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PART I
Scientific, philosophical, and religious traditions up to the Renaissance
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1
Experiencing earthquakes
This book is a history of ideas, not of mentalities. My focus is on the development of learned theory. However, that is not to say that I can completely ignore other approaches. Ideally, scholars may have developed their ideas in the splendid isolation of their studies, leafing through centuries-old texts. In practice, they were as much part of society as anybody else. If an earthquake struck, they shared in the common experience. It is unlikely that this would not have any repercussions on their thought. We may well start, therefore, by paying some attention to these common experiences.
Not all earthquake experiences are the same. In some countries, earthquakes are well-known phenomena. When an earthquake happens, people will immediately be on the alert, well understanding the threat; but if the quake turns out to be a minor one, they will quickly move on with their lives. In other countries, earthquakes are very rare events. Many people will never have lived through one. In these regions, even relatively small earthquakes are quite upsetting.
People unfamiliar with earthquakes often had difficulty realizing what was going on. The English scholar Gabriel Harvey related how the earthquake of 1580 happened while he was in a company playing at cards. Since people were uncertain of what had happened, he asked his host to send a servant into town to inquire whether the movement had been general. When this proved to be the case, he decided it must have been an earthquake.1 In that sense, earthquakes can be called social constructs.
In recent times, people sometimes initially suspect a heavy truck or other machines. Similar interpretations occurred in the past. āI doubted the fall of a large Piece of Timber, or Stone-Workā, wrote the reverend Paschall to Robert Hooke about an earthquake in January 1680.2 The Lutheran minister Tobias Wagner wrote on an earthquake in 1655 at WĆ¼rttemberg, which woke him up from sleep: āI had the idea that a bag filled with flour fell down from the upper part of my room with great violence, as such a fall is not uncommon with me, and happens more often at night.ā3 When the mathematician Christiaan Huygens sensed the earthquake of November 1692 at his home near The Hague, he initially related it to the war in the southern Netherlands and surmised the explosion of a gunpowder magazine at Duinkerke, some 160 kilometres away.4
Huygensā brother Constantijn, who as secretary to King William III of England took part in the military campaign, was much closer to the epicentre. When the earthquake occurred, he and others were just having dinner in a tent. Seeing the table shaking, Constantijnās first thought was, as he wrote in his diary, that some horse had got entangled in the strings. Once people realized what was happening, everybody rose and ran away, shouting āan earthquake, an earthquakeā. In the house where the King was staying, there was a thronging of people trying to escape. The King himself had fallen in the hustle. One other lord, Montpouillon, had injured his shin. In the end, the panic may have caused more harm than the earthquake itself.5
In countries where earthquakes are more frequent, like Italy, people had no trouble realizing what was going on and their reactions would be more adequate. The Italian author Agatio Di Somma experienced the great Calabrian earthquake of 1638 in his hometown, Catanzaro. With many other people, he happened to be in the city square when the earthquake struck. āAs soon as the unforeseen buzzing in the air, of which I spoke, made itself felt, everybody, murmuring: āterremoto, terremotoā, as if they had wings, fled to the widest part of the square, as the least dangerous.ā6
Fear and panic
Serious earthquakes could be extremely traumatic experiences. The clearest attestation of the stress they caused to the population is given by the spontaneous outbursts of panic that often occurred after an earthquake. Rumours about strange, maybe supernatural appearances were eagerly told and believed. After the earthquake of 1590, people in Prague saw strange things at night: spooky people carrying lights, and a man in red who behaved strangely and then mysteriously disappeared. After the earthquake of Calabria of 1638, people reported on bloody and fiery crosses seen in the sky.7
Often, rumours circulated that the earthquake had been announced or prophesized.8 An hour before the great earthquake of 1674 of Ambon in the East Indies, a Christian slave had seen in the hall of the fortress a person standing on the pulpit with white face and hands, a book in his one hand and a candle in the other, as if reading, with long black clothes and on his head a crown of thorns. The naturalist Rumphius, who reported this, was somewhat sceptical (āWhatever the truth may be we leave it to the Readerās judgmentā) but could not deny that the slave who saw the vision was a credible person, who gave his report repeatedly to several respectable persons āand he never varied his taleā.9 In Lima, after the earthquake of 1746, it was told that 21 days before the disaster struck, an honourable man had seen in a vision that all the houses of Callao, the harbour of Lima, were on fire. Moreover, less than a month before the quake, a pious nun had explained to her confessor that the anger of God was against the city and its inhabitants, but that she would die before she could witness the effects of the divine justice. Indeed, she died 13 days before the earthquake.10
However, such alleged prophecies not just concerned the past, but the future as well. After the great earthquake of Vienna of 1590, the Fugger newsletter reported rumours that some anonymous scholars had predicted that a still much larger earthquake would follow, or even that Vienna would be completely destroyed in four weeks.11 The protocols of a Franciscan convent in Innsbruck in Austria report on an earthquake in 1687:
The confusion was increased by a rumour that was spread by the Jesuit father Ferdinand Orban, mathematician and on holidays court preacher in our church. He wrongly asserted that within 24 hours, the earth would quake still much more terribly than the first time. Thereupon everybody who had the opportunity fled from the city to the surrounding farmsteads or the public fields.12
Concern about aftershocks was of course understandable, but the fears among the population went far beyond that. After the Italian earthquake of January 1703, a panic arose at Rome in the middle of the night of February 3. People started banging on doors; a voice shouted that the Pope had pronounced that the whole city would perish that night at the tenth hour, and that everybody should flee. Indeed, many fled in confusion; according to the physician Giorgio Baglivi, who related the event, not even a third of the population stayed behind. Once they reached the open fields, the people implored God to save the city for the sake of the innocent children. When it was announced that the alarm was false, they returned home. Those responsible for the panic could not be traced, so that many suspected that it was the work of demons. They pointed out that that same night at the same hour, a voice threatening imminent destruction was heard in villages and suburbs at many miles distant.13
A similar panic is reported from Lima in 1605, after rumours of an earthquake in the south had reached the city and a Franciscan friar had warned that Lima, because of its many sins, might be destroyed likewise. Churches and convents opened, lit up candles and displayed the holy sacrament. People pressed priests in the streets to be confessed. Some flogged themselves, others gave alms, and some hastily married to sanction an illegitimate relationship.14 Panic struck again in Lima after the big earthquake of 1746; many fled to the hills when a rumour spread that the sea would flood the city.15 (Lima is actually several miles inland and had shown to be out of reach of tsunamis.) For a decade after 1746, the population of Lima would be tormented by premonitions of impending doom.16 Even in full Enlightenment London, in 1750, two minor quakes exactly one month apart caused such concern that many notables fled the town when a prophecy was circulated that after yet another month the city would be completely destroyed by a third earthquake.17
Prognostications that earlier had drawn little attention now suddenly might appear ominous. A pamphlet printed at Nuremberg in 1627 announces in the title a report of the earthquake that hit the region of Apulia (Italy) with a short description of the kingdom of Naples. In reality, it offers a long description of the kingdom of Naples, but has little to say on the earthquake. The reason to publish the pamphlet in spite of this lack of relevant information must lay in the appendix, also announced in the title: a long extract from a prognostication by David Herlicius (or Herlitz), a well-known mathematician and physician. In this prognostication (for 1627), he had foretold devastating earthquakes. Herlicius explained that these disasters would strike because of our sins: āSuch terrestrial signs will come to us, because we will not convert or improve because of the celestial onesā.18 The edifying message, driven home by a fulfilled prophecy, must have been the reason to publish this in other respects rather uninformative pamphlet in the first place.
The devastating earthquake of Calabria of 1638 gave rise to frightening predictions. A pamphlet published in the German city of Breslau (present-day WrocÅaw, in Poland) prints various reports of this earthquake. One of these is a letter from Prague, dated May 16, 1638. āFrom here, there is no other news but that there is great fear and worry among part of both the notables and the common people, because of the prophecy of the astronomer who is confined in Venice.ā This (otherwise-unknown) astronomer had predicted that 19 July, when the sun would enter the sign of the Lion, the countries and cities under that sign would be hit by disaster: darkness, storms, airy voices. This would be followed, 23 July between 7 and 8 oāclock in the evening, by a severe earthquake.
This astronomer appears to have prophesied about the island [sic] Calabria as well, where 9 cities and 209 villages have been destroyed. Therefore, people here are very worried that harm may befall us, because he specifically mentioned Prague. You may believe me that there is such a fear among part of the population here, that many pack their best belongings and get away. Wherever there are two persons standing together in the streets, they talk about nothing but this prophecy and the destruction of the city of Prague.19
In Calabria itself, fear was still more intense. A rumour emerged that the quake had been foretold, apparently in some prognostication, by the physician and astrologer Pietro Paolo Sassonio from Cosenza in northern Calabria. His apparent success made Sassonio push forward and predict another earthquake for May 5, which would dwarf the earlier one. The rumour spread like wildfire. People now suddenly remembered still older predictions, among others those by the famous twelfth-century visi...
