Black Death

Plague reaches Constantinople through Black Sea shipping

The Byzantine emperor who wrote an account of the epidemic also lost his own son to it — and the famous fleeing-refugee story is giving way to records about the grain trade.

1347: the crossing of the Black Sea

During 1347 plague crossed the Black Sea through renewed maritime commerce and produced an epidemic in Constantinople. Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos wrote an account of the outbreak; his son Andronikos died during it.

The listing's phrase about a '1331 Black Death plague in Theodosia' has no support — the relevant Black Sea epidemic and conflict belong to 1346–1347.

Embargoes, then grain ships

Older reconstructions place the city's infection in early May 1347 and attribute it to galleys from Kaffa. Hannah Barker's 2021 study of administrative and commercial records instead dates the crossing to autumn 1347 and emphasizes renewed grain shipments after wartime trade embargoes were lifted.

On that reading, a 1346 embargo may have delayed plague's crossing of the Black Sea for more than a year — and the nationality and itinerary of the ships that first infected the capital cannot be established securely.

One node, not a straight line

The infected capital became one node in a wider chain of maritime outbreaks around the eastern Mediterranean; the surviving evidence does not support a single simple route from Kaffa to every later port. Plague moved along overlapping Genoese, Venetian, Byzantine and Mamluk networks.

The Kaffa corpse-catapult narrative deserves the same caution: it comes from a writer who was in Piacenza, hundreds of kilometres away, and is not settled eyewitness fact.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 3 audit passes, 1 issue open Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~1347.

What the sources leave uncertain

Older reconstructions place the city's infection in early May 1347 and attribute it to galleys from Kaffa.
Hannah Barker's 2021 study of contemporary administrative and commercial records instead dates the crossing to autumn 1347 and emphasizes renewed grain shipments after trade embargoes were lifted.
The nationality and precise itinerary of the ship or ships that first infected Constantinople cannot be established securely.
The event's listed phrase "1331 Black Death plague in Theodosia" has no support: the relevant Black Sea epidemic and conflict belong to 1346–1347.