A Glimpse into the Seismicity of the Ionian Islands Between 1658 and 1664 - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 39

A Glimpse into the Seismicity of the Ionian
Islands Between 1658 and 1664
P. Albini and J. Vogt
Abstract Mostly based on traditional catalogues, without further research, several
modern parametric catalogues are nevertheless straightforward, without question
marks, and easily misleading (chronology, epicentre, epicentral intensity, not to
speak of magnitude). The example of an Ionian time-window (1658-1664), with
several major events, shows that the historical seismicity of the Ionian Islands, often
thought to be well-known, actually needs a more or less drastic revision. A wealth
of sources was collected, mostly from the Archives of the Republic of Venice, then
ruling the main three islands of the Ionian Archipelago; it was ascertained that there
are no important chronological gaps in the surviving documentation.
Similarly outstanding, and in fact at the basis of a more balanced and pre-
cise view of one of the events in this time-window, are the souvenirs of Christoff
von Degenfeld, a German nobleman at the service of the Republic of Venice. His
manuscript, discovered at the library of Karlsruhe (Germany) in 1992, has been
consulted again in the original, on the occasion of the preparation of this paper.
Some question marks remain on the distributions of macroseismic effects of the
earthquakes within this time-window, and this is due to the lack of information con-
cerning the mainland. For this reason this study does not propose epicentres and,
of course, magnitudes. An unusually long documentary appendix is provided, with
the hope that it might contribute in discouraging authors of parametric earthquake
catalogues from hasty exploitation and interpretation of often unreliable current cat-
alogues.
Foreword The idea of writing this paper goes back to 1992 (Vogt and Albini, 1996)
and an advanced draft was ready since 1997; an unfortunate series of events ham-
pered its publication. This revised and updated version maintains some of the parts
originally written by Jean Vogt, who discovered the von Degenfeld's manuscript,
one out of his many serendipitous and little known findings.