Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania

The Sabbatian Movement in Turkey (1703-1708) and Reverberations in Northern Europe Author(s): Richard H. Popkin and Stephanie Chasin Source: The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Spring, 2004), pp. 300-317 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1455429 . Accessed: 31/03/2011 07:33
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THE

JEWISH

QUARTERLY

REVIEW, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Spring 2004) 300-317

The SabbatianMovement in Turkey (1703-1708) and Reverberationsin Northern Europe

RICHARD H. POPKIN AND STEPHANIE CHASIN

some hitherto unknown documents that recently came to our attention. Our investigation started from a simple examination as to whether Gershom Scholem had used Jacques Basnage's Hi#toire desJtuti in his book on Sabbatai Zevi. We found that Scholem cites one item from Basnage's work, namely, the study of some of Nostradamus's prophecies by the Sabbatian leader Abraham Miguel Cardozo.' When we looked up the reference in the fifteen-volume 1715-16 edition of Basnage, we found a much larger text concerning Sabbatai Zevi and his disciples.2 The information on the Sabbatian movement came from early eighteenth-century letters by Johannes Heyman, a Flemish pastor in Turkey, and Baron Daniel Jan de Hochepied, the Dutch consul at Smyrna. These letters were sent to the burgermeister of Deventer, Gijsbert Cuper. Basnage apparently cites from the actual letters rather than from any printed source. In his history of the Jews, Basnage mentions Heyman's meeting with Cardozo, who informed him of a former pupil of his, Daniel Israel Bonafoux, living in Smyrna at that time, and was destined to become Cardozo's successor as leader of the Sabbatian movement. The phenomenal excitement generated by Sabbatai Zevi's prophetic announcements of 1665-66 led to the appearance of prophets all over Europe and the OttoWE DISCUSS
IN THIS ESSAY

We would like to thank Professor Matt Goldish of Ohio State University for his interest and encouragement and, especially, for providing information about the status of the Sabbatian movement in Jewish communities in Turkey, Egypt, and Palestine. 1. Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah (Princeton, N.J., 1973), 646, n. 145.
2. Jacques Basnage, HMstoiredes Jutif depuid Jesus-Christ jusqa'a present: Pour de Joseph (The Hague, 1716). servir de continuation a l'HIMtoire The Jeuwis Quarterly Reviue (Spring 2004) Copyright (? 2004 Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved.

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man Empire.3 After his death there were messianic claimants in Poland and various parts of the Middle East, some declaring themselves to be the reincarnation of Sabbatai. Cardozo probably represented the mainstream group of survivors, hence Daniel Israel, as Cardozo's successor, could call upon the significant following that was still loyal to Sabbatai Zevi through Cardozo's interpretations.4 In his article on Cardozo for the Encyclopedia Judaica, Scholem writes that Cardozo was part of a Sabbatian group that believed Sabbatai Zevi would return forty years after his conversion to Islam.5 Following Cardozo, Daniel Israel claimed that Sabbatai Zevi was still living and would, after forty-five years in hiding, return as promised to deliver his people from their suffering.6 Since Sabbatai Zevi died in 1676 this would put his reappearance at 1721. In his recent treatment of European reactions to the Sabbatai Zevi story, Michael Heyd discusses the anonymous text "The Devil of Delphos, Or, the Prophets of Baal," which lists false messiahs and prophets, naming Sabbatai Zevi as the most famous imposter.7While Heyd identifies the text as a comparison of Sabbatianism and the French Prophets, he makes no historical connection between what was going on in London, Rotterdam, and in the Ottoman Empire. Neither Scholem nor Heyd mention Daniel Israel, his connection to Cardozo, or the interest shown in him by European millenarians in the Netherlands and Smyrna. From 1703 until 1709 Heyman and Hochepied in Smyrna engaged in a lively discussion with Cuper in the Netherlands about the Sabbatian
3. See Richard H. Popkin, "Two Unused Sources about Sabbatai Zevi and his Effect on European Communities," Dutch Jewish History 2: Proceedings of the FourthSymposium on the Historyof the Jews in the Netherlands,7-10 December -Tel1986, ed. Jozeph Michman (Jerusalem: Institute for Research on Aviv-Jeruwalem, Dutch Jewry, Hebrew Univ., 1989), 2:67-74. 4. For more information about some of these other messianic prophets after Sabbatai Zevi's death, see Harris Lenowitz, The Jewui,h Messiahs (New York, 1998), 168-97. 5. Gershom Scholem, "Cardozo, Abraham Miguel," Encyclopedia Judaica(New York, 1972), 5:164-65. Cardozo had been the leading figure in the Sabbatian movement after Sabbatai Zevi's death but seems not to have been completely accepted because he was a Spaniard and not a Turkish Jew. (He also refused to convert to Islam as Sabbatai had done.) 6. Jacques Basnage, TheHistoryof the Jewsfrom Jesus Chrit to thePresentTime, trans. Thomas Taylor (London, 1708 ed.), 758. 7. See Michael Heyd, "The 'Jewish Quaker': Christian Perceptions of Sabbatai Zevi as an Enthusiast," HebraicaVeritas? Christian Hebraists,Jews,and the Study ed. Allison Coudert and Jeffrey Shoulson (PhilEurope, of Judaim in EarlyModern adelphia, forthcoming 2004).

