The Parochial Memories of 1758 ( pt, Memórias Paroquiais de 1758) are the results of an enquiry sent to every parish in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the ...

following the

1755 Lisbon earthquake The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, also known as the Great Lisbon earthquake, impacted Portugal, the Iberian Peninsula, and Northwest Africa on the morning of Saturday, 1 November, Feast of All Saints, at around 09:40 local time. In combination with ...

, by order of Sebastião de Carvalho e Melo, the Secretary of State of Internal Affairs of the Kingdom. The exercise was organised according to a plan containing sixty written questions; the compiled answers, relaying accounts on not only the damage sustained by the earthquake but also information on the local geography, demography, history, and economy, are valuable historical documents and are stored in the country's National Archive. Because Secretary Carvalho e Melo (today more commonly known by the title of

Marquis of Pombal Count of Oeiras () was a Portuguese title of nobility created by a royal decree, dated July 15, 1759, by King Joseph I of Portugal, and granted to Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, head of the Portuguese government. Later, through another roy ...

) was the first to attempt an objective description of the broad causes and consequences of an earthquake, he is regarded as a forerunner of modern seismological scientists. By analysing and cross-referencing the parish priests' accounts, modern scientists are able to reconstruct the event with some degree of scientific precision; without the questionnaire, this would have been impossible.

The questionnaire

The enquiry was split in three parts: the first, comprised 27 questions about the settlement; the second, 13 questions about the local landforms, specifically mountains; and the third, 20 questions about the local watercourses.BRAGA, Joana. ''Memórias Paroquiais : Índice
'. Lisboa: Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, 2014. All three parts ended by asking if there was anything else that was worthy of memory, in an effort to collect more information about the parishes' local peculiarities.

References

Notes

{{reflist, group=note 1758 in Portugal Censuses by country Parochial Memories Demographics of Portugal