1In the first volume of his big work on historical plague, Biraben also published two lists of epidemics of the second plague pandemic 1346 – c. 1690 (1975, vol. 1, 363-449). Recently, aspects of Biraben’s lists were commented on highly critically by two historians, Roosen and Curtis (2018). In brief, they rejected their usability, and stated that: “Because of his inadequate citation practices, we have little hope of checking the validity of Biraben’s assertions, which undermines the reliability and accuracy of the data set that has been reused on a number of occasions by others (Roosen & Curtis, 2018).” However, historical plague researchers who know Biraben’s work well will know the basis and quality of the lists. Biraben has not made up arbitrary lists or the basic registrations of plague epidemics himself, as the two authors assume, but gathered together information from works of other scholars. This indicates a more moderate and reasoned critique and a more optimistic view on the usefulness of these lists.

2Biraben’s lists are problematic because they are uncommented, unfootnoted and not directly associated with immediate information for easily testable identification of the disease, i.e., defining or indicative clinical or epidemiological features of plague. They present just as lists: (1) in appendix iii, lists are organized chronologically by year and number of epidemics according to various geographical delimitations; (2) in appendix iv, lists are organized chronologically by year and according to country or a small cluster of closely related countries and with the name of the localities of the epidemics. In the latter case, the place names often connect two or more localities hit by the same epidemic (wave) in the same year. The lists show that frequently there were two or more independent epidemics that spread contemporaneously in various regions. These two sets of lists can be juxtaposed and found to be congruous.

3Although Biraben acquired a reputation as a leading historical demographer, he was a physician by education and used paginated footnotes more sparsely than historians are trained to do. However, this academic background provides his work with a multidisciplinary basis that is valuable. His first volume on the history of plague epidemics contains only 425 footnotes on 337 pages of running text, 1.25 footnote / page. This means that parts of his text are not substantiated by direct referencing but footnoted references are paginated and easily checkable.

4In this respect, Biraben’s work compares, nonetheless, well with the works of scientists on historical plague that are published in science journals. Science journals generally do not contain paginated footnotes at all but only numbered references to a numbered list of references according to the Harvard referencing style. Such reference lists are often impressively long and include also many books. No one can read thousands of pages on the hunt for confirmation or disconfirmation of bits of information in an article. In practice, science articles are not readily testable by references. Such reference lists have mainly decorative functions. Roosen and Curtis’ highly critical article of Biraben’s lists on plague epidemics for lack of adequate footnoting is (surprisingly) published unfootnoted in the science journal Emerging infectious diseases, providing only numbered references, challenging curious or critical readers to read thousands of pages on the hunt for the alleged relevant empirical or informational basis of the statements or assertions (if one has not worked intensely on the topic for over a generation and knows the scholarly literature well).

5Biraben gives some explicit information on the matter in a brief notification under the heading “Avertissement” following the foreword on p. 1, which Roosen and Curtis could usefully have considered before declaring that Biraben’s lists of plague epidemics were arbitrary and worthless:

6

“This work is the result of work begun in January 1967. We regret that the speed with which it had to be produced forced us to discard some of the notes we had collected and to considerably shorten the statistical analyses. Both would have usefully completed this work but, for lack of time, we must leave this to the judgment of the reader.”

7Biraben’s first volume focuses on historical plague epidemics, the second volume on medical, cultural and religious aspects of plague history. Roosen and Curtis seem to be unaware that Biraben has provided a bibliography, not in the first volume that is in their focus but in vol. 2 (1975, vol. 2, 196-409). It is not a usual bibliography containing works referred to in the footnotes but an attempt to provide a complete registration of works and sources relating to historical plague which therefore contains about 6,000 works. This bibliography is a valuable portal to plague studies. It also provides the opportunity to identify the source of the entries of plague epidemics for a specific time or period in a specific country or region, especially when juxtaposed with Biraben’s footnotes.

