Emperor and Physician: Plague, Politics, and Healing in the Justinianic Novels

Abstract

The first bubonic plague outbreak, the “Plague of Justinian,” has been subject to scrutiny to determine how it impacted the cultural, political, and economic trajectory of the Byzantine Empire. Central to this debate is the question of the plague’s minimal mention in non-literary sources, particularly the “Novels,” a series of laws released by Emperor Justinian throughout his reign. In recent years, the emperor’s relative silence on the matter has been cited as evidence that the plague was not significant enough to merit a robust imperial response. While the Novels make virtually no explicit reference to plague, this paper identifies a shift in legal language during the early years of the pandemic wherein the emperor offered a series of allusions likening himself to a physician practicing his craft. These allusions are forceful in their comparative quality, declaring an equivalency of lawmaking and healing. It is the position of this paper that the emperor used his legislation as a vehicle to modify his public image, embodying the mindset of a physician to underline his virtuous philanthropy and offset criticism throughout the plague. Compared especially to his successors, Justinian’s language was uniquely deployed and represents an understudied political effect of the pandemic.