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movement and the state of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire. Cuper then passed this information on to Jacques Basnage, who put it in the 1708 English edition of his history of the Jews. Each of these men was a member of either the Dutch or the French Reformed Church in the Netherlands, and it was clear from their letters that Calvinism lay behind their interest in the Jewish community of the Ottoman Empire. This correspondence between Smyrna and the Netherlands generates a number of questions. Why did events concerning the Jews, the Sabbatian movement, and its principal figures so intrigue these men? Was there a conversionary and millenarian impulse stemming from the Reformed Church that provoked inquiries into the Sabbatian movement? Did the curiosity about the Jews in Smyrna have a connection with the millenarian impulses of the contemporary French Prophets movement in Europe? And what does all of this tell us about Basnage's major work, Hi.itoire des Juf11?
Setting out to learn what we could about Gijsbert Cuper, we found a massive trove of papers by this polymath at the Dutch Royal Library, of which only a small part has been catalogued. Cuper was professor of classics and headmaster of the Athenaeum at Deventer. He corresponded regularly with some of the leading scholars both in the Netherlands and abroad, including Johann Georg Graevius, Petrus Burman, Pierre Bayle, Jean le Clerc, and G. W. Leibniz. There were also several letters to Cuper from the Flemish pastor Heyman and the consul Hochepied.8 Cuper's correspondence with Heyman, Hochepied, Basnage, and others coincided with the arrival in 1707 in England of the Huguenot refugees.9 After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 it was no longer legal to be a Protestant in France. Hundreds of thousands of refugees poured into the Netherlands, Germany, and England. A remnant remained in France, carrying on their religious beliefs in secret, hiding in the woods and caves. Pierre Jurieu, the leader of the French Reformed Church exiles in the Netherlands (and Basnage's brother-in-law), became their contact with the outside world, sending them sermons and receiving messages from them. When the persecutions in France became unbearable, these Protestants also fled. In England, they became known as the French Prophets on account of their mystical practices and prophetic revelations about the portent of their predicament. In the first decade of 8. We thank Professor Wiep van Bunge of Erasmus University of Rotterdam for putting us in touch with a Dutch graduate student, Ruben Buys, who went to the Royal Library and copied the letters in which we were interested and
carried on a further search for related materials, both there and in Leiden. We are most grateful to Mr. Buys for his invaluable help in our research.