Biraben’s lists: empirical basis

8In view of the devastating criticism Roosen and Curtis level at Biraben’s lists, it is unfortunate that they hardly refer to the footnote apparatus of the first volume. Apparently, they have not studied it to identify central works that could have been used for the compilation of the lists. This is a serious omission.

9(1) Primarily, Biraben’s lists are based on G. Sticker, Abhandlungen aus der Seuchengeschichte und Seuchenlehre, vol. 1, “Die Pest”, 1908 (cf. Biraben, 1975, vol. 1, 28 n. c, 50 n. 43, 72 and n. 112, 85 n. 126, 193 n. 141, 195 n. 63).

10In this volume, Sticker presents systematically, according to regions of the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and 16 plague periods, plague epidemics from the Antiquity to c. 1900, on 400 pages of running text. A physician of the old school with good knowledge of Latin and other languages, he does so with references to sources. Usually, the references are unpaginated, but many of the sources are chronicles organized by year and the information is normally easily found. He also renders clinical or epidemiological elements in the sources that serve identification of the disease as bubonic plague, i.e., defining and distinguishing features of bubonic plague; he also has an acute eye for contemporary clinical, medical and epidemiological terminology. It is Sticker and not Biraben who has made the main work on the registration of historical plague epidemics. This means that most of Biraben’s registrations of plague epidemics are source-based and supported by clinical or epidemiological information in the sources, albeit indirectly or second-hand.

11Because history of the plague epidemics in Germany, Austria and Switzerland had not been written, and still are not, Sticker, a German national, felt a particular duty to register plague epidemics in these countries. This greatly benefited Biraben’s work and the construction of lists of epidemics for these countries. He also added information from recent works, for instance, Keyser’s article, which lists a considerable number of big plague epidemics in Germany (1965).

12Sticker’s form of registration shapes the volume into a compendium, which is eminently useful or rather indispensable, a treasure trove for all working in the field of plague history. It is a thorough and for its time quite exhaustive presentation of information on historical plague epidemics. This shows in the bibliography that contains over 1,100 entries, all referred to in the running text.

13Sticker’s work was mainly written on the study of primary sources. Several big works with a national orientation on the history of plague or epidemic diseases were important for the compilation of his compendium and indirectly for Biraben’s account and lists.

14(2) A. Corradi, Annali delle Epidemie occorse in Italia dalle prime memorie fina al 1850, 1865 (Biraben, 1975, vol. 1, 28 n. c, 43 n. 20, 70 ns. 103 and 106, 140 n. 18).

15In this huge two-volume work, Corradi, the professor of pathology at the University of Palermo, gathered together, mainly from Italian chronicles, all information on epidemic diseases in Italy from the Antiquity to 1850. His material on epidemics of the period of the second pandemic 1346-1700, is rendered on pp. 497-1297. This work is fully referenced, the epidemics are presented chronologically with much clinical and epidemiological detail and also much professional commentary useful for the identification of the diseases, especially distinguishing features of bubonic plague.

16(3) C. Creighton, A history of epidemics in Britain from AD 664 to the extinction of plague, 1891, vol. 1 (Biraben, 1975, vol. 1, 93 n. 145, 171 n. 18, 197 n. 68).

17In this big volume, Creighton endeavoured to register and present briefly all outbreaks of epidemic diseases in the British Isles mentioned in the sources. As the title shows, the main focus is on plague, the epidemics of the second pandemic are chronologically registered with much commentary on pages 114-692 and well footnoted. A physician by training, he took much interest in clinical and epidemiological information in the sources. He also was the last zealot defender of the miasmatic theory of epidemic disease which affects his use and interpretation of the material.

18Biraben supplemented Creighton’s book with some information from.

19(4) J. F. D. Shrewsbury, A history of bubonic plague in the British Isles, 1971 (Biraben, 1975, vol. 1, 91 n. 137, 93 n. 143, 174 n. 22).

20This is an ambitious book of 580 densely footnoted pages with much source-based clinical and epidemiological detail and a big bibliography.

