acts of God part 1

When the unimaginable happens and your world turns upside-down, where can you find certainty?

In the middle of the Eighteenth Century, Lisbon was perhaps the wealthiest city in Europe, the third busiest port in the World and the centre of the mighty Portuguese empire. It was also one of the most “religious” Catholic cities in the World. Its seven hills were replete with churches, chapels and monasteries, dripping with trappings of wealth and prosperity, their altars adorned with gold, silver and precious gems..

Nearly every home had a personal shrine, with a smattering of dubious relics, such as bones, teeth, hair and other body parts of the saints. All year round there were religious processions dedicated to this or that saint. Shops and businesses closed. People bowed their heads or kneeled, as the colourful, noisy spectacle passed by. There were a lot of priests living and working in Lisbon in those days, one out of every six citizens were members of the clergy. It was a city secure in its place in God’s Universe.