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Millenarian Themes in the Writings of Antonio Vieira
Author(s): Thomas Cohen

Source: Luso-Brazilian Review , Summer, 1991, Vol. 28, No. 1, Messianism and
Millenarianism in the Luso-Brazilian World (Summer, 1991), pp. 23-46
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3513281
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Millenarian Themes in the Writings of
Antonio Vieira
Thomas Cohen
The Portuguese Restoration of 1640 inspired an outpouring of messianic and mille-

narian literature that sought to legitimate the accession of D. Joao IV to the throne.' It
was during the decade following the Restoration that theJesuit Antonio Vieira first rose
to prominence in Lisbon, serving D. Joao as both court preacher and roving diplomat.2
These public roles gave Vieira ample opportunity to argue the cause of D. Joao and to
develop the distinctive "Luso-centric millenarianism" that became a central feature of
both his theology and his missionary work.3 This essay analyzes the development of
Vieira's millenarian thought between 1659, when he circulated his first prophetic trea-
tise, and 1689, when he wrote his last public sermon. Underlying the shifting themes of
Vieira's prophetic writings during this period was a continued focus on the nature of
prophecy and on the links between Portuguese destiny and universal conversion.
Within two years of the expulsion of the Spanish from Portugal, Vieira had become
a key figure in the court of D. Joao. Among the most notable assignments given to him
by the king was a diplomatic mission to Amsterdam in 1648 that brought him into con-
tact with the city's Jewish community. Vieira's long discussions with the Portuguese-
born rabbi Menasseh ben Israel challenged him to develop his understanding of
Judaism and its relationship to Christianity. Menasseh would soon publish a prophetic
treatise entitled The Hope of Israel.4 In 1659, three years after the death of D. Joao IV,
Vieira circulated privately his treatise The Hopes of Portugal (Esperanfas de Portugal). S This
treatise and the millenarian hopes that it expressed set in motion the events that were to
lead to Vieira's arrest and imprisonment by the Inquisition. Between his arrest in 1663
and his release in 1667 Vieira would produce the three texts that form the core of his
prophetic writings: the Livro Anteprimeiro da Historia do Futuro, the Historia do Futuro
proper, and the two Representations that comprise his defense.6
Why did Vieira's ideas provoke such sustained hostility on the part of the Inquisi-
tion? This question has been inadequately addressed in the literature.7 I believe that at
the root of Vieira's conflict with the Inquisition was the interpretation of political and
ecclesial authority that he first put forward in the Esperanfas and then refined in the His-
toria do Futuro and particularly in the Representations. Vieira's understanding of the pur-
pose of the church and its hierarchy was shaped above all by his experience in the
Brazilian missions.8 The New World represented for Vieira not an appendage to the
Old but a locus of prophecies that the Portuguese had been providentially chosen to re-
veal. The process of revelation, however, worked two ways: in revealing the New World
to Europe, the Portuguese were to be engaged in a process of self-revelation that was in
danger of being cut short prematurely by a failure not only of the imperial imagination
but also of the ecclesial one. It was his uncompromising identification of this latter fail-
Luso-Brazilian Review XXVIII, 1 0024-7413/91/000 $1.50

@> 1991 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

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24 Luso-Brazilian Rfview 28:1
ure that made Vieira's views so dangerous to the Inquisition. Every group that partici-
pated in the imperial project the crown and settlers, the missionaries and Indians,
and the Inquisitors themselves had a role to play in the schema of progressive revela-
tion that Vieira drew from scripture and then read into Portuguese history and into the
history of the missionary church. This schema had the effect of displacing authority
within the church because it assigned no special status to the ecclesial hierarchy in the
interpretation of scripture and because it stated unequivocally that lived experience is a
more valuable guide than scholarship for understanding the accidents and contingen-
cies that mark the pilgrimage of the missionary church.
Vieira began writing the Esperanfas during one of his last journeys into the back-
lands prior to the expulsion of the Jesuits from Maranhao. His immediate purpose was
to argue that Gonalo Bandarra's prophecies about a hidden king (the Encoberto of Por-
tuguese legend) applied not to D. Sebastiao but to the recently deceased D. Joao IV.9
Like Augustine, for whom he repeatedly expressed his admiration, Vieira was
acutely aware of the limitations of post-biblical prophecy. But he abandoned all caution
in his assessment of Bandarra's Trovas. He assigned canonical status to these verses
throughout his writings, particularly in the Esperanfas and Representations. '° The text of
the Esperanfas contains the specific arguments for which Vieira was arrested and sug-
gests some of the broader issues that brought him into conflict with the Inquisition.l'
Perhaps no single strand of Vieira's thought has received more dismissive treatment
than his unshakeable belief in the prophecies of Bandarra, a belief that caused Azevedo
to lament: "Singular aberration of an elevated spirit!" Azevedo writes with undis-
guised dismay of Vieira's fascination with a simpleton whom the biographer character-
izes as a "deceiver by inclination," a "charlatan" and a ''maniac.''l2 Yet Bandarra's lack
of education was an asset in Vieira's view, and Azevedo's charges of dishonesty and
madness reflect an assessment of the prophet that was rejected by Vieira and by the ma-
jority of his contemporaries.'3
Vieira opened the Esperanfas (which were written in the form of a letter to his fellow
Jesuit D. Andre Fernandes) with a rhetorical flourish that may have been an attempt to
guard against the controversy that the text, once circulated, would be sure to inspire.
He states that he is responding to the request of D. Andre for a more detailed exposi-
tion of the ideas about D. Joao IV that Vieira had previously communicated to him,
presumably in conversation.l4
The main arguments of the Esperanfas are constructed around a syllogism that
states:
Bandarra is a true prophet; Bandarra prophesied that El-rei Dom Joao

IV shall do many things that he has not yet done and cannot do without
being resurrected; therefore, El-rei DomJoao IV shall be resurrected.l5
The syllogism is rooted in Vieira's assumption that the status of Bandarra as a true
prophet had been proven by the unfolding of Portuguese history exactly as the Trovas
had prophesied. Those prophesies that remained to be fulfilled reflected the limitations
of Bandarra's interpreters rather than a flaw in the prophesies themselves. Vieira here
introduces an interpretive strategy that he will employ frequently in the Historia do Fu-
turo and the defense. He argues that the fact that the prophecies have not yet been ful-
filled confirms their veracity. Prophecy, like human hopes, is rarely fulfilled in the way
that people expect.

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Cohen 25
Bandarra was able to prophesy the unfolding of Portuguese history with unerring
specificity. Vieira, in turn, seeks to defend not the accuxacy of his own interpretations
of Bandarra but rather the unassailable truths of the Trovas themselves. In doing so he
assigns to Bandarra's visions a reality that supercedes the reality of the events that Ban-
darra prophesied. The cobbler's vision acquires for rhetorical purposes an urgency that
history itself lacks, so that Vieira is able to write of Bandarra: "certainly it seems that
he saw the events he foretold with a clearer light than that of the very eyes that after-
wards witnessed them." This light illuminated Portuguese history and placed a singular
blessing on that history by permitting it to be prophesied by an ignorant man:
It was thus a supernatural light, prophetic and divine, that illuminated

the understanding of this simple and humble man, in order that the
wonders of God that the world was to see in Portugal in recent times
might also have that preeminent quality of all great divine mysteries,
which is to be prophesied long before.'6
This passage, which represents the most unequivocal claim in the Esperanfas for the
divine inspiration of the Trovas, suggests the main points of conflict between Vieira and
the Inquisition. Had Vieira limited himself to calling Bandarra a true prophet whose
Trovas foretold the resurrection of D. Joao IV, it is unlikely that he would have been im-
prisoned. But his specific interpretations of the prophecies were linked to a second
point of conflict that was rooted in his understanding of Bandarra's prophetic gift. Be-
ginning in the Esperanfas and continuing through both parts of the defense, Vieira views
Bandarra's lack of education and low social status not as a liability but rather as a sign
of the cobbler's having been chosen by God to prophesy the destiny of the Portuguese.
Vieira's praise of this "simple and humble man" constitutes a call to the Portuguese to
recognize the knowledge that comes from God alone and that symbolizes the singular
blessing that God has placed on the Portuguese nation by revealing its future to the
cobbler. In the First Representation Vieira will again emphasize (this time with the Inquis-
itors directly in mind) the fact that Bandarra was a simple man. Bandarra's simplicity is
held up as a model for the Portuguese, whom Vieira identifies throughout the Esperanfas
and the defense as the successors to the Israelites.'7
Vieira's portrayal of Bandarra as an exemplary prophet calls into question both the
religious and the political authority of the Inquisition. The Esperanfas suggest that we
are able to gain only glimpses of the light that is contained in scripture. Knowledge of
the mysteries of divine providence is given by God to even his most humble servants,
and this is true not only of the Hebrew prophets but also of the post-biblical inter-
preters of prophecy and of the domestic prophets of Portugal, among whom Bandarra
possesses unique authority.
The implications of Bandarra's humble status for Vieira, as he wrote to Lisbon
from the Amazon backlands, cannot be overstated. Maranhao had transformed Vieira's
understanding of the apostolic purpose of the isolation and accompanying hardships of
the missionary vocation. The subtext of the Esperanfas is that the church hierarchy is
useful only insofar as it furthers the work of mission and allows God's chosen prophets
to make themselves heard.l8 Vieira elaborates a pastoral ethos that the Inquisition
rightly fears. He makes no effort to reassure his future accusers and others whom he
knows will object to the Esperanfas. Instead he warns repeatedly that cautious Christians
who are not yet strong enough to bear the full consequences of their faith are under-

