Dear Authors,
thank you for the very interesting and useful work you submitted. The authors present their result regarding a rather unique source that provides an exceptionally detailed inside view to a significant drought episode and the societal (institutional) responses of an urban community. However, the paper in its present form needs further revision. In agreement with the referees’ comments, I suggest a number of changes and a slight transformation of the paper that makes it suitable to be published in the present journal.
First of all, I kindly ask you to follow the structural requirements of the journal, with clearly differentiating an “Introduction” chapter (this you already have), “Sources, methodology” chapter (or separate two chapters; it is up to you), “Results” chapter, a “Discussion” chapter and a “Conclusions” chapter (this last one you already have). Currently, the information provided in your main chapters are a mixture of Results, Source (Methodology) and Discussion chapters. Please, check other papers of the journal (e.g. papers in the current special issue provide you adequate guidelines). This also means that, for example, in the “Discussion” chapter you could extend your analysis, for example, with comparisons in space (in Span, Mediterranean or elsewhere) and time (e.g. same period in other places, or with totally different historical periods), with comparing this drought period and societal response to those of other periods, highlight particular years of importance etc. Furthermore, for example, the modern implications (conclusions and comparisons to recent drought situations and forms of societal/institutional response) of your findings, and what lessons early modern societal response on droughts may teach us, would be also rather interesting and worth to discuss briefly (for example; these are just ideas, recommendations).
This means, in general, that you need to transform the currently more descriptive, historical style of the paper (especially the parts regarding societal response) to a paper with a more concise, dynamic and comparative natural scientific approach. While this approach is present in discussing the intensity of the drought anomaly and the discussion of droughts in the last 500 years, the text turns to a different style in the chapters regarding the socio-economic response. These later chapters need a thorough and major revision, and also a division of content into the appropriate major chapters based on the structural requirements of the journal.
Although based on the authors’ responses, many of the suggestions have already been successfully incorporated into the manuscript, some of the suggestions are worth to be highlighted and consider more carefully. Following the recommendation of Referee No. 1, please, underline more within the text which part of your work presented here has been already discussed elsewhere, and which part is a novelty and presented here for the first time. Moreover, Referee 1 provided a number of useful comments worth for reconsideration even if you did not agree with some; in these comments, I would particularly further highlight the comment regarding the application of more figures. Either as a timeline diagram or a flow chart (or any other), it would make your results regarding societal response more plausible if you insert an overview/concluding figure on these responses (e.g. can you connect any of the major changes to particular drought years? I am sure you can….). A timeline diagram you also offered (together with a map that helps the reader to understand the text spatially better) “if needed”: yes, please, you do need at least one overview diagram on societal responses (so as a map: you are, after all, present your results in a natural scientific/environmental journal). As in your paper there is a particular focus on one book, it is also advisable to provide at least a sample page (and/or title page) of this source. Your audience in this journal is primarily coming from natural sciences, but even to historians you would need to introduce this source more explicitly in your “Source” chapter (i.e. what it is, how it is structured, who wrote it why, what systematic information is included there etc). Seeing your responses, many of the specific smaller suggestions you have answered and did make some changes according to the recommendation of the Referee. Nevertheless, please, also make the changes regarding major comments (e.g. regarding the presentation style what Referee 1 also suggested).
Regarding the comments of Referee No. 2: the referee raises a number of very useful questions: while some can be answered in the other chapters (as also the recommended by the Referee), most of these questions would be (sub)topics for the “Discussion” chapter, and I encourage the authors to use these excellent recommendations there, too. Reflecting on suggestions that are rather useful but may fall out of the scope of the paper (e.g. “Why do you interpret the writing of the book as an appropriation of knowledge and not making (private or family) knowledge public?”): even if the topic is out of the scope of the paper, you still have the possibility to reflect on this question in a sentence, referring to its importance. When explaining to the referees (in the response), the authors actually provide a lot of useful information which, even if only with some words mentioned in the text, would easily clarify why no more details are included in the paper in the questions the referee reflected on.

Dear Author,

the two referees had a number of small suggestions in the second round. Most of them are technical questions that are easy to correct. Following the suggestions of Referee No. 1, please, consider a minor further improvement of the Discussion section.