CHAPTER XXXVI.
A.D. 1600-1700.
THE JEWS IN THE EAST.—SABBATHAI SEVI.
The condition of the Jews in the East during this century does not call for much remark; indeed, little has been recorded respecting it. The treatment they received at the hands of the Mussulmans, both princes and people, was curiously different from that which they experienced from the Christian populations of Europe. The first named did not regard the Jews with any particular favour or respect,—in fact, the disdain they evinced for them was even greater than that entertained by their Christian contemporaries,—but there was no active enmity. They looked on with scornful indifference while the Israelites plied their busy trade, aware though they might be that the wealth they accumulated was in a great measure drawn from their own coffers. They would spit in contempt as they passed a Jewish synagogue, but they would not raise a finger to cause its demolition or prevent any number of worshippers from crowding into it. All over Turkey, Arabia, and Persia, some Jews were to be found in every town, where they were allowed to live and thrive, unless they broke some law or offended some faithful Islamite. But if they did either of these things, they were apt to experience scant ceremony and sharp punishment.
The reader has heard, in a previous chapter, of the massacre perpetrated by Shah Abbas II., which appears to have occurred about A.D. 1666. It is said to have lasted three years, and to have almost exterminated the Jews in his dominions. It is, however, involved in great obscurity, the dates given by different writers varying considerably. But in this year, 1666, not the Jews of the East only, but all over the world, were greatly excited by the appearance of the most persistent and successful impostor that had arisen among them from the time of Barchochebas. Sabbathai Sevi, a native of Smyrna, and son of a poulterer in that city, was born in 1625. He was sent to school, where he made such rapid progress that he was appointed a Rabbi when he was only eighteen years of age. He early attracted attention and had many followers, who believed in the pretensions which, even then, he put forward, of being the expected Messiah. At the age of twenty he married a woman of great beauty and rank; but the marriage was only a nominal one, as he lived entirely apart from her. He was compelled to give a divorce, and soon afterwards made a second similar marriage, with the same result. He practised strict asceticism, fasting six days in every week, and bathing continually in the sea at midnight. At twenty-four, his reputation had increased so greatly, that he ventured to put forth publicly his pretensions to be thought the Messiah, and, in proof of these, ventured to pronounce publicly the name of Jehovah, which is absolutely forbidden to the Jews. The Rabbins were horror-struck at his impiety, and declared him to be worthy of death. He was compelled to fly from Smyrna, and took refuge in one city after another, until in Gaza he made an important proselyte, the celebrated Nathan Benjamin. This man, a person of position and influence, professed to have seen in a vision the Lord Himself; who informed him that the promised Deliverer had come in the person of Sabbathai Sevi, and that he, Nathan Benjamin, was the Elias who was to herald his coming. The reader will remember that this is the exact repetition of the imposture of Barchochebas and Rabbi Akiba, fifteen hundred years before. Aided by this ally, Sabbathai preached in Jerusalem, and resided for thirteen years in that city, continuing to gain proselytes and bearing down all opposition.
The imposture was aided by the remarkable fact that, according to the interpretation of some eminent Cabalists of a passage in the book of the prophet Daniel, the Messiah would make His appearance about the year 1675. One of Nathan Benjamin’s first steps, when he felt himself strong enough to take it, was to assemble the Jews resident in Jerusalem, and inform them that, by virtue of the authority committed to him from on high, he abrogated the fast which would otherwise be observed in the ensuing June, because the time of the coming of the Messiah was a festal one, inconsistent with mourning of any kind. He then brought Sabbathai out to them, who, he said, in the ensuing November would go forth in power and destroy the Ottoman empire. He encountered determined opposition from the wiser among his countrymen, who perceived that his pretensions were not only without foundation, but were likely to bring the gravest calamities on the Jews everywhere throughout the Sultan’s dominions. They even went so far as to try him as a rebel and an impostor, and condemn him to death. His adherents, however, were too many and too powerful to permit of this sentence being carried into effect, and he continued to reside without molestation in the city.
After a period of thirteen years from the date of this announcement of his pretensions, he made an expedition into Egypt, where he married, for the third time, the daughter of a Polish Jew, who professed to have received a revelation that she was the destined bride of the Messiah. But the marriage, like the two former ones, was only a marriage in name; and Sabbathai returned to Jerusalem, where he resided for three years more, and then publicly proclaimed himself in one of the synagogues as the Messiah. This once more roused the indignation of the Rabbins, who pronounced against him the sentence of excommunication. This sentence he found too strong for him to struggle against, and he fled to his native city, Smyrna.
The report of his condemnation had preceded him; but he was nevertheless welcomed in his native city with almost regal honour. Every evening he paraded the streets, accompanied by a train of followers, carrying banners, and singing hymns in his praise. All resistance offered to him proved vain. A Jew of high rank, named Anakia, attacked him in the market-place, branding him as an impostor. But his fate did not encourage others to pursue the same course. He returned to his home, and had scarcely entered it, when he suddenly fell from his chair a corpse. The reader will not require to be told that Sabbathai’s friends declared this to be God’s judgment on the blasphemer!
