In the afternoon of January 25th, 1348, a serious earthquake occurred. The epicentral area was believed to be located in the Austrian town Villach and parts of the Dobratsch mountain slid into the valley. Estimates of the number of people killed ranged from 5,000 to 10,000. This might be the information on this earthquake, if you summarise the numerous but heterogenic reports on that earthquake published since the event. The various studies on that earthquake have been written from different viewpoints: the seismological, historical, and philosophical aspect, the aspect of a natural catastrophe, etc.

Fig. 1 shows the assessment of its parameters according to five studies selected among those published between 1940 and 1985.

Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 show two macroseismic maps of the 1348 event as emerging respectively from Ambraseys (1976) and Gentile et al. (1985). The fact that these two maps differ even in the near-field area, the differences in epicentral intensity, magnitude and epicentre location (Fig. 1) suggested the necessity of a re-consideration of this earthquake from the point of view of historical investigation. So the 1348 earthquake had been extensively studied as a case history (Hammerl, 1992) to process the historical source material in the best possible manner employing the science of history, its auxiliary sciences and subsidiary branches, as well as by means of special, interdisciplinary methods.

A complete documentation of the sources and a precise description of the procedure should make this study transparent for any subsequent studies, which may be geared to other specific tasks, such as questions on seismicity posed by engineers (building of large technical constructions, etc.).