Abstract
Integrating palaeoclimatological proxies and historical records, which is necessary to achieve a more complete understanding of climate impacts on past societies, is a challenging task, often leading to unsatisfactory and even contradictory conclusions. This has until recently been the case for Italy, the heart of the Roman Empire, during the transition between Antiquity and the Middle Ages. In this paper, we present new high-resolution speleothem data from the Apuan Alps (Central Italy). The data document a period of very wet conditions in the sixth c. AD, probably related to synoptic atmospheric conditions similar to a negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation. For this century, there also exist a significant number of historical records of extreme hydroclimatic events, previously discarded as anecdotal. We show that this varied evidence reflects the increased frequency of floods and extreme rainfall events in Central and Northern Italy at the time. Moreover, we also show that these unusual hydroclimatic conditions overlapped with the increased presence of “water miracles” in Italian hagiographical accounts and social imagination. The miracles, performed by local Church leaders, strengthened the already growing authority of holy bishops and monks in Italian society during the crucial centuries that followed the “Fall of the Roman Empire”. Thus, the combination of natural and historical data allows us to show the degree to which the impact of climate variability on historical societies is determined not by the nature of the climatic phenomena per se, but by the culture and the structure of the society that experienced it.
Highlights
Integrating palaeoclimatological proxies and historical records, which is necessary to achieve a more complete understanding of climate impacts on past societies, is a challenging task, often leading to unsatisfactory and even contradictory conclusions
One aim of the Dialogues was to propagate the cult of saints, so it is no surprise that the river listens to a holy bishop
Others tended to interpret the increasing frequency of floods to be a result of the progressive abandonment of the hydraulic systems of the Roman Empire, connected to the “barbarian invasions”—whereas at the same time, it may well be that we are dealing with a hagiographic topos that should not be used as an independent basis for any palaeoclimatic reconstructions
Summary
Frediano (Latin: Frigdianus) was a bishop of the Italian town of Lucca in the sixth century AD (Central Italy, Fig. 1). The registration, nature and timing of these climatic changes, as well as their impact on the environment and society, are distressingly scarce for the very centre of the old Roman world: Italy We address this problem by providing a high-resolution oxygen isotope record with decadal resolution, i.e. a well-accepted paleohydrological indicator, for almost the entire first millennium AD (up to 900 AD), from a stalagmite from Renella cave in the Apuan Alps, not far from the city of Lucca (Fig. 1). AD, and in particular the numerous miracle accounts of the Dialogues, in the context of our palaeoclimatological study and the other published proxy data, we show how an increase in scientific knowledge can lead to a better understanding of the historical data We demonstrate how this understanding reveals the dynamic interactions between climate, environment and society, which leads us to propose an approach to climate change studies that focuses on hybrid natural-cultural networks rather than unidirectional “deterministic” impacts
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