9. We thank Matt Goldish for pointing out this coincidence.

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the eighteenth century, they attracted much attention. Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, Isaac Newton's most important mathematical disciple, became one of the movement's leaders, and various members of English nobility joined the group. Great expectations were generated, followed by great persecutions. Some left England for the Netherlands and started millenarian ferment among the French Reformed and Dutch Reformed Church. It was to the leaders of the movement in Rotterdam that Pierre Jurieu provided both shelter and money.'0 Both Jacques Basnage and Gijsbert Cuper were extremely interested in the French Prophets and in the possibility that this group was the harbinger of an imminent millenarian development. The last decade of the seventeenth century and the first of the eighteenth was a period of serious millenarian expectation. In England, scholars like Newton were trying to figure out when the Messiah would appear from the prophecies in the books of Daniel and Revelation. In his Boyle lectures, William Whiston showed how many of the prophecies had already been fulfilled, how many remained to be fulfilled, and mathematically how long it should take to get to the end point in time. In the Netherlands, the Dutch Reformed Church kept up its millenarian hopes. Many of its leaders trained at Herborn, a Calvinist seminary in Germany with millenarian tendencies, which held the Jews to be of critical importance in the culmination of human history." Some of them supported the contemporary Jews of Amsterdam and watched their activities both inside and outside the synagogue for signs that the crucial end events were about to begin. From the seventeenth century, the premillennial theory offered by Joseph Mede at Cambridge and Johann Heinrich Alsted at Herborn included the conversion of the Jews as one of its crucial steps. Such Calvinist scholars tried to ascertain the date when this conversion would occur, with many calculations centered on 1655-56, although the dating proved to be flexible. There was some question whether all Jews would be expected to convert, just some, or, in Mede's theory, just one, like Saul of Tarsus. In light of this, the significance of the Sabbatian movement was of immediate theological concern. After 1665, when Sabbatai Zevi made his announcement that the messianic age had begun, Protestant millenarians learned as much as possible about the Sabbatians and Jew10. Hillel Schwartz, The FrenchProphets:The History of a MillenarianGroupin England(Berkeley, 1980), 170-71. Etqhteenth-Centary 11. On the history of Herborn, see Paul Dibon, "Le fonds neerlandais de la bibliotheque de Herborn," Regards ar la Hollandeda siecle d'or (Naples, 1990), 191-220.

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ish developments in the Ottoman Empire. This seems to explain the contacts being established between Herborn and Smyrna and the shift from theorizing about the significance of the Sabbatian movement to traveling in the Ottoman Empire to learn about the state of the Jews first-hand. In Sabbatai Zevi's time, Peter Serrarius testified that he rushed to the Amsterdam synagogue to find out what he could about the rumors that the Messiah had come in 1665. He sent John Dury a copy of Sabbatai Zevi's letter to the Amsterdam synagogue. The Dutch newspapers of the time contained numerous stories about Sabbatai Zevi, apparently to satisfy the curiosity of non-Jews in the Netherlands.'2 Even though the proclaimed Messiah had never been seen or heard in the Netherlands, the interest in Sabbatai Zevi and his movement was intense among Jews and Christians; outside the Ottoman Empire, Amsterdam was one of the principal centers of Sabbatianism.'3 Similarly, some of the French Reformed Church leaders in exile, such as Jurieu, took an active interest in Jewish affairs. Jurieu was even given a pension by the Amsterdam synagogue for promoting the welfare of the Jews.'4 Basnage, unlike his brother-in-law, had no patience for the ecstatic and mystical methods that the French Prophets used in their millenarian practices. Nonetheless, he regarded these people as having a special religious role in the divine drama and sent supportive messages to
12. Jetteke van Wijk, in her interesting article on the spread of the Sabbatian movement in Europe, traces the role the emerging mass media played. While reports in pamphlets were often not taken seriously, a more objective newspaper journalism was developing. The first report about the Sabbatian movement in one of these more impartial Dutch newspapers appeared in the summer of 1665 and by the beginning of the following year the Oprechte Haerle,nseCourantwas covering the events in the Levant in great detail. Between late 1665 and the beginning of 1667, thirty-nine articles in thirty editions of that particular newspaper dealt with Sabbatai Zevi and his movement. The coverage not only informed the Dutch and other Europeans as to the events in Smyrna but also facilitated the success of Sabbatianism in Europe. See "The Rise and Fall of Shabbatai Zevi as Reflected in Contemporary Press Reports," StudiaRosenthaliana 33:1 (1999): 7-27. 13. The interest was not confined to the Netherlands and the Ottoman Empire. In 1810 the Abbe Gregoire discussed the secret followers of Sabbatai Zevi in Turkey (the Donmeh). He ended his account by stating that in 1808 a follower of Sabbatai Zevi had appeared in Paris as a musician. See Gregoire, Histotredea
sectes religieudes: Qut sont nees, se sont modiJi/es, se sont iteintes dans Lesdiffirentes contresi diuglobe, depums le commencement du st'ecle dernt'erjusqu'a l'epoque actuelle (Paris, 1828-45). 14. It would be interesting to know if Jurieu also received material on the continuation of the Sabbatian movement in the Ottoman Empire in the early eighteenth century.

