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Messianic Themes In Portuguese And Brazilian Literature In The Sixteenth And Seventeenth Centuries, Carole Myscofski

Scholarship

Between 1819 and 1897, three messianic movements were launched in the north- eastern interior region of Brazil, in the states of Pernambuco and Bahia, drawing to their enclaves not only hundreds of backlanders but also extensive military repression. The three unsuccessful sects prophesied the imminence of the Last Days, of the End of the World in cosmic terms, and had as their extraordinary emissary of the final catastrophe neither Jesus nor any Christian saint but rather a short-lived but long-lamented Portuguese monarch of the sixteenth century. The nostalgia for Rei Dom Sebastião was, however, not limited to a cluster of …