Bio-warfare In Middle-earth

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Where did the Enlightenment/Renaissance debate come from?

Yes, could some more be done to link this back to Professor Tolkien's work and the Great Plague of the Third Age? Given that much of Professor Tolkien's writing harks back to an early medieval and somewhat "unRomanised" Germanic culture (or at least an idealisation of it) it seems to me that that would be the era to focus on.

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

However, I still believe that the plagues could have been a ripple of the Dark Lords' mood mirrored in nature. Either way, they were not a conscious creation, but just a use of something already present. I might only disagree with you on whether the use of conscious or not, but that's just a matter of personal preference.

This is a good point which could be compared to the scene in Book 4 of The Lord of the Rings in which the brooding of Sauron appears to influence the weather:
"The skirts of the storm were lifting, ragged and wet, and the main battle had passed to spread its great wings over the Emyn Muil; upon which the dark thought of Sauron brooded for a while. Thence it turned, smiting the Vale of Anduin with hail and lightning, and casting its shadow upon Minas Tirith with threat of war. Then, lowering in the mountains, and gathering its great spires, it rolled on slowly over Gondor and the skirts of Rohan, until far away the Riders on the plain saw its black towers moving behind the sun, as they rode into the West."
This also refers back to your "pathetic fallacy" concept very neatly
That being said I could imagine that while Sauron may not have been the originator of the plague, he may have, again, "encouraged" it to be transmitted westwards. There's something particularly horrifying about the image of an enemy who hated the Dúnedain so much that he encouraged mass migrations, diseases and so on in an effort to destroy them over three thousand years and more.