THE HORROR JOHN of Ephesus witnessed in north Africa and Constantinople was so traumatic that it took him three years before he could begin to tell the story.
“Thy judgments are like the great deep,” prayed John of the “cruel scourge” that struck the whole world in 544 C.E., when the plague spread along the trade routes of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. “Like the two edges of the reaper, it successively passed across the earth, and progressed without stopping,” wrote John. The cities stank with unburied corpses. This sixth century deacon and hagiographer wrote, “The mercy of God showed itself everywhere toward the poor, for they died first while everyone was still healthy enough to ... carry them away and bury them.”
No wonder John drew upon the psalms of lament and the “weeping prophet” Jeremiah for guidance. His congregation was dead or dispersed. To anoint and bury the dead meant contamination. All worship was suspended. The normally scrupulous were hoarding and stealing. And rulers who had overspent on imperial expansion placed impossible economic burdens on the survivors.
And then it all happened again 14 more times throughout north Africa—because pandemics recur in waves, sometimes for as long as 200 years.
In Ethiopia, the governor issued edicts against leaving corpses in the street and levied fines on communities that did not bury their dead. Orthodox priests designated “gospel associations,” a small group of the faithful, to carry out burials. Each carried a “staff of Moses” and tree branches to sprinkle holy water as they transported the baptized dead to mass graves.
John noted in his Ecclesiastical History, some of which was written in prison, that when a band went out to bury the dead in Alexandria, they each strapped to their arm a tablet with their name and neighborhood, which read: “If I die, for God’s sake, and to show his mercy and goodness, let them know at my house, and let my people come to bury me.” Hagiographies of “plague heroes” were read aloud to give hope to the faithful.
Over time, “plague theologies” developed. Was the sickness a condemnation from God on all people, a punishment on everyone for failing to keep a covenant? Or was the sickness visited on the righteous by demons infesting certain alienated classes—sinners, foreigners, women?
The first perspective prompted communities to common action, a humanitarian response of mutual aid, and an examination of personal and national conscience. The second notion cued the righteous to get on a war footing to expel or exterminate the demon-infested. It led to ritual exorcisms, banishing strangers, purification of the communal body by expelling the weak and the wicked.
Pandemics seem to follow empires. As empires grow and trade routes expand, a disease once isolated now has a path of expansion. As empires rise, wealth and goods are centralized, labor is devalued, taxation escalates. Plagues often topple imperial economies. A radical redistribution of wealth occurs, either from looting, land theft, or revolution. The Justinian plagues witnessed by John of Ephesus are credited, in part, with ending slavery in the Byzantine Empire. With so few workers left, the value of labor grew. The European plague in the mid-1300s undermined the infrastructure of indentured servitude, paving the way for peasant revolts.
Today, we don’t know the full extent of the coronavirus pandemic or its future impact on transnational economics, governments, or societies. But we do know that things we believed impossible became possible overnight.
We wonder too what the role of the church is in this “cruel scourge.” It is still to feed the hungry, heal the sick, bury the dead. And, like John, to remember. To tell the story of God’s mercy and goodness, even amid unbearable grief.
Rose Marie Berger, a Catholic peace activist and poet, is senior editor of Sojourners magazine. She is author ofBending the Arch: Poems.
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