Catastrophe and Conspiracy:
The evidence of the sixth century Byzantine sources
for the AD 536 environmental event
Maria Kouroumali
I have followed the debate instigated by Edward James’ review of
Catastrophe, the book by David Keys, in ML 12 and the subsequent articles on the
subject with great interest. As a historian of the sixth century, it has been of the utmost
importance for me to understand if there is indeed an issue to be addressed, as Mike
Baillie asks in his book, Exodus to Arthur and in his article in ML 14, especially since
he feels that this is an issue which historians have so far failed to address
satisfactorily.
As a non-scientist, I am not in a position to determine the cause behind the
environmental event of 536 AD, whether it was due to a massive volcanic eruption
(Keys’ theory) or the result of the bombardment of the earth by cometary debris
(Baillie’s view). However, I would agree that there was indeed a severe environmental
event with global manifestations as can be seen from the tree-ring evidence. My main
disagreement stems from Baillie’s insistence that ‘historians have completely missed
the most serious environmental event of the last 1500 years’. Is this really the case?
As I already mentioned, the scientific evidence presented does point to a
global climatic event which seems to have provided the necessary environmental
conditions for one of the most well-known epidemics in Byzantine history, the
outbreak of plague during the reign of the Emperor Justinian in 542 AD. Historians
have not failed to concern themselves with the plague and its consequences, but I am
sure that Baillie would agree that it is the responsibility of modern scientists to
discover the scientific explanation behind the cause of similar events.
It is a pity that nowhere has Baillie seen appropriate to enlighten the reader
why historians need pay more attention to this event than they already have. Although
in the bibliography used for his book, he has cited works of secondary literature which
certainly have considered the environmental event of 536 as the cause behind the
plague1, he still berates historians for dismissing the evidence from the primary
sources of the period. He is even more extreme in Appendix 4 of his book where he
marshals together the evidence from the Byzantine sources. He insinuates that there
might have been some kind of conspiracy or ‘tampering’ with the sources by the
authorities of the time (namely, Justinian and the Church) to suppress information
which could have been damaging to the theocratic sensibilities of the times. He arrives
at this conclusion because of the fragmentary nature of the sources he chooses to
favour for the chronological period under examination, i.e., 536 - 540 AD, and the
paucity of evidence they provide for the environmental event.
Furthermore, his references to historians and history with phrases such as ‘the
failure of history to provide me with any serious evidence’ and ‘it seems to me that it
is the historians who are out of line here’ (see his article in ML 14) as well as the use
he makes of the literary texts he has examined for supporting evidence, reveals his
* I am indebted to the State Scholarship Foundation of Greece (I.K.Y), which funds my doctoral studies
at Oxford, thus also enabling me to research and write this article.
1
I refer particularly to the two articles by J. Koder and P. Farquharson in the volume of collected
articles, Sixth Century. End or Beginning?, P. Allen and E. Jeffreys (eds.), Sydney, 1996.
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misunderstanding of both the way in which historians work and of Byzantine
literature.
Bonaventure Knollys in his review of Baillie’s book in ML 15 already
highlighted one of the problems which arise through Baillie’s misuse of Biblical texts
and their language. I shall concern myself in this paper primarily with the sixth
century sources of the Roman Empire as these fall within my particular field of
research in order to address the ‘conspiracy theory’ presented in Baillie’s book and to
further indicate the dangers inherent in approaching literary sources without an
understanding of their position in the process of reconstructing history.
The sixth century Byzantine sources
The authors whose work deals with the particular period of interest (i.e., 536 -
540 AD) and have survived, in some form or other, to this day are Procopius of
Caesarea, John Malalas, Cassiodorus, the anonymous author of the chronicle known
as that of Zachariah of Mitylene, Cosmas Indicopleustes, Evagrius Scholasticus, John
Lydus, John of Ephesus, Cassiodorus, the anonymous compilers of the Liber
Pontificalis, Marcellinus Comes and Jordanes. All of these authors were
contemporaries or near contemporaries. They also wrote entirely different works,
belonging to distinct literary genres. In addition to these, there are a number of other
sources written at a later date which cover the period of interest, but these will not
concern us here since they mostly derive their information from sixth century sources.
