This excerpt from book II of the Historia Langobardorum by Paul the Deacon describes the effect of the Justinian plague in Italy.

Based on archaeological DNA samples, the epidemic has recently been verified as yersinia pestia — bubonic or black plague. As such, it was the first of three pandemics of bubonic plague in known history.

The plague arrived in Italy in 541, and the first wave lasted a few years, but just as in the Middle Ages, successive waves came and went over at least two centuries.

The final paragraph doesn’t mention the plague, but it gives some clues to the dating of the passage. Based on that, the date must be shortly after 565 when Justinian I died, and no later than 573, when the patrician Narses died. Most scholars date the narrative to 566 or 567.

Other outbreaks of the plague happened later in the 590s, as apparent from another two short excerpts from book IV of the Historia Langobardorum.

Source: Historia Langobardorum (980s–990s) by Paul the Deacon, here in the translation by William Dudley Foulke from 1906.

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The text leading up to this excerpt discuss the actions of the Byzantine general Narses, so the initial “this man” refers to him.

Chapter II.4

In the times of this man a very great pestilence broke out, particularly in the province of Liguria.

For suddenly there appeared certain marks among the dwellings, doors, utensils, and clothes, which, if any one wished to wash away, became more and more apparent.

After the lapse of a year indeed there began to appear in the groins of men and in other rather delicate places, a swelling of the glands, after the manner of a nut or a date, presently followed by an unbearable fever, so that upon the third day the man died. But if any one should pass over the third day he had a hope of living.

Everywhere there was grief and everywhere tears.

For as common report had it that those who fled would avoid the plague, the dwellings were left deserted by their inhabitants, and the dogs only kept house. The flocks remained alone in the pastures with no shepherd at hand. You might see villas or fortified places lately filled with crowds of men, and on the next day, all had departed and everything was in utter silence.

Sons fled, leaving the corpses of their parents unburied; parents forgetful of their duty abandoned their children in raging fever. If by chance long-standing affection constrained any one to bury his near relative, he remained himself unburied, and while he was performing the funeral rites he perished; while he offered obsequies to the dead, his own corpse remained without obsequies.

You might see the world brought back to its ancient silence : no voice in the field ; no whistling of shepherds ; no lying in wait of wild beasts among the cattle; no harm to domestic fowls.

The crops, outliving the time of the harvest, awaited the reaper untouched; the vineyard with its fallen leaves and its shining grapes remained undisturbed while winter came on ; a trumpet as of warriors resounded through the hours of the night and day ; something like the murmur of an army was heard by many ; there were no footsteps of passers by, no murderer was seen, yet the corpses of the dead were more than the eyes could discern ; pastoral places had been turned into a sepulchre for men, and human habitations had become places of refuge for wild beasts.

And these evils happened to the Romans only and within Italy alone, up to the boundaries of the nations of the Alamanni and the Bavarians.

Meanwhile, the emperor Justinian¹ departed from life and Justin the younger² undertook the rule of the state at Constantinople. In these times also Narses the patrician,³ whose care was watching everything, at length seized Vitalis, bishop of the city of Altinum (Altino),⁴ who had fled many years before to the kingdom of the Franks — that is, to the city of Aguntum (Innichen)⁵ — and condemned him to exile in Sicily.

Chapter IV.4

In this year⁶ the inguinal plague was again at Ravenna, Gradus (Grado) and Istria, and was very grievous as it had also been thirty years before.

At this time too king Agilulf made peace with the Avars. Childepert⁷ also waged with his cousin the son of Hilperic, a war in which as many as thirty thousand men fell in battle.

The winter was then very cold, so that hardly anyone recalled its like before.⁸

Also in the region of the Briones (Brenner) blood flowed from the clouds, and among the waters of the river Renus (Reno) a rivulet of blood arose.

Chapter IV.14

At a subsequent time⁹ a very severe plague again devastated Ravenna and those places which were around the shores of the sea. Also in the following year a great mortality wasted the people of Verona.

Notes

1. The Byzantine emperor Justinian I (482–565) initiated the reconquest of Italy to the empire, which made Venetia a Byzantine province under the Exarchate of Ravenna. ↩︎
2. Justin II was Eastern Roman Emperor 565–578, during whose reign the Lombards invaded Italy. ↩︎
3. Narses (c. 478–573) was a Byzantine general, who led the imperial forces in parts of the Gothic Wars in Italy in the 500s. ↩︎
4. This is the only existing reference to a bishop Vitalis (or Vitale) of Altino. The bishopric of Altino was suppressed in 639, when the seat of the bishop moved to Torcello in the lagoon. ↩︎
5. This is the town of San Candido in the upper Puster valley, in the province of Bolzano in Tyrol, on the modern border with Austria. ↩︎
6. From the context, probably 591 or 592. ↩︎
7. [Childebert II] (c. 570–596) was Merovingian king of Austrasia (575–596) and king of Burgundy (592–596). ↩︎
8. Agilulf (c.555–616) was a Lombard Duke of Turin and king of the Lombards from 591 until 616. ↩︎
9. From the context, this must have been in 590 or 591. ↩︎