The 1755 earthquake recorded in Portugal is the largest in European history. At least 50,000 people were killed in the country as a result of the earthquakes, which were also felt in Morocco on the African continent, where another ten thousand died.
1755 Earthquake and Faith in God
The disaster has made believers cry out for mercy. BBC reports that as soon as the first quake hit, many people headed to a square near the Tagus River. There, the crowd consisted of “canons of the patriarchal church in their purple and red vestments, priests who had fled the altar in their sacred vestments in the middle of the solemn mass, half-naked ladies and others without shoes.” According to the report of the English merchant Mr. Braddick, who was there at the time of the quake, people knelt and began to beg God for mercy.
A second earthquake hit the area. The second shock, more powerful than the first, would have occurred “in the midst of the consecration” of the believers.
The church and its followers were searching for the people responsible for the tragedy. At the time, names such as the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz and the English poet Alexander Pope proposed to confront the historical dilemma of “what is evil”, considering that any manifestation of evil is nothing more than a manifestation of evil, the result of human inability to understand its function within the whole, explains the BBC.
The prevailing philosophy was that we lived in the best of all possible worlds, and that even in these catastrophes there was divine providence. God had a plan and we had no right to question it.
Edward Bayes, author The Wrath of God – The Amazing Story of the Earthquake That Devastated Lisbon in 1755 To BBC Witness
