The Sabbatean Prophets

26 The Sabbatean Prophets
about his future as well as past activities demonstrates one direction astrology
tried to take. Extremely widespread and important in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries was the impulse to understand not only planetary
conjunctions, but also eclipses, comets, and other heavenly events as
portents. Evidence can be amassed for the prophetic and more specifically
messianic interpretation of almost every one of these occurrences. 108 Astrological
interpretations of Shabbatai’s name (which means Saturn) and its relationship
to his personality and his mission were widely asserted among his
believers, confirming the importance of this astrological background. 109
It was not only signs in the heavens that caused the early moderns to seek
meaning in science and prophetic explanation alike. This was a period of intense
fascination with marvels, monsters, strange occurrences, and peculiar
phenomena of all types. The same pattern of thought found in astrology was
repeated in the realm of extraordinary natural events. Investigations into
such oddities as monstrous births, sea monsters, hermaphrodites, halfhuman-half-animal
creatures, spirit possessions, and mermaids were conducted
in the spirit of science, but simultaneously interpreted as portents. 110
The Thirty Years’ War, from 1618 to 1648, put a formidable damper on the
hopeful messianic attitude of science over the next several decades, 111 but
this spirit was slowly reviving around the time of Shabbatai Zvi among various
groups, including the founders of the Royal Society (whose secretary,
Henry Oldenburg, was a friend of Manasseh ben Israel’s and took interest in
Sabbateanism), the Hartlib-Dury-Comenius circle, and the editors of the
Kabbala denudata, who included Henry More and Francis Mercurius van
Helmont. 112 Newton certainly personifies this spirit in the latter part of the
century. 113
The relationship between bodily healing and universal healing, which
was so important to the Rosicrucians, can be found again toward the end
of the century in the experience of the famous Newtonian physician, Dr.
George Cheyne. Despite the success of Cheyne’s practice, he fell into a dissolute
and unhealthy life style, his weight swelled to over 400 pounds, and he
fully expected to suffer an early death, when he came in contact with the
French Prophets, the band of expatriate French Protestant visionaries who
appeared in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Under their
influence Cheyne became a believer in the rapid approach of the New Jerusalem.
He shed hundreds of pounds and expressed his belief that the repair
of the world’s ills in the imminent Second Coming is reflected in the microcosm
of one’s health. 114