Lisbon Earthquake and Opening of the 6th Seal

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; Revelation 6:12

"Subsequently the death-knell for belief in a tutelary, interventionist God was sounded for many 18th-century Europeans by the great

Lisbon earthquake of 1755. 

That disaster resulted in uncountable numbers of deaths since it also triggered a tsunami which affected vast swathes of the Lisbon hinterland. 

Just as destructive as the physical carnage was the toll it took on people’s hearts and minds, as Voltaire recognized.

Voltaire was to exploit the notorious event first in his Poème sur le Désastre de Lisbonne, written in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, and again in his famous anti-clerical satire, Candide."
Mind&Culture