Liber Pontificalis describes an earthquake, or possibly a series of earthquakes,
occurring during what appears to be the sixteenth year of the
reign of
Pope Paschal II, corresponding
to 13 August 1114 – 12 August 1115 CE.
The *Liber* reports that
an earthquake destroyed all the town
walls and houses at
Mamistra, and most of the
inhabitants were caught up in the disaster
. It adds that a
knight
who was trying to flee to Antioch was swallowed up by
the earth together with his horse when a fissure suddenly
appeared
, so that
he was buried alive
. Another fissure
is said to have opened
on that same occasion
, in which
an ox was caught in another crack in the earth
and
sank into the ground up to its horns
.
Guidoboni and Comastri (2005)
attribute the destruction at
Mamistra to the earthquake of
13 November 1114 CE, which falls within the sixteenth year of
Pope Paschal II. However, they
interpret the story of the knight fleeing to Antioch as referring
to a fissure that opened at Antioch, linking this to a separate
earthquake that they date to 29 November 1115 CE—an event which
Ambraseys (2009) instead dates
to 29 November 1114 CE.
It should be noted, however, that the *Liber Pontificalis* states
the knight was
fleeing to Antioch, not that he was
in Antioch. The location where the fissure swallowed him remains
unspecified and may have been somewhere between
Mamistra and Antioch.