Journalistic Un-integrity — Part Three (did catholic priests hang earthquake survivors 250yr ago?)

Catholic Exchange ^ | October 31, 2005 | Theresa E. Carpinelli

[NYer]

Here we go again, rocketing into another fun-filled, exciting defense of those calumniated 18th-century Lisbon priests. Exactly 250 years ago tomorrow, on All Saints’ Day, November 1, 1755, a tragic earthquake and tsunami struck Lisbon, Portugal, killing tens of thousands, and destroying much of the city.

Back on the Trail of a Historical Fiction

Catholic Exchange readers might remember that 9 months ago I wrote “Journalistic Un-integrity,” parts one and two, in response to a Washington Post article written by Jose Antonio Vargas, in which it was alleged that in the aftermath of the disaster, “priests roamed the streets, hanging those they believed had incurred God's wrath.” The purpose of my articles was to detail my efforts to track down a credible source for the allegation, and, should none be found, to hopefully stop the spread of what I was quite certain was a historical fiction.

I continued my research into what really happened in the aftermath of the Lisbon disaster, with the aim of writing a follow-up article on my findings. If it turned out that the allegation had any basis in fact, then I had an obligation to inform CE readers, and to publicly apologize to Mr. Vargas. I was prepared for whatever I might discover when I received Mr. Vargas’s submission of a possible “source” for the allegation. What I was not prepared for, especially after I sent Vargas a detailed summary of my research rebutting his submission, was the publication once again in the Washington Post, of the same allegation.

This time, it was George F. Will, an author for whom I have the greatest respect, quoting from A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906, a “timely new book” by Simon Winchester. In his October 11th article, “Whistling Past the Fault Line,” Mr. Will writes:

Winchester says that after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake killed 60,000, "priests roved around the ruins, selecting at random those they believed guilty of heresy and thus to blame for annoying the Divine, who in turn had ordered up the disaster. The priests had them hanged on the spot."

Before examining the work of Winchester, an “Oxford trained geologist,” it will benefit us to take a look at the how Vargas defended the allegation. He sent me the following paragraphs on the Lisbon quake from Jay Robert Nash’s Darkest Hours: A Narrative Encyclopedia of Worldwide Disasters — From Ancient Times to the Present:

One harrowing escape followed another during the quakes. An Englishman named Chase was quoted by Blackwoods Magazine in 1860, a century after the catastrophe (upon the discovery of a letter he had written his sister), as having survived the crashing of the old house in which he lived.... (p. 337)

But Dom Joseph and his family were not in the palace at the time of the quake. They were in residence at nearby Belem, and at the first shock the apprentice monarch was beseeched by a throng of priests "to intercede with the saints for forgiveness of the sins which had brought about this calamity." (Battalions of priests roved through the debris of Lisbon looking for heretics to burn, such as the previously mentioned Chase, who, to avoid their attention, pretended to be unconscious as he lay sprawled in the Terreiro de Paco; a Protestant minister was surrounded by a mob of Portuguese priests and forcibly baptized in admonishment of his obviously sinful instigation of the quake.) (p. 339)

Jay Robert Nash is a “four-time winner of the American Library Association’s Best Reference Work Award,” one of which is for his Darkest Hours, so I was eager to check it out. I easily found the book in the reference section of my local library. Reading the Lisbon article in its entirety, it was clear it did not support the “priests roamed the city hanging people” allegation. In fact, it seriously undermined it. On the same page 339, two paragraphs above the ones Vargas sent me, Nash writes:

The King, young Dom Joseph, ordered gallows erected the first day in a great circle about the city, elevated on the hilltops. Soldiers dragged several hundred persons to these gallows and hanged them in full view of the quake survivors, almost as a retribution for the disaster visited upon the city, an attempt to propitiate God, for Lisbon was a bastion of the Inquisition.

