Metaphors and eschatological symbols on Father Antonio Vieira

Abstract

This essay aims to be an introduction to a reinterpretation of the imagetic visions, both symbolic and dramatic, that fascinate, impassionate and obsess the preacher’s soul as prophetic signs of the impending coming of the theandric-cosmic and eschatological fulness that he called the Fifth Empire or Christ’s Kingdom inaugurated on earth. On the basis of its theologic-philosophical foundations, which he questioned
based upon what the author himself called “hope temptations”, we aim to investigate to what extent a more authentic experience of the soul, in its mystic and visionary confrontation with the symbology of the Infinit and of the Totality, is projected and refracted, unconscious of itself, on the historic-institutional and worldly objectification of the eschatology of the Fifth Empire.