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26 Luso-Brazilian Review 28:1
mining the missionary enterprise and preventing Portugal from fulfilling her destiny.
The Esperanfas prepare the ground for Vieira's later theology by making a learned argu-
ment against learning itself.
The Brazilian context is essential to this argument, and Vieira invests the isolation
of the backlands in which he is writing with an instructive function as important as that
of a university. The complexity of Vieira's argument here reflects his ambivalent view
of scholarship in relation to the larger aim of the Esperanfas, namely, the attempt to con-
vince his readers of the imminent resurrection of D. Joao. Thus in a passage in which
Vieira notes that he is unable to support his arguments by citing Augustine, he under-
mines his lament and makes a virtue out of the text's lack of sources. This internal un-
dermining parallels his effort to demonstrate to the Portuguese that it is because of D.
Joao's limitations rather than in spite of them that the king will be resurrected and that
the enlistment of supporting scholarship is at best unnecessary and at worst impious.l9
The physical circumstances and spiritual purposes of the missionary in the Amazon are
shown to be precisely suited to the interpretation of the prophecies of Bandarra.
These passages represent the most complete statement prior to the Histo'ria do Futuro
of Vieira's interpretation of how prophecy is fulfilled. Critics have suggested that he
overreached himself in explaining the weakness of D. Joao and that by the time he
wrote the Representations he had arrived at a more realistic assessment of the deceased
king.20 I would suggest that the Esperanfas and the Representations might more accurately
be placed on a continuum and that during the years that elapsed between the writing of
these two texts Vieira refined but in no way abandoned the interpretation of D. Joao
that would focus in the Representations on the difference between kings who have been
seen and kings who have been read (reys vistos and reys lidos). The years in prison simply
made this difference more apparent, as Vieira placed increasing emphasis on the mys-
terious relationship between history and the prophetic text. Over the course of his pro-
phetic writings Vieira transferred the focus of his hope in the Encoberto successively from
D. Sebastiao to D. Joao IV, D. Affonso VI, D. Pedro II, and finally to D. Pedro's two
sons, the first of whom died in infancy and the second of whom became D. Joao v. This
continuous transfer, rather than reflecting the inconsistencies in Vieira's interpretation
of the Fifth Empire, obeys the logic of prophecy that he developed for the first time in
the Esperanfas.
During the years when he was under house arrest and in prison Vieira worked on a
prophetic text, the Historia do Futuro, that he hoped would find a warm reception from
the Inquisition and from the Portuguese crown. The audience-particularly the crown
and court audience figures prominently in the Histo'ria do Futuro. Vieira's text is suf-
fused with the inflections of the preacher who seeks both to revitalize the Portuguese
imperial and ecclesial imagination and to free himself from the grasp of the tribunal.
While it has been clearly determined that the Representations were written in 1665-
66, the precise period during which the Historia do Futuro was written has been one of
the central points of controversy concerning the text.21 Determining the dates of compo-
sition of the text is important because of the accretions of missionary experience that by
the time of Vieira's imprisonment had transformed the millenarian vision to which he
first gave expression in the 1640s. With the notable exception of Marcel Bataillon, read-
ers of the Histo'ria do Futuro have attached a mere biographical interest to the dating of
the text. Yet the internal biographical evidence that suggests that sections of the Historia
do Futuro were drafted prior to 1664 becomes relatively unimportant when considered

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Cohen 27
alongside Vieira's interpretive schema, which was a product of his exile from the colony
and of his subsequent internal exile in Portugal.22
Vieira's series of conversations with Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel inspired him to
forge what proved to be a fateful link between the Jewish belief that the Ten Lost Tribes
would be restored to Israel and his own incipient belief in redemption by a Portuguese
king who would serve as the temporal vicar of the Fifth Empire. The spiritual vicar of
this empire would be the pope. The importance of this idea in Vieira's subsequent pro-
phetic writings led Besselaar to suggest that it was in prison that Vieira experienced his
second estalo. 23 Without underestimating the importance of the discussions with Menas-
seh ben Israel I would argue that it was not in Amsterdam but rather in prison that Vieira expe-
rienced a second estalo. The defeat in Brazil and two years in prison tested Vieira's
certainty about his messianic vision like no previous experiences had done. Only in the
course of reflecting in prison on his recent history was he able to cement the link be-
tween the conversion of the Jews and the conversion of the New World that he had be-
gun to consider in Amsterdam.
In the closing pages of the Livro Anteprimeiro Vieira sought to prove that the Hebrew
prophets assigned a privileged role in the missionary enterprise to the Portuguese em-
pire in general and to the colony of Maranhao in particular. The specificity with which
he applied each word of the eighteenth chapter of Isaiah to the Amazon Indians will
seem strained unless the reader bears in mind the framework for the interpretation of
prophecy that Vieira first elaborated in the Esperanfas and continued to develop in the
Livro Anteprimeiro. Both texts focus on the indeterminacy of human history:
This world is a theater, men are the players on its stage, and the true
history of their fortunes a comedy by God that is wondrously drawn
and staged by the ages of his Providence. And just as the excellence and
subtlety of the comic art consists principally in that suspension of the
understanding and sweet confusion of the senses with which the plot
carries men along, leaving them hanging from one development to the
next, and shielding the end of the story from those who would guess it,
so that no one can know where it will end until the moment when that
end comes upon him and reveals itself suddenly between the expecta-
tion and the applause; in the same way God. . .does not permit us to
grasp and understand the secrets of his intentions until the ends of
those intentions are upon us, in order that we might be held always sus-
pended in expectation and hanging by his Providence.24
Between the expectation and the applause the mysteries of history unfold. Foremost
among these mysteries is the faltering progress of the missionary church. The church
for Vieira is a necessarily fragile creation whose future can never be adequately dis-
cerned. It is the obligation of those who possess a gift for interpretation to draw on the
increments of knowledge that have accrued to each successive age in order to under-
stand how the prophecies of scripture will be fulfilled. Prophecies, however, are like wa-
ter: "dark. . .however clear they might be."25
During the period of exile and imprisonment that lasted from 1661 to 1668 Vieira
argued with increasing certainty that Brazil occupied a privileged position within the
missionary church. He broadened the reach of his prophetic writings by insisting with

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Luso-Brazilian Review 28:1
28
a new specificity on the interwovenness of scripture, the missionary enterprise

Portuguese destiny. Vieira did not see himself as a rebel or as one who sought to
the authority of the metropolitan church. But by reinterpreting the relationshi
tween Portugal and Brazil and between the church and the Jesuit order on the
his experience in the New World, he called into question the foundations of th
sionary enterprise and its place in the imperial project as a whole.
The most important scriptual influence on the millenarian vision of the Hist
Futuro and the Representations was the Book of Daniel. Vieira drew on Daniel th
his prison writings in an attempt to establish formal precedents for the interpr
human knowledge and the gift of prophecy that he set forth in his informal m
on Bandarra in the Esperanfas. Daniel's prophecies, however, do not figure o
Vieira's general argument for the provisional quality of the exegetical process. H
looks to Daniel in advancing his more specific defense of the interpreter's right
history in the service of exegesis. If prophecy is a gift given to the seer whom
chosen, the understanding of prophecy is an additional gift that depends on the
in which we live. Commenting on Daniel's inability to understand prophecies
spoke and that became clear to succeeding generations, Vieira concludes that
the very mysteries that were hidden from the greatest wise men and
Doctors may become clear to those who know much less, because this
knowledge is not the prerogative of learning but the fortune of the
times.26
In the Esperanfas Vieira interpreted Daniel through the mediation of Bandarra. In

the Historia do Futuro and the Representations, however, he sets forth a more personal inter-
pretation of the Fifth Empire that draws even more directly than did the Esperanfas on
scripture and on his own experience in the missionary church in Brazil.
The Livro Anteprimeiro and the Representations put forward an inclusive millenarian vi-
sion that affirms the role of all Portuguese-not just missionaries and the secular
clergy in the fulfillment of prophecy. In this context Vieira assigns central importance
to the evangelical role of what he terms the "first fruits" of conquest: the riches that the
Portuguese have harvested in the New World. The missionaries become followers rather
than initiators, and the souls they convert are the "second fruits" of Portuguese expan-
sion. This is as it should be, Vieira argues, in a characteristic attempt to discern the for-
tuitous consequences of obstacles to evangelization. He understates the points of
conflict between the missionary church, the crown, and the explorers and traders of the
empire in order to insist on the efficacy of temporal power in the missionary enterprise.
This efficacy depends on the capacity of kings to inspire fear.27 The Livro Anteprimeiro
provides a resounding affirmation of the imperial enterprise in its entirety, as befits a
work that is meant to inspire the whole Portuguese nation.
Vieira seeks to identify in scripture a vocabulary with which to affirm the apostolic
uses of European greed. He recites a litany of New World riches (drogas das Indias) in
order to personify these products as agents of evangelization. The cinnamon, honey,
and cedar of the prophecies all had specific Brazilian referents. These goods did not
simply invite the Portuguese to the New World but actually compelled them to over-
come the hardships of discovery and exploration.28
The earthly treasures to which Vieira refers had been invested with evangelical sig-

