The 1647 Santiago earthquake struck

Santiago, Chile Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital (political), capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated Regions of Chile, region, t ...

on the night of 13 May (22:30 local time, 02:30 UTC on 14 May) and is said to have brought virtually every building in the city to the ground. The

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...

was felt throughout the so-called

Captaincy General of Chile The Captaincy General of Chile (''Capitanía General de Chile'' ) or Governorate of Chile (known colloquially and unofficially as the Kingdom of Chile), was a territory of the Spanish Empire from 1541 to 1817 that was, for most of its existenc ...

, an administrative territory of the Spanish Empire. The maximum felt intensity was XI (''Extreme'') on the

Mercalli intensity scale The Modified Mercalli intensity scale (MM, MMI, or MCS), developed from Giuseppe Mercalli's Mercalli intensity scale of 1902, is a seismic intensity scale used for measuring the intensity of shaking produced by an earthquake. It measures the eff ...

and there were about a thousand casualties.

Tectonic setting

Chile lies along the destructive plate boundary between the

Nazca Plate The Nazca Plate or Nasca Plate, named after the Nazca region of southern Peru, is an oceanic tectonic plate in the eastern Pacific Ocean basin off the west coast of South America. The ongoing subduction, along the Peru–Chile Trench, of the Na ...

and the

South American Plate The South American Plate is a major tectonic plate which includes the continent of South America as well as a sizable region of the Atlantic Ocean seabed extending eastward to the African Plate, with which it forms the southern part of the Mid-A ...

Damage

The earthquake was the most damaging in the history of Santiago. Damaged buildings included the Iglesia San Agustín (

Saint Augustine Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Af ...

Church). Inside the church, the ''Cristo de Mayo'' crucifix was undamaged except for its

crown of thorns According to the New Testament, a woven crown of thorns ( or grc, ἀκάνθινος στέφανος, akanthinos stephanos, label=none) was placed on the head of Jesus during the events leading up to his crucifixion. It was one of the instru ...

which had fallen to Christ's neck, despite the diameter of the crown being smaller than that of the head. The Bishop of Santiago,

friar A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century; the term distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the ol ...

Gaspar de Villaroel, salvaged the image from the debris and dragged it from the church to the

Plaza de Armas The ''Plaza de Armas'' (literally Weapons Square, but better translated as Parade Square or parade ground) is the name for Latin American main squares. In the central region of Mexico this space is known as El Zócalo and in Central America as ...

to display to the gathering survivors.

Characteristics

The cause of the earthquake is not known with certainty, although from contemporary reports, it appears unlikely to have been a megathrust event. It may have been either an extensional event within the

Benioff zone Benioff is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: *David Benioff (born 1970), American writer, screenwriter and television producer *Hugo Benioff (1899–1968), American seismologist and academic **Wadati–Benioff zone *Marc Benioff ( ...

, or a shallow focus intraplate event, possibly along the San Ramón Fault.

Aftermath

After the earthquake the ''Cristo de Mayo'' crucifix was kept in the home of the landowner

Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer Catalina de los Ríos y Lísperguer (c. 1604 – January 16, 1665), nicknamed La Quintrala because of her flaming red hair, was an aristocratic 17th-century Chilean landowner and murderer of the Colonial Era. She is famous for her beauty and, ...

, better known as La Quintrala, until her death in 1665. Each year since 1647 on May 13, many townspeople gather to commemorate the earthquake. Some days after the earthquakes the city was affected by heavy rains which made the problems of sanitation worse. Over the next few weeks an estimated 2,000 people died of "chabalongo", the name then used for

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...

. Due to the high level of damage caused by the earthquake the government considered moving the capital a few kilometers farther north (in the area that is currently known as

Quillota Quillota is a city located in the Aconcagua River valley in central Chile's Valparaíso Region. It is the capital and largest city of Quillota Province, where many inhabitants live in the outlying farming areas of San Isidro, La Palma, Pocochay ...

). The decision was made, however, to reconstruct Santiago on the same site. Gaspar de Villarroel, Bishop of Santiago, said that the earthquake should not be considered as divine punishment for the sins of the inhabitants, adding that "it will be a mortal sin to judge that their (the citizens') sins destroyed this city".

In literature

The earthquake was the subject of a

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...

, ''

The Earthquake in Chile ''The Earthquake in Chile'' (german: Das Erdbeben in Chili) is a short story written by Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811) and published in 1807. The story's central characters are two lovers caught up in the chaos of the 1647 Santiago earthquake in ...

'', by the German author

Heinrich von Kleist Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist (18 October 177721 November 1811) was a German poet, dramatist, novelist, short story writer and journalist. His best known works are the theatre plays ''Das Käthchen von Heilbronn'', ''The Broken Jug'', ''Amphit ...

, published in 1807.

References