When Death Docked in Constantinople by Michael Goodyear

The stench of death lay heavy over the streets of Constantinople. The towering Byzantine churches were silent. The streets lay empty. Constantinople was laid low, not by war or conquest, but by the Black Death. In 1347, the Black Death killed thousands in the capital of the Byzantine Empire. The Black Death is synonymous with the European Middle Ages in popular imagination, but it was in Constantinople, where Asia meets Europe, that the bubonic plague first docked and then spread its pestilence across the medieval Mediterranean world.

Constantinople in Nuremberg Chronicle (1453) ©Wikimedia Commons

The Plague Cometh Again

The plague was not a stranger to the Byzantines and their great capital of Constantinople. Outbreaks in the sixth century, the late seventh century, several times over the course of the eighth century, and twice in the eleventh century had left their mark. Thousands died with each new wave. The worst outbreak occurred in the sixth century – it devastated the Byzantine population and contributed to the Byzantine Empire losing half of its land in the following decades to the rising power of Islam.

In the fourteenth century, the world was more interconnected than ever before. The giant Mongol Empire spanned Asia, spreading trade and cultural exchange across the continent. But this vehicle for trade became a highway for the Black Death. The worst outbreak of bubonic plague in history reportedly started in Mongol China, carrying off millions of souls. The disease then traveled to the other end of the Mongol Empire: the Middle East and the Crimea.

Genoese citadel of Caffa, now Feodosia, Crimea. ©Investigatio, Wikimedia Commons

In 1346, the Crimean city of Caffa was the first affected. According to one story, the Mongols, using crude bio-warfare, catapulted diseased corpses into the Genoese colony of Caffa, the first entry of the Black Death into Christian Europe. Ships leaving the Crimean port were boarded not only by men, but also by plague-carrying rats. When fleas bit the rats and then the men on the ship, the vessels became ferries of death. When they docked at Constantinople in 1347 (a major port), the plague revisited the Byzantine capital once again.

Life in the Diseased City

Constantinople had been one of the most important cities in the world for over a millennium. It had stood as the capital of the Romans and their successors, the Byzantines, but by 1347 it had seen better days. The ravages of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, which led to a 57-year period of Constantinople being ruled by Western crusaders, had devastated the city. Its riches had been plundered, its palaces lay in ruins, and farms had grown up inside the city walls due to the sheer amount of abandoned, unoccupied land inside Constantinople.

But despite being well past its golden age, Constantinople was still one of the largest cities in Europe, and a major stop along international trade routes. These two factors caused Constantinople to be especially devastated by the Black Death. The plague first arrived in Constantinople because of its location; Constantinople was the linchpin between the Black and Mediterranean Seas. The city’s importance caused it to be hit by new waves of plague repeatedly during the fourteenth century.

The city of Constantinople still boasted a population of many tens of thousands. As a densely populated city, Constantinople was one of the best breeding grounds for bubonic plague, which had devastating results on the populace. According to some estimates, as many as two thirds of the residents of Constantinople perished due to the Black Death.

Byzantine historians give us a glimpse into the dark lives of those living in Constantinople in 1347. Nikephoros Gregoras and John Kantakouzenos lived through the Black Death and provided much of our knowledge on how Byzantium fared. Gregoras, a learned polymath and historian, recounted, “The calamity attacked men as well as women, rich and poor, old and young … it did not spare those of any age or fortune … no one could help anyone else.” His account includes the telltale signs of bubonic plague – black buboes – and that the disease spread rapidly, leaving no family untouched.

A prime example was Kantakouzenos. He was the former Byzantine emperor John VI (r. 1347–1354), who was forced by his successor to retire and live out his days as a historian monk. He was the sitting emperor during the Black Death, and thus his is a top-down account of the plague. His story shows that even the halls of the emperor were not without victims of the plague: his youngest son, Andronikos, died on the third day of the outbreak. Kantakouzenos’ history draws from the language of Thucydides’ ancient account of plague in Athens, demonstrating the deadly proportions of the plague.

The reaction of many people in Constantinople was to turn to religion to save them. Kantakouzenos saw the plague as “sent by God to restore chastity.” The Constantinopolitan populace repented of their sins and took to living virtuously and donating to charity to assuage God’s wrath. The plague was compounded by military defeats by the Ottoman Turks and Serbs, civil wars, and earthquakes – all this exacerbated the sense of biblical doom. The Byzantine Empire was crumbling, limited to Constantinople and a few enclaves on mainland Greece and the Aegean islands, and the Black Death seemed to be God’s latest sign of displeasure.

Life in Constantinople during the plague mirrored that in cities in Western Europe. Residents thought the end of the world was upon them. The city reeked of the stench of putrefying unburied corpses. Crowds disappeared from the streets, hoping to escape the grip of the plague, and the homes of the infected were even burned down in an attempt to halt the spread of the Black Death.

Leaving Death in its Wake

Trade ships from Constantinople quickly and unwittingly spread the disease to the rest of the Mediterranean, and from there to the rest of Europe. The Black Death is estimated to have killed upwards of one third of Europe’s population. This drastic population drop had revolutionary consequences for medieval life, such as changes to the feudal system and city life. But while the Black Death ravaged Europe, not all were hindered by its devastation. For example, the Serbs, taking advantage of the chaos that the Black Death caused in Byzantium, conquered the recently re-acquired Byzantine province of Epiros in 1348. The Black Death accelerated Byzantium’s decline, with Constantinople falling further into underpopulated disrepair by the day while its neighbors managed to recover faster.

The Black Death left Constantinople after weeks of death and misery, but it did not leave permanently. The plague would return to Constantinople in four more waves from 1361 to 1402. By the time the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453, the city’s population, which had once approached half a million, had been reduced to 50,000. In the Black Death’s wake, Constantinople would never be the same city.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY FEATURED IN ISSUE 129, PLAGUE.

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About the Author

Michael Goodyear is a JD candidate at the University of Michigan Law School. He has an AB in History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago, where he specialized in Byzantine history. He has been published in a variety of academic and general-interest publications, including Le Monde diplomatique, Ancient History Encyclopedia, and the Vanderbilt Historical Review.