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29
Cohen
nificance throughout the history of the missionary church, beginning with the preach-
ing of Jesus.29 In the last section of the Livro Anteprimeiro, however, Vieira identifies the
physical characteristics of Maranhao and the riverine culture of its Indians as the spe-
cific referents of Isaiah's prophecies. His exegetical project in these passages becomes
more explicitly historiographical than at any other point in the Livro Anteprimeiro or the
Histo'ria do Futuro proper. Vieira recognizes the novelty of his project and tries to forestall
criticism by stating that the specificity with which he applies the prophecies of Isaiah to
Brazil is an unfortunate necessity. The claims of lived experience that informed the Es-
peranfas take precedence over the claims of exegetical prudence once again in the Livro
Anteprimeira Vieira states that his unique ability to link his knowledge of scripture to his
experience in Brazil places a special burden on him to set forth his Fifth Empire vision
in detail rather than trim it in the interest of his own safety. The implication is that he
would readily desist from this task if there were anyone else who could correctly inter-
pret the prophecies that have been realized in Maranhao in his own generation. But the
preacher protests too much. Addressing the king and court as well as his accusers,
Vieira relishes the interpretive role in which providence has placed him.
Vieira has already noted, in leading up to his interpretation of Maranhao, that the
patristic writers denied the existence of the Antipodes and dismissed as fantasies the
navigational feats that would be accomplished by the Portuguese. At the same time he
noted that these failings of the church fathers were mere accidents of history and of the
limitations of its interpreters. Yet in the Elnal pages of the text Vieira makes greater
claims for the human capacity to interpret history with the aid of prophecy than he was
willing to grant earlier in the text. He argues that the particular manner in which cer-
tain of the Hebrew prophecies were fulEllled remained hidden until the time of the Je-
suit Jose de Acosta, who had wide experience in the New World. Acosta's
interpretations, however, were limited (just as his predecessors' interpretations were
limited) by his time and place, and above all by his lack of knowledge of Brazil in gen-
eral and of Maranhao in particular. Vieira names the province that had eluded all pre-
vious interpreters.
Vieira made a striking departure from previous exegetes in his willingness to incor-
porate Indian realities into his interpretive method without questioning the importance
of the historicity of scripture. Instead of rendering traditional exegesis irrelevant within
the Amerindian framework, Vieira transferred it to Brazil with the conviction that it
was in the backlands of the Amazon that God had chosen to reveal the mysteries of the
Hebrew prophets. This inclusionary exegesis extended to the secular history of the
Amazon gentios the same scriptural antecedents that exegetes had traditionally assigned
to Europeans.30
Vieira's interpretation in the Livro Anteprimeiro of scriptural references to Maranhao
focuses on the first two verses of the eighteenth chapter of Isaiah. The differences be-
tween the Vulgate and the modern English translations of these verses suggest some of
the ambiguities on which his interpretation turns:
Ah, land of whirring wings which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia;

which sends ambassadors by the Nile, in vessels of papyrus upon the
waters! Go, you swift messengers, to a nation, tall and smooth, to a
people feared near and far, a nation mighty and conquering, whose
land the rivers divide.31

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The first four words of Isaiah's prophecy Vae terrae cymbalo alarum assume special sig-
nificance in Vieira's application of the text to the Indians of Maranhao. These words
have been alternately translated in the Vulgate and Septuagint as references to a "land
where there are bells with wings" and to a "land where there are ships with wings."32
Vieira claims that the two translations are in no way contradictory: he intends to show
that the Indians of Maranhao represent the only instance in history in which the sinos
(bells, or instruments) of the Latin version may be perfectly reconciled with the navios
(ships) of the Greek. He concludes that the Indians figured clearly in the language of
the prophets, though the existence of these same Indians remained hidden from the
church fathers and from their successors until the time of the Portuguese discoveries.
The cymbalum of the Vulgate referred not only to the metal cymbal (or bell, in
Vieira's Portuguese translation) of the Europeans but also to the generic term with
which the Indians denoted instruments that possessed a variety of more specific names.
The traditional association of the bells of the Vulgate with metal instruments was a
product not of the text itself but of its European interpreters. Vieira's interpretation,
like the interpretation by Miguel de Palacios that he cites, frees the Indians from this
need for European antecedents:
Why, I ask, should it not . . . have been the case that the vessels of which
Isaiah spoke were called by or took the name sinos not because this
name was used among the Hebrews but rather because it was used
among those same Indians?. . .And so it is that Isaiah comes to say
that the land of which he speaks is a land where the vessels are known
as sinos; and these very vessels are the maracatins of the Maranhao Indi-
ans.33
The sinos of the Europeans had their counterparts in the maraca's that were hung on
the prows of the canoes in which the Indians went into battle.34 The prow was called the
tim by the Indians, who borrowed the designation from their word for the beak of a
bird. The war canoes were known as maracatim. Paddling in these canoes, the battle-
ready Indians beat on their figuratively winged maracas to produce "a barbarously war-
like and horrible thundering." For those readers who remain uneasy Vieira notes in
passing that the Romans too referred to the prows of warship and the beaks of birds
with the same word, rostra.35
The claim that Vieira makes here for the autonomy of Indian language particular-
izes his more elliptical claims for the autonomy of the New World itself. Earlier in the
Livro Anteprimeiro Vieira had suggested that it is the metropolis that is dependent on the
colonies, and he had compared the empire to a vast body that is sustained by the fruits
that come from its furthest limbs.36 These fruits were created at the same time as the
fruits of Europe, Asia and Africa, but because they remained hidden from Europeans
they were thought to be products of a New World. This perception of the American
continent called forth from Vieira the mixture of pride and irony that runs throughout
his writings on the New World, which he described as "new to us, who are the wise
ones; but for those savages, its inhabitants, it is old and very ancient."37
Having identified the cymbalo alarum of the Vulgate with the Indians of Maranhao,
Vieira extends his interpretation to the navium alarum of the Septuagint by arguing that
the text refers not to the sails of ships but rather to "the real wings of birds." Like the
preceding exegesis, Vieira's interpretation of the Septaguint hinges on his knowledge of

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31
Cohen
Indian warfare. It is the custom of the Indians to cover

canoes but also their bows, arrows, maracas and bowspr
birds, particularly the bright red feathers of the guara.
ously understood to be figuratively winged (because th
pended from the beak of the canoe) may now be seen
"and for this reason the prophet, who saw and noted al
so novel, called the canoes 'sinos' and 'sinos with wi
alarum. X38
Vieira concludes the Liuro Antepnmciro by reaffirmin
pied by the Portuguese crown in the missionary ente
minds the crown of the role of theJesuits as partners in
heavily on Augustine throughout the Livro Anteprirneir
temporal and spiritual kingdoms are inextricably intertw
cerning a privileged position for the Jesuits as pilgrim
Vieira assigns to human agency a determining role in t
directly at odds with Augustine's philosophy of history.
primeiro is rooted in the expulsion from the Amazon an
Vieira and on the Society as a whole. Vieira's voice fad
not before providing a warning (for those who are able
tion that brackets it) that those Portuguese who attack th
ing the body of Christ.39
The Coimbra Inquisition censured Vieira for his arg
them were against common Catholic interpretation a
ous, and scandalous [fatuas, temerarias e escandalosas];
of pious and faithful Catholics and were erroneous an
and Holy Scripture, and had the flavor of heresy."40
sentence imposed only one restriction on the missionary
This measure was taken in order to prevent Vieira fro
authority by advancing his ideas outside the country, a
striction was lifted shortly afterwards. The General Co
ruled the tribunal and issued a sentence that would n
The Council placed Vieira under house arrest in aJesu
important, the Inquisitors permanently barred Vieira
The sentence was read to Vieira in a private audien
in a special Jesuit convocation the following mornin
most resounding demonstration of solidarity that Vieira
low Jesuits.43 He never resigned himself, however, to a
and with the 1668 accession of D. Pedro II as prince re
sion to travel to Rome. The stated pretext for his tri
group of Jesuits led by Luiz Figueira who died at the h
wrecked off the coast of Maranhao in 1643. Vieira's tru
his own name and that of the Society. He was vindicate
brief recognizing his "virtues and good conduct" and gr
nity from the jurisdiction of the Portuguese Inquisition
his attention once again on the Brazilian missions. In 16
he remained for the rest of his life.
Vieira spent the first years following his return to Ba
a Jesuit retreat outside the city.45 He did not remain in

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the age of eighty he accepted the post of Jesuit Visitador in Brazil, with the provision
that he not be obliged to make inspection tours of the missions in the backlands.46 In
accepting the post he entered once more into the public sphere to preach a series of ser-
mons that reflect his continued engagement with the missionary enterprise and with
Luso-Brazilian society as a whole.
The homecoming was made at what appeared to be an auspicious moment for the
Jesuits. The laws issued by D. Pedro II in 1680 placed the Society in a strong position in
the Amazon for the first time since its expulsion from the region in 1661.47 With theJe-
suits' exclusive jurisdiction over the Indians restored, it seemed that the victory of
which Vieira had dreamed since the 1660s one that precluded any compromise with
the Portuguese settlers on the Indian question-was finally within reach.
The Society was granted little time to savor its successes. Writing from Lisbon to
the Jesuit Superior in Maranhao in one of the few letters from the 1670s that addresses
the Indian question, Vieira anticipated the difficulties the Jesuits would face in enforc-
ing the new laws. The letter occupies a crucial place in the periodization of Vieira's
texts. Along with the 1678 Resposta to D. Pedro, it stands at the beginning of a new body
of writings about Brazil, and, more specifically, about the missionary enterprise in the
colony.48 Vieira's purpose during his last years in Brazil was to distance the Jesuits and
their Indian charges from the rest of colonial society. He sought to strengthen the Jesuit
alliance with the Portuguese crown and to focus the Society's efforts on Indians who
had not yet been brought into European society:
for this is not the time or occasion for us to use the few men and little
money we have for anything but the task with which we have been
charged...all our effort and application should be to take charge
quickly of the aldeias (the villages in which the Jesuits' Indian charges
lived) . . . for our greatest obligation is not the service of the settlers and
their slaves; rather it is the service of the free Indians, Christian and
gentio, leaving the rest for when there are more missionaries, which I
hope will be very soon.49
Vieira continued to refer occasionally to the need to convert the Portuguese and the In-
dians whom they had enslaved, but these references were vague and increasingly rare.
In any case, the events of the next sevenl years offered no reason to hope that the Jesu-
its' relations with the Portuguese were likely to improve. A rebellion against the crown
administration in Maranhao in 1684 led once again to the expulsion of the Jesuits from
the colony. The lesson that Vieira drew from the violence of 1653 and 1684 was that the
mission of the Society in Brazil lay exclusively in the conversion of the Indians and in
the partnership with the Portuguese crown that made conversion possible. Vieira had
formally postponed the conversion of the Portuguese and was uncharacteristically cau-
tious about predicting with any specificity how and at what time it would occur.
Vieira's term as Visitador (1688-91) coincided with the birth and death of Prince D.
Joao, the firstborn son of D. Pedro II and the king's second wife, D. Maria Sofia Isabe}.
The birth in December 1688 and the prince's death less than three weeks later pro-
duced a new crop of millenarian expectations that led Vieira to write his last two public
sermons: the Sermam de Acfam de Grafas, and the Discurso ApologAico. 50 These sermons are
unrivalled in Vieira's writings for the boldness with which they link contemporary polit-
ical contingencies to his longstanding preoccupation with the Fifth Empire. Together

