A 1755 earthquake devastated Lisbon on a holy day, and reshaped the Enlightenment

On All Saints' Day 1755, an earthquake, fires and a tsunami killed tens of thousands in Lisbon while congregations filled the churches. Voltaire's poem on the disaster, and later Candide, attacked the idea that a benevolent God permits only justified suffering, fueling a real Enlightenment dispute with Rousseau. Portugal's chief minister, the Marquis of Pombal, sent every parish a written questionnaire on the quake, producing one of the first systematic surveys of a natural disaster.

— Nicholas Shrady, The Last Day: Wrath, Ruin, and Reason in the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 — Viking, 2008
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