Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
1 Introduction
The past seismicity of the Ionian Islands has attracted seismologists' attention since
many years; some papers were published (e.g. Makropoulos and Kouskouna, 1994;
Albini et al., 1994) and, apart from the parametric catalogues, the modern studies
on the seismicity of Greece commonly deserve a particular attention to this area
(e.g. Spiropoulos, 1997). Notwithstanding this favorable situation, gaps and doubts
still concern both the date and the distribution of effects of several damaging earth-
quakes occurred before the 20th century. This paper will try and use the relatively
small time-span between 1658 and 1664 as a case history to state the need for further
studies on the seismicity of the Ionian Islands.
After an overview of the geopolitical scenario of the Ionian Islands under the
domination of the Republic of Venice, the documents, including information on
earthquakes and who wrote on them, are presented, to help determine if and how
much they are reliable and complete with respect to the investigated time-window.
These investigations concerned both the discovery of some new sources and the
thorough and systematic research carried out in the already known sets of doc-
umentary sources. The results are presented according to three main aspects: (i)
interpretation of the earthquake records by putting them in a coherent time-space
context; (ii) correction of errors in the dates of the earthquakes; (iii) description of
the effects caused by the damaging earthquakes in this time-window.
The conclusion the authors would especially stress is that there are still many un-
detected documents to be found in European archives and libraries or misinterpreted
ones, to cast light on. It is not time yet to disregard the investigation of historical
documents and the intepretation of the earthquake records they contain: the current
knowledge of the seismicity of the Ionian Islands and other areas could be signifi-
cantly improved by the memory of the past earthquakes, waiting to be rediscovered.
2 The Ionian Islands and Their Background
in Mid 17th Century
In mid seventeenth century, the rule of the Republic of Venice towards East extended
to some coastal areas of Dalmatia and Albania, and to the three Ionian Islands
of Kerkyra (
Corfu
in the Italian documents), Kefallinia (
Cefalonia
or
Ceffalonia
)
and Zakynthos (
Zante
) (Fig. 1). To gain possession of the island of Lefkas (
Santa
Maura
), at that time under Ottoman rule, the Venetians had to wait until 1684. In the
17th century, the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire (Fig. 1) entered into a
continuous conflict, which became intense during the long-lasting war (1645-1669)
for the island of Crete (
Candia
).
In the time-window this paper considers, the Republic of Venice is suffering from
a financial, administrative and military crisis and is paying for the heavy toll taken
by a war that ended in the loss of the Venetian hegemony on Crete. The strategical
position of the Ionian Islands with respect to the actual war theater made them a
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