Le savant, le « vulgaire » et la catastrophe. Le retentissement du séisme calabro-messinais de 1783 en Suisse occidentale

In early modern Europe natural disasters often boosted the proliferation of reports and queries, as well as of accounts and rumours, thus revealing the widespread interest in extraordinary and disrupting events. The specific aim of this article is to explore the circulation of narratives of catastrophe in Western Switzerland after the dreadful earthquake in 1783 that affected Southern Italy, and the subsequent enquiries and debates on its causes and effects on society. By taking into account news-sheets, scholarly journals, printed leaflets and manuscripts, it analyses the dissemination of the news in the main cities in Western Switzerland, and the means through which the educated circles created their interpretations of such a hardly explicable event. Finally, it sheds some light on some debates on the political and social consequences of the disasters and on the proposals of moral and social regeneration developed by some observers who meditated on the disruption.