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The Black Death and Justinian’s Plague: History’s Worst Pestilences

Khalid Elhassan January 8, 2025 13 min

Plague - Illustration from the medieval Liber Chronicarum 1, depicting skeletons rising for the dance of death — Illustration from the medieval Liber Chronicarum 1, depicting skeletons rising for the dance of death. Live Science

6. A Great Shock

Plague - The social upheaval and terror caused by the Black Death is reflected in Pieter Brugel's 'The Triump of Death' — The social upheaval and terror caused by the Black Death is reflected in Pieter Brugel’s ‘The Triump of Death’. Museu del Prado

The shock of a plague that wiped out up to two thirds of the population was great, to say the least. Take the experience of the world’s reaction to the recent Covid-19 pandemic, and multiply it many times over, to get an idea of how contemporaries felt about and reacted to the Black Death. The economy contracted sharply, as trade came to a standstill, and wars came to a halt. However, astonishing as it might seem to us today, medieval people soon adjusted to the Black Death, grew accustomed to the plague, and took its frequent recurrences in stride.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.