expected the imminent end of the fourth empire, and a new age. The early modern version of the four monarchies in universal history was subsequently often attributed to the chronologist and astrologer Johann Carion, based on his Chronika (1532). Developments of his Protestant world chronology were endorsed in an influential preface of Philipp Melanchthon (published 1557). The theory was topical in the 1550s. Johann Sleidan in his De quatuor imperiis summis (1556) tried to summarise the status of the "four monarchies" as historical theory; he had already alluded to it in previous works. Sleidan's influential slant on the theory was both theological, with a Protestant tone of apocalyptic decline over time, and an appeal to German nationalist feeling in terms of translatio imperii. The Speculum coniugiorum (1556) of the jurist Alonso De la Vera Cruz, in New Spain, indirectly analysed the theory. It cast doubts on the Holy Roman Emperor's universal imperium by pointing out that the historical "monarchies" in question had in no case held exclusive sway. The Carion/Melanchthon view was that the Kingdom of Egypt must be considered a subsidiary power to Babylon: just as France was secondary compared to the Empire. The Catholic Jean Bodin was concerned to argue against the whole theory of "four monarchies" as a historical paradigm. He devoted a chapter to refuting it, alongside the classical scheme of a Golden Age, in his 1566 Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem. In 1617, sculptures representing the four kingdoms of Daniel were placed above the doors of Nuremberg town hall: Fifth Monarchists In the conditions leading to the English Civil War of 1642–1651 and in the disruption that followed, many Englishmen advanced millennarian ideas, believing they were living in the "end of days". The Fifth Monarchists were a significant element of the Parliamentary grouping and, in January 1661, after Charles II had taken the throne following the English Restoration of 1660, 50 militant Fifth Monarchists under Thomas Venner attempted to take over London to start the "Fifth Monarchy of King Jesus". After the failure of this uprising, Fifth Monarchists became a quiescent and devotional part of religious dissent. References Further reading Bernard Capp (1972), Fifth Monarchy Men: Study in Seventeenth Century English Millenarianism, Faber Gerhard F. Hasel, "The Four World Empires of Daniel 2 Against its Near Eastern Environment," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 1979 12: 17-30 H. H. Rowley (1935), Darius the