The Sabbatean Prophets

CHAPTER 5
Opponents and Observers Respond
[They are] only such Matters as are consistent with Hypocrisy, Delusion,
good Guessing, subtle Scrutinies, underhand Intelligence,
forelaid Contrivance and Artifice, the Warmth of a Delirious and Enthusiastic
Imagination, or, at most, the Power and Activity of Evil
Spirits, whose Agency, no doubt, must be necessary to the working
of those Signs and Wonders, which, if it were possible, would deceive
the very Elect.
—Eubulus, Censura Temporum 1, 4 [1708]: 116, on the French prophets 1
At the height of the fervor, most Jews either became followers
or were open to the likelihood that Shabbatai was really the messiah.
Among the stalwart dissenters who rejected him, by far the most outspoken
was Hakham Jacob Sasportas of Hamburg. Sasportas preserved a large cache
of letters written by himself and many correspondents from the height of
the movement, and their authenticity is verifiable. These documents, collected
as the Zizat Novel Zvi (Withering of the Flower of Zvi), are not only a
central source on the unfolding of Sabbateanism, but also a window into the
world of an unbeliever who put his life in danger to oppose Shabbatai.
Sasportas’ reactions to the Sabbatean prophets reveal a great deal both about
his personal attitudes and about the larger state of religious turmoil in the
mid-seventeenth century. An examination of the many reports on the
movement appearing among European Christians serves to highlight even
more of this turmoil. While the majority of surviving Christian documents
were composed after Shabbatai’s apostasy and are highly deprecatory, many
earlier ones display neutrality and even enthusiasm for the unfolding
events. In this literature it is not the Sabbatean prophets that take center
stage, but rather the way developments in the East were both reported and
fabricated to fit Christian prophetic ideas.
Unfortunately, few Muslim records remain dealing with Sabbatean events
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