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his beleaguered coreligionists trapped in France, rushing to support them when they emerged in England and the Netherlands. Basnage also made clear in his Hitoire des Juifj that he expected the messianic age to begin in the very near future and awaited the conversion of the Jews as a prelude to the Second Coming, which the 1715-16 edition predicted would
occur in 1716.15

In disentangling the various threads from Cuper's correspondence,16 it becomes evident that Heyman and Hochepied had developed a special interest in the Sabbatian movement. Both were students at Herborn, and both studied under Johannes a Lent, doctor of theology and professor of Oriental languages and Church history, who had published a work on Jewish messiahs in 1683 in which he discussed Sabbatai Zevi's career.17 Hochepied was appointed Dutch consul in Turkey in 1688.18With the same zeal with which he championed the interests of the Reformed Church in Smyrna, Hochepied also vowed to give protection to the Jews of the Ottoman Empire, a community he considered to be oppressed.19
15. Basnage, Hiitoire desJuf11, 1715-16 ed., 15:1105: "en comptant les Annees lunaires a la maniere des Chaldeens, comme faisoit Daniel, qui etoit en ce Paisla, cet Avenement doit s'accomplir l'An 1716." 16. Over the course of a couple of months we received packets of photocopies of the letters that were found for us in the Dutch Royal Library. Most of them are in Dutch. A graduate student at UCLA, Christine Sellin, translated the material for us. We were also helped by a visiting Dutch professor, Elly van Gelderen. All the letters we received were between Cuper and Heyman or between Cuper and Basnage. The content of some of these letters clearly indicates that Hochepied was a correspondent with Cuper as well, but so far we have been unable to locate any of his letters. 17. Johannes a Lent, Schediasma hidtorico de Judaeorum phi/ologicum pseudo-mess4il. A 1697 edition of this work is in the collection of the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies library at the University of Pennsylvania. The work was the only source of information that Basnage's good friend, Pierre Bayle, had about Sabbatai Zevi, who is mentioned just once, very briefly, in Bayle's Dictionary.Bayle could not read the most available sources -the account by Paul Rycault in John Evelyn's The ThreeImpostersand the account by the Dutch consul of the time, Thomas Coenen-since they were in English and Dutch, languages he did not know. The dissertation by Johannes a Lent includes material from both Rycault and Coenen. See Pierre Bayle, art. "Weile," in which he writes "faux Messir Sabbathi Tzebbi qui avoit fait beaucoup de bruit en Turquie depuis peu de tems." Dictionnaire historique et critique,1740 ed., 492. On Rycault and Evelyn, see Richard H. Popkin, "Three English Tellings of the Sabbatai Zevi Story," Jeuwdh Hictory 8:1-2 (1994): 43-54. 18. Paul Rycault had held the position of English consul during the time of Sabbatai Zevi. 19. Abraham J. van der Aa, Biographcich derNederlanden uoordenboek (Haarlem, 1867).

