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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

13. The Rapid Spread of a Deadly Plague

Plague - The rapid spread of the Black Death — The rapid spread of the Black Death. Encyclopedia Britannica

From Sicily in 1347, the Black Death swiftly reached the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, plus Naples in Italy, that same year. The next year, it spread to the rest of mainland Italy, France, two thirds of the Iberian Peninsula, southern England, the Balkans, Egypt, Anatolia, and the Eastern Mediterranean in general. In 1349, the plague reached Germany and Central Europe, most of Ireland, plus the rest of England, the Middle East, and North Africa. In 1350, Scotland, Scandinavia, and the Baltic shores were hit. By 1351, the Black Death had ravaged most of Europe, except for relatively unaffected pockets in Poland, plus the western parts of Belorussia and Ukraine.

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.