His pretensions now rose higher.[197] He assumed the state of a monarch. He divided the kingdoms of the earth among his partisans. He named his two brothers sovereigns of Judah and Israel, while he himself took the title of ‘the King of the Kings of the Earth.’ He ordered the name of the Sultan to be removed from the prayer offered up for the sovereign in the Jewish liturgy, and his own to be inserted in its place. Embassies arrived from foreign communities charged with rich presents and assurances of devoted loyalty. These were sometimes kept waiting two or three weeks for an audience. His picture was exhibited in public, surmounted by a golden crown; and multitudes of prophets of both sexes thronged the streets, declaring in the name of Heaven his approaching triumph. Some of these are said to have acquired in a moment a miraculous knowledge of Hebrew!
It was not in Smyrna only, or in its vicinity, that the madness prevailed. In those European cities in which the largest number of Jews were to be found,—Hamburg, and Frankfort, and Amsterdam,—all other topics of interest were postponed, and business was broken off to discuss the doings of the newly risen Prophet of Israel. The excitement was not less in the East, where the husbandmen are related to have refused to do their ordinary work in the fields, because the Deliverer of Israel had come. If Sabbathai had been really a man of ability and courage, there is no saying what he might not have effected. It is probable, however, that the extraordinary amount of success to which he had attained now embarrassed, rather than gratified, him. He felt that he could neither recede nor stand still. His partisans insisted on his passing over to Constantinople, and advancing his pretensions in the face of the Sultan himself. He made the voyage accordingly, attended by a vast number of his adherents, and was received by the Jews of Constantinople with the utmost enthusiasm. The Sultan was at the time of his arrival absent, but Sabbathai demanded an audience of the grand vizier. The latter sent immediately to his master for instructions, and delayed giving any reply until he received them. The Sultan’s reply was, that Sabbathai was to be arrested and kept in safe custody until his return. First one, and then a second officer of janissaries were accordingly sent; but in the presence of Sabbathai they were so overpowered by awe that they dared not execute their office. Once more, if Sabbathai had had boldness equal to the occasion, he might have made himself master of Constantinople. But he surrendered himself of his own accord, and was kept in a kind of honourable captivity in the castle of Sestos, where, however, his followers were freely permitted to visit him. He put out a manifesto ordering that the fast which was always strictly observed on the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem should be suspended, and the day celebrated as a festival, it being the birthday of the Messiah. At this juncture there arrived a learned Cabalist, Rabbi Nehemiah, the head of one of the synagogues in Poland, who took up his abode in the castle as Sabbathai’s guest. A few days’ intercourse satisfied him that Sabbathai was simply an impostor, and as such he denounced him to his followers. Roused to fury, the partisans of the prophet would have killed him on the spot; but Nehemiah snatched a turban from the head of one of the Turks, and declared himself a Mussulman. The janissaries instantly interfered to protect him, and he was conveyed to Adrianople where he had an interview with the Sultan. The latter now returned to the capital, and summoned Sabbathai to his presence. The impostor in the hour of trial entirely lost the hardihood which he had hitherto displayed, and, when the Sultan demanded of him whether he was the Messiah, could not summon courage to reply. The Sultan proposed to test his pretensions by shooting three poisoned arrows at him. If these failed to wound or injure him, his title should be at once acknowledged; if the result should be different, death or the profession of Mahometanism must be his sentence. Sabbathai did not hesitate. Following the example of Nehemiah, he placed a turban on his head and exclaimed—‘There is but one God, and Mahomet is His Prophet!’
It is most extraordinary that this apostasy, evidently the result of mere cowardice and imposture, did not provoke the contempt alike of the Turks and the Jews. But by the Sultan he was loaded with honours, and the Jews did not withdraw their belief in his miraculous pretensions. With unabated impudence he put out a declaration to the effect that God had changed him from an Israelite to an Ishmaelite. He quoted the example of Moses, who dwelt for a time among the Ethiopians, and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, where it is said that the Messiah was numbered among the transgressors. For a long time he continued to maintain his double character of the deliverer of the Jews and the devoted believer in Mahomet. Some even declared, after the fashion of the Gnostics in the early Church, that the true Sabbathai had been taken up into heaven, and it was only his likeness or phantom that had undergone degradation and apostasy. Great numbers of Jews, indeed, were induced, by his example, to become Mahometans; and at length the injury to the Jewish community became so great, that they exerted all the influence they could command with the grand vizier, who caused Sabbathai to be arrested and banished into Bosnia. There, in 1676, ten years after his apostasy to Mahometanism, and in the fifty-first year of his age, he expired in a castle near Belgrade. According to some, he died a natural death; according to others, he was beheaded in prison. The latter is the more likely supposition. Though he endeavoured to persuade the Jews that, notwithstanding his profession of another faith, he was at heart a Jew, they entirely distrusted him; and it is likely that the assurances to which they would lend no credit nevertheless caused suspicion and uneasiness among true followers of Mahomet. Thus it would be the interest of both parties to cut short his career.
In the long catalogue of impostors who have succeeded for a time in blinding the eyes of those to whom they pretended a mission, the case of Sabbathai Sevi seems the most extraordinary.