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The second figure in our story, Heyman, was appointed to pastor to the Dutch merchants in Smyrna after his graduation from Herborn. From the time he arrived in the Ottoman Empire in the summer of 1700, Heyman began acquiring the tools he needed to understand the many cultures around him. He learned Turkish, Arabic, and Hebrew, among other languages, and he translated Turkish documents for the Dutch government.20In 1703, Cuper mentions in his letters that he has been reading a book by a Huguenot refugee, Pierre Allix, who, according to his interpretation of the book of Daniel, predicts the messianic era will begin in 1720.21 This, as well as a request from Hochepied, seems to have led Heyman to investigate Jewish messianism among the Turkish Jews and to send a treatise to Cuper a few months later with the results of his research. This tract was sent via Hochepied. To date we have been unable to locate it but much of its content seems to be repeated in the letters. Heyman and Hochepied embarked on a series of reports to Cuper, attempting to learn as much as possible about the messianic Jewish activities in Smyrna and its environs. Heyman made sure that his letters reached Cuper, sending them on different boats from different ports with instructions for their delivery to the Netherlands. At the time Heyman and Hochpied were writing to their Dutch correspondents, the Sabbatian movement itself was at something of a crossroads. Sabbatai Zevi had died in 1676, and his chief prophet, Nathan of Gaza, died in 1680. During the decade after Nathan's death, a considerable number of Ottoman Jews, convinced of the imminent return of Sabbatai, converted to Islam in his footsteps. This Muslim Sabbatian sect became known as the Donmeh, and over the next half century it slowly lost touch with the more conservative Sabbatians who remained within the Jewish fold. The same period saw a wave of Sabbatian prophetic activity in Europe, particularly in connection with the circle of Abraham Rovigo in Italy. In the Ottoman Empire, Abraham Miguel Cardozo continued his teaching and prophetic activities on behalf of the movement. Daniel Israel Bonafoux, his student and fellow prophet, was possessed of a maggid,a heavenly mentor who revealed secrets to him, including various dates of messianic expectation. He saw visions of deceased Sabbatian figures and performed tricks with a globe of fire that appeared behind
20. This led Cuper later to recommend him to be in charge of language studies at the University of Leiden. 21. Gijsbert Cuper to Johannes Heyman, January 13, 1703, Cuper Collection, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague.

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him as a sign of his bona fides. He also received instructions from Cardozo on certain mystico-magical activities he was to perform.22 When Heyman and Hochpied reported on Daniel Israel, Israel and Cardozo were in the middle of a deep imbroglio with other Sabbatians. The background was this: In 1700, two leaders of the Ashkenazi believers, Judah he-Hasid and Hayim Malakh, had organized and led a sizeable movement of Sabbatians to Jerusalem in expectation of Sabbatai's imminent reappearance. Judah he-Hasid died almost immediately upon their arrival, as did many others who accompanied him. It appeared that the enterprise would collapse as yet another failure of Sabbatian prophecy; but a number of the believers held out, and they were reinforced in 1702 by a new group led by Abraham Rovigo and Mordecai Ashkenazi. A study hall was established with survivors from the original group as well as the newcomers. Cardozo was deeply distrustful of the entire project. When representatives of the he-Hasid circle came to Turkey in 17011702, Cardozo warned his disciples there not to get involved with them. He was certain that the Jerusalem undertaking was doomed. He also insisted that the two he-Hasid representatives in Smyrna came not to learn certain secrets of Sabbatai's teachings from Cardozo's students as they claimed, but to unmask Daniel Israel as a fraud. (The local rabbis had long suspected Daniel; they had the local qadi expel him from the city, and he was forced to live in the suburb of Kasaba.) On this occasion Cardozo gave Daniel a secret ceremony to perform that would reveal the true intentions of these visitors. They soon returned to Jerusalem. It should be noted, however, that the he-Hasid group that came to Cardozo himself in Constantinople impressed him favorably and left on good
terms.23

In his first letter on the subject of the Sabbatian movement, Heyman explains that somebody was presenting himself as a prophet among the Jews in Tiria, telling them that Sabbatai Zevi was still alive and would
22. On Daniel Israel Bonafoux, see Sefer merivatkode4h, in Aron Freimann, 'InyeneShabtai Tsevi (Berlin, 1912; reprint: Jerusalem, 1968), 10-11; Heinrich derJudenvondenaltestenZeitenbkizur Gegenwart Graetz, Geschichte (Berlin, 1890); 4: TheShab6atean in Greece, Movement Jubilee Sefunot14 (= TheBookof GreekJewvry Presented to Gershom ScholembyMeir Benayabu)(Jerusalem, 1971-77), 197, Volume and n. 85 there; Basnage, History of the Jews, 757-59. 23. Meir Benayahu, "The 'Holy Brotherhood' of R. Judah Hasid and their Settlement in Jerusalem," Sefunot3-4 (1960): 133-82, esp.161-63. See also D. J. SelectedWritings (New York, Halperin, trans. and ed., AbrahamMiguel Cardozo: 2001), 243, 248-49.