Procopius wrote a history of the Emperor Justinian’s campaigns in the manner
of ‘classicising’ history. He also wrote a panegyric dealing with the building projects
of the selfsame emperor as well as an invective in literary form to provide his
audience with the real causes of political and social events of the time, events which
he was hampered from revealing in his military history. John Malalas and the
anonymous author of the so-called Zachariah of Mitylene chronicle, on the other hand,
wrote world chronicles, works which narrated events from the creation of the world
(as reckoned by the Byzantines) to the present time of the author’s life and thus
covered an extensive period of history with unequal attention, depending as they did
on the type and availability of sources which the author used to cover the events
outside his own lifetime.
Evagrius Scholasticus and John of Ephesus wrote ecclesiastical histories,
works concerned mainly with church events and theological debates which were
abundant at the time. Other events intruded in their works from time to time but the
aim was to describe the theological contentions of the period. John Lydus wrote three
works of an antiquarian nature on three different topics: one on the powers of Roman
magistrates, one on the months of the calendar and a third on portents and omens. He
was primarily interested in providing the historical background for these three very
different topics and thus not so much concerned with contemporary phenomena,
although he did of course note them. Cosmas Indicopleustes’ Christian Topography is
a work of geographical and topographical interest, describing his travels to various
parts of the world as well as stating his views on the nature of the world.
Cassiodorus was a prolific writer, but amongst his many works, the one
which is of interest to us is his Variae, a collection of state letters and bureaucratic
forms of address which he compiled during his sojourn in the higher echelons of
Ostrogothic governmental office. Marcellinus Comes also wrote a world chronicle,
2
much briefer than that of Malalas. Jordanes wrote two works concerning the history of
the Goths and the history of the Roman state of his time. The Liber Pontificalis is an
anonymous compilation, dealing with the Lives of the Popes from the foundation of
the Apostolic See of Rome to the early eighth century AD. These last four authors
wrote in Latin as opposed to the Greek and Syriac of the previous writers. From the
above brief survey of our sources, it is evident that the scope of the work of each
author was different in aim, content and quantity.
Science and History
As those familiar with the period will know, the value and information that
each one of these sources provide is of varying quality. In the eyes of the scientist who
is looking for corroborating reference to a scientifically proven event, any mention
which confirms this event may well be treated with equal value. However, a historian
has rightly learnt to approach such evidence with caution. The historian attempts to
reconstruct the picture of the past, not by approaching the sources with
presuppositions, but by carefully examining and judging the evidence of each source
within the wider context of the historical period he is dealing with. This is not to
imply that the sources consciously provide false information or that the events
described did not happen; rather it is to indicate what we can expect to find in these
sources. While it is very tempting to accept all information at face value, the
meticulous scholar is aware that there are more than one perceptions of the same event
and that there is a different degree of veracity and accuracy, depending on the author.
In our case, one of the most important factors to be taken into account is
literary genre. The limits of space do not allow me to go into further detail here as
regards the various literary genres in Byzantine literature, but one main characteristic
that they all share is that they adopt certain rules according to what is required of them
and what the authors themselves felt was their specific topic and field. This is very
true of our sources.
Thus, to take but one example, Procopius clearly states in his prologue that he
has set out to record Justinian’s campaigns so that these events will not be lost for
posterity as he judged them to be major events of his time. This determines the
content of his work. Moreover, he is following a long-established tradition of
recording history which accepted Herodotus and Thucydides as the role models.
Certain events were inadmissible in a history designed to convey an impression of
objective, detached and scholarly narration of contemporary events whilst other
‘classicising’ characteristics such as rhetorical speeches ascribed to the protagonists
were not only expected, but also required. Readers might be interested to hear that in
this historiographical work important contemporary events, such as the fierce
theological debates of the time, receive but a passing reference and are consciously
avoided by the author on the grounds that they do not constitute ‘appropriate material’
for the genre within which he is writing. No mention is made of a variety of events
which are recorded in our other sources which had no similar restrictions of content,
such as the chronicles of Malalas and Marcellinus and the ecclesiastical histories, both
literary genres being born and developed within the Byzantine world and thus not
unduly restricted by the rules of an ancient literary tradition. To expect more evidence
in Procopius’ History of an environmental event which was clearly severe enough to
merit a reference as to the dimming effect it had on the sun, but on the other hand,
certainly did not cause the world or the historical process to end, is unrealistic. There
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is no need for elaborate explanations concerning conspiracies on behalf of the Church
authorities or at the instigation of the Emperor Justinian.