Note well: Nash does not footnote any source for his presumption of the hangings of “several hundred persons” as a "retribution" and "propitiation.” Based on eyewitness accounts, we shall see that such a presumption is untenable. Nash continues:

There were several "confessions" from the looters before their execution, in which they admitted setting fires to aid them in looting and to add to the confusion. One, a Moor, "confessed at the gallows that he had set fire to the king’s palace with his own hand; at the same time glorying in the action and declaring with his last breath that he hoped to have burnt all the royal family.”

While Nash doesn’t cite his source, he is quoting here, regarding the “Moor's confession,” from the eyewitness account of a Rev. Charles Davy. But what is pertinent to our discussion is that, according to Jay Robert Nash, it was the King, Dom Joseph, who was having people hanged.

The Security Issue

This is verified by Robert K. Reeves in The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755: Confrontation between the Church and the Enlightenment in 18th Century Portugal:

Crime in general, and looting in particular, was another of Pombal’s immediate concerns after the tremors stopped and the fires were squelched. Looting was made punishable by immediate, summary trial and execution, which one first-hand account delicately described as follows: “The best orders have been given for preventing rapine and murders, frequent instances of which we have had within these three days.” Martial law was quickly established, as “the King sent directly to the nearest garrisons for his troops; upon whose arrival order was restored....” And, as stated previously, judges were given extraordinary temporary powers: “...the Judges were likewise distributed in different parts of the city with orders to execute upon the spot all who were found guilty of murder or theft." (pg. 47. All quotes taken from The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755; British Accounts. Lisbon: The British Historical Society of Portugal, 1990)

Supporting this is an account by Russell R. Dynes. On page 13 of his The Lisbon Earthquake in 1755: The First Modern Disaster, he writes:

Security became an issue. It is reported that gallows were set up in several parts of the city as a warning against looting. It was also noted that at least 34 were executed for looting....

Thomas Chase, an eyewitness whose account we will attend to in more detail later, stated he saw 80 bodies hanging, but 34 is also the number given by Jose A. Franca in his scholarly secondary account.

An eyewitness account published in the 1990 British Accounts states:

Thieves were apprehended, who being found with goods on them,… were condemned and hung the next day, for which purpose gallows were erected in the most conspicuous parts of the city.

So, while eyewitness accounts and secondary sources like Reeves and Dynes support Nash’s assertion that the King had criminals executed, they do not support the Washington Post’s allegation, or Nash’s more “sensational” allegations about rogue priests, the number of criminals brought to the gallows, and the retribution/propitiation element. They make clear that looting was a problem after the quake (something we have seen in this country after natural disasters). This problem was addressed by the King and by the Prime Minister, Sebastião de Melo — who would become in 1770 the Marquis de Pombal — not for reasons of “retribution” or “propitiation” as Nash suggests, but to establish law and order.

It’s one thing for bias to be interjected into the interpretation of an historical event; it’s another thing entirely to make up events that never happened. I wondered if the allegation originated from “reading into” the presence of 2 priests at a hanging depicted in a graphic of the aftermath of the disaster. The Kozak collection caption reads simply: “Lisbon a few days after the earthquake. Camping outside the damaged town, executions of robbers and looters. (Copper engraving, Germany, 1755) (Lisbon, Portugal)” This same graphic is posted on about.com, with a caption that says in part, “criminals are being hanged under the supervision of soldiers and priests.” I am aware of no primary or secondary account of the disaster that suggests a supervisory role for these priests. Priests, rabbis and ministers are often present at state-sanctioned executions, even today, but that hardly means they are “supervising.” When bias trumps scholarship, it’s not a far leap from assigning a supervisory role to the priests, to asserting “priests roamed the streets, hanging those they believed had incurred God's wrath.”

The interesting thing about the Lisbon quake is that one is not limited to reading secondary accounts of the disaster, written from the (sometimes biased) point of view of historians several decades removed. Lisbon, a busy sea port, was teeming with Spanish, French, German and British visitors on that fateful day, so the number of first-hand, eye-witness accounts from survivors of the disaster, is considerable. The enormity of the devastation generated a great deal of international interest and sympathy, and newspapers, books and magazines for decades afterwards carried the accounts, consisting of interviews, letters written to friends, relatives and business associates, and memoirs. They are remarkable in their dramatic portrayal of the event, as well as the physical, psychological and spiritual suffering that was both experienced and witnessed.