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return as promised. With scorn, Heyman describes the tricks and magic being used to convince the gullible Jews of this message.24Cuper replies a few months later that Hochepied had written to him about the same Jewish prophet, Daniel Israel, who was in the valley of Magnesia, southeast of Smyrna, and asks Heyman if this is close to Tiria or whether the professed prophet is moving from one place to another.25 In the next several letters Heyman supplies more information about what the Jews are doing and believing and Cuper in turn raises questions. Cuper is dubious about the reports concerning new prophets, certain that the Jews would at some point see the error of following these false messiahs or magicians and convert to Christianity. Although disdainful of the conjuring methods used by Daniel Israel, Heyman was sufficiently involved with the Sabbatians to plan a trip to Jerusalem in 1704 with the prophet. Heyman asks Cuper if the latter could obtain funds for the impecunious Daniel Israel to make the trip, but there is nothing in the material we have looked through that indicates they made such a joint voyage. Heyman, who wrote a book on his travels throughout Europe and the Middle East, apparently went to Jerusalem at a later date without Daniel Israel.26Daniel's desire to go to Palestine in 1704-5, about which we learn from the Dutch correspondence, is instructive. The anti-Sabbatian camp in Jerusalem had finally asserted itself exactly at this point and had Hayim Malakh and his Sabbatian group expelled from the city. Many converted to Islam. The entire movement was in crisis with the collapse of this mission of great hope for the believers.27It appears that either Cardozo and Daniel had made peace with the he-Hasid/ Malakh group by this time and hoped to revive it, or they sought an entirely separate movement to the Holy Land under their own auspices. In 1705 Cuper writes to Heyman for more information about the everyday life of these Jews. Although he has learned much from Heyman and Hochepied about the Jews who still expect Sabbatai Zevi to return and celebrate his birthday (and also follow the prophet Daniel Israel), Cuper keeps probing to find out if there are signs that anything is happening within the Jewish community that would indicate preparation for messianic events. Did they live in one community? Were they of one
24. Heyman to Cuper, April 13, 1703. 25. Cuper to Heyman, August 3, 1703 26. Heyman to Cuper, June 23, 1704. On Heyman's travels throughout the Middle East, see his Reizen door een gedee/te van Europa, kletn Asien, verscheide eilanden van de archipel, Syrien, Palestina of het H. Land, Aegypten, den berg Sinai, enz (Leiden, 1757). 27. Benayahu, "The 'Holy Brotherhood,"' 3-4.

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opinion? He asks Heyman to forward such reports to him, the sooner the better, so that he can be informed of this "unprecedented and scarcely
believable business."28

