Bio-warfare In Middle-earth

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Leaf

Maybe that's what "happend" in this case as well. I think there's the possibility that those plagues might have been natural phenomena that were wrongly associated with Morgoth/Sauron by the people of the West. All we get is their (reasonably biased) point of view which turned into lore and, at some point, was written down by gondorian scribes as history. It's entirely reasonable to suspect that, due to the existing threat and dire circumstances, all sorts of disastrous events were mystified and (re)interpreted as of evil and unnatural origin.

There's, of course, no way of proving that this might be the case, but I think that this thought is interesting nonetheless.

Yes definitely an interesting way of looking at it. While Morgoth is the most overtly "Satanic" character, in Letter 175 Professor Tolkien refers to Sauron (indirectly) as "the Devil" and it seems quite possible to imagine him quite naturally being blamed for all sorts of misfortunes throughout the Third Age which would be seen as the Middle-earth equivalent of the Devil's work (although given that all evil derives from Morgoth, I suppose Morgoth is the one who's ultimately to blame.)

It's also noteworthy that as we know, in Gondor Sauron was referred to as "Nameless" and one "who we do not name". The latter in particular seems to suggest a degree of superstition, does it not? But I'm unsure if this is because the name is seen as unlucky or if it's because Sauron was regarded in the culture of Gondor to be an abomination unworthy of even the recognition of a name. It's worth noting that Denethor regarded Sauron as "another potentate" like himself (Letter 183) which, if that was consistent with the views of other Men of Gondor, suggests a more political motive of disparagement: that Mordor was the "Nameless Land" because in their view it was not a legitimate nation and Sauron was "Nameless" because he was not a legitimate person (if that makes sense).

So the question might be: were the Men of Gondor superstitious? Would they see a natural plague as a deliberately instrumented weapon of the Enemy?