ABSTRACT
In the year of Our Lord a man saw a dream fulfilled, and a nation witnessed the beginning of a nightmare. The man was the emperor Justinian I, who cherished the bright vision of restoring the lost Western provinces to the Empire's bosom. His armies had crushed the Vandal kingdom of Africa, had annexed part of the Visigothic kingdom of Spain, and had finally extinguished the life to which the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy had clung with such unexpected and costly tenacity. Gregory records details of some of the delirious, visions experienced by plague victims. The plague had become as much a fact of Italian life as the Lombards; indeed, the Lombard invasions coincided with the first great plague pandemic. The psychological effect of the apparently unending onslaught of plague and war was immense. For many religious people, including Gregory himself, they were the scriptural precursors of the Apocalypse.
