Unrecorded news report of the 1783 earthquakes in Calabria & Messina.

[Earthquakes] / [Ephemera]. Relazione dell’ orribil flagello seguito nella Calabria e in Messina per cagione de i gran terremoti. Mercordì 5. Febbraro 1783. Lucca: s.n., s.a. [1783]. 4to [21.0 x 16.4 cm], [2] ff. Quarter bound in modern vellum and reused liturgical leaf over card. Binding well preserved. Minor toning, edge wear, and spotting, pale water stain. 
 
 
Unrecorded ephemeral Luchese pamphlet reporting on the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Calabria and Messina on 5 February 1783.
 
The relazione first provides a breathless account of the destruction of several towns in “Calabria Ultra” by a quake of 6 minutes in duration that began at 7:06 PM. Many people were crushed or by killed by fire. Silk, grain, licorice liqueur (“Regolizie”), olive oil, wine and wine factories as well as fortifications crumbled or ‘sunk into the sea’ (the result of tsunamis). The writer mentions several cities and towns in the area, noting that “the famous and wealthy city of Reggia no longer exists.” The dead were being buried in the countryside without rites, and the living wandered without clothes or shelter.
 
In Messina chasms opened in the ground and were spouting sulfurous smoke. The Capuchin convent and the Chiesa del Purgatorio miraculously survived. At the time of writing, 12,000 were feared dead in Messina.
 
The writer of the pamphlet remarks that his information on Calabria comes from a copy of the Corriere della Calabria that arrived “today, the 15th,” but that his information on Messina remains sketchy because Messina newspapers had not yet arrived in Lucca. For Messina he instead was relying on eyewitness accounts from a ship that was anchored in the port of Messina during the disaster and had arrived in Lucca “yesterday.”
 
 
This relazione is not located by OPAC/SBN/ICCU, OCLC or KVK.
 
D. Carbone-Grio, I terremoti de Calabria e di Sicilia nel secolo XVIII; V. De Filippis, De’ terremoti della Calabria ultra nel 1783 e 1789.