21(5) F. Dörbeck, Geschichte der Pestepidemien in Russland, 1906.

22This is a German translation from the original Russian edition, which appeared in time for Sticker to tap it thoroughly. Dörbeck, a physician, has made a good pioneering search in the sources, for the Middle Ages almost exclusively chronicles. Few plague epidemics have avoided his attention. The book is usefully footnoted with references to sources and with medical and epidemiological information, which reflects his medical profession. Biraben has also used this German translation for his account of plague in Russia, referring to it in paginated footnotes (1975, vol. 1, 149 n. 32). He has not used Vasiliev and Segal’s much bigger and more advanced Russian language history of epidemics in Russia (1960) which is entered in his bibliography.

23For the history of plague epidemics in the Middle East and North Africa, Biraben is as usual much dependent on Stickers presentation. But he provides paginated references to von Kremer’s long article on the big epidemics of the Orient according to Arab sources (1975, vol. 1, 24 n. 6, 31 n. i, 45 n. 23, 73 n. 113), and El Haddad’s history of plague in Tunisia from the Antiquity to the present (1975, vol. 1, 43 n. 19, 140 n. 17).

24A French national, Biraben took great interest in French plague history, which shows in the title of his work: Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays européens et méditerranéens (“People and plague in France and in the European Mediterranean countries”). He displays great knowledge of French plague studies and archives (Roosen & Curtis, 2018, 104). This shows in the heavy dependence on Biraben’s monograph for the account of France’s plague history, and in his role as co-author of several chapters in the first two volumes of the huge work on French population history published in 1988, Histoire de la population française.

25Evidently, the lists would not be complete and final. There would be unidentified plague epidemics in countries and regions where little plague research had been performed at the time the lists were produced. That is not under-registration but a reflection of the contemporary stage of historical plague research and the historicity of Biraben as a scholar. It is not a flaw that Biraben did not know or take into account the important work of Blockmans on the plague epidemics in the Low Countries published five years later, or Benedictow’s history of plague epidemics in Norway published in 2002, and many other subsequently published works on plague with additional information on plague epidemics. Biraben’s lists must be supplemented as the study of historical plague progresses. Biraben’s lists cannot simply be brushed off as “outdated”. This is the fate of good historical work performed in a wide chronological and geographical perspective and means that others can see longer standing on his shoulders. It also means that his work is a legacy of enduring value on which later scholars can build their work and improve our knowledge on historical plague.

26Roosen and Curtis state that they are not sure that the mentions of plague identified originally by Biraben were in fact plague at all, especially for the medieval period (Roosen & Curtis, 2018, 108). This opinion is based on the erroneous assumption that Biraben originally identified the plague epidemics, while he, in fact, predominantly gathered together the information on plague epidemics from the works of Sticker and other fine scholars where the grounds for identification are clarified or at least references to the sources are provided for examination. The additional plague epidemics will be seen mainly to be supplementary, outbreaks that fit into the wider epidemic picture outlined by his main sources of data.

Climate and the plague of 1437-1442

27The only plague epidemics entered in Biraben’s lists which Roosen and Curtis specifically point out as misidentified, substantiates this view, namely “the plague of 1437-1440 which occurred during a period of extreme cold weather”. Their references for support of this judgement are two historical climatological studies and a suggestion that waterborne diseases could have been the cause, although that would have been more likely in hot summers. This seems to be an argument based on an assumption of a four-year long winter and weak interest in the wider European plague history. Roosen and Curtis’s failing interest in the material basis of Biraben’s lists of plague epidemics, just presuming that they were uncritically collected without a material basis in sources, shows. They have not consulted Sticker’s volume with referenced documentation for widespread plague epidemics in 1438-9, in Germany and Central Europe, and England, and also in the Low Countries, in (the provinces of) Holland, Geldern and Seeland (Sticker, 1908). Cold winters do not preclude plague epidemics in relatively chilly summers; I have registered about 30 plague epidemics in Norway (Benedictow, 2002) and their frequent recurrence in other Scandinavian countries and in Russia is well known (Mansa, 1873; Dörbeck, 1906; Vasiliev & Segal, 1960).

