Fra l'umano e il divino: la peste giustinianea come colpa, punizione e cura nelle agiografie occidentali

In the West, the so-called ‘Justinian plague’ arrived at different stages, from North Africa to the Italic and Iberian peninsulas, from Gaul to Britain, and the hagiographic narratives handed down to us reflect this discontinuity in their fragmentary nature. In this paper, the sources from turn to turn reflecting the diffusion of the disease will be investigated in a synchronic order; thus considering each time the different geographical areas involved in a broad context that includes the Mediterranean and the current Western European continent, between the year of the onset of the plague 542 and the mid-8th century. The greatest literary evidence for the spread of the Justinian plague in the West comes from Gregory of Tours; through his work we can locate at least six successive epidemic waves during the 6th century, in Gaul and Italy (the work of Pope Gregory I is fundamental for the history of the peninsula, since it evokes the very plague that killed his predecessor, Pelagius II, in early 590). The Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles, the former hard hit as early as 543, the latter witnessed manifestations of the disease of increasing severity in the 7th century.