In Troubled Times, in a Divided Country: The 1789 Valtiberina Earthquake - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 248

Ta b l e 3 (Continued)

Locality Class In previous studies? Latit Long I MCS (this study)

43 . 777 11 . 249

Firenze Y IV

. .

Cortona Y 43 274 11 986 IV

Y: y e s
N: no
SS: small settlement ( 30 buildings)

MS: multiple settlement: (buildings scattered over an expanse of land)
SB: solitary building (church, monastery, castle, villa, farm etc.)
D: generic damage

<

those recently constructed]: a statement which gives too much credit to the moving
stories circulated by 1789 newspapers.
As to the reasons for telling this story: there is none really, apart from the wish
to keep a record of an intricate investigation that would else have remained hidden
behind a catalogue string of earthquake parameters. I hope the late Jean Vogt would
agree that sometimes “ce n'est pas l'histoire des succes, c'est l'histoire des epreuves
qui merite d'etre racontee” 1 ; I just tried to do that.

Acknowledgments This work was partially funded by the Italian Dipartimento della Protezione
Civile in the frame of the 2004-2006 Agreement with the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vul-
canologia (INGV). Alba Ghelli of the Biblioteca Comunale di Citta di Castello discovered some
forgotten archive records; Fernando Rodriguez de la Torre, Carlos H. Caracciolo and Romano
Camassi studied Spanish and Italian gazettes; Monika Gisler and Christa Hammerl reviewed a
draft of this paper and gave helpful suggestions. Julien Frechet carefully edited the text. The faults
are the author's.

References

Ambraseys NN, Melville CP (1982) A history of Persian earthquakes. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge: 219pp.
ASCC [Archivio storico comunale, Citta di Castello](1790) Manoscritto contenente indicazioni di
abitazioni e chiese di Citta di Castello danneggiate dal terremoto del 1789. Relazioni dei danni
a cura di tre architetti (1790, April 29): folios not numbered.
ASCS [Archivio storico comunale, Sansepolcro] (1789-1791) Terremoti al tempo di M.G. Pietro
Mascalchi, Carteggio ed atti del cancelliere comunitativo, Series VII, No. 61: folios not num-
bered.
ASRM [Archivio di Stato, Rome] (1789-1795) Terremoto di Citta di Castello, Sacra Con-
gregazione del Buon Governo, Series XI, No. 306: folios not numbered.
Augusti M (1779) Osservazioni, memorie, e riflessioni su li terremoti sentiti in Bologna nel mese
di Giugno 1779. Firenze: 52pp.
Augusti M (1780) Dei terremoti di Bologna, opuscoli di D. Michele Augusti monaco olivetano.
Bologna: 181pp.
Augusti M (1785) Lettera [ ... ] sopra i terremoti ed aeromoti di Camerino e Serravalle. Antologia
Romana, 11: 393-399; 401-407.

1

Adapted from Jules Verne's Michel Strogoff