Justinianic

This is what happened in the AD540s, when the ‘Justinianic plague’ (named after the Byzantine Emperor Justinian) was so devastating that there were said to be not enough people to bury the dead in Constantinople (now Istanbul).

The only western province where the Justinianic code was introduced was Italy (after the conquest by the so-called Pragmatic Sanction of 554), Kunkel, W. (translated by J. M. Kelly) An introduction to Roman legal and constitutional history.