France, Germany, Italy, and various other countries of Europe,--in fact, the whole inhabited globe,--suffered awfully from pestilence in the years of our Lord 565–66, 583, 587, 589–90–91, 596 to 610: in the course of 580, Antioch was again shaken by a severe earthquake. There prevailed during this period, in the year 589, in Spain, writes St. Gregory, bishop of Tours, a very singular pestilence, the principal symptoms of which were pimples, or pustules, with buboes in the groins: such great havoc did it make, that the houses were as so many tombs, and the town as one vast cemetery: it was supposed that this disease was brought from Marseilles in a vessel, as it had raged there the year previously. St. Gregory, in his ‘History of the Franks,’ also gives these particulars of this pestilential period: “In the fifth year of the reign of king Childebert (A.D. 580), great floods, tempests, earthquakes, hail, and several prodigies, were succeeded by a dreadful plague; for almost every district of France was occupied by a dysentery, in which the patients were affected with violent vomitings, fever, headache, and excruciating pains in the loins: what they discharged from their mouths was green or yellowish.” This epidemic was particularly fatal to infants and children: “Parvulos adolescentes arripuit letoque subegit: perdidimus dulces et charos nobis infantulos,” &c. King Childebert recovered with difficulty, but he lost his two sons. Austrigilda, queen of Orleans, sunk under the disease; she retained to the last the ferocious and vindictive spirit of the times, having exacted a promise from the king Gunthran that her two physicians should be put to death if they did not save her; soon after she expired, both of them were stabbed by the king’s order. The Count d’Angoulême also died of the pestilence; the corpse appeared black and charred, as if it had been laid over coals of fire. Paulus Diaconus describes the Ligurian pestilence which raged during this period, A.D. 566, in the time of Narses: “Cœperunt nasci inguinibus hominum vel in aliis delicatioribus locis glandulæ in modum nucis seu dactyli, quas mox sequebatur febrium intolerabilis æstus, ita in triduo homo extingueretur: sin vero aliquis triduum transegisset, habebat spem vivendi. Erat autem ubique luctus, ubique lacrymæ,” &c. He concludes with the following passages: “Nulla vox in rure, nullus pastorum sibilus, nullæ insidiæ bestiarum in pecudibus, nulla damna in dominos volucribus. Sata transgressa metendi tempus, intacta expectabant messorem: vinea amissis foliis, radiantibus uvis, illæsa manebat. Nulla erant vestigia commeantium; nullus cernebatur percussor, et tamen visum oculorum superabant cadavera mortuorum. Pastoralia loca versa fuerunt in sepulturam hominum, et habitacula humana facta fuerunt confugia bestiarum.”