As cited in Basnage, in 1706 Heyman met the leader of the Sabbatians, Abraham Miguel Cardozo, in Cairo. Heyman writes to Cuper that Cardozo is about a hundred years old and has two wives, one apparently young enough to have an infant.29It was during this meeting that Cardozo told Heyman that Daniel Israel was his student and disciple and cited a quatrain from Nostradamus to indicate the approaching messianic event.30Heyman confides that he is skeptical of Cardozo's claims to be a prophet, saying that his predictions of future events only proved his deceit. To indicate that he was in fact the Messiah, Cardozo showed Heyman the pair of horns that he had behind his ears, which, Heyman relates, he touched and thought were about a finger in length. Heyman then felt behind his own ears and found the beginnings of little horns, which he believed to be a sinister omen. Cuper expresses surprise that Cardozo would have known of Nostradamus, of whom he says that he "is seen by that [Jewish] nation as a prophet, which he is also held to be by many Christians."'3' Heyman replies that Cardozo probably learned of the French seer while in studying in Spain, perhaps at Salamanca. Nostradamus' teachings would have been more common in a Christian country than in the Muslim world. Cuper was obviously unaware that Cardozo was a Spaniard. Cardozo then transmitted the prophecies of Nostradamus to the Jews in the Ottoman Empire, who otherwise would not have known of them.32 Heyman remarks that a change occurs in the Sabbatian movement
28. "wat van dese ongehoorde en haast ongelooflycke saake magh wesen." Cuper to Heyman, December 19, 1705. 29. Heyman to Cuper, May 29, 1706. 30. Heyman to Cuper, May 29, 1706: En l'an cincq cens octante plus et moins On attendra le siecle bien etrange En l'an sept cens et trois (cieux en temoins) Regner plusjeurs un a cinq feront change. 31. "dat by die natie weit aengesien als een prophet, waer voor hy ook by veil Christenen weit gehouden." Cuper to Heyman, September 27, 1706. 32. Heyman to Cuper, January 29, 1707. Nostradamus himself in his letter to the French king, Henri II, explained that his ability to foretell the future came from his forebears. Elsewhere he clarifies this by claiming that he was a member of one of the lost tribes. See Richard H. Popkin, "Predicting, Prophesying, Divining and Foretelling from Nostradamus to Hume," HMtoryof European Ideas 5:2 (1984): 117-35.

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after Cardozo's murder by his nephew in the summer of 1706. Daniel Israel carried on the movement, although, as Heyman writes, he did not perform his rapturous miracles as he had done previously. His power seemed to have ceased completely, and he carried on his work in silence.33 Yet even as Daniel Israel lost some of his influence, the Calvinists' interest in Sabbatianism and the Ottoman Empire's Jewish community did not diminish. Heyman and Hochepied gathered information about the attention given to the disciples of Sabbatai Zevi and any messianic activity. In 1707, Cuper writes to both Hochepied and Heyman that "from Aleppo to Marseilles, letters have been received" that tell of the "birth of a child, called the messiah and the antichrist," and that Jews are recounting how certain miracles and celestial signs appeared on the day of his birth. Cuper comments that the belief in such things is so indecent that he cannot imagine how the grand master of Malta could be taken in by the reports. The Jews, on the other hand, are so credulous, Cuper writes, that they "take everything for a messiah." Nevertheless, Cuper urges his correspondents in Smyrna to find out where these stories come from and whether Jews, or other Oriental peoples, believe in them.34 In the following summer, Heyman writes to Cuper that he had been taken by the Jews of Smyrna to a nearby village named Sjobar to see the synagogue that stood above the cave of the prophet Elijah. There the Dutch pastor spent the whole time disputing with his hosts and discussing the coming of the Messiah. The Turks, Heyman learned, were expecting the arrival of the Antichrist, a giant who could straddle hills half a mile apart and whose voice could be heard around the world. Hearing his call, the Jews would then gather from all parts of the world. The Muslims expected that Jesus would then descend from heaven, and on the wings of angels be set down on the towers of the white mosque in Damascus. At this point men would take up daggers and kill the Antichrist. One of the Jews, who had recently been in Constantinople, related to Heyman that he had a letter in High German which told of the birth of a Jewish child in Baghdad who could speak eight days after his circumcision. Heyman asked whether the child was the Messiah, to which the answer was no but that the child was sent by the Messiah. Heyman
33. Heyman to Cuper, January 29, 1707. 34. "Van Aleppo zyn tot Marseillen brieven vekoomen dewelke Schynen de Ick geboorte van een kindt, die Messias ende de AntiChrist genaemt wert.... kenne de lightgeloofdigheyt der Jooden, ende dat die natie, een exempel van Godts reghtveerdighe toorn, alles voor eenen Messias aenneemt." Cuper to Heyman, March 12, 1707.

