A Glimpse into the Seismicity of the Ionian Islands Between 1658 and 1664 - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 47

to the effects of this earthquake sequence, beginning with: “It is a pity that such a
beautiful island is so subjected to earthquakes, which I fully experienced myself in a
most dreadful way” (fol. 30). Albini et al. (1995) published an English translation of
this part and shortly commented it. In this paper, its content is discussed in Section 4,
and the whole account left by von Degenfeld is proposed in the original 17th century
German language, together with a revised English translation in the Documentary
Appendix .
On board the English vessel Phoenix , Christoff lands in Kefallinia on 2 June
1662. He introduces the island, mentioning the small town of Argostolion, located
not far from the harbour, and subject to earthquakes in the same way as Zakynthos.
He mentions also the Fortress (of Agios Georgios, see Section 3.1 and Fig. 1) where
the Venetian Provveditore is living (fol. 34). Contrary to the precision in describing
the 1662 earthquake effects in Zakynthos, in this case Christoff explicitely writes
that he learnt from hearsay that in 1661 an earthquake damaged Kefallinia (fol. 34).
This information is discussed below in Section 4.3. For the sake of completeness, at
the same point (foll. 34-35) Christoff mentions the dreadful experience of a violent
storm in Kefallinia on 12 June 1662. It caused him and a not otherwise known person
named “Anglant” to save themselves from a flash flood by leaping out through a
window. In the middle of this “disaster”, “also an earthquake occurred”. Christoff's
statement did not find any confirmation in any other sources, and will not be further
discussed.
4 The Earthquakes and Their Effects
The parametric catalogues listing earthquakes in this area and in the selected time-
window are Shebalin et al. (1974) and Papazachos and Papazachou (1989, 1997
and 2003). Their sources of information are some modern studies, but mostly some
seismological compilations of the second half of the 19th century. All these sources
are referenced in the sub-sections devoted to each earthquake and in the figures
illustrating the relationships among them (Figs. 3, 5, 8).
What is known after the investigation of 1658-1664 time-window for each earth-
quake is presented by means of: (i) a scheme of the relationships among the sources
(Figs. 3, 5, 8), (ii) a table with a summary of the documents that are the closest
in time to the earthquake (Tables 1-4), (iii) a map showing the places affected
(Figs. 4, 6, 7, 9), and (iv) further details on the context of both the research and
the records used.
Geographical names deserved a particular care in that they needed to be homo-
geneous and according to the modern standards. The adopted modern names and
their georeferentiation are taken from GEOnet Names Server (GNS) (NGA, 2007).
Whenever a corresponding name in Italian is used in the documents supplied in the
Documentary Appendix , it has been given at its first appearance in the text of this
paper, immediately after the modern one, and between parentheses. Modern names