ABSTRACT
Lucius Valerius looks upon his “candidate for divinity” and wishes that the miracle of this visitation could return to its prior, dreamy state. The five he managed to detail were Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, and Multiplicity, which correlate nicely to the same Sebastianismo-like desires we all have to entertain a miracle, for a clear, swift, discernible, applicable vision to bless us. One night the wind blew a door shut, and Jose shouted, “It’s King Sebastiao! He’s here!” They explained to author about this particular strain of Portuguese longing: Sebastianismo was the wistful desire for the return of the young King, Dom Sebastiao, who died in 1578 on the battlefield of Alcacer-Quibir and whose body was never found. They knew of no one who was a truly fevered adherent of the messianic cult said to have sprung up around Sebastianismo; no one expected an incarnation of the king to show up and return Portugal to its Golden Age.
