Introduction

Since mid-20th century, research involving millenarianisms and messianisms¹ have gained terrain. Several new studies deal with groups, publications, preachings, prophets, prophecies, philosophies, and political-religious movements. Isolated or combined, these elements have not materialized their hopes of establishing a new order of things.² Nevertheless, is undeniable their share of influence on Western history and culture.

This study focus on specific and geographically restricted millenarianist trends by examining the interpretation and use of Daniel 2 and 7 four-kingdom schema by João de Castro (c.1550-1628) and António Vieira (1608-1697). Though coming from diverse contexts and aims, the interpretations of these two Portuguese enthusiasts reveal some fascinating parallels with basic Adventist understandings of the theme.³

Millenarianism in Europe

Serafim dares to assert that “the history of European culture cannot be fully understood, by denying the importance of prophetic trends, usually those of an eschatological nature.” Throughout the Middle Ages, “with a special glow after Joachim of Fiore” and in the “Modern Age and to the Contemporary, Europe understood itself, ruled and decided much of its future based on interpretations of prophecies.” So prophecy had several uses as “a form of intervention, as a means of political and religious propaganda, as an instrument of understanding history and a way of unraveling the future.”⁴ From a social point of view, the “taste” for prophecies was “wide and vertical,” common among the most popular layers, but equally appreciated in the courts, among the nobility, becoming a “trait of modern intelligentsia.”⁵

Messianic expectations in Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the continuation of a long line of Jewish-Christian messianic hopes, according to Popkin, dating back to the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE).⁶ Under the rule – and often oppression – of foreign empires and nations, there was among the Jews an “expectation that a messianic figure would appear and bring about the culmination of Jewish hopes.” Christianity wasn’t different. It was born of messianic and apocalyptic Jewish hopes, now embodied in Jesus and his second coming to establish, in fact, the messianic kingdom.⁷

The long line of those who held these beliefs is linked to the books of Daniel and Revelation, which point out in some way how and when the Messianic hopes would be fulfilled in the future, involving the coming of the Messiah (for Christians, the second coming) and the climatic events around this event.⁸

A special emphasis is placed on the four kingdoms schema found in the book of Daniel. In a historic review of the reception of Daniel 2, Breed points out that “the four-kingdoms schema found in Dan 2 and 7 proved to be one of the most influential time-structuring devices in all of world history.”⁹ The attractiveness and versatility of such schema allowed it to be used both by empires and paradoxically by peoples subjugated by them. Almost all interpretations in the Christian Era identified the sequence of four kingdoms in the same way Seventh-day Adventists do today, starting with Babylon, which is followed by “some combination of Media and Persia,” “Greece or Macedonia usually including Alexander’s Hellenistic Empire and the resulting kingdoms of the Diadochoi,” ending with the Roman Empire.¹⁰

By the time of Jerusalem’ destruction by the Romans, “Some had hoped the Messiah would arrive in time to save the Temple and the holy city.” Later, in the second century, amid a rebellion against the Romans, some looked to Bar Kochba as the expected leader. Frustrated with hope,

Jewish leaders studied various malevolent developments in Jewish history as containing possible evidences of the birth pangs of the Messiah. They looked for clues about the mighty empires that would have to be destroyed, as foretold in the Book of Daniel, in order for the Messianic Age to begin. They tried to calculate from the symbols in the Book of Daniel, how long it would be after the end of the Roman Empire.¹¹

In the 12th century, Joachim of Fiore proposed a rereading of the book of Revelation, identifying three ages (firstly with the Father, followed by the Son, and then by the Holy Spirit), affirming that the third and last age would start shortly. Kabbalists in southern France and Spain sought to identify when the Messianic Age would initiate from numerological readings of Hebrew terms.¹²

In late Middle Ages, Jewish communities in European Christian populations, though segregated, experienced significant interactions, due to Christians' interest in studying the Bible in the original languages and in discovering supposed “secrets” that the Jews eventually were keeping in their studies about the Messiah’s coming.¹³ Thus, at the end of the fifteenth century, there was contact between of ideas from both groups, especially Spain and Portugal, with Isaac Abravanel.¹⁴

According to Koselleck, until the sixteenth century, the Christendom lived an expectation of the end of time, especially concerning the Holy Roman Empire, which was considered an extension of the ancient Roman Empire, generally classified as the fourth kingdom of Daniel. Thus, throughout history, as in post-exilic Judaism, Christianity is considered a

history of expectations, or more exactly, the constant anticipation of the End of the World on the one hand and the continual deferment of the End on the other. While the materiality of such expectations varied from one situation to another, the basic figure of the End remained constant. The mythical investment of the Apocalypse could be adapted to a given situation, and even noncanonical prophecies presented little variation from the figures that were supposed to appear at the Judgment, such as the Emperor of Peace, the Engelspäpste, or harbingers of the Antichrist such as Gog and Magog who, according to oriental tradition (also then current in the West), remained confined to the Caucasus by Alexander until the time came for their irruption. However the image of the End of the World was varied, the role of the Holy Roman Empire remained a permanent feature: as long as it existed, the final Fall was deferred. The Emperor was the katechon of the Antichrist.¹⁵

The transformations that occurred in Europe in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries led many Jews and Christians to believe in the approach of time of the end, as Popkin asserts:

the forced conversion of most of Spain's Jews, the collapse of the Moorish kingdom in Spain, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and later Portugal, and the unification of Castille and Aragon were taken as indications that something monumental was starting. 1492 was seen as the miracle year, the annis mirabilis. The Voyages of Discovery emanating from Portugal and Spain, the new worlds they revealed and the riches they broughtback to Europe had to be part of the great Divine plan. Christopher Columbus, in his Book of Prophecies, told Isabella that he would find enough gold in the Americas to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem!¹⁶

Constantinople, the seat of Easter Christianity, was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453, which dominions “spread as far as the Balkans, Budapest, the outskirts of Vienna, and the waters around Italy. This also had to be some indication of divine significance.”¹⁷ In parallel to the Ottoman expansion, internally

The corruption of the papacy and of the clergy, railed against by Savonarola and Erasmus, was taken as a sign of the deteriorating world that would precede the coming of the Messiah. The resurgence of Greek and Roman learning provided ammunition for those seeking clues about the ways of God in History. All over Europe, the eruption of reform movements within the Church, which led to the establishment of non-Catholic Christian states in England, Germany, Bohemia, and Switzerland, and the emergence of organized Reformed churches as powerful alternatives to Roman Catholicism, all made various visionaries think in terms of the dramatic scenarios in both the book of Daniel and Revelation.¹⁸

Those who studied the biblical apocalypse saw the Ottoman Empire as the last before the divine kingdom of the book of Daniel. Others saw the pope or the papacy as the antichrist, “others saw the pope or the papacy as the Antichrist who was about to be overthrown as a prelude to the Second Coming of Christ.” Some commentators believe that the millennium would begin 1,260 years after the fall of the Roman Empire. This caused many to venture to determine precisely when the Roman Empire would fall – a task to which Isaac Newton, among other scholars, devoted themselves. People of that time, Newton among them,¹⁹ understood that in those days Daniel 12: 4 was being fulfilled, which states that “knowledge would multiply.” for, as we have already noted, discoveries and the establishment of colonies and commerce overseas stood as a sign that the end time was fast approaching.²⁰ The complex historical transformations of the time gave rise to millenarian expectations and readings of events from “Portugal to Sweden to Poland to Italy to Palestine and Constantinople.”²¹

In Portugal, at the end of the sixteenth century, there was an expectation for the return of King Sebastian, who disappeared at the battle of Alcácer Quibir (present-day Morocco) on August 4, 1578. Adepts of so-called Sebastianism expected him to return to inaugurate the messianic age. The Portuguese's interest in the prophecies apparently occurred as a reaction to the national crisis. In the following century, Marranos Christians expected that “Jesus would come first to Portugal to rescue the new Christian Marranos and take them with him to Palestine where they would rebuild the Temple.” At the same time, reports of a Portuguese explorer claiming to have found some of the lost tribes of Israel in the Andes Mountains, led the Rabbi of Portuguese origin, Menasseh ben Israel, to proclaim in Amsterdam in 1655 that “the coming of the Messiah was imminent.”²²

D. João de Castro’s Fifth Empire

From noble ancestry on the paternal side, but from a poor family on the part of his mother, whom he did not even know, D. João de Castro seemed to reflect the paradox of his origins. He lived between hope and despair, abundance and hunger, court and gutter, his beloved Portuguese nation and the exile. After being raised by his grandmother, he was sent to a monastery, where he remained from eight until around the age of 14, when he fled in pursuit the dream of studying. He suffered 11 years of poverty in Évora, Portugal until he was sponsored by a cardinal, which helped him to become a bachelor and master of Arts, and study three years of Theology. According to Serafim, this experience of struggles and poverty shaped João de Castro's “character and cultural personality” to “endure and overcome needs and tribulations.”²³

After his period of studies, Castro arrives at Lisbon in 1578, along with the news of Alcácer-Quibir. Two years later, in 1580, he learned that the “king of Castile came with a great army to become king of Portugal.” He, who wanted to become a Carthusian, soon set about taking up arms to defend his nation, in the midst of ill-prepared troops, under the command of Don Antonio, who haven’t shown any resistance to the Spanish army.²⁴ Joao de Castro fled, but his patriotic zeal for the Portuguese cause was inflamed in exile, for which he decided to give his life, participating in two ill-fated expeditions against the Castilians who tried to occupy Portuguese overseas dominions.

On a personal level, D. João felt mistreated by D. Antonio, whom he also criticized for failing to the “rule” and “manners of the glorious kings of Portugal.”²⁵ According to Serafim, it was the prospect of an “oppressed Portugal,” added by D. António's notorious inability to regain the lost sovereignty which led João de Castro to think of “more idealistic solutions.”²⁶ According to Castro himself:

Many times I was thinking about the remedy; figuring it out so impossible that it lacked the fantasy in another greater impossibility, as it was to desire that God would raise Dom Sebastian, The King. And I said to myself that if he [God] wanted to put in my hand the power to raise some dead person, I would raise no one if the mentioned King.²⁷

In 1587, he left England and went to France, where he devoted himself to “collecting and reading some prophecies.”²⁸ Castro “developed the taste” for them, which convinced him that D. Sebastian was alive and would reappear. Initially disbelieving his prophecy, which served to delegitimize D. António as claimant to the throne,²⁹ Castro began to go through a process of “self-conviction about the legitimacy of this hope, and understood all this as a divine strategy to lead him to the truth.”

What moved me to have this opinion: it was seeing many and several prophecies that talked about a future prince that would become the conqueror of the world, giving [these prophecies] the most particular and notable signs about him and the time of appearance. These signs I saw as suitable to King Sebastian, and for being fit for him and for the times in which we were, in the last or fourth mode, as the logic ones talk about. For which such foundation was humanly so firm and certain of this: that I wasn’t able to say anything in contrary.³⁰

As Serafim says, this was the "road to Damascus" for Castro. Seeking to manipulate the Sebastianist faith to influence Portugal's political course, in a calculated game between politics and prophecy, Castro was eventually infected by this faith. That is why Azevedo calls D. João de Castro “the S. Paul of Sebastianist religion.”³¹ While studying the prophecies, João de Castro concluded that he lived in the period of the “fourth mode” or the “fourth kingdom of the book of Daniel.” So he started to wait for the Fifth Kingdom, the divine one, which would be established by the promised King-Messiah. For him, the only one suitable to fulfill this prophecy would be D. Sebastian. The first four months of study in France in 1587 “would have resulted in an outline of the future – Tratado da Quinta Monarquia³² [Fifth Monarchy Treatise]. This work was published in Latin in the year 1597, entitled De Quinta et Ultima Monarchia future. In this book, he “defended [...] the election of the Portuguese people, the coming of the “Hidden One.” in the figure of Don Sebastian, and the establishment of the last monarchy.”³³

Castro came to believe that “the whole history of the people of God – included in the sacred texts – was cyclically reiterated in revelations.” Quoting Amos 3:7, he affirmed: “Surely the Lord GOD does nothing Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7, NKJ).³⁴ He also believed that, in addition to the canonical prophets of Scripture, “God used men with ‘spirit of prophecy’ or ‘spirit of intelligence’ to reveal Himself to manifest ‘future secrets.’” Castro, however, saw a hierarchical relationship between these inspired sources. The Holy Scriptures stood on a higher level, which he called “canonical prophecies” or “prophecies of faith.” In this schema, the Bible was followed by “non-canonical prophecies whose authority was recognized,” which, in its turn, were above the “non-canonical [prophecies] and without confirmed authority.”³⁵

Concerning the importance of the biblical sources, Castro had them as a “point of reference.” So deep was his respect for the Bible that he wrote comments over the books of Daniel and Revelation. However, this did not exclude the possibility that God “could give the same authority (as the canonical ones had) to those who were not.”³⁶ As for non-canonical sources, “Castro had in mind the writings of Joachim of Fiore, St. Methodius, St. Bridget, Cyril, Dandalus, St. Anselm, Telesforus, Reynaldo, and the Sibylline Oracles, an apocalyptic work that foretells Christianity. Below the previous were the prophecies of St. Isidore and “many Portuguese prophecies, ancient and modern,” among which were Trovas of the Portugese national Gonçalo Annes Bandarra (1500-1556). However, he highlighted the critical importance of the Portuguese prophecies, for their usefulness, because they were “analogous in spirit, and more content-filled [...] especially fruitful in details and peculiarities.”³⁷

Concerning the interpretation of Daniel, as Serafim exposes in his introduction to the 2011 edition of A Aurora da Quinta Monarquia [The Dawn of the Fifth Monarchy] (1604-1605), “the work of D. João de Castro does not innovate regarding the ‘program.’” He understood the Fifth Empire as it was “almost unanimously interpreted over the centuries” as the Christian people (i.e., the Catholics) would annihilate all their enemies. At the time, the Catholic Church was a “militant church” due to corruption itself and the “reform” movement, but it would become triumphant with the arrival of a universal king, the latter, who would conquer the “Universe”:

We will suppose what it is for so many years prophetized, that there is not except Christ, or about him in style (sic.), other things that are so repeated and known widely as the following. It’s good to know: The great corruption of manners of the Catholic Church, the terrible scourge that would come to it, its great reformation after that and its triumphant militancy, the coming of the last monarch, with the conquest of the Universe.³⁸

Castro set himself out to discover the time of fulfillment of the prophecy and of which nation would emerge the “emperor-king.”³⁹ He wanted to “prove that many had been wrong about the moment and the protagonists of the project exposed [...]. These glorious events for Christendom would happen in their time, and the head of the Fifth Empire would be the Portuguese King disappeared in Africa and now hidden.”⁴⁰

For Castro, the interpretation of Daniel 2 was evident:

There is not any doctor that doesn’t understand the four metals of that statue as the four Monarchies that have existed in the world; as it was the first of Assyrians and Chaldeans; the second of Persians an Medes; the third of Greeks; the fourth of the Romans.⁴¹

He relies on the interpretation of the “Prophet Daniel,” to say that the stone that destroys the statue symbolizes a “Kingdom extended throughout the whole Universe that would unravel the said Monarchies, and conquer its lordship.” The stone hit the statue that represents the kingdoms and forms in its place a mountain representing the kingdom “given to the holy people of the Most High.” For Castro, this kingdom was a “temporal monarchy of all the land that has to have Christendom, without being a King, nor the Prince of another Law.”⁴²

He believed that at the time of the “emperor-king” manifestation of this “temporal” realm (that is – not spiritual or heavenly but concrete and earthly), “all the Potentates of the Earth” would be converted to “Christ’s Law.” In this view, even the Jews would convert to Christ “without the force of weapons, but just by preaching, and the force of truth and the Lord’s wonders would be reduced [become clear] to their knowledge."⁴³

It was evident to Castro that the prophecy had not been fulfilled in the time of the Jews, “neither could it be, for that stone was Christ.”⁴⁴ Nor had it been fulfilled in the “Early Church, neither in our time, because Christianity was never seen as the ruler of all the earth, neither as a Conqueror of it all.”⁴⁵ However, though Christ is the stone in his interpretation, “when he came to the world he didn’t want to reign temporally, and after he resurrected, it was given to him still as human all the power in heaven and earth. [However he] have not reigned in it visibly but through his members.”⁴⁶ Thus “the kingdom that filled the world and destroyed its dominions” is the “present Christianity,” though in his time still in an incomplete way, for it yet haven’t conquered the world.⁴⁷

Don Sebastian would fulfill the prophecy of Daniel 2, as the head of the “present Christendom” to which Christ had already bestowed the kingdom, according to Bandarra:

For this we say that such a stone, or Kingdom, that filled the world and destroyed its dominions is the present and successive Christianity, is the Christians, members of Christ, by which he will conquer and subdue all the world, which temporal and visible head in the lead of the Conquest – it will be The King Don Sebastian, with Portugal’s kingdom, as God clearly prophesized through Bandarra, and we have declared in our paraphrase.⁴⁸

Concerning the time of the divine kingdom establishment under Don Sebastian, João de Castro argues that it should happen only after the fall of the Roman Empire. In other words, this would be another reason why Christ himself would not be the head of the kingdom expected, but Don Sebastian, “the less noble meaning of the stone”:

When Christ was born, still had not come the time to the stone hit the statue’s feet, and to break it into pieces, because it could not happen but only after the Roman Empire be gone and divided into particular kingdoms – that would be the statue’s feet. It had not yet happened and have not happened for a great sum of years. For this reason, the interpretation of Daniel about the stone still is not fulfilled. […] But stands in a literal way the less noble meaning of the stone – The King Don Sebastian as the Head of the work, and in whom God wants to show that it is not the human work and power that will raise the mentioned King to such wonder, but only his [God’s] will and his arm. […] It concerned about the same monarchy that Daniel has told, about this first King of Portugal, whose offspring chose to be the head of it.⁴⁹

In the Aurora da Quinta Monarquia and after this work, D. João de Castro elaborates more on Don Sebastian as the monarch of the fifth empire, resorting to other prophetic sources valid for him. The situation in Portugal and the experiences lived by Castro had a decisive impact on his immersion in beliefs and millenarian expectations around the figure of D. Sebastian, at a time when not only he but the people and the upper strata of society harbored similar hopes.

Castro breaks the meaning of the stone, proposing a combination of Jesus, the Catholic Church and Don Sebastian – an arrangement that is not drawn from the biblical text. Thus, D. João de Castro uses the Bible according to his nationalistic-messianic expectations, in which Portugal and Don Sebastian, his mythical king, would constitute the apex and fulfillment of the divine plan of establishing a kingdom on Earth.

There are several parallels with the Adventist interpretation of Daniel's prophecy, beginning whit the historicist perception of the "four modes" or historical periods involving four empires, namely: the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek (or Macedonian) and Roman empires. Castro also quotes Amos 3:7 to establish an understanding of prophetic revelation at specific times. Castro still develops an understanding of what he calls the “spirit of prophecy” and what understands of inspiration, considering the value of biblical and non-biblical writings. The last aspect has to do with the notion that the divine kingdom would destroy earthly powers and be settled on Earth.

António Vieira’s Fifth Empire

As João de Castro, Vieira was devoted to the “supremacy of the Portuguese kingdom.”⁵⁰ In his vast work, marked by an eschatological hope rooted in biblical prophecy, he expresses his faith that “a Fifth Empire destined to anticipate the establishment of the divine kingdom and led by a Portuguese emperor was imminent.” Such a faith he kept until his death,⁵¹ although he did not see it fulfilled.

Much more than a subjective hope, it was a “systematic construction” and probably elaborated after “many years of questioning why the promised kingdom had not yet happened” – the same question mad by every biblical commentator. It was, therefore, the result of the work of a Jesuit theologian, combined with his view as a diplomat.⁵² The “world’s sin” and its evangelization still incomplete would be the explanations for such a delay.⁵³ Failure in the fulfilling of the prophecies required “updates” in Vieira's interpretations, but he “never doubted the veracity of the content of the prophecies.” In Clavis prophetarum, the Jesuit affirms that it was just “a matter of time” for its fulfillment.⁵⁴

If for Castro, the disaster of 1580 (Alcácer Quibir) was the event that led him to the prophecies, it is possible that the reversal of this disaster in 1640 with the Restoration of the Portuguese Kingdom played a similar role about Vieira, “public introduction of his eschatological system.”⁵⁵ Besides, as Lima states, em 1640, “Sebastianism was overshadowed by an immense production of texts that justified the Restoration from providential arguments given in the foundation of the kingdom, and the body of prophecies that heralded the coming of the Desired King, now identified in the figure of King John IV.”⁵⁶

For Vieira, the book of Daniel was the “first stone” of his “eschatological building,”⁵⁷ and, as Lima states, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream constituted the base of the Vieira’s Fifth Empire:

Nebuchadnezzar's dream was one of the foundations of the Vieira’s Fifth Empire. Following the Jewish exegeses which transformed the prophets into authors of visions concerning distant ages and empires, and their prophecies, 'in prospective and historical visions', Vieira identified the four kingdoms of the statue as Nebuchadnezzar's as the Chaldees (as deciphered by Daniel), the Persians, the Greeks (Macedonian) and the Romans, represented in his time by the Holy Germanic Empire, of the house of Austria.⁵⁸

However, despite having resorted to Jewish sources to interpret the biblical text, Vieira did not understand the stone of the vision of Daniel 2 (which destroys the statue) as the coming of the Messiah, to establish the Fifth Monarchy. “There was no need for any ruptures or for Christ to come back to earth once more for this kingdom to take place.”⁵⁹ He saw the rock as the Kingdom of Christ on Earth with his double crown: that of the Pope and that of the King of Portugal (identified as King João IV, extending it to his two crowned sons and then to his grandchildren).⁶⁰ Christ would not need to return, because “the pope and the emperor” were already his “vicars of Christ on Earth.”⁶¹ His approach to prophecy was in accordance with the ideas of Augustine and Fiore.⁶²

This proposal of the Fifth Empire, based on Daniel 2 and 7 and the sixth chapter of Zechariah,⁶³ “was a tributary of the Messianic-millenarian Lusitanian tradition,” which proposed the divine election of the Portuguese people since the advent of the Miracle of Ourique (1139), which constitutes the nation’s “founding myth.” The Miracle of Ourique is also found in Castro,⁶⁴ who in De Quinta et Ultima Monarchia Futura, laid the foundations for the election of the Portuguese people (among other ideas, as already noted in this study). Vieira’s ideas, inspired by the “Old Testament hope” of a “messianic earthly kingdom.” were paralleled in other European millenarian beliefs and movements of that time.⁶⁵ Particularly, his ideas of the Lusitanian election were also based on the Trovas de Bandarra,⁶⁶ whose author Vieira dedicated himself to defend as a true prophet in his Livro Anteprimeiro da História do Futuro.⁶⁷ For Vieira, Bandarra was “none other than Daniel.” who acted as an “intermediary of the message and divine will.”⁶⁸ For him, the Restoration itself was the confirming event of the authenticity of the prophetic gift of Bandarra.⁶⁹

Vieira's understanding of the Fifth Empire contradicted the orthodox Catholic position, which regarded it as the kingdom of the Antichrist, which would precede the parousia, the second coming of Christ.⁷⁰ For Vieira, by contrast, the Fifth Empire was the stone and would defeat the Antichrist: the Ottoman Empire.⁷¹ Consequentemente, “any proposal on the contrary could be regarded as heretical, as the inquisitors of Vieira tried to prove.” In Catholic orthodoxy based upon Augustine, “the Roman Empire, the fourth of the statue, was the representative of Christ on the earth, in his union with the Church, forming the City of God, thus putting itself against the prophetic chiliastic or messianic ideas.”⁷²

Vieira's theory of the Fifth Empire was “a peculiar, specific, and original thought system.” Cantel views this system as “coherent, precise, and clear.”⁷³ “Vieira goes further and creates, in fact, a new model within the traditional system of the ages of the world and the succession of empires based on Daniel and Revelation.”⁷⁴

Vieira’s Fifth Empire was “the kingdom of Christ and the Christians, as he frequently states in both the História do Futuro and in the Clavis Prophetarum.”⁷⁵ It is the stone of Daniel 2:35, the eschatological kingdom. However, this kingdom “would combine Christians as well as all the remaining earthly peoples,” which would still be reached by the gospel.⁷⁶ To fit the Fifth Empire into Daniel's timeline, he identified the ten horns of the fourth beast of Daniel 7 – corresponding to the Roman Empire – as the kingdoms in which that empire was divided, which serves as a temporal marker, indicating that this time of fragmentation was the present.⁷⁷

Portugal had to be the Fifth Empire for Vieira. While European nations fratricidal struggles, and the Spanish king, Philip IV was more concerned with “was more concerned with making war against Portugal than supporting Christianity” (support the Emperor against the Ottomans), becoming clay instead of iron,” only Portugal was able to face the Ottoman Empire (the antichrist). “No flag other than that of the Portuguese, on which the five wounds of Christ were imprinted, would defeat the Ottoman flag that carried the signs of the antichrist.”⁷⁸ Only the king of Portugal, “who retained power over the sea would be crucial to defeat the Turks, i.e., the evil that Vieira describes as the antichrist.”⁷⁹

As Valdez explains, Vieira dedicated three works to the building of his eschatological system: (1) “Defesa perante o tribunal do Santo Oficio” [Defense against the Holy Office court], the April 29 of 1659, Esperanças de Portugal (Hopes of Portugal); (2) História do Futuro (History of the Future), and – the most important in the eyes of Viera – Clavis Prophetarum. This leads someone to believe that the systematization of his eschatological hope was the purpose of his life.⁸⁰

Each work is analyzed separately as it follows.

Esperanças de Portugal

In Esperanças de Portugal, a famous letter written during a canoe trip on the Maranhão River in the Brazilian Amazon, Vieira addresses to Queen Luísa de Gusmão to comfort her about the death of King João IV occurred on December 6, 1656, in Lisbon. Three months earlier, the king had been seriously ill, and Vieira had prophesied that he would not die, for “many things had been prophesied and not yet fulfilled,”⁸¹ referring to a particular interpretation of Bandarra. With the death of D. João IV, the Sebastianists reinvigorated, demonstrating that D. João IV could not be the Hidden One. The letter is forwarded to the Queen, through the elected Bishop of Japan, Fr. André Fernandes, a friend of Vieira. According to Azevedo, the reason for this would have been for Fernandes to be more favorable to the Sebastianist cause, and his friend Vieira tried to convince him otherwise, along with the queen and all who had this idea.⁸² Esperanças de Portugal, therefore, is “most probably a treatise in which he describes his theory concerning the Fifth Empire, and in support of that he forecasts the resurrection of the Portuguese monarch.”⁸³ As Valdez states:

In fact, it appears possible to affirm that Vieira was on a mission to proclaim the excellence of the Portuguese and their monarchs, and the special role they would play in the very near future regarding the establishment of the divine kingdom on earth, as Daniel prophesied...⁸⁴

