“Terrae motus factus est”: earthquakes in Switzerland before A.D. 1000. A critical approach

We focus on Swiss earthquakes in antiquity and the early medieval period before A.D. 1000. We have information on less than half a dozen earthquakes within this era, since written records for the first half of the first millennium A.D. are minimal, and there is little hope of finding more written evidence for earthquakes. Furthermore, interpreting the documents at hand is somewhat complex. For the 6th century Gregory of Tours in Historia Francorum gives hints of a rockslide near the castle Tauredunum (Le Grammont) in the Swiss canton Valais, an event that has been considered in the literature as caused by an earthquake. The Carolingian period (ca. 750–950) included the rise of some very important cultural centers in various parts of today’s Switzerland. For instance, the ecclesiastical culture in St. Gallen generated a remarkable number of written records, which survived for our use in a unique manner. From the 9th and 10th centuries, we have evidence for earthquakes in the years 849, 867, 902, and 944. However, information on them remains so scarce that their location and intensity are generally difficult to assess. Nevertheless, the finding of a new document - a memoir written by the abbot of Reichenau - offers some insight into the A.D. 849 event and its reportedly aftershocks. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007