Rethinking the Fifth Empire: António Vieria and the Clavis Prophetarum

Rethinking the fifth empire: António Vieria and the Clavis Prophetarum
Under Spanish government and about to lose what used to be part of the Portuguese empire, Portuguese men described Portugal as if undergoing the biblical last tribulation. Consequently, and by opposition to what was happening in central Europe, we can observe an increasing effort towards the exploration and usage of concepts involving millennial, messianic and apocalyptical expectations.
One of the main examples, and probably one of the latest, is certainly António Vieira, a Portuguese Jesuit, who left us an unfinished work in which he explored the concept of Fifth Empire. The Clavis Prophetarum is not only the writing space where he assembled his interpretation of the biblical prophecies, but also a place in which he proposed the terms under which a universal religion would be reached.
Therefore, it is our purpose in this paper to introduce António Vieira’s model of Fifth Empire and to contextualize it within biblical exegesis tendencies of his days. Then we will attempt to understand Vieira’s double facet, i.e., the Jesuit and the diplomat, can be found in his Fifth Empire systematization, and what appear to have been his most important concerns regarding the establishment of the divine empire.
Vieira’s conceptualization is of utmost importance to understand the intellectual and religious environment of the Portuguese second half of the seventeenth century: a disturbed time during which people were looking to search for answers in the biblical prophecies that could explain the reason behind so much suffering. Furthermore, it is necessary to remember how Vieira’s systematization was first understood as a possible heresy by the Portuguese Inquisition and only later, and in part, rehabilitated by Antonio Casnedi.
The Clavis Prophetarum represents, in our view, a common eschatological hope within the Iberian world, although focused on Portugal.