28There is in reality quite a narrow focus on the Low Countries in Roosen and Curtis’s approach to their subject (2018; Curtis, 2016), an advanced part of Europe with a surprising paucity of contemporary medieval sources and chronicles that mention plague epidemics. This is also underlined by Blockmans in his pioneering study of plague in the Low Countries (1980; Benedictow, 2004). They should have taken more interest in the wider European perspective of historical registrations of plague epidemics, and they would have found many other references to bubonic plague in Europe in these years, for England (Hatcher, 1977, 57; Gottfried, 1978, 38-9), for Germany (Keyser, 1963, 372; Ibs, 1993, 113), and for Italy (Corradi, 1865, 569-73; Del Panta, 1980, 118). This wave of plague epidemics ended in Pskov in Russia, not in 1440 but in 1442, where pestilence with buboes raged (Dörbeck, 1906, 20-1; Vasiliev & Segal, 1960, 38). In the circumstances, it appears appropriate specifically to mention the contemporary plague epidemics in the Low Countries identified by Blockmans (1980): plague in Flanders, Tournai, (provinces of) Holland, Guelders, Brabant, and Bishopric of Liège, county of Namur, Utrecht, and the Ijssel-region. This shows Roosen and Curtis’s shallow knowledge of historical plague epidemics.

29Clearly, when Roosen and Curtis state that “if we are going to pursue the Biraben database, we at least need to check his plague references with other forms of evidence rather than taking him at his word” (2018), this reveals a lack of insight in the material basis of Biraben’s lists of plague epidemics.

30Roosen and Curtis criticise Biraben for a heavy urban bias because he has predominantly registered urban epidemics. If Biraben should have entered all hamlets, townships and villages mentioned in the sources as ravaged by plague, especially in England, and if all registrations should have been footnoted and furnished with identifying referential information, this would have been a completely different project. It shows the underlying view that Biraben should have written a huge compendium and mainly supplemented Sticker’s work. Instead, the registration of place names, towns, counties and provinces, should be taken as indicative of the time and whereabouts of plague epidemics with an emphasis on substantial, better known or more easily identifiable localities. There is not a general urban bias in plague studies, although this may be the case in Dutch historiography on plague (Curtis, 2016).

31The sheer mass of information gathered together in Sticker’s compendium makes it rather impossible to discern structures of plague in the second pandemic. Biraben wished to produce a highly structured analytical and synthetic work. His additional big effort to identify and register systematically historical plague epidemics engendered the opportunity to uncover the systemic and structured dimensions of plague epidemics and of the second plague pandemic. By introducing the long-term perspective of the French Annales school of history, la longue durée, he also uncovered the cyclical rhythm of plague epidemics through 345 years, the big waves that spread over most of Europe, often also in the Middle East and North Africa, around every 12 years, identifying 26-28 such main waves in the second pandemic (1975, vol. 1, 119). When I wrote the history of plague in Norway 1348-1654, this cyclical pattern of waves of plague epidemics showed up again on the outskirts of Europe, mainly imported from England by ship and commercial connections, in the later phase mostly from the Netherlands (Benedictow, 2002, 103-8, 130-9).

32Biraben’s lists uncover an important dimension of plague history also by demonstrating that there was a large number of plague epidemics in various and distant locations in Europe every year. He registered, on average, 27 plague epidemics / year 1356-1649, from the first recurrence of plague to about the time the countermeasures of Europeans began to function efficiently. The number should be taken as approximate or rough and rather in the meaning of too low, because a substantial number of plague epidemics have been identified in the over 40 years since Biraben compiled his lists. There are two important points: (1) there was a large number of plague epidemics every year; (2) they broke out and spread quite simultaneously and independently in various and distant localities.

