The Plague of Justinian …. a Northumbrian saint .... and episode 4 of I Want You To Know We're Still Here ….. on the wireless today

Now with the rain continuing to come down like stair rods, and the prhobiton of travel even further restricted, today is a day to stay in with the wireless.

Which is an introduction to three programmes on Radio 4, two of which come from that excellent In Our Time series, and the third from the continuing serialization of I Want You To Know We're Still Here.

I will start with last week’s The Plague of Justinian in which “Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the plague that broke out in Constantinople 541AD, in the reign of Emperor Justinian. 

According to the historian Procopius, writing in Byzantium at the time, this was a plague by which the whole human race came near to being destroyed, embracing the whole world, and blighting the lives of all mankind. 

The bacterium behind the Black Death has since been found on human remains from that time, and the symptoms described were the same, and evidence of this plague has since been traced around the Mediterranean and from Syria to Britain and Ireland. 

The question of how devastating it truly was, though, is yet to be resolved.

With, John Haldon, Professor of Byzantine History and Hellenic Studies Emeritus at Princeton University, Rebecca Flemming, Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge, and Greg Woolf, Director of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, Producer: Simon Tillotson”.*

This I will follow up with Saint Cuthbert.

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Northumbrian man who, for 500 years, was the pre-eminent English saint, to be matched only by Thomas Becket after his martyrdom in 1170. 

Now at Durham, Cuthbert was buried first on Lindisfarne in 687AD, where monks shared vivid stories of his sanctifying miracles, his healing, and his power over nature, and his final tomb became a major site of pilgrimage. 

In his lifetime he was both hermit and kingmaker, bishop and travelling priest, and the many accounts we have of him, including two by Bede, tell us much of the values of those who venerated him so soon after his death.

With Jane Hawkes, Professor of Medieval Art History at the University of York, Sarah Foot, The Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford and Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, and John Hines, Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University, Producer: Simon Tillotson”.**

Which will just leave me with Esther Safran Foer the author of I Want You To Know We're Still Here who "makes an emotional journey to the Ukrainian shtetls where her parents once lived, and where so many perished during the Holocaust". ***

Pictures; Detail of a contemporary portrait mosaic in the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, author, Petar Milošević, author, / CC BY-SA, Wikipedia, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, the stained glass window in the south aisle of the nave in Durham Cathedral: 'St Cuthbert praying before his cell in the Farne Island' and cover of I Want You To Know We're Still Here, Esther Safran Foer, 2020

*The Plague of Justinian, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rc43

**Saint Cuthbert; https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rll4

***I Want You To Know We're Still Here, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rll6