And We All Know Catholics Are Stupid, Anyway

Through interlibrary loan, I have read a considerable number of these accounts, as has Dr. Shi (who you might remember from my previous articles was helping me in my research). In addition to the 20-plus secular histories I have read, Dr. Shi checked out T.D. Kendrick’s The Lisbon Earthquake and Charles Brooks’s Disaster at Lisbon for me. He later wrote: “I have scoured five more books that I ordered online but to no avail. The most interesting one was a compilation of eyewitness accounts by Englishmen in Lisbon. The only references to hangings involved those accused of theft.” He also noted that one of the accounts actually complimented Lisbon’s priests for not taking advantage of the catastrophe to promote the Inquisition. After immersing myself in these eyewitness accounts, I went back and re-read several secondary accounts.

Some of these secondary accounts portray the overall response to the disaster in the larger context of the rhetorical conflicts of the 18th century between religion and philosophy. On one side in Lisbon, there was “reason, rationality, secularization and science.” On the other side, “a society steeped in religion,” “fanatical Catholicism,” “superstition,” “myth,” “emotionalism,” “religious hysteria,” “the medieval ideologies of the Inquisition,” “Dark Ages” intellects, and “mysticism.” As Eloise Engle writes in her 1966 work, Earthquake! The Story of Alaska’s Good Friday Disaster:

The Lisbon quake is significant because it is one of the earliest to be scientifically investigated. It also marked the beginning of rational thinking, rather than blind superstition about the earthquake’s cause.

Handicapped by their personal bias and a lack of understanding of the Church’s true teachings, these writers interpret the eyewitness accounts in a way that furthers the presumed dichotomy between faith and reason. Claiming that “Catholics gathered idols to protect themselves…”, Robert Reeves even makes up a dogma to explain his assertion that science wasn’t well-developed in 18th-century Portugal: “Church dogma taught not to question natural phenomena because that was tantamount to questioning God’s Holy design.” Reeves interprets an eyewitness report from The British Accounts, which states, “For the first few Days the Natives seemed entirely taken up with Acts of Devotion and Repentance…” as proof of Catholic “religious hysteria.”

This “clash between the Enlightenment and the Church” is epitomized in two main characters: The Marquis de Pombal (reason), who was charged with the recovery and restoration, and Gabriel Malagrida (irrational religion), a beloved Jesuit who represents the “Catholic response.” Pombal is presented as championing a purely “scientific, natural” cause of the quake, while Malagrida is presented as opposing those causes, insisting on a purely “supernatural, divine retribution” cause.

Yet even with this “reason vs. irrational religion” characterization found in some secondary works, we still find no support for the “hanging priests” allegation. Rather, as Russell Dynes writes, both parish and order priests “provided significant service during the emergency response.” He elaborates:

There were no indications that Pombal was not supportive of the impressive actions of most clergy during the response. Much of the temporary housing and the provision of food became the responsibility of the Church and churches became the center of temporary facilities for those displaced. That suggests that Pombal saw danger only in the religious practices and interpretations which might inhibit or delay the reconstruction process.

What is also notable about the eyewitness accounts is that they are primarily non-Catholic, so their descriptions of the actions and behaviors of the Portuguese Catholics, both lay and clergy, reflect the typical non-Catholic and/or Protestant misunderstanding of Catholic practice and devotions. Many of these accounts expressed the view that the cause of the quake was Catholic “idolatry,” “error,” and the Inquisition. But these non-Catholic eyewitness accounts are relatively tame in comparison with the overtly biased misrepresentation of their accounts in some secondary sources, as previously noted. In addition to those already presented, I was disturbed by Nash’s parenthetical remark that "Battalions of priests roved through the debris of Lisbon looking for heretics to burn, such as the previously mentioned Chase, who, to avoid their attention, pretended to be unconscious as he lay sprawled in the Terreiro de Paco...." If Chase himself made this claim, then why doesn’t Nash just give us Chase’s own words?

