The Sabbatean Prophets

From Mystical Vision to Prophetic Eruption 95
forces of evil, but a whole literature existed for discerning this, and proud
male thinkers believed they could differentiate. 10 As for guile, it was assumed
that young women did not have the knowledge or craft to deceive
educated men deliberately, so that possibility could be eliminated in their
case. This, of course, was often a misjudgment. For example, Lucrecia de
Léon, a young Spanish prophetess of Vital’s period, had extensive knowledge
and art, which she used in a divinatory context to manipulate men. 11
This is the background for Sarah’s success as a prophetess, both as an oracle
for Valle and as the harbinger of the messiah Shabbatai Zvi.
Sarah herself presents a panoply of images and symbols that appear to
bear on her role as wife of the messiah. Many of these cluster around the
poles of Christianity and sexuality. Sarah was Jewish, but she was raised in a
convent. She must therefore have known a fair amount about Christianity
and relatively little about Judaism. This makes her, in a sense, an Ashkenazi
conversa—a Jew with a Christian background and undoubtedly a complicated
religious identity. One of the most widely discussed “signs” of her
story’s authenticity was the appearance of blue hand marks where her father
held her while flying her away from the convent to the graveyard.
This is obviously a form of stigmata, a Christian style of ecstatic expression
brought into a Jewish context.
Sasportas and most others report on Sarah’s loose morals. One source actually
claims Shabbatai married her on account of her reputation as a prostitute,
to fulfill the prophecy of Hosea (1:2), “Take unto thee a wife of whoredoms.”
12 Other sources avoid or deny these claims and make efforts to prove
her virginity. The noun used by Leib to refer to Sarah is in fact “virgin,” the
unambiguous betulah, rather than almah (young woman), which gave rise to
the virgin-birth doctrine. The Dutch minister Thomas Coenen, an eyewitness
in Izmir, says “Whether or not she was a virgin was a matter of debate
among people ...Shetraveled the land with no companions but those she
found along the way.” 13 But de la Croix reports that she was accompanied
on her travels by a pair of matrons—a ploy, according to Scholem, “to counteract
rumors of Sarah’s licentiousness by providing her with two chaperones.”
14 The same could be true of Arezzo’s statement that Raphael Joseph
sent her to Jerusalem “with a straight and reliable Jew.” After Sarah and
Shabbatai were married, they did not consummate the union until God
commanded Shabbatai to do so in a prophecy. The following morning, according
to Coenen, the bloodied sheet was shown to a waiting crowd in the
traditional proof of Sarah’s virginity. 15
The images of the virgin and the prostitute are two sides of the same coin.