Description of Anonymous of Douai from Ambraseys and Karcz (1992)
The Anonymous of Douai (1714),
most probably a Franciscan friar, left
France in October 1545. The copy of
his narrative made in 1714 is
incomplete and starts in the middle of
a phrase describing the Holy
Sepulchre in Jerusalem about which
he does not mention any earthquake
damage. From Jerusalem he proceeds
to Bethlehem, Ramla and he is in Jaffa
on 7 June 1546, from where he sails off
to Cyprus and Venice where he
arrives on 29 August. Therefore, he
should have arrived in the Holy Land,
a few months after the earthquake
and probably he should have
experienced the aftershock of 13 May
1546. However, nowhere in the
extant part of his narrative do we find
any explicit mention of the effects of
the 1546 earthquake. His truncated
account contains nothing about the
effects of the earthquake in
Jerusalem. He travels to the Jordan
river and the Dead Sea, and it is after
leaving the monastery of St Joachim
(in Wadi Kelt) that he describes
(fol.14.r) a site called ’Donny',
previously a natural arch cut through
rock forming a bridge, destroyed by
earthquakes. From there he proceeds
to the site of the “trois montagnes”,
dangerous on account of the rocks
that earthquakes cause to roll down
from the summit and arrives in
Jericho which he finds in ruins.
