The Sabbatean Prophets

118 The Sabbatean Prophets
Iberian through and through, knew a great deal about similar phenomena
among beatas and nuns in Spain and Portugal. In their own environs they
had the model of the Sufis and dervishes. Even if they had not seen such
possessions and visions in person, they could hardly have helped knowing
about them. For this reason it is probable that the model of Nathan struck a
particular chord.
The mimetic model helps explain other seeming discrepancies as well.
Why would Sabbatean visionaries act so much like bewitched Europeans or
New Englanders who suffered from demonic possession Why would the
possession style, which was known from the New Testament but had been
largely dormant in the medieval West, suddenly reassert itself How were
these possession cases related to the “normative” cases in other world cultures
If one understands all these relationships in terms of mimetic behavior,
one no longer needs to seek holistic adoption practices or concrete human
chains of influence. They can be found on occasion, to be sure; for
example, Tituba and John Indian create a direct tie between African and Caribbean
witchcraft and possession traditions, and the Salem outbreak. This
indeed exemplifies how the age of discovery and colonialism brought such
traditions into the Western conscience. Concrete causal chains like this,
however, are not necessary. Once the idiom and style of possession are
heard of in any venue or context, whether positive or negative, demonic or
prophetic, the raw material for mimesis exists. Nor should possession be
taken as an isolated category with clearly defined borders. Careful delineations
between possessions, trances, ecstasies, and visions, as well as the
common differentiation between learned and popular culture, lose most of
their meaning in the mimetic scheme. Even the usual gender wisdom tends
to break down. The traditional theories of possession fail miserably in the
Sabbatean case. Indeed, any fragments or assortment of behaviors can be
learned, copied, recombined, or refigured once the mimetic models are presented.
89 Two case studies of popular Sabbatean prophets will serve to support
this claim and show why lay prophets were central to the success of
Sabbateanism.
Prophecy in the Household of Hayyim Peña
Hayyim Peña, a wealthy merchant and former converso living in Izmir, was
one of the most outspoken opponents of Shabbatai in the winter of 1665–
66, when Shabbatai was staying in the city. He was a prominent member