The Sabbatean Prophets

200 Notes to Pages 94–97
legend. The account by Johannes Braun appears to be based on the same legend
known to Ragstatt about the coat of Eve. On these versions see Scholem,
ibid., pp. 193–95.
7. This point is brought out by Harris Lenowitz, “A Spirit Possession Tale as an
Account of the Equivocal Insertion of Rabbi Hayyim Vital into the Role of Messiah,”
in M. Goldish, ed., Spirit Possession in Judaism, 197–212.
8. Ibid., app. G.
9. This fear was most famously realized in the case of the brilliant John Dee. Despite
his great learning, he spent years being duped by the unscrupulous medium
Edward Kelly, who pretended to be conversing with angels through the
aid of the famous crystal ball.
10. This is a highly simplified picture of a very complex phenomenon that will be
dealt with sporadically throughout the chapter. In general see Phyllis Mack, Visionary
Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (California: University
of California Press, 1992); Rosalynn Voaden, God’s Words, Women’s Voices:
The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (St.
Edmunds, Suffolk: York Medieval Press, 1999).
11. See Richard L. Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century
Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
12. Scholem, Sabbatai àevi, 196.
13. Coenen, Ydele verwachtinge der Joden, 41. All quotations from this work here are
my translations from the Hebrew edition.
14. Scholem, Sabbatai àevi, 195 n. But de la Croix’s story contains more material
suggestive of the unchaste side than Scholem indicates. See de la Croix,
Memoire . . . contenant diverses Relations très curieuses de l’Empire Ottoman, vol. 2
(Paris, 1684), 278–80.
15. Coenen, Ydele verwachtinge der Joden, 45.
16. Ibid., 192 n.
17. From Toledot Yeshu ha-Notzri, in J. D. Eisenstein, Ozar Wikuhim: A Collection of Polemics
and Disputations (in Hebrew) (np, nd; reprint, Israel, n/p, 1969), 227.
18. On the place of the Adam/Messiah relationship in Sabbateanism and its important
relationship to Christian ideas, see Idel, Messianic Mystics, 203–04.
19. See Angelo S. Rappoport and Raphael Patai, Myth and Legend in Ancient Israel,
vol. 1 (New York: Ktav, 1996), 156–59.
20. Scholem, Sabbatai àevi, 191–97.
21. Rebecca was the wife of Isaac and the second mother of the entire Jewish people.
Sarah and Rebecca are the only women who could claim this distinction.
22. The question of female prophecy in the movement is discussed in the context
of a larger study about women in Sabbateanism by Ada Rapoport-Albert, “On
the Position of Women in Sabbatianism,” [Hebrew] in The Sabbatian Movement
and Its Aftermath: Messianism, Sabbatianism and Frankism (Ha-Halom U-Shevaro),
vol. 1, ed. R. Elior [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Institute of Jewish Studies, Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, 2001), 147–60, and thereafter dealing with women
prophets after Shabbatai’s conversion. While Rapoport-Albert deals brilliantly