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33
Cohen
they constitute a remarkable act of summation on Vieira's part of the implications of

prophecy for public life that he had addressed throughout his career, most recently in
the Exhortation that he had delivered to the novices of the Jesuit college in Bahia.51 The
several distinct strands of the Exhortation-Vieira's insistence on the illusoriness of hu-
man hopes and the lack of autonomy of the agent of history, and his command that
partnership be the organizing principle of mission are all developed in a new direc-
tion in the sermons on D. Joao.
Vieira's interpretation of the progress of the church was designed to accomodate the
many reverses that the church had to suffer in both Portugal and the New World. The
Sermatn deAcfam de Grafas, read witho?lt knowledge of the prince's early death, shows that
Vieira, even in the act of giving thanks for the birth of the prince, anticipated the trag-
edy that the Discurso Apologetico would explain. Put differently, Vieira in the Sermam de
Acfam de Grafas laid the foundation for a reversal that he would need only to interpret.
The fact that his term as Visitador coincided with the birth and death of D. Joao was
weighted for Vieira with unmistakable symbolism. He interpreted this symbolism first
in the private Exhortations and then in his final public sermons. He had lived long
enough to be able to interweave the destinies of the prince and the missionary so closely
as to make them virtually indistinguishable. The prince and the missionary are agents
of both history and providence. Neither one is autonomous, and each fulfills his destiny
by recognizing and finally sacralizing his lack of autonomy.
Critics have suggested that Vieira was forced in the Discurso Apologetico to perform a
desperate act of reconstruction in order to rescue the crumbling edifice of the Sermam de
Acfam de Grafas. This view misreads both sermons by failing to connect them to the
body of writings of which they are a part.52 Vieira's lapse into pride required no expla-
nation to his readers; his apologia was addressed to God and to the queen who served as
an instrument of divine providence. If indeed he sought to respond to the derision that
he encountered in some quarters, the text of his response cannot be read as a straight-
forward act of self-defense.
Even as he rejoiced at the birth of the prince, Vieira had found reason to be cau-
tious about the fulfillment of Portugal's hopes. In no sense may the sermon be inter-
preted as a return to the enthusiasms of his youth.53 The Sermam de Acfam de Grafas and
Discurso Apologetico are the most important late examples (along with the letters) of the
complex interplay between hope and desengano in Vieira's thought. As a nation that has
been given a unique blessing by God, the Portuguese have greater reason than any
other to fear both divine providence and human envy. Vieira posits a God who lovingly
witholds from his chosen nation the blessings that it expects, and then bestows these
same blessings in unexpected ways. This interpretation provides a new gloss on a theme
that Vieira treated in detail in the Histo'ria do Futuro and gives his audience a foretaste of
the arguments on which he will draw in the apologia that follows.
The only thing that is certain about our hopes, Vieira preaches in the thanksgiving
sermon, is that in fastening on the wrong object (D. Sebastiao) they have assured their
own realization. Had the Portuguese hoped for D. Joao iv from the beginning, their
hopes would have been destroyed by the envy of their rivals:
The Portuguese have always hoped for a King who would restore them.
And in what way was their hope justified? In their having been mis-
taken in the one for whom they hoped (Em errarem o esperado). If they
had hoped correctly for King D. Joao IV, both he and we would have

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Luso-Brazilian Rcsiew 28:1
34
been lost, for if God's jealousy and fear of that hope had not taken him
[D. Joao IV] from the world, they would surely have taken him from
Portugal. And what did divine Providence do to reveal his destiny to
him, and through him to us? It made the Portuguese give themselves
over to their hope in King D. Sebastiao. For what purpose? In order
that their hope for the dead King (a hope in which there was nothing to
be feared) would preserve without danger the succession of the living
King.
This interpretation of the efficacy of reversals in history- reversals that make human
society aware, however fleetingly, of the precariousness of its hopes runs throughout
the thanksgiving sermon. Vieira thus introduces in a public context the theology that
he developed in the private Exhortation) which was preached within months of the Ser-
mam de Acfam de Grafas. The sermon carries echoes of his experience with the Jesuits in
Maranhao thirty years earlier when he speaks of hopes that are incapable of fulfillment
because of the envy they inspire. The enmity he encountered in rival religious orders,
even in the face of explicit orders from D. Joao IV, has clearly not been forgotten by
Vieira. This enmity further strengthens his conviction that the most visible symbols of
hope particularly the church are not likely to be instruments of divine providence.
In the missions, he has called for a long-term recommitment by the Jesuits to the work
of conversion; in the temporal sphere, he looks to the fulfillment of the Juramento d'Ouri
que in D. Joao IV and his successors.55
The underlying link between the Jesuit mission and the vagaries of Portuguese suc-
cession is made concrete by Vieira in the miraculous role he ascribes to Francis Xavier
in the conception of the newborn prince by D. Maria Sofia. The sermon's emphasis on
Xavier's intercession for the queen accomplishes two purposes. First, Vieira establishes
the central and unexpected role of this foreign-born Jesuit in the Portuguese empire
both during and after Xavier's lifetime; and second, he establishes Xavier and the in-
fant prince as having been singled out by God in the Juramento, the one to serve as a Por-
tuguese missionary, the other as vicar of the temporal kingdom.56 Portugal could not
carry on the work of conversion by herself: she had to rely on foreign-born mission-
aries. At the same time, it was clear to Vieira that a non-Portuguese missionary could
not be God's chosen instrument for converting the New World. Xavier's naturalization
by D. Joao III represented more than a renewal of God's promise to the Portuguese.
Vieira discerns in the king's action so singular a manifestation of divine providence
that he unhesitatingly compares Xavier's assumption of two nationalities to the Incar-
nation. In attributing a Portuguese birthright to Xavier and to other foreign-bornJesu-
its who won his favor, Vieira sought to establish a necessary relationship between the
missionary fervor of the Jesuits and the advancement of the temporal interests of the
Portuguese crown.57
The privileging of Xavier on the one hand and of Portugal on the other completes
Vieira's thanksgiving vision of the dependency of the missionary, of the empire, and fi-
nally of Jesus. D. Joao and Xavier together converted Asia, something that neither one
could accomplish alone; andJesus, in the Juramento, established the Portuguese king as
the vicar of the temporal kingdom in the same way that he established Peter as the vicar
of the spiritual one. In Jesus's words to Peter ("on this rock I will build my church,"
Mt.16.18) Vieira finds the model for shared rule that will be inherited by the Portuguese
dynasty:

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35
Cohen
I shall establish an Empire, Christ said, in you, in te, but for me, mihi:
and what is the meaning of "in you," and "for me?" The meaning is
that it will be an Empire of Christ and the King of Portugal together.
Because it is founded for me, miAt; it is mine; because it is founded in
you, in te, it is yours. And if this Empire is mine, and yours, it belongs
to the two of us. Who are these two? They are Christ, who spoke it,
and the King of Portugal, to whom he spoke.58
The partnership that Vieira posited in the Exhortations (in which the missionaries join
with God in the work of conversion) is given a new temporal locus the king of
Portugal in the service of the same apostolic ends. The progeny of the sixteenth gen-
eration to which the Juramento refers is the newborn prince. Still the Portuguese must
pray for their prince, just as D. Maria Sofia continued to pray to Xavier after she had
conceived. The thanksgiving sermon sounds a final prophetic warning about the pre-
cariousness of even those hopes that are founded in Xavier and the Juramento.
Vieira's defense of the thanksgiving sermon in the Discurso Apologe'tico begins with a
tone that confounds the reader with echoes of his angry 1642 Sermao pelo bom sucesso das
armas de Portugal. 59 The resemblance, however, is only a surface one. Instead of returning
to the unmediated rage with which he confronted God in the earlier sermon, Vieira in
the Discurso Apologe'tico finds signs of God's mercy even in his opening lament. Under-
mining the idea that it would have been better for the newborn prince never to have
been given to Portugal than to have been given and taken away after eighteen days,
Vieira goes back to the conceit of looking and seeing on which the thanksgiving sermon
was based. God took the prince from his people in order to protect him from the hurtful
eyes not only of Portugal's enemies but also of the reverent Portuguese themselves:
When God hurries to take from this world those who are well looked
upon by him, it is not because his eyes cast his olhado on them, but
rather because his eyes see and foresee the olhado from which he wants
to deliver them. And this was the reason (one that we neither expected
nor imagined) why divine providence gave and took away within so few
days the desired one of our eyes and the promised one of its own. These
are the second effects of the gaze and sight of God, which do not undo
but rather perfect the Elrst effects. He wished that our Infante should be
born into this life, in order that he might live into the other, not dead
exactly, but transported.60
These "second effects" are the central conceit of the Discurso Apologettico and a founda-
tion block of the religious and social thought of Vieira's last years in Bahia. His guilt
consists in his having forgotten the very precariousness that he has attributed to God's
promises. In an affirmation of the efficacy of his preaching that goes even further than
his customary broad claims, Vieira now argues that his thanksgiving sermon took the
prince's life. Words are actions.6' The manner in which he arrives at his conclusion con-
cerning the prince's death reveals much about the way Vieira understood the act of
prophecy and the responsibilities of its practitioners.
I noted earlier that Vieira in his thanksgiving sermon took a divine promise (respi-
ciet, et videbit) and located it in history (respexit, et vidit). To the public celebration of the
prince's birth Vieira added a prophecy that denied the tenuous hold on life that had

