The theory of the Earth of the Barnabite cleric Ermenegildo Pini: a mostly unknown Italian catastrophist

At the turn of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Earth sciences were in a period of heated debates, with an arduous acquisition of basic principles for geology. Among the unresolved debates, was the well-known between Neptunists and Plutonists, and there was still disagreement between the supporters of a catastrophic flood and a long permanence of the sea in areas currently occupied by emerged lands. In such a climate of uncertainty...