Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/565

Rh, are our only sources relating to the ash-eruption of 685, which continued 'mense martio per dies aliquot.' This is reckoned as the fifth in the list of recorded disturbances.

There now ensues a period of dire poverty in Italian chronicles, and we hear nothing further of Vesuvius for nearly three hundred years. Then are found meager and incidental notices of two eruptions, during the earlier of which lava flows reached the sea, a symptom of high intensity, only twice repeated in modern times. The unique authority for these events is Petrus Damianus, a prolific and most singular polemical writer of the early eleventh century, monk and cardinal, whom Balzani describes as having 'treated in prose and verse every possible subject, whether in literature, homilies, lives of saints, political or religious treatises. Some confusion exists regarding the dates of these eruptions. This arises from the fact that the years in which they occurred are unmentioned, although names are given instead of petty princes with whose deaths they synchronized, the coincidence being interpreted in a manner usual to the times. Later on we find an extract of Peter's account appearing in a postscript to Leo of Marsi's 'Chronicon' under date of 1049, where, unfortunately, the name of the reigning duke of Naples, John III., is omitted, thus leaving it uncertain which one of the numerous family of Capuan princes was intended. Recently the tangle has been unraveled by the Neapolitan historian Capasso, who is no doubt correct in assigning the events in question to the years 968 (in lieu of 982) and autumn of 999, respectively. By a fortunate chance, the original draft of Leo of Marsi's chronicle is still preserved at Munich, and, with its erasures and numerous additions, clearly shows what use was made by the author of his materials in preparing finished copy.

For a brief mention of the eighth recorded eruption we are indebted to a wandering monk, Rodulphus Glaber, of whom little is known except that he lived at various monasteries, including those of Bèze and Cluny, after having traveled extensively in Italy. His history, published 1047, is not without value for contemporary events, and is regarded as reliable in the main, hence no reason appears for doubting his account of a violent eruption in 1007. By some authors the passage has been understood to read seven years before instead of after the millenium, hence the earlier date is often incorrectly given in catalogues of eruptions. Mabillon recalls that the year 1006 was