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been given by the first look (olhar) of God. The sermon thus served as a kind of provoca-
tion. In offering thanks for what had been given, Vieira assumed too readily that what
had been given would not be taken away. The result was the second look of God, which
numbers among the second effects with which human hopes are brought low. The
workings of divine providence are completed when these hopes are raised up again, as
Vieira shows his readers they must be. He discerns a fine tension between faithful affir-
mation and prideful expectancy, and it is in navigating between these two that the
preacher who claims a gift of prophecy puts the object of his prophecy at risk:
It was I who put our Prince in this second dangerX one in which I was
also the cause of death, for when we were celebrating his birth as a
child I added to him the title and destiny of Emperor; and in this way I
announced the news and provided more reason for the olhado that took
his life.62
Vieira's culpability both underlines the fragility at which he hinted in the Sermam de
Accam de Grafas and prepares the ground for a new understanding of divine providence.
The thanksgiving sermon provoked God to protect the newborn prince from the admir-
ing gaze of the Portuguese. Vieira moves on, in the Discurso Apologetico, to a more cau-
tious effort to discern and understand the second effects that shape Portuguese history.
It seems puzzling, Vieira notes, that the newborn prince (the vicar of the temporal
kingdom) should have taken possession of that kingdom in heaven rather than on earth,
where Peter took possession of the spiritual kingdom. To explain the puzzle, and to il-
lustrate the logic of D. Joao's vicarship, Vieira introduces an analogy with the protocols
of colonial administration. Both vicars, his argument runs, receive their respective
kingdoms directly fromJesus: the Portuguese viceroys are sworn into their posts not in
the colonies but in the metropolis, where the king presides, while Peter received the
spiritual kingdom on earth because Jesus was in the world when he commanded the
apostle to build the church. D. Joao therefore had to be removed to heaven in order to
receive the vicarship of the temporal kingdom from Jesus.
Vieira now faces the problem of understanding exactly how the temporal kingdom
will be governed. His argument constitutes one of his last discussions of the nature of
apostolic and political dependency. Vieira draws here on the historical particularity of
the succession tragedy to invest with special urgency the knowledge that no single brother
can serve as an autonomous agent of history. Anticipating his audience's wary recep-
tion of the argument that D. Joao will govern through an unborn brother (a brother
who in turn will govern through his father until he comes of age), he declares that
for me, though it be a marvel, it is not a novelty; for this is God's way
with the Kingdoms that he has made and of which he is the King. And
the only two Kingdoms of this kind that the world has seen are the
Kingdom of Judah, and afterwards that of Portugal.63
In these passages the concrete personal and political disappointments of his last years in
Bahia were woven seamlessly into Vieira's interpretive project. Far from forcing him to
leap to save a crumbling edifice, the thanksgiving sermon anticipated the dynastic crisis
that the Discurso Apologetico interprets. To the extent that the preacher was called upon

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Cohen 37
in this sermon to perform a balancing act, he was answering the demands of God and
of scripture, not those of the Portuguese succession or of any other contingency. The
Dtscurso Apologetico allows Vieira and his readers to approach in a new way in the light
of a national tragedy the tension between the illusoriness of human hopes and the ir-
revocable promises of God.
Vieira has written and spoken many times of the need to understand the mysteries
of scripture in their literal sense.64 It is therefore not surprising that in the two sermons
on D. Joao, which allude frequently to theJuramcnto, he is concerned with the physical
activity of looking and seeing. The hope contained in Hannah's prayer Si respiciens
videris carried with it a promise that her child would be given to the service of God.65
It also carried the conviction that God's sight is beneficent. Vieira shares this convic-
tion, but with a difference that only becomes fully apparent after the death of D. Joao.
Before the succession tragedy Vieira had never considered the literal sense of the
text from Samuel. The death of the prince suggests to him a new exegesis of the pas-
sage. The eyes of God that attended the birth of Samuel are fixed not only on God's ser-
vants but also on the sinful society in which those servants live. God is watchful of those
who watch. In a lapse that pointed to the fundamental tensions embedded in the theol-
ogy of his later years, Vieira for a moment had turned his view away from society and
seen only the destiny of the prince:
I founded it [the interpretation of the destiny of King D. Joao] in the

words and promises of God. How could I fear that the eyes of the very
God who gave him life would cast the olhado upon him, since only the
one who gave him his existence could take it away? The power of this
conclusion caused me at first to think that God's eyes too can cast the
olhado. But after the clouds of pain and sadness had dispersed a little,
they helped me to perceive a greater light; and in this matter (which is
all a mystery) I discovered another circumstance that I had not imag-
ined and that indeed could not easily be imagined. And what mystery
was this? That it was not the olhado of God that took the life of our
Prince, but rather it was God who took the Prince's life in order that
the world might not give him the olhada66
Again Vieira shows that words are actions. He recalls his sermon as both an act of
prophecy and an act of creation: Ifounded it refers not only to the hope but also to the
realization of that hope. At the same time, a passage that briefly had the look of an
apology becomes a vehicle by which Vieira reaffirms his preferred method of exegesis
and, not incidentally, reminds his audience that his prophetic powers produced results
that were fatal only in appearance.
Wary perhaps of exhausting the patience of his readers, Vieira has offered a some-
what elliptical treatment here of the gaze of God. But his brief discussion of the olhado
provides an effective link to his larger argument concerning the specificity of the Jura-
mento and of scriptural references to the shared rule of the Portuguese heirs. He in-
vokes once more the promised mission of the Portuguese crown:
The Kingdom of Portugal was conceived before it existed in the person

of D. Henrique, and while still in the embryo it was already animated

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by the spirit of the conquest of Jerusalem . . . The same Kingdom was

born on the Fields of Ourique in the fighting arms of King D. Affonso
I.67
This reaffirmation of the mission that was prophesied in the Juramento gives way in
the conclusion of the Discurso Apologetico to a sustained discussion of extra-biblical writ-
ings that the Portuguese have embraced as prophecies. Among the prophecies to which
Vieira refers are those of Frei Zacharias of Guimaraes, in whose words D. Maria Sofia
Isabel is most clearly prefigured.68 Vieira's interpretation of Frei Zacharias, and his ref-
erence toJohn Chrysostom to support his conclusion, focus on the prophecy that "In
the last days of greater Spain there will reign a King two times piously given [duas
vezes piamente dado]: and he will reign through a woman whose name will begin with
I and end with L, and this King will come from the East."69 His discussion of this pas-
sage contains two striking elements, the first of which is his attempt to link Frei Zacha-
rias's prophecy to his veiled suggestion elsewhere in the Discurso Apologetico that not only
the promised king but also the queen will be "two times piously given."
Vieira's antipathy to the late D. Maria Francisca Isabel was well known. This antip-
athy takes on a more complex shading in light of Vieira's interpretation of Frei Zacha-
rias. In his 1684 obsequies for the queen, he pointed to the renewal of the dynastic line
that he hoped would follow speedily on the Queen's death.70 The obsequies antagonized
the king, who had never shared his father's esteem for Vieira. Five years later Vieira is
unrepentant, and even more unmindful of D. Pedro's reaction to his words:
God took away one Queen, in order to give us another. EIe took away
Her Serene Highness of Savoy to be able to give us Her August High-
ness of Austria; he took away the sterile queen to be able to give us the
fecund one; he took away the one who after so many years of hope and
desengano obliged us to look outside the Patria to become subjects and
vassals of a foreign Prince. He did all this in order to bring us from
even further away one who within the first year restored to us the Lord-
ship of native-born Kings.'l
With these words Vieira links Frei Gil's prophecy that salvation will come from afar to
Frei Zacharias's prediction that this salvation will be accomplished through a woman.72
The redeemer from afar presents the Portuguese with a twofold reversal of expecta-
tions: redemption will come unexpectedly, and it will come from an unexpected king.
Vieira has been refining this argument for almost fifty years, but the replacement of
the sterile queen with the fertile D. Maria Sofia suggests that he was rethinking his in-
terpretation of the prophetic texts. The late queen came from afar and possessed a
name that lent itself to the fulfillment of Frei Zacharias's prophecy. Symmetry re-
quired, however, that not the queen from Savoy but another still more distant Isabel be
the instrument of divine providence. The masculine and feminine endings may thus be
applied interchangeably to the participle in the prophecy.
A final indication of the singular destiny that Vieira reserved for the second queen
was the image in the thanksgiving sermon of D. Maria Sofia Isabel as an instrument of
restitution. This image provided a foretaste of the strategy that Vieira employs in the
Discurso Apologetico to locate the queen's place in history. God had removed the newborn
prince in order to protect him from the gaze of the Portuguese. God's own gaze, how-

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Cohen 39
ever, had come to rest on the prince's mother. The prophecy required not only that the
king be twice given, but that the restitution be accomplished by this particular twice-
given queen.
Vieira's identification of the queen who will rule in the name of a king from the west
with the queen who will be twice given is the first important element of his interpreta-
tion. The second element is his appropriation of John Chrysostom in privileging the
queen's role in propagating the royal line.73 The Discurso Apologetico extravagantly
praises D. Pedro's heroism and identifies the king as the appointed guardian of the Fifth
Empire that will be inherited by his son.74 Vieira had identified D. Pedro thirty years
earlier as the rightful heir to his brother, D. Affonso.75 In old age, however, Vieira places
his hopes for the redemption of Portugal in the queen as well as in D. Pedro and the
Jesuits. By emphasizing the role of the queen Vieira radically expands the idea of apos-
tolic partnership that underlies the Exhortations and the sermons on D. Joao.76
Vieira expands his interpretation of apostolic partnership still further when, in at-
tributing the birth of the prince to the prayers of the Queen, he extends the prophecy
concerning gifts given twice to include the repeated intercession of Xavier. The prince
was conceived as a result of the Queen's veneration of the image and biretta that had
been brought from Goa (thus the dual interpretation of the prophecy that the king will
come from the East). The second son too will come from the East:
Because if when given the first time it came from Goa in the reliquary
and biretta of St. Francis Xavier (as we have already noted), in the
same way when given the second time it will come from that same East
through the intercession of the same Saint, whose proven power and fa-
vor were sought in the prayers and novenas of Her Majesty. At the time
when the nine months of the first pregnancy began, the Image of St.
Francis Xavier was brought from Sao Roque [the Jesuit college] to the
Palace, and speaking with the Image our Lady the Queen told it in
words most Portuguese [com palavras muito Portuguezas]: My Saint,
give me a son if God should wish it. God wished it, and wished that it
be not only his gift, but also that of the Saint.'7
Vieira here ties together the diverse strands of the Discurso Apologetico by focusing on the
shared destiny of Xavier, the queen, and the Portuguese nation. The foreign-born
queen becomes the instrument chosen by God to express, "with words most Portu-
guese," the singular devotion of her adopted homeland. Similarly, divine providence
turned a Navarran into a Portuguese who would convert the East. Together, the queen
and the missionary would twice bless the nation with the sons who would receive from
Jesus the vicarship of the Fifth Empire.
The Discurso Apologetico might have concluded here, but Vieira was not a preacher
who invited complacency. Though the Fifth Empire had been irrevocably promised to
the nation, the Portuguese must work and pray in order that the promise not be denied
to them individually. The progressive narrowing of the sermon's focus is now reversed,
and Vieira preaches of the sins of Portuguese society in a style that recalls his sermons
of the 1650s more than those of his last years in Bahia. Rlieira praised the Queen in the
Sermam de Accam de Grafas for her devotion to Xavier even after she knew that she had
conceived. D. Maria Sofia knew that God, "though he cannot fail in his word, none-
theless wishes that we ask him for the very thing that he has promised us."78 The Portu-

