Did Pandemics foster the Rise of Christianity? A Comparative Modelling of the Antonine and Cyprianic Plagues in Rome and Achaea
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
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| Description | Several decades ago, Rodney Stark and William H. McNeill argued there was a causal link between pandemics in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE and the growth of Christian population. They hypothesized that the two pandemics, the Antonine Plague and the Plague of Cyprian, have caused lower damage to the Christian population, setting the conditions for its unprecedented growth in the following centuries. This interpretation of the growth of Christian population, as well as the hypothesized impact of the two pandemics were however questioned by other scholars. A research direction that might advance the current discussion surrounding the impact of the Antonine and Cyprianic Plagues on the population of the Roman Empire is to inspect the currently available sources by novel methods and assess whether Stark and McNeill’s interpretation is realistic at all. Researchers in the humanities started recently employing mathematical and computational methods on other pandemics in Antiquity with fruitful results, indicating this direction might provide interesting insights. Despite there is no molecular evidence of the pathogens that have caused the Antonine and Cyprianic Plagues, literary and archaeological sources indicate the features of the pathogens that might have caused the pandemics and their impact on Roman society. The aim of this paper is to provide an example of how to create compartmental models of the Antonine and Cyprianic Plagues to identify the most plausible causal agent of each of them. |
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