The Sabbatean Prophets

112 The Sabbatean Prophets
conversos and their descendants, so many were probably raised as Catholics.
From Livorno some of the missionaries traveled through Greece while others
went directly to Izmir, where they met up again. One of them reported
that “The sound [of our] coming is gone through this town among Turks
and Jews and all.” Around May or June of 1658 the missionary Mary Fisher
was granted an audience with Sultan Mehmet IV, before whom she testified
with a message from God. Mehmet listened politely to her, then dismissed
her kindly. The previous year another missionary, George Robinson, had
succeeded in making his way through great perils to Jerusalem, where he
also delivered the Quaker message. 66 Nathan of Gaza would have been a yeshiva
student in Jerusalem in his teens at the time.
These Quaker missionaries carried piles of pamphlets and books everywhere
they went. Traveling to Italy and Turkey, they were certainly well
supplied with their most potent tool for the conversion of the Jews, a Hebrew
translation of a Quaker pamphlet by Margaret Askew Fell (Fox), entitled
A Loving Salutation to the Seed of Abraham Among the Jews. The Hebrew
translation had been completed shortly before the trip, apparently by a Portuguese
Jew of Amsterdam by the name of Barukh d’Espinosa, or Benedict
Spinoza. 67 Correspondence indicates that Margaret Fell knew Mary Fisher
personally, so there was a direct connection between the two Quaker prophetesses.
68 It is interesting that a son of Portuguese conversos, and none less
than the great heretic Spinoza, may have contributed to a link between the
Quakers and the Sabbatean prophets.
Despite some similarities in the physical manifestation of prophecy, and
possible links between these two visionary groups, there were also important
differences. Quaker prophets, both male and female, were active participants
in the movement. They both experienced prophecies and spread the
theology of the holy spirit. Mary Fisher walked 500 miles alone through an
unknown land in order to deliver her message before the sultan. In other
words, the Quaker prophets’ activity was characterized by a strong degree of
agency, whatever the gender issues affecting women’s place in the movement.
The lay Sabbatean prophets, on the other hand, although not completely
devoid of agency, appear mainly passive. The divine message of
Shabbatai’s messiahship came through them, but they were not propagandists.
With only one or two exceptions, they did not learn or teach theology.
Thus their role in the movement was quite different.
Another correspondence exists between the Sabbateans and two later
French movements: the Camisard prophets, active in the Cévennes moun-