The Sabbatean Prophets

166 The Sabbatean Prophets
the group that converted to Islam in the 1680s while continuing its secret
Sabbatean faith; but it was still best represented in the household of Abraham
Cardoso. Cardoso had been forced to leave Tripoli in 1673, and he wandered
in subsequent years from Tunis to Livorno to Izmir, then Brusa, Istanbul,
Rodosto, Gallipoli, and other points east, always followed by threats of
isolation and excommunication for his Sabbatean activities. The main mode
of prophecy in the Cardoso group became maggidic revelations that far surpassed
any that had gone on before. The closest parallel is perhaps the Sufi
groups whose shaykhs encouraged their disciples to seek visions through ecstatic
trance—yet even these closed conventicles pale in comparison with
the Cardoso group. Cardoso claimed to grant and call up maggidim at will,
and he appointed specific heavenly mentors to his various students. At least
one of these, Daniel Bonafous, became a prophet in his own right and attracted
the attention of the historian Jacques Basnage. Like the prophets
around R. Abraham Rovigo, Cardoso re-engineered Sabbatean theology to
fit his own ideas, most of which contradicted those taught by his nemesis,
Nathan. 7 Nevertheless, the centrality of maggidim in this group bears witness
to the continued resonance of that form, revived so dramatically by Nathan
himself in 1665.
A striking example of the impact Sabbatean prophecy had on the larger
Jewish intellectual world is the case of R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, one of the
most influential Jewish thinkers of the early eighteenth century. Luzzatto
had close ties to Sabbatean circles and was an avid reader of Nathan of
Gaza’s kabbalistic works, but was probably not a Sabbatean himself. Luzzatto
had a famous maggid that revealed various secrets to him, not the least
of which was a “second Zohar,” reminiscent of that put forth by Moses
Suriel. Luzzatto was persecuted mercilessly by the rabbis for his prophetic
claims and suspected connections with Sabbateans, but this did not prevent
him from training students in his path and becoming a highly influential
writer in the Jewish world. 8 At the same time that prophetic activity continued
among both the Ottoman and European Sabbateans later in the
century, forms of possession and ecstasy closely related to those of the Sabbateans
(but sometimes presented in dialectic opposition to them) were becoming
widespread in the early Hasidic movement. 9 Keen awareness of the
Sabbatean prophetic precedents remained in Jewish memory, and it testifies
to their continuing impact among non-Sabbateans for over a century. Nevertheless,
the speed and fervor with which Hasidism spread are distinctly
reminiscent of Sabbateanism, and the common element of prophecy may
have been equally important in both.