A Glimpse into the Seismicity of the Ionian Islands Between 1658 and 1664 - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 43

feature was the Fortress, built in the 16th century, when the Venetians took hold
of the place.
To get a comprehensive scenario of the life in the Ionian Islands in the period of
interest, the investigation was oriented towards some specific documentary series,
all belonging to the documentation pertaining to the Senate of the Republic of
Venice:
a. Dispacci, Rettori , gathering the dispatches written to the Senate in Venice by the
Provveditori of Kerkyra, Kefallinia and Zakynthos;
b. Provveditori da Terra e da Mar , collecting the dispatches written to the Senate in
Venice by the Provveditore Generale alle Isole del Levante , residing in the town
of Kerkyra.
The two series complement each other, the first being made up by the documents
produced by the Provveditori appointed in each Ionian Island, and the second series
proposing a general view of this eastern portion of the Venetian territory, described
both through the personal experience of the Provveditore Generale alle Isole del
Levante and the locally produced documentation.
A systematic investigation was carried out, to check upon the documentary versus
the seismological coverage for the years 1658-1664. The number of documents has
been plotted versus 6-month periods between July 1658 and June 1664 for both
documentary series (Fig. 2a,b). The comparison is permitted by the coincidence of
the places of origin of the documents.
In Fig. 2a are shown the documents originated from the Provveditori in Kerkyra,
Kefallinia and Zakynthos. In Fig. 2b, the dispatches written by the Provveditore
Generale alle Tre Isole del Levante are shown according to their places of ori-
gin, which are in fact the same three islands from where the documents in Fig.2a
originated.
The gaps that could affect our knowledge of the investigated time-window can be
seen in Fig.2a: (i) from January 1661 to December 1662 for the island of Kefallinia,
period for which two dispatches only are available; (ii) from January to June 1662
for the three islands. The documents made available by the Provveditore Generale
alle Isole del Levante (Fig.2b) partially fill in these gaps.
If one looks for the actual reasons of these gaps, one can start listing the common
loss of documents that marks the 17th century correspondence between the periph-
eral and central authorities, and consequently their archives. The Ionian Islands local
archives suffered from subsequent losses and might only in a few (lucky) cases sup-
plement with items not found at the State Archive of Venice. The systematic reading
and investigation of the documentation for this period make possible to guess that
a further, specific reason to account for these gaps could be the usual delay in the
arrival of the newly appointed Provveditore from Venice (see below the case of the
Provveditore of Zakynthos, in the section devoted to the 1662 earthquake).
For the sake of completeness, information was also searched for in files and reg-
isters of Decreti (Resolutions) by the Senate. Unluckily, these documents (ASVe,