It’s beyond my scope to deal with Nash’s “Black Legend” notions of the Inquisition — I can deal only with whether or not Chase’s experience was really as Nash presents it. For a better understanding of why the idea that priests were running around hanging and burning heretics virtually on the spot is inconsistent with the known facts of how the Inquisition operated, here are two excellent publications, both non-Catholic: Edward Peter’s Inquisition, and Henry Kamen’s The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. There are also some excellent Catholic articles on the web:

• "The Spanish Inquisition: Fact Versus Fiction" by Marvin R. O'Connell;

• "Inquisition" by James Hitchcock;

• "A New Industry: The Inquisition" by Brian Van Hove, S.J.

There were legal ramifications even for the civil authorities to try, convict and execute looters so quickly. As also noted in The British Accounts, a special decree had to be published “ordering that robbers should be tried verbally and that sentences should be carried out on the very same day they were pronounced.” So, the idea that priests could roam around Lisbon grabbing people off the street and hanging them on the spot, says more about the ignorance of those making the claim than it does about Lisbon’s residents.

For books, encyclopedia articles, and research papers, footnotes are required for such things as direct quotes, dates, borrowed thoughts, and even facts that are not common knowledge. I found Nash’s entire work very difficult to verify because he gives no footnote citations after his assertions and quotations. The back of his book has a huge bibliography, which contains over 400 entries, in just the “earthquake” section. But there is no way to know which source he used in the Lisbon article, and where. In addition, he writes that “An Englishman named Chase was quoted by Blackwoods Magazine in 1860…”, but he lists no Blackwood’s Magazine of 1860 in his bibliography. Is he referring to Thomas Chase, whose account is reproduced in Gentleman’s Magazine of 1813, which Nash does list in his bibliography?

Through inter-library loan, I obtained Thomas Chase’s experiences of the Lisbon disaster, taken from a letter written to his sister, reproduced in both Blackwood’s Magazine (Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 88, July-December, 1860: “The Great Earthquake at Lisbon, Account of Thomas Chase,” pp. 195-297), and "Mr. Thomas Chase’s Narrative of the Earthquake at Lisbon" (The Gentleman’s Magazine, London February-April, 1813, as quoted in The British Accounts).

Tomorrow, we will explore Thomas Chase’s fascinating experience of the Lisbon earthquake — including his interactions with Lisbon Catholics — as well as some other first-hand eyewitness accounts. Were priests roving around the debris looking for heretics to burn, hanging those they believe had incurred God’s wrath, baptizing people in admonishment of their obviously sinful instigation of the quake? And who really was tried as a heretic, strangled, and burned after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755?

[grellis]

But it really works, and it's so convenient! How do you think we lit the candles in our pumpkins tonight?

[Tax-chick]

Oh, dear.

[AnAmericanMother]

Silly me. When I first was dating my husband (a Georgia Tech man), I picked up a 9 volter and asked, "Do you know if this is good?" He replied, "Touch your tongue to it," and without thinking I did.

I don't know if sparks shot out of my eyes, but it sure felt like it.

. . . you see, even in 1971 I was doomed to be a Catholic and was practicing!

[bornacatholic]

OL' George ought to stick with baseball. The Wanderer stopped publishing his column years ago after he acccused the Church and Pope Pius with cooperating with Hitler. Will is clearly an antiCatholic bigot.

Worse, He is BORING AS HELL!!! My daughter graduated from Boston University and he, unfortunately, was the Commencement Speaker. He began by noting the high temeratures (we were sitting on the football field at BU) and promised to give a short addresss. He droned on endlessly. We folks siting there began mocking him just to amuse ourselves.

[bornacatholic]

Bring it back and send Georgie Will before it.

[bornacatholic]

WaPo will apologize once the NY Times apologizes for Walter Duranty