História do futuro

In História do Futuro, Vieira seems to offer a continuation to the proposals launched in Esperanças de Portugal. However, there are some difficulties regarding the date of the book about to the letter, according to Azevedo and Cantel.⁸⁵ Anyway, “the two works had to be understood as closely related, both in Vieira’s mind and in their content.”⁸⁶ Valdez agrees with Cantel that História do Futuro would have been written in the days of Vieira in Maranhão, between 1652 and 1661. In fact, in this book, Vieira also makes similar descriptions to the letter.⁸⁷ Azevedo suggests that this would have been an ideal environment for Vieira think about “uncommon things.”⁸⁸

Para J. J. van den Besselaar, História do Futuro is a “warm profession of faith [...] it had not only religious but also political and social dimensions.”⁸⁹ Vieira wrote this book at a time when “the Church and the State were not completely separated,” and “their works are as much a product of their faith as of their time and formation.”⁹⁰ In this book, Vieira presents a “universal panorama of history,” highlighting the role of the Jews and their importance in the Old Testament, and the fundamental role played by Portugal, creating a “lusocentric theory” – as J. J. van den Besselaar defines it.⁹¹ According to Valdez, in the second and third volumes of História do Futuro,

We find traces of the influence of ancient writers in questions such as those regarding the Fifth Empire as it had been forecast by Daniel, his real understanding of this empire, and how he designed the empire using a universalistic tone. Although he continually says that Portugal was the chosen nation to perform that task, Vieira, as the man of faith he was, does not forget about the importance of the spiritual power. Therefore, he describes the new empire as spiritual and temporal...⁹²

He “begins by describing the four empires that anticipate the fifth” however, citing other empires unrelated to biblical chronology existing in Europe, Asia, and Africa at that time. Reaffirms that the Fifth Empire would replace the four empires mentioned in Daniel and explains how the Roman Empire decline over the centuries, became divided into many lesser kingdoms and why Portugal was one of them.⁹³

In the first chapter of the second book, as the title shows ("The Fifth Monarchy is shown with the first prophecy of Daniel"), he devotes himself to interpret the events narrated in the prophecy of chapter 2 of the referred book. In the second chapter, titled "Daniel's Second Prophecy," Vieira seems to emphasize the importance of prophecy for it was presented to him a second time in chapter 7. He demonstrates once more the sequence of four empires and that the Roman Empire would be the last and was in decline. The era of iron and clay, the last of the statue, corresponded to the time of the Roman Empire, which was in decadence, marking its imminent end.⁹⁴

The kingdom, therefore, should be terrestrial/temporal, not heavenly/spiritual, within history and not outside history, for Christ inaugurated his kingdom by his death on the cross in history, a position discordant to most ancient commentators.⁹⁵ “the Empire of Christ and the Christians to be earthly.”⁹⁶

This Stone and this Empire of Christ, which has overthrown the other Empires, has grown? Therefore, it is not the Empire of heaven not after the World is finished; because the Kingdom and Empire of Christ, after the World is finished, in no way can the number of men grow or increase, because, after the World is finished and after the Day of the Judgment, there will not be more men who go to heaven; it should not grow or cannot grow in the glory of the blessed, because since that point each one will receive in full all the glory due to their merits; and because the time of receiving more has finished, so has the time of achievement.⁹⁷

The idea that the stone firstly destroys the earthly kingdoms and then grows up to fill the Earth means that it could not have an end. So the Fifth Empire would be eternal and earthly, because, according to Daniel 7:27, “the saints of the Most High” would rule over everything below the skies.⁹⁸

Clavis prophetarum

According to Azevedo, Clavis Prophetarum was written in the final phase of Vieira's life, when he was described as “beaten,” but “on the other hand, this same period represents his intellectual climax” around what he himself calls “pure mysticism and theology.”⁹⁹ There is no certainty about the place and date of composition, and it is not possible to make a statement about it safely, but it is almost certain that Vieira reflected on its content “for several years, if not decades”.¹⁰⁰ Apparently, he had thought of a set of four books, but ended his writing with the third.¹⁰¹

Although the critical edition of Book III does not deal with the visions of Daniel, in chapter III, Vieira discusses the universal preaching of the gospel, in which he highlights “the key role of the Portuguese and the missionaries taken on board the discovery ships.” In his view, the Portuguese revealed that the apostles had not preached to the whole world, concluding that ancient knowledge of the universal preaching was incorrect. Therefore, “the conquest of foreign people through faith happened little by little and would have lasted for several centuries” according to Vieira. As Valdez states, for Vieira, “The most important event of this evangelization happened with the beginning of the maritime discoveries led by the Portuguese. Only in that way could the missionaries enter territories previously denied to them.”¹⁰²

*****

Both Castro and Vieira present the Fifth Empire as a divine initiative, providential, but instrumented by beings of flesh and blood. The Messianic kingdom would be of divine origin and therefore universal, eternal, beyond the temporality of a millennium. Paradoxically it would also be temporal, terrestrial, according to the text of Daniel 2.