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guese of Bahia have recently been providentially warned of the consequences of

forgetting this requirement. The biblical text for the feast day of Xavier that coincided
with the announcement in Bahia of the birth of the prince was from the twenty-fourth
chapter of Isaiah. The remnant of which the prophet speaks will be the Portuguese, but
only those Portuguese whose actions deliver them from punishment. For Vieira, pray-
ers must be linked to action, and this irreducible fact is reflected in the words with
which he warns the Portuguese that "there will remain only the few who have under-
standing and who conduct themselves as men with understanding."79
The conversion of the Portuguese nation thus emerges as the ultimate consequence
of the devotion of its queen and of her intercessor, Xavier. This conversion was Vieira's
constant preoccupation during his sermons of the 1650s, and though it appears less fre-
quently in his writings after his final return to Brazil, he never abandoned it. The Elnal
passage of the Discurso Apologetico was addressed to the Portuguese nation. Vieira's allu-
sion to a secret paper that the author intends for a wider audience suggests the divine
inspiration to which he lays claim in this and other sermons. His purpose, like his pur-
pose in Lisbon and in Maranhao, is to prompt the Portuguese to act:
If this paper should pass into the hands of the Portuguese [for whom it
is not formally intended], I would wish to tell them that placed between
the danger and the hope in which this prophecy puts us today, each
person should see and consider carefully whether it is better for him to
mend his mad ways and live with the few, or to continue in these ways
and perish with the many.80
Between the danger and the hope lie the second effects through which history unfolds.
No longer affecting to speak only to the queen, Vieira sees a final instructive example of
these second effects in the circuitous manner in which his text will reach its readers.
The preacher who could once command a crowd at Sao Roque must now speak to his
audience not directly but through the hands that might come upon this avowedly secret
sermon. Vieira's hope is an inclusionary one inasmuch as it assigns to all Portuguese a
role in establishing the Fifth Empire. The fulElllment of that role has been sealed by the
Juramento, but the covenant must continuously be made anew by a converted nation.
The Portuguese, blessed with another saving reversal of expectations, will be set on the
road to conversion by those faithful who providentially receive and act upon Vieira's
warning.
N(ZES
'The Restoration led by D. Joao, the former Duke of Bragansa, ended sixty years of Spanish
rule in Portugal (1580-1640).
2Vieira (1608-1697) was born in Lisbon and spent his childhood in Bahia. He returned to Por-
tugal immediately after the Restoration at the request of the Brazilian viceroy in order to convey to
D. Joao IV the support of his Brazilian subjects. For the standard biography, see Joao Lucio de
Azevedo, Histo'ria de Antonio Vieira (two vols., Lisbon, 1918-20).
3The phrase is fromJose van den Besselaar, "Erudisao, Espirito Critico e Acribia na Historia
do Futuro de Antonio Vieira," in Revista da Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciencias e Letras de Marilia (1976),
47.

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Cohen 41
4Menasseh ben Israel, The Hope of Israel, eds. H. Mechoulan and G. Nahon (New York, 1987).
5Esperancas de Portugal, Quinto Imperio do Mundo. Primeira e segunda vida de El-rei Dom Joao sV, escritas
por Goncalo Eannes Bandarra e comentadas por Vieira, em carta ao bispo do Japao, D. Andre Fernandes, in Ob-
ras Escolhidas, eds. Hernani Cidade and Antonio Sergio (twelve vols., Lisbon, 1951-54), VI, 1-66.
6Livro Anteprimeiro da Historia do Futuro, ed. Jose van den Besselaar (two vols., Munster, 1976);
Historia do Futuro, ed. Maria Leonor Carvalhao Buescu (Lisbon, 1982). The two Representations (Re-
presentacoes) have been published as the Defesa Perantc o Tnbunal do Santo Oficio, ed. H. Cidade (two
vols., Bahia, 1957). Unless otherwise noted the Histotna do Futuro will hereafter refer to both sec-
tions of the text. Besselaar's critical edition of the Livro Antctrimeiro represents the most insightful
treatment to date of Vieira's prophetic writings.
'Azevedo emphasizes the socio-political implications of Vieira's trial but devotes little attention
to the doctrinal and exegetical issues that were at stake. Cidade provides an excellent analysis of
the importance of Brazil in Vieira's interpretive schema but, like Azevedo, he is not primarily con-
cerned with the specific interpretive strategies that caused problems for the missionary. Besselaar,
finally, is an indispensable guide to the prophetic texts up to but not including the defense; he un-
derlines the need for an analysis ofthe Representations. Azevedo, Histo'ria deAntonio Vieira, op. cit., II,
5-95; Representacao Primeira, I, Cidade, ed., viiff.; Jose van den Besselaar, O Sebastianismo: historia
sumaria (Lisbon, 1987) 137.
8Vieira served as Superior of the Jesuit missions in Maranhao and Grao Para from 1653 to
1661. His work in the Amazon came to an abrupt end when he and his fellow missionaries were
expelled from the region and sent back to Lisbon by Portuguese settlers who had long resisted the
temporal authority of the Jesuits in the region. The settlers sought to strip the Jesuits of the power
that D. Joao had granted them to regulate the slaving expeditions (entradas) into the backlands and
the subsequent distribution of Indian labor to Europeans. The expulsion permanently compro-
mised Vieira's commitment to negotiating with the settlers over their treatment of the Indians and
over the political and economic role of the missionaries in the Amazon. He returned to Lisbon de-
termined to vindicate his conduct and to convince D. Luisa (the widow of D. Joao) to reaffirm the
Jesuits' authority. For an excellent discussion of the conflict between the Jesuits and the Portu-
guese settlers over the control of Indian labor, see Dauril Alden, "Black Robes versus White Set-
tlers: The Struggle for 'Freedom of the Indians' in Colonial Brazil," in Howard Peckham and
Charles Gibson, eds., Attitudes of Colonial Powers Toward the American Indian (Salt Lake City, 1969)
1945.
9Bandarra (ca. 1500-1550) was a cobbler from Trancoso whose Trovas became the central text
of the Sebastianist movement. The most frequently cited text of the Trovas is the Porto edition of
1866.
l°Saraiva writes that "For Vieira Bandarra was a prophet with the same authority as those of
the Old Testament." Antonio Jose Saraiva, "Antonio Vieira et Menasseh ben Israel," in Studia Ro-
senthaliana VI: 1 (1972) 27.
IISee Hernani Cidade's comments Representacao Primeira, I, Prefacio, and Representacao Segunda,
II, Posfacio; and Besselaar, op. cit., 120, 139.
l2Azevedo, A Evolucao do Sebastianismo (second ed., Lisbon, 1947) 28; cf. Azevedo, ed., Histotria
do Futuro, in Boletim da Clase de Letras da Academia das Sciencias de Lisboa, v. 12 (Coimbra, 1918) 110ff.;
Azevedo, OsJesuitas no Xo Para (second edition, Coimbra, 1930) 114; Cidade, Prefacio, in Obras Es-
colhidas, VI, xli; and Besselaar, O Sebastianismo, op. cit., 49.
l3The most famous contemporary writer to share Vieira's readiness to transfer his hope in the
Encoberto from D. Sebastiao to D. Joao IV was a fellow Jesuit, Joao de Vasconcellos (1592-1661),
who wrote under the pseudonym Gregorio de Almeida. See Sstauracao de Portugal Prodiogiosa (Lis-
bon, 1643; reprint, four volumes, Damiao Peres, ed., Barcelos, 1939-40). Azevedo calls Almeida
the "doctor par excellence of Restoration messianism;" op. cit., 72.
'4Fernandes was the confessor of D. Luisa.
t5Obras Escolhidas, VI, 2.
'60bras Escolhidas, VI, 17.

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42 Luso-Brazilian Rtview 28:1
i'Representafao Primeira I, 123.

