ABSTRACT
Millenarian movements appeared in a number of European countries during the early modern era, but only in Portugal are any of them known to have manifested themselves in a colonial empire. In fact, one form, known as Sebastianism, persisted in Brazil longer than it did in the metropolis and even outlived the colony's independence in 1822. This article, however, does not concern itself with the belief that King Sebastiao would return miraculously from the battlefield of El Ksar-el-Kebir to rule over his people and indeed all Europeans for a thousand years - a superstition already known well enough to Iberianists and to historians of witchcraft and the occult. Instead, it will deal with something much less familiar.
