I recently learned Caffarelli was present at the 1755 Lisbon earthquake (he was hired to sing at the brand new opera house, which had only 4 operas before it was destroyed by the earthquake) so I'm reading up on it. Wikipedia has this to say:
The event was widely discussed and dwelt upon by European Enlightenment philosophers, and inspired major developments in theodicy and in the philosophy of the sublime.
However the explanatory paragraphs are rather vague. There some talk of Candide and such but nothing really meriting the term "major developments." Anyone have the deeper picture?
This might not be entirely relevant but I was told by my professor (Geophysics), that this earthquake is what kickstarted the modern field of geophysics.
He attributed this due to it being one of the largest earthquakes in Europe during the enlightenment period.
In terms of religion he only mentioned that it happened on Sunday and Portugal at the time had a very religious population and were mostly in churches when it happened. This increased the casualties due to the nature of the material being used in the buildings.
These people (killed inside the churches) were considered in general to be righteous and so many wondered why would God kill the righteous?
Disclaimer : this might not be appropriate for a top level comment because I am not a historian and neither is my professor. If so delete it.