"For the modern scholar, Gómez's treatise offers a similarly rich array of information and insights. It provides an eyewitness account of a major environmental disaster affecting one of the most developed urban landscapes in Europe and shows how contemporaries analyzed the causes and consequences of natural disasters. It also offers a rich and varied example of how contemporary scholars could mobilize their written sources; exercise skills in reading and historical interpretation honed by their studies in law, medicine, and the classics;"
"This text and translation of Gómez's account-alongside a few other sources on the 1530 flood-is an important witness to how people in the medieval and early modern worlds understood catastrophe. It is also revealing for what it shows about historical knowledge: Gómez lists 22 earlier floods in Rome, reaching back to antiquity. Readers interested in Rome's history, or in environmental history more broadly, will find it rewarding."
In 1530 the River Tiber burst its banks and produced a major flood in Rome. A contemporary account from the following year records the event and situates it among twenty-two earlier Roman floods reaching back to antiquity. The account provides an eyewitness description of the disaster in a highly developed urban landscape and analyzes causes and consequences. Learned practitioners mobilized written sources and applied skills from law, medicine, and classical studies to interpret the past, critique the present, and imagine future responses. The material is valuable for studies of Rome and environmental history.
Read at Medievalists.net
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