Baillie wonders why the works of the unknown author of the Zachariah
chronicle or John of Ephesus have not survived intact to the present day, why the text
for the period of the environmental event is especially corrupt and why other sources,
for example Cassiodorus, stop writing around that time. But for anyone dealing with
ancient and especially Byzantine sources, this is not surprising. Historians are
necessarily limited by the scope of information they receive from their sources. There
is no reason to suppose that something unusual happened to our sources specifically
due to the environmental event of the 530s. We have problematic transmission of
texts before and after the sixth century as there are many other factors to consider
when seeking explanations for problematic texts such as manuscript tradition,
popularity of the author, the value placed on his work by subsequent generations and,
of course, the political, social and economic conditions of each historical period.
In particular, both John of Ephesus and the anonymous Syriac author of the
Zachariah chronicle belonged to the Monophysite theological movement of the time, a
movement that was subsequently defeated in the Eastern Roman Empire. The
Byzantine Empire finally accepted and followed the Chalcedonian theological
tradition and it would be very natural for the works of authors whose views were
deemed heretical to have a problematic and fragmentary tradition. Cassiodorus, on the
other hand, was writing at a time of turmoil during the campaigns of Justinian in Italy
against the Ostrogoths and lost his position in the Ostrogothic government around that
time since the first phase of that grueling war ended with the defeat of the Ostrogoths
in 540 AD.
One more answer to Baillie’s question as to why there is not more detailed
information in the sixth century Byzantine sources on the environmental event of 536
could well be that it was simply not deemed of sufficient importance to the authors of
the time. They naturally noted what must have been unusual for the times of season,
but they were neither contemporary scientists recording data nor should we expect
them to be. It must be remembered that the people of the time were more accepting of
natural catastrophic events as their world was rife with earthquakes, floods, fires,
plagues and famines. One cannot expect the authors living to be able to compare the
severity of the event of 536 to either previous or following events. All these natural
phenomena had occurred many times before and were neither the first nor the last of
their kind. It is only in modern times that scientists have been able to establish the
severity of the event and compare it to others mainly because of their ability to derive
evidence from natural sources such as tree rings and ice cores. How, therefore, should
we expect sources which were explicitly written for other reasons to provide us with
the information which we seek with hindsight?
Furthermore, as the historical record shows, the history of mankind did not end
in 536 AD. To argue that the environmental event plunged the developed world into
the Middle Ages is farfetched from a historical point of view. The effects of the event,
whether plague, famine or unnatural geological activity certainly were not solely
responsible for a historical process which progressively happens over the passage of
centuries. Undoubtedly, if the environmental effects were so extremely unusual, they
would have been noted by the authors. The fact that they have not speaks for itself. It
would need an event of completely catastrophic proportions in order for written
evidence to have been recorded in the sources for posterity (assuming that there were
any survivors from such an event). Baillie might be attracted to the language of
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authors such as John of Ephesus, the Zachariah chronicler and John Malalas, but this
is not surprising because he is looking for dramatic descriptions of catastrophes. He is,
however, misleading readers since these authors and others like them use very strong,
poignant language to express themselves. The writers of ecclesiastical history and
chronicles, apart from presenting the theological views and debates of the time and
noting the history of mankind, were also more likely to record events of such a nature,
since natural catastrophic phenomena, inexplicable as they were due to the absence of
advanced science, were deemed as acts of God at the time and always expressly
attributed to the wrath of the Divine Being. For these authors, who were writing for a
pious society, such events were considered to be edifying since they acted as warnings
to repent from sinful behaviour. Depending on the individual author and his mode of
expression, descriptions of the earthquakes and the plague range from the extremely
tragic to the scientific, ‘detached’ narrative of Procopius.
In addition to the evidence of the above authors, mention must be made here
of a recent paper by Dr A. Arjava of the University of Helsinki given at the
International Congress of Papyrology in Vienna this summer2 which studied the 536
environmental event by looking for indications of its disruptive influence within the
extant papyri of sixth century Egypt. Although the nature of the sources would
probably exclude specific references to the event itself, its consequences could have
been apparent in the absence or abundance of documents from that year onwards.
Unfortunately, the environmental event of 536 has left no discernible trace in the
papyri of the time. Whether Egyptian society in the sixth century was affected or not is
something that, for the time being at least, we cannot corroborate from the existing
written sources.
