The Christian origins for saying ‘Bless You’ when someone sneezes, date back 1400 years.
Eternity News reports it was a time when the first great pandemic was spreading rapidly through the Roman Empire.
The Bubonic plague lasted two centuries and is said to have killed up to 100 million Europeans, around half the continent’s population.
The exact numbers will never be known.
One of the victims was Pope Pelagius II.
He was replaced by Pope Gregory I who recognised the power of prayer and was a great advocate for praying.
At the height of the plague in the year 590, Gregory issued a papal decree that anyone who sneezed, be immediately blessed with the short phrase ‘God Bless You’.
Sneezing was the first symptom of being infected with the plague.
Although the reference to ‘God’ is often dropped nowadays, the blessing remains a reminder to pray for those who are unwell, as God commands in James 5:14-15
Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up.
Pope Gregory later organised the first large-scale mission to Britain to convert pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity.
