The Sabbatean Prophets

44 The Sabbatean Prophets
Among the Portuguese conversos whose imaginations were sparked by
Reubeni was Diogo Pires, a secretary of the king, who immediately began
experiencing messianic dreams. He decided he must return to his ancestral
Judaism in order to pursue the matter, and sought to enlist Reubeni’s help.
The latter wanted nothing to do with this dangerous venture, but Pires
circumcised himself, adopted the name Solomon Molkho and escaped to
the Ottoman Empire. There the young man studied Jewish texts, especially
Kabbalah, with such intensity that he became renowned for his wisdom and
piety in only a few years. His messianic dreams continued, and the content
of several of these has come down to us. Molkho brazenly betook himself to
Italy, even though the Inquisition sought him as a renegade Christian, and
made an enormous impression on the pope. Clement VII was taken not only
by Molkho’s personality, but also by two highly accurate prophecies of natural
disasters, confirming the young man’s status as a true prophet. After various
adventures Reubeni and Molkho met up again and initiated a new joint
mission, this time to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Charles was less
taken by the two Jewish eschatologues and sent them both to their respective
ends. Nevertheless, the images of these two men, especially Molkho, reverberated
over many generations. 19
A more restrained wave of messianic excitement affected certain circles of
Jews, particularly those of Italy and Palestine, in the early 1570s. Various
rabbis, especially Italian ones, had calculated 1575 to be the certain date of
redemption. 20 At about the same time, Rabbi Isaac Luria, who arrived in
Safed (in Palestine) around 1570, was venerated in his kabbalistic circle not
only as author of the famous Lurianic doctrines of exile and redemption, but
also as a messiah himself. When Luria died in 1572, having failed to manifest
himself as messiah, his student, R. Hayyim Vital, inherited at least part of
this mantle. Vital’s messianic identity was quite complex, and it remained
unresolved upon his death in 1620. 21
The period between the death of R. Hayyim Vital and the rise of the
Sabbatean movement was marked by two seemingly paradoxical trends regarding
messianism. On the one hand, there was an almost complete dearth
of messianic pretenders; 22 but on the other hand, there was also a furious
production of literature concerning the messianic advent in the Jewish
world. Various rabbis were occupied with messianic calculations and
thought; 23 outstanding among them was R. Manasseh ben Israel, whose attitudes
were deeply connected to his converso background.