Acta hist. med. stom. pharm. med. vet. / 2019 / 38 / 1–2 / 8–20 8 Original scientifc article UDC: 616.98:579.842.1/.2(495.02)”7/8” DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3733165 Dragoljub Marjanović Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade Čika Ljubina 18-20, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia E-mail: sigilopator@gmail.com MEMORIES OF PLAGUE IN LATE 8 TH AND EARLY 9 TH CENTURY BYZANTINE HISTORIOGRAPHY Abstract: In the late 8 th and early 9 th century two historical works, the Short history of Nikephoros of Constantinople, and the Chronicle of Teophanes the Confessor, give evidence about the plague which appeared in Sicily and Calabria in 745/6 and spreading to the east, erupted in Constantinople in 747/8 during the reign of Emperor Constantine V. In this paper, we analyze the narratives ofered by the two historians and place their historical representation of the plague in the context of the religious controversy over icons which shook Byzantium in the 8 th and 9 th centuries. It appears that both historians, themselves engaged in the controversy over icon worship, Nikephoros in the capacity of the patriarch of Constantinople, and Teophanes as a hegumenos of an orthodox monastery, utilized the description of the plague to portray the emperor Constantine V’s rule as irreligious and devastating for the Byzantine state and church. Keywords: Plague, historiography Non MeSH: orthodoxy, icons, Constantinople, Constantine V Ending his 1947 novel “Te Plague”, French philosopher and writer Albert Camus, while relying much on Procopius’s description of the plague in Constantino- ple, concluded: “He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.” [1 p278] Te Mediterranean world of Classical and Late Antiquity, up to the early Mid- dle Ages, experienced several epidemics of plague, which were embedded in the