<P> (Penguin: Pliny the Elder, Natural History: A Selection, p. 254 paragraph 22, "Superstitions") </P> <P> Pliny died in 79 CE trying to save people from the eruption of Vesuvius . Therefore this custom was a mystery 2000 years ago give or take . Since its origin was a mystery to him at the time, the Romans may perhaps, for example, have got it from the Greeks . Therefore it started as a pagan blessing, not a Christian one, and in its origins had nothing to do with plagues or popes . </P> <P> National Geographic reports that during the plague of AD 590, "Pope Gregory I ordered unceasing prayer for divine intercession . Part of his command was that anyone sneezing be blessed immediately (" God bless you "), since sneezing was often the first sign that someone was falling ill with the plague ." By AD 750, it became customary to say "God bless you" as a response to one sneezing . </P> <P> The practice of blessing someone who sneezes dates as far back as at least AD 77, although it is far older than most specific explanations can account for . Some have offered an explanation suggesting that people once held the folk belief that a person's soul could be thrown from their body when they sneezed, that sneezing otherwise opened the body to invasion by the Devil or evil spirits, or that sneezing was the body's effort to force out an invading evil presence . In these cases, "God bless you" or "bless you" is used as a sort of shield against evil . The Irish Folk story "Master and Man" by Thomas Crofton Croker, collected by William Butler Yeats, describes this variation . Moreover, in the past some people may have thought that the heart stops beating during a sneeze, and that the phrase "God bless you" encourages the heart to continue beating . </P>

Where did saying god bless you after a sneeze come from
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