Castro and Vieira faced moments of national crisis that arouse in them a great deal of eschatological sensitivity. Such a crisis mingled with feelings of uncertainty and instability turn into a crucial factor of connection with the biblical prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. The local crisis led them into a particular reading and appropriation of apocalyptic symbolisms. Universal claims to the text were reduced around a particular group (in this case, the Portuguese nation), while at the same time the universalized the influence of such a particular group.

This seems to be a significant hermeneutic deviation from the apparent meaning of Daniel 2, which states that the stone is cast without the aid of human hands. Castro and Vieira emphasized that the main hidden meaning of the stone lied precisely in the human hands they wanted to see commanding not only Portugal but the world. In fact, both had direct involvement with political actions blended with their millenarian expectations. Commenting on this aspect about Vieira, Valdez states that:

it is important to remember that Vieira ’s hermeneutically apparent incoherencies may not be what they seem, i.e., they may just reflect the ideology of the author. In fact, we have to agree that Vieira was above all a realistic politician, which may explain the earthly character of his Fifth Empire.¹⁰³

Castro and Vieira applied a very particular typological hermeneutics, substituting Israel for the Roman Catholic Church, and the universality of the Roman Catholic Church for the particularity of Portugal. Although logical and apparently coherent in several respects, the complex ideas surrounding the Fifth Empire of Castro and Vieira seem to be based more on the subjectivity of their expectations than on a less passionate and more serene reading of Daniel and the facts.

On the other hand, in a comparison with the Adventist understanding of prophecies, they reveal several similarities, involving a historicist approach, a foundation in Daniel's prophecies, the identification of the four kingdoms, being the fourth, the Roman Empire, the division of this empire into fragile smaller kingdoms, and the terrestrial and temporal nature of the divine kingdom.

Conclusion

This study provided an analysis of the four kingdoms schema of Daniel 2 and 7 as used by Don João de Castro and António Vieira, in the 16th century. Castro and Vieira’s readings shows the correspondence between an apocalyptic text of historical nature and the political belief: the Fifth Empire should appear in history; it would be temporal, earthly, and although spiritual. It would not be mystical or distant; on the contrary, it was on the verge of appearing universally.

Operating symbolisms, the book of Daniel spoke in antiquity to an oppressed and crisis-stricken audience, effectively conveying a message of encouragement and hope. These characteristics make this kind of language and content attractive to other audiences equally oppressed and in crisis. These, in turn, appropriate the symbolism and apply it to themselves, often ignoring clear elements of the text, particularizing what is universal and universalizing what is particular. In this way of thinking, Jews give way to Portugal, and the fearless Portuguese people and the Christendom find in the Portugal and in its king the leadership, and divine election necessary to fulfill a messianic prophecy, like the stone of Daniel 2 destroys the kingdoms of the world.

Castro and Vieira’s, nationalist passion peppered by political calculation resulted in theoretical constructions and actions that paradoxically counted on the intervention of Providence. In despite of this, they worked politically to materialize such expectations.

The biblical text, therefore, is interpreted to serve the most deeply rooted nationalist interests in Castro and Vieira’s works. Despite the seemingly logical and compelling interpretation of the biblical text, it at times seems to circumvent identifiable meanings to serve political agendas. At this point, waiting for the divine providence that works in Daniel 2:45 “without the help of human hands” gives way to anxiety for some human hands to finally take control over Portugal and the world. With sorrow, they waited and made everything they could for a Christian and Lusitanian “Fifth Empire” that had never materialized and remained melancholically imprisoned between the bars of utopia.

Though the elaborations of Castro and Vieira failed to identify the stone and the kingdom that it would establish, their analyzes reveal several parallels with the Adventist interpretation: (1) the adoption of a prophetic chronology drawn from the biblical book of Daniel; (2) the interpretation of the four periods involving the empires identified as Babylon, Media/Persia, Greece and Rome; (3) a combination of biblical writings, supported by non-biblical writings by inspired authors, elaborating (in the case of Castro) a concept of the “spirit of prophecy”; and (4) the expectation of the establishment of a kingdom within history and not outside of it. In other words, Adventist understanding of Daniel's prophetic timeline is not insular or purely innovative. On the contrary: the perspective of a Europe boiling with messianic expectations centuries before the origins of Adventism talks a lot about its deep and broad hermeneutical heritage.