A national artist?

Literature and theology in the letter Esperanças de Portugal” by Padre Antônio Vieira

Abstract

The discovery of the manuscripts of the Clavis Prophetarum (The Key of the Prophets), a document that was thought to have been lost forever for at least three hundred years and that was found in 2022, rekindled interest in the work of the “King’s Jesuit” and in his writings, which are considered fundamental “for Luso-Brazilian history”. However, the reality is that the work of Antônio Vieira (1608-1697) has been a source of theological and literary controversy ever since they have come to light. For example, one of the central theses of Clavis, - a thesis about which not even Vieira himself seems to have been convinced throughout his life - is that the time for the millennial consummation of the “kingdom of Christ” was in gestation. The book is part of what the historiography has agreed to call the “Trilogy of the Fifth Empire”: which includes, in addition to the “Key of the Prophets”, the letter “Esperanças de Portugal” (“Letter to the Bishop of Japan”), written in 1659, and the “History of the Future”. In several moments of the trilogy, Vieira states that this Fifth Empire - the one that will bring about the expected future and succeed that empires of the Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians and Romans - is the kingdom of Portugal itself. This article intends to analyze Father Vieira’s letter, Esperanças de Portugal, in its literary and theological aspects.