgeon to the gladiators in Asia Minor and then moved to Rome, where he practiced medicine. Though Galen was a skilled anatomist, an experimentalist, and a searcher for new drugs, when faced with the plague he fled Rome. He was, however, recalled by Emperor Marcus Aurelius to Rome, where he died. But before his death he left a description of the plague’s symptoms: high fever, inflammation of the mouth and throat, thirst, diarrhea, and a telltale sign: pustules on the skin that appeared after 9 days. Even today precisely what this plague was remains a mystery, but most historians suspect that this was the first record of a smallpox epidemic. Some believe either that smallpox moved into the Roman Empire with the legions returning from Mesopotamia or else that the Huns carried it with them from Mongolia and then on to Rome.

      The Cyprian Plague

In A.D. 250, Cyprian, the Christian archbishop of Carthage, described a disease that appeared to have originated in Ethiopia, then moved into Egypt, and eventually came to the Roman colonies of North Africa: vomiting, diarrhea, gangrene of the hands and feet, a burning fever, and a sore throat. The Cyprian plague became a pandemic, advancing quickly through direct person-to-person contact as well as by contaminated clothing. It is suspected that the disease was either smallpox or measles. Mortality is said to have been high, with the number of deaths exceeding those who survived. The plague of Cyprian lasted 16 years, causing panic among the people; those who fled to the surrounding countryside served as “seeds” for initiating fresh outbreaks. The land they left lay fallow. Despite this, the Roman Empire survived the devastation wrought by the Cyprian plague and was even able to overcome subsequent invasions by the Huns. But by 275 the Roman legions were forced to retreat from the Danube and the Rhine to the city of Rome. The situation was so precarious that the emperor decided to fortify Rome itself to protect against this plague. This also proved to be ineffectual.

      The plague of Cyprian strengthened Christianity. Cyprian wrote:

      Many of us are dying in this mortality, that is many of us are being free from the world. This mortality is a bane to Jews and pagans and enemies of Christ; to the servants of God it is a salutary departure. … Without any discrimination the just are dying with the unjust. … The just are called to refreshment, the unjust are carried off to torture; protection is more quickly given to the faithful; the punishment to the faithless. … This plague and pestilence which seems horrible and deadly, searches out the justice of each and every one.

      This ability of Christianity to deal with the horrors and hardships of a plague made church doctrine an attractive alternative to the stoic and pagan philosophies, which were impersonal, uncompassionate, and ineffectual in explaining the randomness of death due to disease, and so served to strengthen its hold on the Roman peoples. The attraction of Christianity for the people of Rome not only altered their current religious and cultural practices but also influenced future social and political development.

St. Sebastian, often painted as a naked youth wearing a crown, tied to a tree and with his body pierced by arrows, is the patron saint of archers, athletes, and soldiers as well as the protector from plague (Fig. 3.4). His answers to prayers for protection from the plague, first in Rome and later in Milan (1575) and Lisbon (1599), were the cause for his elevation