Press Release
The American Academy in Rome hosts an international conference on
the Justinianic Plague
Study of First Historically Documented Pandemic of
Plague Will Help Better Understand Pressing Public Health Issues of Today
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The plague, a fearsome contagious disease known popularly as bubonic plague and technically as yersinia pestis, is fatal to about 50% of the persons who contract it. The first historically documented plague epidemic broke out in Egypt in 541 A.D. By the next year it had hit Constantinople and soon it had spread throughout the Mediterranean basin, constituting a major pandemic that lasted for 225 years. It took the name of the Justinianic Plague after the emperor who was reigning at Constantinople in 542 AD.
The conference participants include historians and archaeologists whose collective expertise covers the major geographic, cultural, and linguistic areas where plague was present: the Middle East, the Byzantine Empire, and the Latin West. Moreover, a historian/molecular biologist from the English lab that made a positive identification of malaria in fifth-century A.D. human remains from Italy is to take part, as well as a molecular biologist from Marseilles who contributed to the identification of yersinia pestis in human remains of the late 1340's.
In addition to the identity of the pathogen(s) involved, other major issues to be raised include: (1) the weakness of Byzantine armies in the face of Arabian advances of the seventh century; (2) the increased value of labor due to the high mortality among workers, and its possible connections with the decline of ancient slavery; (3) the role of the plague in promoting monasticism and the use of icons, litanies, processions, and votive liturgies; (4) the transformation of St. Sebastian into a plague saint; (5) the inclusion of death by plague among the qualifications for martyrdom in Islam; and (6) the importance for us, in our times, of understanding the etiology of plague.
Conference participants include: Lawrence Conrad of the University of Hamburg; Michel Drancourt of the University of La Mediteranee, Marseilles; J.N. Hays of Loyola University, Chicago; Hugh Kennedy of St. Andrews University; Michael Kulikowski of the University of Tennessee; Lester K. Little, Director of the American Academy in Rome and Professor at Smith College, John Maddicott of Exeter College, Oxford; Michael McCormick of Harvard University; Michael Morony of UCLA, Los Angeles; Robert Sallares from the Institute of Science and Technology of the University of Manchester; Peter Sarris of Trinity College in Oxford; Dionysios Stathakopoulos of the University of Vienna; Alain Stoclet of the University of Lyons; and, David B. Whitehouse, Director of the Corning Glass Museum in Corning, NY.
The conference will take place December 13-15, 2001 at the American Academy in Rome, Via Angelo Masina, 5, 00153 Rome, Italy and will be open to the public at no charge. All papers will be published in a single volume following the conference. For further information on the Academy or the conference, please see the Academy's website, www.aarome.org, or contact Milena Sales: Tel. 39-06-584-64-70, Fax 39-06-581-0788, m.sales@aarome.org.
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