First Dionysius flood
The two Dionysius floods were two severe storm surges in the North Sea that caused severe damage between Flanders and the Weser on October 9, 1374 and October 8 to 10, 1375 .
The storm surges are named after Saint Dionysius of Paris , whose feast day is October 9th. In Flanders, around seventeen villages and one monastery were destroyed in 1374 and 1375. According to excerpts from the chronicle of the 16th century, there were devastating dike breaches in East Friesland in 1374 and the following years. The Leybucht reached after the flood with about 13,000 hectares of its greatest extent and the village Westeel had to be abandoned. As a result, the flood is said to have reached the city north , where the waves reached the walls of the Dominican monastery . From then on, the city had access to the North Sea and was given a port. The water penetrated deep into the interior of the country via the now silted up bays of Sielmönken and Campen . On the Rysumer Nacken the parishes Drewert and Walsum as well as the village Ham were destroyed in the late 14th century.
The historian Ubbo Emmius reports on the effects in the 1590s:
“On October 9th, 1373 (!) There was a great flood, the likes of which had not been in living memory, which stretched over the entire Frisian coast and caused great misfortune for the inhabitants. Because it covered the handsome village of Westeel, located in a fertile area almost 2000 paces to the south from the north and facing east towards the rising of the sun with such an amount of water that all the buildings with the church were torn down and destroyed, even a part of the ground was swallowed up is and people and animals disappeared. "
Individual evidence
- ^ MK Elisabeth Gottschalk: Stormvloeden en rivieroverstromingen in Nederland. Vol. 1, 1977