The Seven Minute Reset

But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.  Matthew 13:16 NASB

Because they see – On  All Saints Day, November 1, 1755 at 9:40 in the morning the status of Portugal as a world power completely changed.  Before 9:40  Lisbon was the center of worldwide exploration and economic prosperity.  By 9:47, all that ended.  The largest earthquake ever recorded in Europe rumbled through Lisbon.  Two-thirds of all the buildings collapsed.  20,000 were killed instantly.  Many more died in the next hours and days from the more than 200 aftershocks. Those who fled the rubble falling from the sky ran to the port on the river Tagus.  But the earthquake, a result of an undersea tectonic plate shift, packed another surprise.  The waters of the Tagus sucked out to sea and returned in a two-story high tsunami.  The wave smashed everything in the river and on the shore.  Ships, cargo, and people were swept away.  More destruction ensued.  Fires broke out among the ruins, sweeping over the city, reaching temperatures of 1000 degrees.  Six days later they were still burning.   In seven minutes Lisbon went from an economic empire to piles of bricks and dead bodies. From that day on, the remaining royal family never slept indoors again, preferring the relative safety of living in tents and temporary wooden shelters.

The losses included more than people.  Lisbon was very wealthy, and as a result, Lisbon patrons collected thousands of printed books, manuscripts, paintings, and other rare and historically important works.  All were lost.  Like the great fire of Alexandria, centuries of European history disappeared in a few minutes.  The disaster in Lisbon sent chills across all Europe.  Was there nothing sacred from the whims of fate and nature? As Camile Paglia wrote, “But let nature shrug, and all is in ruin.”[1]

You might think that this episode in Portuguese history is simply an interesting bit of trivia, but there’s another part of this story that reveals an even deeper terror.  As usual, the people who survived put a spiritual interpretation on the event.  Several prominent priests declared that this was God’s judgment because of Portugal’s past sins.  Religious fervor was at a record high.  In the aftermath, much of the reconstruction was put in the hands of Carvalho e Melo, who received the title Marques de Pombal.  Pombal used his new-found status to reshape Lisbon’s city and its people.  Today you can see his handiwork in the fact that the rebuilt city is modeled on Greco-Roman mathematical design while the older city still retains the shape of its ancient, wandering streets and alleyways.  He was a man of the Enlightenment, and a spiritual explanation for a “natural” disaster was not only illogical but rationally offensive.  Pombal’s ire for antiquated notions of divine involvement extended to those who espoused religious explanations.  In one particular case, a Jesuit priest, Father Gabriel Malagrida, published a pamphlet claiming the disaster was God’s punishment and Lisbon must repent.  Pombal had the pamphlet burned in public and banished the priest.  But the Jesuit would not recant, sending a letter reaffirming his view.  Pombal had him incarcerated and then handed him over to the Inquisition which executed him (in a most unpleasant way).  Pombal made it quite clear that God had nothing to do with natural disaster, and anyone who objected was subject to severe reprisals.  It’s interesting that the Inquisition, a religious assembly, found the priest’s explanation heretical and executed him, burning him alive.  Clearly religion in the hands of political power has little to do with the biblical God.

We often say that history repeats itself.  The Hebraic view of time contains such a suggestion.  Perhaps the catastrophe in Lisbon nearly 300 years ago sheds some light on current times.  First, we might note that catastrophe births religious fervor.  Consider America’s 9-11 experience.  The intensity and self-reflection doesn’t last, however.  When economic prosperity returns, God is forgotten.  But more importantly, the Enlightenment and its subsequent variations in the present don’t simply ignore God.  They exiled Him.  God is no longer a player in human affairs, not even in natural disasters. Leonardo de Caprio’s line in Blood Diamond applies to all: “God left Africa a long time ago.”

Additionally, Pombal’s treatment of Father Gabriel seems a precursor to today’s actions of the politically powerful.  Anyone who objects to the “correct” agenda is summarily punished, perhaps not with burning at the stake, but certainly with excommunication and reputation destruction.  The Greco-Roman world has no god but Man’s reason, and to suggest otherwise is blasphemy.  It’s ironic that Pombal’s reconstruction of Lisbon did not include a sewer system.  Despite the watchwords of “safety and system,” the population still threw its human waste into the streets and eventually into the river.  All that Greco-Roman structure didn’t address the underlying stink and Lisbon continued to be known as a city that reeked.  The irony of our contemporary world is that it also does not address the human rot that runs through it.  The prophets tried and we know how they were treated.  It seems that until the human sewer is really cleaned up, the artifice of blind culture will rest on the toilet seat.

Topical Index: Lisbon, catastrophe, Enlightenment, reason, Matthew 13:16

[1] Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickenson, p. 1.