The Sabbatean Prophets

70 The Sabbatean Prophets
states that “Luria’s name was freely used because the Lurianic legend as well
as the popular hagiography Shibhey ha-’ARI was widely known by that time,
whereas Lurianic theories were still unknown to the majority of kabbalists.”
45 While modern scholarship is attuned to controversies within the
coterie of Safed kabbalists (including some friction between R. Karo and the
Luria circle), in the seventeenth century the image of that community was
that of a harmonious monolith of righteous mystics with their eyes turned
toward the future. 46
Certainly in Italy, a center of Sabbatean activity, the fame of the AR”I and
his mystical abilities was well established, partly through the enthusiasm of
Rabbi Menahem Azariah of Fano. A student of R. Menahem, R. Shlomiel
Dreznitz was so inspired by the stories that he went to Safed in 1602 and
thence wrote a series of letters describing Safed and its scholars, particularly
the late Rabbi Luria (not omitting R. Karo and his maggid). These letters
were published in R. Joseph Solomon Delmedigo’s Ta’alumot Hokhmah
(Basel, 1629–31). Stories about Luria even reached a converso physician, Elijah
Montalto, as he lay ill in bed. The Lurianist R. Jedidiah Galante, in Italy
in 1613 as an emissary from Safed’s Jewish community, brought a group of
rabbis to the sick man’s bedside and began to regale everyone with stories of
the AR”I’s wonders. Montalto became agitated and finally sat up in bed and
shouted at Galante that such prophecy no longer occurs, and it is all lies.
Needless to say, the Lurianic mystique made better headway with less skeptical
audiences. 47 Other stories of the AR”I’s greatness and events in his
circle were known from the Toledot ha-Ari, Shene Luhot ha-Brit, and ethical
classics like R. Eliezer Azikri’s Sefer Haredim and R. Elijah de Vidas’ Reshit
Hokhmah.
Thus by the time Nathan of Gaza underwent his prophetic vision and
spirit possession, the association of these particular types of prophetic experience
with the Safed mystical circle of the later sixteenth century was widespread.
There may have been few Lurianic kabbalists, but there were also
few Jews who didn’t know about the holy AR”I and his circle, or about the
maggid of R. Joseph Karo.
In the half century since the demise of the AR”I’s circle, the creative genius
of the Safedian kabbalists was discussed and expounded, in works such
as Naphtali Bacharach’s Emek ha-Melekh and Isaiah Horowitz’s Shene Luhot
ha-Brit. 48 Meanwhile, Jews, Christians, and (to a degree) Muslims in Europe
and the Mediterranean basin were gripped by escalating messianic expectations
as the seventeenth century progressed. Yet no noteworthy Jewish