From the above, I hope that it is has become apparent to readers that, from the
historian’s perspective, there is no major issue to address; certainly not one which
would call for a complete re-assessment of early medieval history. Historians should
take due note of the scientific evidence and I, personally, welcome any scientific
explanation of natural phenomena such as epidemics or famines. But more than
considering this evidence as one additional factor which influences the historical
process and re-adjusting their footnotes, I do not see what Baillie expects historians to
do. Even if the 536 AD event was ‘the most serious environmental event of the last
1500 years’ as he convincingly claims, we have more than enough evidence that
history did not stop, humanity survived and, from the historian’s viewpoint, not
enough evidence to seriously argue for major alterations to the course of history.
Environmental determinism is rightly outdated, perceiving as it does, the
historical process as one-sided and one-dimensional. Climatic events of such
magnitude might well reoccur in the future, but I am sure that readers will agree that it
is not the provenance of history to address similar problems or offer solutions. We
should, therefore, be wary of ascribing too great an importance on just one factor
when we attempt to reconstruct the past, be it the environment or any other political,
military, social and economic event. Even one of the glass tesserae used to create the
famed Byzantine mosaics of Constantinople and Ravenna can dazzle the eye with its
individual brilliance and sparkle. However, it is only the combination of many of
these multi-coloured tiny fragments of glass which results in the splendour of the
2
I am very grateful to Ms Livia Capponi, Brasenose College, Oxford, for drawing my attention to this
paper and to Dr Antti Arjava, who kindly sent me a copy of his, as yet unpublished, paper and allowed
me to use it for this article.
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completed image. The 536 AD event might be a glass fragment of exceptional quality,
but for the historian, it is only one of many which together help to recreate the
complex and fascinating mosaic of sixth century history.
Further Reading
Allen, P. and Jeffreys, E. (eds.), The Sixth Century. End or Beginning?, Sydney, 1996.
Arjava, A., ‘Mystery Cloud of AD 536 and the Papyri’, Proceedings of the
International Papyrological Congress, Vienna, July 2001 (forthcoming).
Baillie, M. G. L., Exodus to Arthur: catastrophic encounters with comets, London,
1999.
Baillie, M. G. L., ‘A Dark Age Indeed: A Dendrochronologist looks at the evidence
for a Sixth Century Catastrophe’, Medieval Life 14, 2000.
Barnish, S. J. B. (trans.), Cassiodorus: Variae, Liverpool, 1992.
Brooks, E. W. and Hamilton, F. J. (trans.), The Syriac Chronicle known as that of
Zachariah of Mitylene, London, 1899.
Cameron, A. M., Procopius and the Sixth Century, London, 1985.
Croke, B. and Emmett, A. M. (eds.), History and Historians in Late Antiquity,
Sydney, 1983.
Croke, B. (trans.), The Chronicle of Marcellinus, Sydney, 1995.
Croke, B., Count Marcellinus and his chronicle, Oxford, 2001.
Davis, R. (trans.), The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis). The ancient biographies
of the first ninety Roman bishops to AD 715, Liverpool, 2000.
Dewing, H. B. (trans.), Procopius, Loeb Classical Library, London, 1914-1954.
Frend, W. H. C., The rise of the Monophysite movement: chapters in the history of the
Church in the fifth and sixth centuries, Cambridge, 1972.
James, E., ‘Did Medieval History begin with Catastrophe?’, Medieval Life 12, 2000.
Jeffreys, E., Jeffreys, M. and Scott, R. (trans.), The Chronicle of John Malalas,
Melbourne, 1986.
Jeffreys, E. et al. (eds.), Studies in John Malalas, Sydney, 1990.
Kahzdan, A. et al. (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Oxford, 1991.
Keys, D., Catastrophe: an investigation into the origins of the modern world, London,
1999.
Knowlys, B., ‘Of Comets and Angels’, Medieval Life 15, 2001.
Mierow, C. C. (trans.), The Gothic History of Jordanes, Cambridge, 1966.
McCrindle, J. W. (trans.), The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk,
London, 1897.
Meyendorff, J., Imperial Unity and Christian divisions: the Church 450 - 680 AD,
Crestwood NY, 1989.
O’ Donnell, J. J., Cassiodorus, Berkeley, 1979.
Whitby, M. (trans.), The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus, Liverpool,
2000.
Witakowski, W. (trans.), The Chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, pt. III,
Liverpool, 1996.
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Maria Kouroumali