Earthquake Terror and Catholic Fervor

In both accounts which I read of Chase’s experience, he makes not a single mention of any priests roving Lisbon looking for heretics to burn, so he didn’t have to pretend to be unconscious to avoid their attention. To imply that this information came from Chase’s account in the Blackwood’s Magazine, as Jay Robert Nash does, is simply false. I do not say that Mr. Nash is lying. Perhaps he used a different source that made the unverified allegation, and he simply used it without checking the Blackwood’s Magazine himself. I don’t know, and can’t speculate. But what I do know is that there is no such allegation made by Thomas Chase in Blackwood’s Magazine (or anywhere else), and so Mr. Nash’s claim made in his encyclopedia article is erroneous and misleading.

The account of Thomas Chase is a fascinating one in many ways. Although not a Catholic, Mr. Chase appears not to have an ounce of anti-Catholic leanings, although he does share some of the common misconceptions and misunderstandings of his day and ours regarding Catholic devotions. His account is not only one of his physical experiences, but also of his mental anguish, turmoil and fear. He portrays this in several places. For example, he is in the company of a very gracious German fellow named Mr. John Jorg, (Translated as “Forg” by Judith Nozes in The British Accounts), a merchant from Hamburg, with whom Chase had a casual business dealing. Mr. Jorg took Chase in when he saw the extent of Chase’s injuries. Jorg gave Chase no reason whatsoever to mistrust him, but due to the state of Chase’s mind at the time he writes:

All that afternoon, I passed in most melancholy reflections, whilst the flames spread everywhere within my view.... Mr. Jorg then came in, and looking at me without speaking, which hitherto he had always done, retired.... Full of suspicions, from what he had before said, that there was no assistance to be had...I concluded that he had found himself obliged to leave his house, and, lacking courage to tell me the horrid fate I must submit to, he had quitted it without speaking at all. In the utmost agony of body and mind I determined to ascertain if this was the case.... (Blackwood’s Magazine, p. 197)

To find myself...suddenly relieved from the constant apprehension of falling houses and dangers of the fire (as I thought, at least), when I was in the greatest despair, and had given up all hopes of assistance, raised my spirits to that degree, that now for the first time, notwithstanding the great pain I was in, I began to hope it was possible still to live, till new terrors employed my thoughts. For the people, all full of the notion that it was the day of judgment, and willing therefore to be employed in good works, had loaded themselves with crucifixes and saints; and men and women equally the same, during the intervals between the shocks, were either singing litanies or cruelly tormenting the dying with religious ceremonies; and whenever the earth trembled, all on their knees roaring out Misericordia! in the most dismal voice imaginable. The fear, then, that my presence might excite their fanaticism at such a time when all government was at an end (and it was impossible to guess what turn their furious zeal might take against that worst of criminals, a heretic), made me dread the approach of every person. Add to this, that the...stone quay, adjoining to this square, had already sunk, and the least rising of the water would overflow us all. (pp 198-199)

About an hour after, the fire still gaining ground, I attracted the attention of a Portuguese woman, who began her prayers in a melancholy tone, holding a crucifix over my head, and the people on their knees, forming a circle round us, joined with her. As this was what I had all along much feared would happen, I waited the event with the utmost horror, and had determined to feign insensibility, when she abruptly stopped, and immediately the dismal roar of Misericordia! always attendant on the earthquakes (of which there had been several uncounted by me, as the fire had become the more threatening danger), made me expect another shock; but perceiving no motion, I was surprised and, venturing to open my quilt, I saw all kneeling down, and that the great square was full of flames.... After some time passed...an Irish Roman Catholic gentlewoman sitting near me asked if my name was not Chase, and said she knew my father many years, and gave me a large piece of water-melon and some bread and water. (pp 200-201; italics mine)

Also puzzling is Nash’s assertion that “a Protestant minister was surrounded by a mob of Portuguese priests and forcibly baptized in admonishment of his obviously sinful instigation of the quake.” While I haven’t read every single account available, the only mention I have found of a Protestant clergyman being baptized is presented quite differently from Nash’s account. In “An Account of the Late Dreadful Earthquake and Fire which destroyed the City of Lisbon, in a Letter from a Merchant resident there to his friend in England,” as quoted in The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755: British Accounts, pp. 23-25, we discover that the clergyman had arrived in Lisbon from England only a few days before:

This poor Gentleman, being just arrived, could of course know nothing of the Language of the Country.... After the great Shocks of the Earthquake were over, and the People...began to exercise themselves in acts of Penitence and Devotion, you may imagine a solitary Clergyman, whose Function and Religion he had reason to conclude were particularly obnoxious, and who had it not in his Power to make himself understood, or of understanding others, must conceive himself to be in a perilous Situation.

And whether he shewed any signs of Apprehension that they might fix their Attention upon him...there is no pretending to say, but the Multitude gathered around him, he apprehended to put an end to his Life; but he was so much mistaken, that it was from good Will to save his Soul, for the Priests that were with him fairly Baptized him, without his knowing what they were about, ‘till they came to the Use of the Water in the Ceremony, and then it was vain to resist. After they had accomplished their Work, the poor misguided Zealots expressed so wonderful a Regard and Fondness for their fancy’d Proselyte, that the Priests even proceeded to kneeling down before him and embracing his Knees, nay to the very kissing of his Feet.

