The year of darkness Alain Willaume/Tendance Floue
“The sun began to be darkened by day and the moon by night, while the ocean was tumultuous with spray from the 24th of March in this year till the 24th of June in the following year… And, as the winter was a severe one, so much so that from the large and unwonted quantity of snow the birds perished… there was distress… among men… from the evil things”
Zacharias of Mytilene (Chronicle, 9.19, 10.1)
THE year is AD 536, and Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea has just arrived in southern Italy. The balance of power in the Mediterranean is in flux: Vandals had sacked Rome in 455 and the Western Roman Empire had fallen in 476. Justinian I, the Byzantine (or Eastern Roman) Emperor, is determined to reclaim the lost territories. After a successful campaign against the North African Vandal Kingdom in the early 530s, Justinian dispatches his army to retake Italy.
Yet as Procopius records, something odd then happened. The sun dimmed, and the dimness lasted for more than a year. There were frosts and snows in the middle of summer – the winter never really ended. From Italy to Ireland, China to Central America, the year 536 was the beginning of a decade-long cold snap beset by turmoil. Religions lost believers, cities collapsed and one of the greatest plagues in history killed a quarter of the population in the Byzantine Empire. Justinian’s armies did manage to retake Rome, but his weakened empire was overstretched, and soon lost the territory again.
In almost every region of the world,…