98The most important of these prophets for the Portuguese are Bandarra and S Frei Gil.
Vieira also refers frequently to the Juramento d'Ourique.
l9In identifying King D. Joao as the hidden king of the Trovas, Vieira extends Bandarra's
prophecies concerning O Encoberto to accomodate the perceived shortcomings of the deceased
ruler:
Oh! how much was hidden in that man, El-rei Dom Joao! El-rei Dom Joao was hidden
within himself; and certain imperfections of the king that were most widely commented
upon were a natural covering and mask with which God had hidden in the king what he
wanted to bring about through him, in order that the king's wonders might be more won-
drous. Obras Escolhidus, VI, 46.
20"Specious argument: DomJoao, precisely because he is an anti-hero, will be chosen by God

tobetheheroofthelasttimes!'' Besselaar, op. cit., 124; cf. RepresentafaoPrimeira, I, 198. Foraview
similar to that of Besselaar, see Azevedo, A Evolufao de Sebastianismo, op. cit., 93-94.
21The final page of the Second Representation is datedJuly 23, 1666. For discussions of the proba-
ble dates of composition of the Histo'ria do Futuro, see Histo'ria do Futuro, Azevedo, ed., op. cit., 114;
Raymond Cantel, "ICHistoria do Futuro du Pere Antonio Vieira: Reflexions sur la genese de
l'oeuvre et les differents moments de sa composition," in Bulletin des Etudes Portugaises, XXV
(1964), 35; Jose van den Besselaar, Livro Anteprimeiro, Comentario, 7ff; and Marcel Bataillon, "Le
Bresil dans une vision d'Isaie selon le pere Antonio Vieira," in Bulletin des Etudes Portugaises, v. 25
(1964), 11-21.
22Several passages in Vieira's letters make it possible to identify the period during which Vieira
worked on the Histotria do Futuro. Cartas, ed. Joao Lucio de Azevedo (three vols., Coimbra, 1925-
28), II, 59, 74, 143, 160, 166ff. Cantel makes effective use of the internal evidence of the text. Can-
tel, op. cit., 35ff.
23Vieira's first estalo, or sudden illumination, occured when he was a Jesuit novice in Bahia.
24Livro Anteprimeiro, X, 223.
25Ibid., X, 290.
26Representafao Segunda, I, 234; cf. Dan.12.8: "I heard, but I did not understand."
27cf. Representafao Segunda, II, 71.
28The riches "forced human greed to pr
open and allow us to pass through those
the European enters into contact with the
suit novices. In this sermon Vieira person
enter into knowledge of others." Sermoes (sixteen vols., Sao Paulo, 1943-45), VIII, 523.
Commenting on Vieira's interpretation of temporal power, Besselaar writes: "a dialectical re-
lationship exists between the subjective intentions of men (such as the ambition for wealth) and the
objective ends of Providence (the Christianization of the world)." Livro Anteprimeiro, Comenta'rio, XII,
740.
29Vieira will return to this theme in his discussion in the Second Representation of Jesus's ministry
to the Jews, stating that Jesus made "a concession to human weakness when he exhorted men not
to abandon their treasures absolutely but rather to pass those treasures to Heaven, where they
might securely possess them." The kings of Portugal, in turn, offer material benefits to neophytes,
"hoping that with the help of human and temporal interests the conversion of the heretics might be
more copious and that of the gentios more firm; and experience has shown this to be the case, with
divine Providence and grace making use of those means that are most suited to human nature."
Representafao Segunda, II, 156; for a similar argument, see the Histo'ria do Futuro, II, 6, 321ff., and the
1644 Sermao de S. Roque, in which Vieira defends an idea that he qualifies in the Livro Anteprimeiro
and Histotria do Futuro proper: that riches which are gained by impious means may be legitimately
used for pious ends. Sermoes, XII, 22ff.

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43
Cohen
30The continuing force of this project is reflected in the words of Cardinal J. Paracattil to the
1970 Synod in New Delhi: "The Catholic Church is neither Latin nor Greek nor Slav, but univer-
sal. Unless the Church can show herself Indian in India and Chinese in China, and Japanese in
Japan, she will never reveal her authentically Catholic character." Quoted in Enrique Dussel,
"Theologies of the 'Periphery' and the 'Centre: ' Encounter or Confrontation?X" in C. Geffre, G.
Gutierrez, and V. Elizondo, eds., Diff^rent Theologies, Common Rcsponsibility: Babel or Pentecost? (Edin-
burgh, 1984), 88.
3lIs. 18.1,2, Revised Standard Version. The Vulgate on which Vieira based his exegesis reads:
Vae terrae cymbalo alarum, Quae est trans flumina Aethiopiae, Qui mittit in mare lega-
tos, Et in vasis papyri super aquas. Ite angeli voces, Ad gentem convulsam et dilacera-
tam; Ad populum terribilem, post quem non est alius; Ad gentem exspectantem et
conculatam, Cuius diripuerunt flumina terram eius.
The KingJames Version reads:
Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: That send-
eth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go, ye
swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their begin-
ning hitherto; a nation meted out an trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled!
The Revised Standard Version does not suggest several of the specific references to the Indians that
Vieira discerns in the Vulgate. The KingJames Version more closely follows the Vulgate, particu-
larly in its reference to "a nation scattered and peeled. . .meted out and trodden down."
32Neither the Revised Standard Version ("whirring") nor the KingJames Version ("shadow-
ing") admits Vieira's emphasis on the bell-like sound produced by sinos in his translation of the
Vulgate (cymbalo alarum) into Portuguese: "Ay da terra, que tem sinos com azas) [Woe to the land
where there are bells with wings]." Besselaar suggests that Vieira's alternate translation ("Ay da
terra, que tem navios com azas" (Woe to the land where there are ships with wings) is based on
Thomas Malvenda's reading of one of the Latin versions of the Septaguint. Livro Anteprimeiro, Com-
entario, XII, 1137.
33Livro Anteprimeiro, XII, 1168. In an uncharacteristic lapse, Vieira misconstrued the argument
of Palacios as arguing against his own view of scriptunl references to the Indians.
34The maraca's were made of coconut or calabash shells filled with seeds. Livro Anteprimeiro, XII,
1156.
35Vieira's text has rostrata instead of rostra. Livro Anteprimeiro, XII, 118
36Ibid., VII, 253.
3'Ibid., XI, 378.
38Ibid., XII, 1207.
39The Livro Anteprimeiro has no conclusion properly speaking: Vieira never completed the w
and the text published by Besselaar ends in mid-sentence.
400bras Escolhidas, VI, 181-182 .
4tRepresentafaoPrimeira, I, xxxvii; Azevedo, op. cit., 82.
420bras Escolhidas, VI, 235-236.
43"When the condemned man stood up
convened in the chapter house stood with h
fathers well knew had been imposed (in its
colleague who personally suffered it." Az
44Breve de isenfao das Inquisifoes de Portugal
Companhia de Jesus, portugues, in Obras E
45Andre de Barros, Vida do Padre Anto
Histo'ria de Antonio Vieira, v. II (Lisbon, 19

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44 Luso-Brazilian Rzview 28:1
46Barros, op. cit., 284; Azevedo, op. cit., 270.

47For the texts of the laws, which were published on April 1, 1680, see Livro Grosso do Maranhao,
Artur Cesar Ferreira Reis, ed., in Anais da Biblioteca Nacional, v. 66 (Rio, 1948), 51-59.
48Vieira's correspondent, Padre Pier Luigi Consalvi, served as Superior from 1674 to 1683; his
name has been variously spelled Consalvi by Leite, and Gonsalvi by Bettendorff and Azevedo.
Serafim Leite, Histotria da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, v. IV (Rio and Lisbon, 1943), 217 passim;
Joao Felipe Bettendorff, Chronica da Missao dos Padres da Companhia de Jesus no Estado do Maranhao, in
Revista do Instttuto Historico e Geographico Brasileiro, v. LXXII, Parte I (Rio, 1910), 300ff.; Cartas, III,
428.
49Cartas, III, 432-33 .
50The complete titles of the sermons are: Palavra de Deos Desempenhada: Sermam deAccam de Gracas
pelo Nacimento do Principe D. Joao (1688), Sermoes, XIII, 65ff.; and Palavra do Pregador Empenhada, e De-
fendida: Empenhada publicamente no Sermam de Accam de Gracas pelo nacimento do Principe D. Joao, Primo-
genito de SS. Magestades que Deos guarde; Defendida depois de sua morte em hum Discurso Apologe'tico,
oXerecido secretamente d Rainha N. S. para alivio das saudades do rnesmo principe (1689), Sermoes, XIII, 139ff.
These sertnons, along with the 1684 obsequies for D. Pedro's first wife (D. Maria Francisca Isabel)
make up volume thirteen of the Sermoes. The Sermam de Accam de Gracas was preached in the cathe-
dral of Bahia in December 1688. The Discurso Apologe'tico was written in 1689 and never preached: it
was formally intended only for the eyes of the mourning queen, but it is clear that Vieira intended
it to circulate in Bahia and in Lisbon.
5'Exhortacam I em Vespora do Espirito Santo (1688), in Sermoes, VIII, 514ff. For the companion piece
see Exhortacam II em Vespora da Visitacam (n.d., preached during Vieira's term as Visitador), Sermoes,
VIII, 534ff.
52We have no record of the derision with which some readers must have greeted Vieira's at-
tempt. Cidade offers some indication of the reception the sermon may have been given by sympa-
thetic skeptics when he argues that Vieira was forced to struggle "to keep on its feet the daring
architecture of the [previous] chimerical political sermon." H. Cidade, ed., Padre Antonio Vieira
(four vols., Lisbon, 1940), I, 153.
Cantel, like Cidade, posits a building metaphor in discussing Vieira's exegetical work in the
present sermon: "He remains a prisoner of his system. All the agility of his spirit will not enable
him to escape, for this is a question of faith. His agility permits him only to keep the structure
standing in an ever more precarious equilibrium each time events seem to be at the point of bring-
ing it down." Raymond Cantel, Prophetisme etMessianisme dans l'oeuvre d'Antonio Vieira, op. cit., 130-
131. Neither writer grants that it was because of these reversals-not in spite of them-that Vieira's
certainty grew stronger.
53cf. Cantel, who writes that with the birth of the prince Vieira "rediscovers all the exuberance
of his youth;" "Emerging from his long retreat [in Bahia], Vieira rediscovers the enthusiasm of his
youth and makes of this sermon a public exposition of his messianic doctrine." Ibid., 127, 184.
Cantel veers away from or misinterprets the writings in which Vieira underlines the illusoriness of
human hope.
545ermoes, XIII, 89. The most important warnings in the Sermoes of the danger of placing hope in
the agents of divine providence are found in the 1647 Sermao da Primeira Oitava de Paschoa (Sermoes,
VIII, 197ff.), in which Vieira takes the Israelites' veneration of Moses as his example; in the 1656
Sermao da Primeira Oitava de Pascoa (Sermoesv IV, 396ff., in which he discerns the providential effects of
the failure oftheJornada de Ouro; in the 1643 Sermao doManduto (Sermoes, III, 355ff.), in which his
example is David's love for his wife; and in the 1654 Sermao das Exequias do Serenissimo Principe de Por-
tugal D. Theodosio (Sermoes XVI, 253ff.), in which Vieira preached that D. Theodosio was denied the
throne because his talents had wakened God's jealousy.
55At Ourique Christ appeared to D. Affonso and promised to establish an everlasting empire
in the sixteenth generation of D. Affonso's descendants. Vieira refers frequently to the Juramento in
the thanksgiving sermon and in the Discurso Apologe'tico, replacing a present hope ("Respiciet, et vi-
debit" [He will look upon, and will see]) with an accomplished fact ("Respexit, et vidit" [He
looked upon, and saw]). For a discussion of previous interpreters, see Luis Filipe Lindley Cintra,

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Cohen 45
"Sobre a formacao e evolucao da lenda de Ourique (ate a Cronica de 1419)," in Miscelanea de estudos
em honra do Professor H. Cidade (Lisbon, 1957), 168-215.
56Xavier became an increasingly important reference point in Vieira's theory of mission after
his return from Marahao in 1661; in addition to the series of sermons dedicated to Xavier, the Ex-
hortations and the Historia do Futuro refer to him frequently.
57cf. the 1685 letter in which Vieira commended an Italian Jesuit to the Duke of Cadaval by
explaining that Padre Candoni, who had served with distinction in the China missions,
is Sicilian by birth, but by love and zeal he is as passionately Portuguese as if he had been
born in Lisbon; what is more, he is working not only for the preservation and increase of
Christendom but also for the rights and privileges of the crown and for the authority and
greatness of the monarchy. CartaE III, 518.
58Sermoes, XIII, 117-
59Sermoes, III, 466ff.

60The Portuguese conveys Vieira's understanding of ver and olhar, the two verbs on which the
passage hinges:
de sorte que quando Deos se apressa a tirar deste mundo os que delle sao bem vistos, nam
he porque os seus olhos lhe dem olhado, mas porque vem, e prevem o olhado de que os quer
livrar. E esta foy a razao de nos nam esperada, nem imaginada, porque a providencia
divina nos deu, e levou dentro em tao poucos dias o desejado de nossos olhos, e o pro-
metido dos seus. Estes sao os segundos effeitos do olhar, e ver de Deos, que nao desfazem,
mas aperfeicoao os primeiros. Quiz que o nosso Infante nacesse a esta vida, para que
fosse viver a outra, nao morto propriamente, mas trasladado. Sermoes, XIII, 146.
6lFor an even more explicit example of this conviction, see the Sermao do Nacimento do Menino
Deus, in Sermoes, XVI, 48ff.
62Sermoes) XIII, 143-
Sermoes, XIII, 165.

64His most detailed justification of this exegetical style is found in the Livro Anteprimeiro, Ch.
XII; see also Historia do Futuro, Book I, Ch. 5.
65"if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thy maidservant" (1 Sam.1.11). The Revised
Standard Version does not suggest a potential disjunction between looking and seeing.
Sermoes, XIII, 144.
6'Sermoes, XIII, 220.
68Vieira's appropriation of Frei Zacharias is surprising because, though he makes uncritical
use of a wide variety of sources to support his arguments, he generally cites only the most widely
diffused and accepted Portuguese prophecies (notably the Juramento and the prophecies of S. Frei
Gil and Bandarra) when interpreting the nation's destiny.
69Sermoes, XIII, 257.
70Sermam deAcfam de Grafas Empenhada: Sermao nas Exequias da Rainha N.S.D. Maria Franc
de Saboya. Azevedo and Cidade differ sharply over the tone of this sermon, with Azevedo finding in
it an unmistakable malicious intent. Cidade sees the sermon as a complex "extension of [Vieira's
earlier] praise" that goes beyond celebrating the queen in the traditional style in order to embrace
the king and the fertile bride whom Vieira hopes he will find. These two views are not as incom-
patible as Cidade suggests. D. Pedro's evident displeasure with Vieira's effort, and his subsequent
lack of regard for Vieira during his old age in Bahia, suggest that Azevedo accurately identified
Vieira's malice; though he may overstate Vieira's antagonism, the preacher clearly relished the op-
portunity to repay, if only by omission, the low esteem in which he had been held by the late
queen. At the same time, the obsequies show that Vieira was already applying himself to the inter-
pretive project that would come to fruition in the Sermam de Acfam de Grafas and the Discurso Apolo-

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46 Luso-Brazilian Rzview 28:1
getico. The obsequies provided Vieira with an opportunity to suggest that the queen's death would
be attended by triumphs that he would be able to reveal to D. Pedro. Sermoes, XIII, lff. passim, es-
pecially pp. 59-60; Cidade, op. cit., 148; Azevedo, op. cit., 239-42.
715ermoes) XIII, 68.
'2The section of the prophecy that is of particular interest here is: "Salvation will come from
far off, and by one who has not been expected you will unexpectedly be redeemed [Salus a longin-
quo veniet, et insperate ab insperato redimeris]." Ibid., p. 254. Vieira interpreted the prophecy in
detail in his 1642 Sermao dos Bons Annos. This sermon, which announced the destiny of D. Joao IV,
was the Elrst that Vieira preached in the royal chapel. Sermoes, XI, 399ff. Frei Gil's prophecy is also
examined in the Livro Anteprimeiro da Historia do Futuro, op. cit., XII, 666.
73"By no means shall one err who calls this woman at the same time both mother and father of
this child, for even though the man might have contributed the seed, nonetheless her prayer both
supplied the efficacious force and brought it about that Samuel would be born with more auspi-
cious beginnings." Sermoes, XIII, 260.
74See especially Part VI, in which Vieira notes the symmetry in the names and destinies of the
agents to whom the spiritual and temporal vicarships would be entrusted. Peter was appointed to
be the first vicar through whom the Father would subject the world toJesus; the second vicar will
rule through D. Pedro II, in whom "this beautiful architecture shall bring forth in equal propor-
tion and grace not only the correspondence of the office but also the consonance of the name in
one and another Empire." Ibid., 199. This is among the most lyrical of the many passages in the
Sermoes that praise the Portuguese kings. Cidade aptly writes that "the soul of the King is here
richly privileged in all things." op. cit., 154.
'5The beginnings of the transformation in Vieira's thought that led to the Discurso Apologetico
may be discerned in the words with which the preacher voiced his support for D. Pedro in the Ser-
mao da Epiphania. In the 1661 sermon Vieira still saw the missionary enterprise as a burden that
had to be shared by Portuguese society as a whole under the leadership of a powerful missionary
king. D. Affonso was clearly unfit for this enterprise. The sermon provides one of the most vivid
declarations of the task of the ruler in all Vieira's writings. Vieira linked a thinly-veiled reference to
the invalid king and his heroic brother to an explicit summons to pursue conversion over empire.
Is. 9.6; Lk.15.5; Sermao da Epiphania, in Sermoes, IV, 547.
76Similarly, in Clavis Prophetarum he extends the notion of the partnership between brothers in
the temporal and spiritual kingdoms (Moses and Aaron) to the partnership between king and
queen, with the queen representing the spiritual kingdom. Vieira draws here on Is.49.23: "Kings
shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers." Obras Escolhidas, IX, 252.
77Ibid., 261; see pp. 181-187 for Vieira's initial discussion of Xavier's intercession for the
Queen.
78Ibid., 136.
79Vieira cites the righteous few in Isaiah's prophecy of the day of judgement: "For thus it shall
be in the midst of the earth among the nations, as when an olive tree is beaten, as at the gleaning
when the vintage is done" (Is.24.13). The passage recalls a prophecy from Frei Gil that Vieira
omitted from his earlier discussion of the Dominican religious but cited in a revealing 1678 letter
to Duarte Ribeiro de Macedo:
Domus Dei recuperabitur

Pax ubique erit.
Aetas aurea reviviscet:
Felices qui viderint. (Cartas, III, 251)
"The house of God will be regained/Peace will reign everywhere/The golden age will live again/
Fortunate those who shall see it."
Sermoes, XIII, 274.

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Millenarian Themes in the Writings of Antonio Vieira

Author(s): Thomas Cohen

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3513281

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The Portuguese Restoration of 1640 inspired an outpouring of messianic and mille-

Luso-Brazilian Review XXVIII, 1 0024-7413/91/000 $1.50

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Bandarra is a true prophet; Bandarra prophesied that El-rei Dom Joao

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It was thus a supernatural light, prophetic and divine, that illuminated

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a new specificity on the interwovenness of scripture, the missionary enterprise

In the Esperanfas Vieira interpreted Daniel through the mediation of Bandarra. In

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Ah, land of whirring wings which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia;

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Indian warfare. It is the custom of the Indians to cover

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they constitute a remarkable act of summation on Vieira's part of the implications of

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I founded it [the interpretation of the destiny of King D. Joao] in the

The Kingdom of Portugal was conceived before it existed in the person

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by the spirit of the conquest of Jerusalem . . . The same Kingdom was

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guese of Bahia have recently been providentially warned of the consequences of

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i'Representafao Primeira I, 123.

20"Specious argument: DomJoao, precisely because he is an anti-hero, will be chosen by God

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The KingJames Version reads:

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46Barros, op. cit., 284; Azevedo, op. cit., 270.

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58Sermoes, XIII, 117-

59Sermoes, III, 466ff.

Sermoes, XIII, 165.

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Domus Dei recuperabitur

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