Judith Flanders

Ten minutes that shook Europe

Wrath of God: the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, by Edward Paice<br /> <br type="_moz" />

issue 08 November 2008

Wrath of God: the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, by Edward Paice

Portugal in the 18th century was at once a mystery and deeply familiar to the British. Deeply familiar, as one of Britain’s most enriching trading partners, providing Brazilian gold in exchange for British textiles and other manufactured goods. A mystery, because Portugal appeared to be hundreds of years behind the rest of Europe. The Jesuit control of the country forbade ‘any conclusion whatsoever opposing the system of Aristotle’; superstition was rampant (the Spanish derided their neighbours as pocos y locos — few and mad) as the Inquisition searched out not only heretics but bigamists, witches, Jews, sodomites and other undesirables, while the patriarchs of the church frequented (or owned) brothels, collected pornography or merely visited their nun-mistresses.

Yet into this quasi-medieval world, on All Saints’ Day 1755, came crashing an event that was in retrospect to be seen as one of the precipitating events of the Enlightenment, the herald of modernity.

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