Uuring the sixteenth century, the Book of Revelation served as the primary theological source for Reformation attacks on the Pope as Antichrist and the Roman Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon, the tyrannical enslaver of the beleaguered Protestants, who were compared to the Israelites during the Babylonian captivity imposed by King Nebuchadnezzar. Al-though not as popular a subject for interpretation as Revelation, which received eighteen commentaries,^the Book of Daniel was given an important supporting role by Protestant reformers such as Joye, Calvin, Broughton, and Brightman in the creation of a body of apocalyptic exegesis "calling for . . . divine judgment on the present powers of the world and their overthrow by the heavenly armies that will install on earth the true city of God."^Throughout the Reformation, the prophecies contained in Daniel 2 and 5 and in Revelation 14:8, 17:5, 18:2, 10, 21 were invoked to predict the fall of Babylon, the city ruled by the Antichrist and most frequently identified as Rome and Spain. In Daniel 2, King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream which he has forgotten, and so he orders his soothsayers to reconstruct and interpret it. When they fail, Daniel, with the help of God who reveals "this secret . . . mystery in a vision,"^describes and interprets the King's dream of a composite beastwith a golden head, silver breast and arms, brazen belly and thighs, and iron legswhich is smashed by a stone. The four metals represent four empires (Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome) which will rule the world and be overturned successively until the last and worst, Rome, will be defeated by Christ's kingdom "which shal never be destroyed.'"* Chapter five presents the most dramatic scene in the Book of Daniel when Belshazzar, the last of the Babylonian monarchs, holds a drunken feast during which the fingers of a man's hand appear and write on the Renaisance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVI, 1 (1990) 49
