Prophetical hopes, New World experiences and imperial expectations: Menasseh Ben Israel, Antônio Vieira, Fifth-Monarchy Men, and the millenarian connections in the seventeenth-century Atlantic

Abstract

This article analyzes the relations and circulations among seventeenth century Fifth-Monarchy interpretations and the role of the New World in the Last Reign of the World. In this millenarian network, the Portuguese Jewish Community in Amsterdam emerges as a possible axis which articulated the eschatological hopes and colonial interests in the Portuguese and English empires. Considering this entangled world of prophetical expectations, it seeks to bring together sides that were held at bay from each other by scholarship. In order to do that, it traces the connections among the Portuguese-Dutch rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel and groups of both sides of Christianity.