The Washington Post Bites Its Own Tail

Much of what I have just presented was presented to the Washington Post through Vargas. Obviously, my efforts to stop the spread of this calumny did not prevent the Post, and George Will, from promoting it through his quotation of Simon Winchester. While I was familiar with Winchester’s book from a September 5th Forbes.com review by Jonathon Keats, I knew nothing of George Will’s use of the book’s “hanging priests” allegation until several CE readers brought it to my attention. The allegation exists in one other book of which I am aware, The Astrology of the Macrocosm by Joan McEvers (ed. Diana K Rosenberg, published January, 1991,pages 338-340). I wondered if this is the “source” from which the 2003 Wikipedia entry originated. After reading Will’s article, I obtained a copy of Winchester’s book, wondering if I might at last find the elusive “source.”

In A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906, Winchester treats of the Lisbon quake in less than 2 paragraphs, using the event to contrast Lisbon’s “irrational” reaction to their quake with San Francisco’s “rational” reaction to the 1906 quake. “Most of Lisbon displayed a kind of wild primitivism that characterized a people who are shocked and unprepared and intellectually ill-equipped to be able to offer answers as to why a catastrophe like this might have happened.” So they “blamed God,” regarding the quake as the act of a “cruel and capricious God.” Only “A few wise men reacted with a cool rationality...” (notably, the Marquis de Pombal), but as a whole, rational reaction was negligible. In contrast, San Francisco’s official reaction was “measured, ordered, rational” (pp. 55-56). The “hanging priests” allegation was thrown in, apparently to add weight to the “reason vs. religious irrationality” premise.

Even though it is not common knowledge, Winchester offers no footnote citation for his allegation — he just asserts it, and George Will repeats it. I found no first-hand, eyewitness account of the Lisbon disaster in his bibliography, nor did I see even a single scholarly secondary work specifically about the Lisbon quake. I recognized a couple of books on earthquakes which I had checked in my own research. Bruce A. Bolt’s Earthquakes gives the estimated number of deaths in Lisbon as between 50,000 and 70,000, which might explain Winchester’s figure of 60,000. (No one knows the exact number — estimates range from 6,000 to 100,000). But Bolt says nothing about priests hanging anyone.

In the fashion of those who presume to know what the Church teaches, Andrew Robinson, another of Winchester’s sources, writes in Earth Shock: Hurricanes, Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Tornadoes and Other Forces of Nature:

In Europe, earthquakes were God’s punishment for sin — according to the Church, at least. When a gigantic one laid waste Lisbon in November 1755, the Inquisition responded by roasting the survivors in the fires of the auto-da-fe.

Anti-Catholic Bias — Still Alive and Well

You have to admit, priests running around blaming the survivors for the horrible disaster, and then hanging them on the spot, makes a great story for those striving to prove how unreasonably irrational those religious types can be. It really is just the logical conclusion of the “rational Pombal vs. irrational Church” characterization of the aftermath of the Lisbon disaster.

But despite the impression left by the overt bias and misrepresentation of some secondary accounts which we have examined, Pombal’s real “opposition was not directed toward the Portuguese Church itself but toward...the Jesuits,” as previously noted in part three by our quotation of Dynes (p.28). Pombal had no problem with the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, or parish priests of Portugal. His attack on the Jesuits began around 1750, when a treaty with Spain resulted in the surrender to Portugal of seven Jesuit-run missions of the Guarani Indians. Soon after, the Guarani were ordered by Portuguese officials to leave their land and homes, evidently to make way for Portuguese gold-mining operations. They refused and revolted at the injustice, viewing the Portuguese as persecutors and slave traders. The Jesuits had always protected the Indians from those who would use them and their land for profit — nevertheless, they did their best to prevent the rebellion. All the same, Pombal unjustly blamed the revolt on the Jesuits, which gave him his long-awaited excuse to attack the Jesuits

Notions put forth by some secondary accounts, that Pombal’s problem with the Jesuits (and the Church) was that they were opposed to “science,” are just silly, and display complete ignorance of the unparalleled contributions the Jesuits have made to the sciences. Contradicting Reeve’s historically inaccurate idea (p. 18) that Jesuit schools were lacking in “programs in mathematics and philosophy, subjects that frequently questioned ideas the church held as sacrosanct,” are these statements from the Seismological Society of America:

It may be intriguing to some that a religious order dedicated so much effort to a science like seismology. From the very early years of its foundation in the 16th century by Ignacio de Loyola, the Society of Jesus dedicated itself primarily to educational work through its many colleges and universities. From the beginning of these institutions science was an important subject in the curriculum. A key figure in this development was Christopher Clavius (1537-1612), Professor of Mathematics in the Collegio Romano. Clavius was instrumental in incorporating a serious program of mathematics, astronomy, and natural sciences not only in his own college but also in all Jesuit colleges and universities.

“academies of mathematics" flourished in Rome (at the Roman College in 1560), France, Austria, Munich, Belgium, Bohemia and Portugal. The faculty in each academy included Clavius-trained Jesuit mathematicians and each one was firmly committed to rigorous mathematics. The most demanding of all these schools was in Portugal.” (emphasis mine)

[h]istorians of science always listed a surprisingly large number of Jesuits among the greatest scientists and mathematicians of all time. They were at the cutting edge of the sciences. For instance, by the time of the suppression in 1773 of the world's 130 astronomy observatories, 30 were operated by Jesuits. (The 35 Lunar Craters Named to Honor Jesuit Scientists)

contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity...scientists as influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting Jesuits among their most prized correspondents. (Jonathan Wright, as quoted in Thomas E. Woods, Jr.’s How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. See pp. 100-114 for more on Jesuit achievements in science)

The accusation of heresy is based on two visionary treatises which he is said to have written while in prison. His authorship of these treatises has never been proved, and they contain such ridiculous statements that, if he wrote them, he must previously have lost his reason in the horrors of his two and a half years' imprisonment. That he was not guilty of any conspiracy against the king is admitted even by the enemies of the Jesuits.