33According to his basic epidemiological notions of transmission and dissemination of plague, Biraben could not explain this double chronological dimension of the second plague pandemic, the annual synchronic occurrence of many independent simultaneous plague epidemics and the long-term diachronic cycle of recurrence of huge epidemic waves across Europe about every 12 years (Biraben, 1975, vol. 1, 118-21). However, this temporal cycle has been observed also by other scholars and explained by the role of rats. Some rats always survive a plague epidemic either because they fortuitously avoided infection or because the infectious dose of bacteria fortuitously was small and sub-infective and the rats survived with a short-term immune competence or because they had unusually strong innate immune resistance. It has been shown that the post-plague normalization process of rat populations takes about eight years of cross-breeding before the rat colonies have reverted to the pre-plague level of susceptibility to plague and full capacity to support large-scale epidemic developments (Indian Plague Research Commission, 1912; Pollitzer, 1954, 301-2; Benedictow, 2016, 51).

34Because Biraben did not have a functional theory or model of explanation, the big number of simultaneous plague epidemics every year and also at distant localities in Europe fell out of his focus and the potential of the lists’ epidemiological information was not realized, used or explained, only the long-term mortality effects. The explanation must be that the Black Death contaminated rat colonies all over Europe and established a widespread enduring presence: plague infection circulated among the rat colonies interconnected by the spread of infected fleas with commodities and in luggage and clothing by human commercial activities and travelling. Thus, plague acquired a continuous and multi-epidemic presence.

35There was another huge and unnoticed important dimension of the Black Death in addition to the high-profiled features of extreme mortality and huge suffering and misery among human populations: the Black Death also established a huge plague reservoir in Europe among the rat colonies associated with human settlement. It was a metapopulation of rats (Keeling & Gilligan, 2000) interconnected by human activities of commerce and travel: an outbreak in some part of Europe could trigger a big wave of Europe-wide plague epidemics. This was a dramatic feature of the second pandemic that haunted the contemporary populations of Europe for centuries and eluded the prying eyes of plague historians for much longer.

36Roosen and Curtis’ article that level such severe and unwarranted criticism of Biraben’s work and lists of plague epidemics could not have been published in a venue that required an ordinary empirically researched and footnoted study according to the historian’s craft. One of ADH’s (anonymous) reviewer’s of the manuscript of this article could inform that Biraben’s work had been submitted for the thèse d’État ès lettres and that doctorat d’État was obtained in June 1975: “It was perfectly documented and one can hope to find all this documentation in the collection [of manuscripts] that J.-N. Biraben donated to the National Archives.” (My translation from French.) This underscores the groundless and arbitrary nature of Roosen and Curtis’ criticism of Biraben’s work and the lists of the plague epidemics of the second plague pandemic.

Conclusion

37As all historians and scholars, Biraben is a captive of his historicity. Especially work in a large territorial and/or chronological perspective will eventually become partly outdated as new research by scholars standing on their shoulders and benefiting from a materially better platform and a wider view can expand on their knowledge and analyses. However, as the enduring value of Sticker’s work shows, outdated does not at all mean useless but remaining a valuable basis for the characteristic development of scholarly work, continuous improvement by incremental additions and critical attrition of false assumptions.

38Biraben carried out his great work according to a plan which was the basis of a pioneering and highly valuable work. It expanded the horizons and indepth knowledge of historical plague exactly because of its broad scope and long chronological lines of analysis. In this context, he produced lists with chronological and territorial registration and systematic organization of epidemics of the second pandemic which, by closer study, revealed important super-ordinate features. These lists remain a useful technical tool for work on plague epidemics in the wider territorial and chronological perspectives. Biraben should be praised for the great work of compiling and listing over 180 pages systematically all substantial or important plague epidemics, which at the time had been registered by scholars.

39The valid criticism is that Biraben did not provide an introduction or a long footnote presenting the basis of his lists. He should have provided scholars with a useful guide to identify the material basis of local registrations of particular interest and the easy opportunity to look for other outbreaks within the locality, district or region, also in small settlements.