Effects of Sebastianismo and Quinto Império on Portuguese Culture & Literature

Portuguese Expeditions and the Birth of an Empire

Starting from 1341, the first expedition to the Canary Islands, and with the expeditions to India, Brazil, and Japan, the Portuguese people opened their vision towards the undiscovered world. Besides reaching the goods that started to be traded (gold, silver, spices, silk, sugar, and slaves), Portugal also came out of its shell and got the taste of building an empire for the first time in its history. With the eager to conquer new lands, apart from the overseas colonies, the young king Sebastião started an expedition to Africa; however, he passed away in the Battle of Alcácer Quibir on the 4th of August in 1578, and so the conquest of Africa failed. After the death of the king, a succession crisis arose, and King Philip II of Spain peacefully incorporated Portugal into Spain by enticing the Portuguese nobility and a part of the clergy. During the United Iberian Peninsula era between 1580-1640, which came after the golden age of discoveries, Portugal was under the sovereignty of the Spanish crown but maintained an independent law, currency, and government. In the meantime, the Portuguese nobility began to lose its power, and several Portuguese colonial holdings came under the administration of the Dutch government. These events gave rise to a restoration period and an independence effort from the Spanish sovereignty.

Effects of Sebastianismo and Quinto Império on Portuguese Culture & Literature

In order to fuel this restoration effort, the myth of Sebastianismo was introduced to society. There was a belief in the country that one day, on a foggy morning, the Portuguese king Dom Sebastião, who disappeared in the battle of Alcácer Quibir, would return to Portugal to lead the country to a new era of prosperity, just like the belief that one day Jesus will return to Earth to save humanity once and for all. In his epic poems, Luís Camões dignified the past glory of Portugal by celebrating Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India and emphasized the higher purpose of Portuguese civilization. The book was structured in themes in terms of its content. In the first theme, the poem refers to the discovery of Vasco de Gama, in the second theme to the history of Portugal, in the third theme to Portuguese people and heroes, and in the fourth theme to mythology. As examples of classical epic poetry, ‘Os Lusíadas’ appears to be inspired by Greek culture. The following verses are from Os Lusíadas:

“These are the tales of arms and matchless men / Who put to sea from Portugal's west shore / And trekked to Taprobana and beyond / By oceans nobody had braved before, / And in combat and crises held their own, / Drawing on more than human skill, in war / Among a distant people, to bring the name / Of a New Kingdom, and earn it deathless fame”.

The belief of Sebastianismo was also strongly reflected in the poems in the book Mensagem by Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa. In those poems, he promoted the belief that whatever happens to Portugal, the King will return and the country will rise again. Like the ideal of Sebastianismo, the ideal of O Quinto Império, which was introduced to society by Camões, continued to fuel the society to keep alive the spirit of establishing an empire again one day. The Jesuit priest, António Vieira, also believed that after the great empires led by Nebuchadnezzar (Babylon or Assyrians), Cyrus (Persia), Pericles (Greece), and Caesar (Rome), the Fifth Empire would be led by the King of Portugal and unite the Christian World. He also emphasized the importance of history in his book series Sermões as:

'The purpose for men who have invented the books was to cherish the memory of past things, against the tyranny of time and against forgetting men”.

His words, praising the past glory of Portugal and naming the country in the future as the Fifth Empire to come after the restoration of independence, revivified the self-confidence of the Portuguese people to establish the chosen nation again in the future. Like António Vieira, Fernando Pessoa also referred to a fifth empire but in a more spiritual context rather than a material empire governing the World. In his poem called The Fifth Empire, Pessoa wrote: 'Greece, Rome, Christianity, Europe - the four are leaving. Where does every age go? Who comes to live the truth What did D. Sebastião die?'. These words mark the symbolic value of King Sebastião in the formation of a fifth empire by reviving the ancient glory of Portugal.

Portuguese History: A Cycle of Birth, Decay, and Renewal

In 1872, Joaquim de Oliveira Martins published an influential essay on Camões’s Os Lusíadas and its historical and social context. He formulated Portuguese history as an apocalyptic cycle of birth, decay, and death in four parts: first dynasty, the golden age, the overseas expansion period, and the remaining three centuries. Oliveira Martins criticized the moral degeneration that was caused by the wealth coming from the discoveries. In the last period, in those three centuries, the inquisition persecuted, tortured, and massacred thousands of people to guarantee a catholic faith in society. However, the country put an end to this fanaticism with the effort of modernist, intellectual people in society. For instance, the role of Marquês de Pombal in initiating modernity in Portugal by making possible the abolition of slavery, a reorganized educational system, and the reconstruction of Lisbon after a devastating series of disasters of earthquake, fire, and tsunami in 1755.

Although after those dark centuries, the country experienced a republic, a dictatorship, and membership to the European Union in such a short time period. And the reflections of the ideals of Sebastianismo, the fifth empire, and the postponed glory to come on Portuguese society still can be seen in the saudade and caravels in fado music, in modern Portuguese literature, and even still in the distant dreams of some old people.

References

1. Camões, L. (1572). Os Lusíadas. Lisbon: António Gonçalves.
2. Martins, J. de O. (1872). História de Portugal. Porto: Typographia da Empreza Litteraria e Typographica.
3. Pessoa, F. A. N. (1934). Mensagem. Lisbon: Parceria Antonio Maria Pereira.
4. Vieira, A. (1679-1748). Sermões. Lisbon: Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal.