ALBERT

Notes: Abstract The known documentary climatic evidence from six European countries - Switzerland, Germany, the Czech Republic, ancient Hungary, Italy and Spain - is presented and classified in this article and then further analyzed in subsequent papers included in this volume. The sixteenth century witnessed an increase in the number and variety of sources in Switzerland, Germany and the Czech Republic as well as in the western and northern parts of ancient Hungary (present Slovakia). In northern Italy, the relevant sources are more abundant and widespread than in central Europe, but they have hardly been explored. Town chronicles written by members of the literate elite comprise the basic type of evidence in central Europe (including northern Italy and Hungary). This kind of source reports exceptional climatic events (e.g. anomalies and natural disasters) along with their impact on the environment and on society. Documentary data are the only evidence known to exist for reconstructing time series of natural disasters prior to the twentieth century. In order to document the extreme character of an event, chroniclers frequently referred to features in the cryosphere, biosphere or hydrosphere that were known to be more accurate yardsticks of temperature and precipitation patterns than subjective impressions. When records of such events are compiled with the description of some of the known effects, the results can be transformed into a severity index. Whereas chroniclers usually focused upon extreme events, long, continuous and seemingly homogeneous series of different kinds of proxy data are drawn from administrative records. Most of them are connected to the timing of certain kinds of agricultural work (hay-making, beginning of grain harvest or vintage) or to the amount and quality of agricultural production (per hectare yield of vineyards, sugar content of wine, etc.). In most cases the timing of these works was found to be directly related to temperature patterns over the preceding months and weeks. All the Iberian peninsula towns, which had an institutionalized municipal authority, have preserved documents generated from the late Middle Ages. These records frequently contain references to floods and meteorological anomalies such as droughts and long wet spells. They also include mention of the system of rogations, those religious rites performed in a standardized way within the Spanish world with a view to putting an end to an alleged meteorological stress. The data for Switzerland, Hungary and Spain as well as much of the data for Germany are stored in the EURO-CLIMHIST database set up at the Institute of History at the University of Bern. At present, EURO-CLIMHIST comprises some 600,000 data for the period from AD 750 to the beginning of the period of instrumental networks. About 120,000 records for Germany are currently stored in a data bank called HISKLID located at the Department of Geography of the University of Würzburg. The database for the Czech Republic includes records for the time-span AD 975-1900 and is housed with the Department of Geography of Masaryk University in Brno. Data on Italy were collected with different purposes and are stored in two data banks, the CNR-ICTIMA (climatic data and natural disasters) and the SGA (extreme events).

Notes: Abstract The severity and frequency of sixteenth-century floods of the Rhine, the Main, the middle and upper Elbe with its tributaries, rivers of northern and central Italy, the Garonne and rivers in Catalonia and Andalusia are analyzed using documentary evidence. The basic topographical and hydrological characteristics of the rivers investigated as well as the synoptic causes of their flooding during the instrumental period are presented. Different examples of modifications of the run-off process due to anthropogenic activity are discussed. Prevalence in flood occurrence during the second half of the sixteenth century in comparison to the first half is typical for central European and Andalusian rivers (mainly in the 1560s and 1590s) and agrees with the evolution of precipitation patterns. On the other hand, Italian and Catalonian rivers, in part, had a higher occurrence of floods during the first half of the century. Changes in the flooding seasons in both halves of the century are not unambiguous. Results of an analysis on a broader European scale show floods to be a random natural phenomena with limited areal extent defined by the spatial influence of forcing meteorological factors (continuous heavy rains, sudden melting of thick snow cover, etc.). Despite some limitations of documentary evidence, series of reconstructed historical floods are valuable sources of proxy data which can be utilized for the study of the flooding fluctuations in the pre-instrumental period.

Notes: Abstract By conducting a historical review of this large seismic event in the Mediterranean, it has been possible to identify both the epicentral area and the area in which its effects were principally felt. Ever since the nineteenth century, the seismological tradition has offered a variety of partial interpretations of the earthquake, depending on whether the main sources used were Arabic, Greek or Latin texts. Our systematic research has involved the analysis not only of Arab, Byzantine and Italian chronicle sources, but also and in particular of a large number of never previously used official and public authority documents, preserved in Venice in the State Archive, in the Marciana National Library and in the Library of the Museo Civico Correr. As a result, it has been possible to establish not only chronological parameters for the earthquake (they were previously uncertain) but also its overall effects (epicentral area in Crete, Imax XI MCS). Sources containing information in 41 affected localities and areas were identified. The earthquake also gave rise to a large tsunami, which scholars have seen as having certain interesting elements in common with that of 21 July 365, whose epicentre was also in Crete. As regards methodology, this research made it clear that knowledge of large historical earthquakes in the Mediterranean is dependent upon developing specialised research and going beyond the territorial limits of current national catalogues.