Abstract
A complete survey of historical earthquake investigation in Italy cannot be compressed into a few pages, since it would entail making a summary of widely different phases of research (performed by past scholars and by contemporary scientists and historians) and taking into account the widely different historical contexts, methodological assumptions and critical awareness of each of them. This short note only purposes to chart the main stages of the progress made by Italian historical seismology, from the late 17th century compilation by Bonito(1691) up to the latest parametric catalogue (Working Group CPTI, 1999).
Highlights
The tradition of earthquake studies in Italy is very long; its origins go back to a classical literary genre known as «paradoxography» or collection of marvels and curiosities (Pauly and Wissowa, 1949)
There is no lull in Italian seismicity but - with a few remarkable exceptions such as Mongitore (1743), on Sicilian earthquakes, and Soldani (1798) on Siennese ones – treatise writers seem more interested in debating whether earthquakes are caused by Giannozzo Manetti (1457) Colanello Pacca (1563)
By 1890 the Geodynamic Service network numbered more than 900 stations and observatories, whose output featured regularly in the Bulletin published from 1895 to 1913 by the Italian Seismological Society
Summary
The tradition of earthquake studies in Italy is very long; its origins go back to a classical literary genre known as «paradoxography» or collection of marvels and curiosities (Pauly and Wissowa, 1949). Antiquity-1456 Antiquity-1561 Antiquity-1570 Antiquity-1646 Antiquity-1688 electricity or not, than in piling up macroseismic data This trend was reversed again in the second half of the 19th century, thanks to the Europeanwide birth of national institutions for the study of meteorological and seismological phenomena (Camassi, 1991; Ferrari, 1992). In Italy, the creation of the earliest observational networks in the 1870s went hand in hand with the resumption of large scale collection of macroseismic data, first advocated by Alessandro Serpieri, Antonio Malvasia and Michele Stefano De Rossi. By 1890 the Geodynamic Service network numbered more than 900 stations and observatories, whose output (macroseismic questionnaires and reports) featured regularly (under the heading News of earthquakes observed in Italy) in the Bulletin published from 1895 to 1913 by the Italian Seismological Society (founded in 1895)
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