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concluded this section of his letter with the hope that he could go to Constantinople in the coming year to learn more.35 Seemingly intrigued by these messages from Smyrna about the birth of a messiah, Cuper relates to Heyman that he had been informed by Hochepied about a "child that is supposed to be the Antichrist and the true messiah" and that this Jewish child "could eat, walk and speak within eight days after the circumcision." Cuper once more dismisses such reports as fiction, commenting, "this poor and unhappy folk believes everything that gives hope." The Jews, he continues, "suffer the judgment of God, because [they are] a people that know not Christ.... I wish from the bottom of my heart, that Christ, if it pleases him, converts his brothers of the flesh, and that the plenitude of the heathens could enter into his kingdom."36In this, Cuper seems to share Basnage's view that it is up to the divine power to bring about the conversion of the
Jews.37

Another item of interest for these correspondents was the dispersal of Jews throughout the world. The search for the lost tribes was intense during this period, as it had been since the previous century. According to millenarian beliefs based on passages from the books of Daniel and Revelation, the ten tribes would reappear at the end of time, after the fall of the world's empires. For both Jewish and Christian millenarians, the Jews would be returned to the Holy Land, whereupon universal salva35. Heyman to Cuper, July 10, 1708. 36. "De H. de Hochepid heeft my geschreven van het fabulens kind, dat den Antichrist soude zyn, en den waaren Messias maer syn Wel G. [his honor] seydt niet, dat dit een verdightsel is van de Venetiansse Jooden.... Het Joods kind dat binnen 8 daghen nae de besnydenis wandelde, ensprak is sekerlyk een verdightsel, ende dit arm en ongeluckigh volk gelooft alles wat maer hoop geeft tot de komste van haaren noeyd sullende koome Messias.... Het gheen V-Eern [your honor] seydt van de kleynaghtinge die de Mahometaanen voor de Jooden hebben, is al mede een klaar teeken van haare verwerpinge en groote blintheyt, ende siet men daer nyt, dat het oordeel van Goot op haer leyt om dat een volk dat Christus niet kend of ten hooghsten maar aght een prophet te zyn haar soo qualyk handle daernoghtans gheen deel heeft aen den twist die tusschen de Christenen en haar is of den Messias gekoomen is of niet. Ick wensche nyt grond van my herd dat Christus eens belief de te beekeeren syne broederen nae het vleesch ende dat de volheyt der Heydenen al moghte ingegaen zyn in syn Coningryk." Cuper to Heyman, February 16, 1709. 37. The Amsterdam Jewish community was important in this regard. If the Jews were beginning to see the errors of their ways and beginning to convert, it would be visible to their Christian friends. The Amsterdam Jewish community was free and the choice that the Jews would make would not be coerced, as it had been in Spain and Portugal, but would be most meaningful.

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tion would be achieved, although for Christians the conversion of the Jews to Christianitywas a vital factor in bringing about the Second Coming.38Reports from explorers and colonizers gave rise to theories that the lost tribes were in both North and South America. The opening up of commerce to India and China and the discovery of Jewish activities there led to rumors that the lost tribes were in Asia. Similarly, the contact with "judaized" Ethiopians, or Abyssinians, also led to speculations along these lines. The correspondence between Heyman and Cuper clearly reveals the interest in the millenariantheory of the lost tribes. The conquest of Mecca by the ten tribes of Israel, a recurrent theme circulating in Europe since at least the 1640s, was supposed to be a sign that the messianic age was about to begin. John Dury gives a picture of this in his introduction to Thomas Thorowgood's Jews in America, or Probabilities, that those Indiand
are Judaitca1.39 A thousand or more years after Mohammed's conquest of Mecca in 630 C.E., the Jewish recapture would precede their return to the Holy Land and the messianic events that would then ensue. Some seventeenth-century reports, detailed by Scholem, even claim that Mecca had been conquered by the ten tribes of Israel and it was just a matter of days until other events would take place.40 In a letter to Cuper written in 1705, Heyman mentioned a group of Arabs known as the Jews of Chaibar, who lived around Mecca; both he and Cuper attempted to determine the genealogy of this group. They were still exchanging information about this community in 1708. Heyman noted that he had asked many people about them. He discovered that in the time of Mohammed they had an army of twenty-four troops, each comprising a thousand men, and that they fought against Mohammed and his followers. They were also called "Anas," Heyman informs Cuper, but when he asked the Jews about this community they told him that they were unaware of such a group and that only Arab Muslims were to be found in that land, possibly "because they were taken with the fanciful
38. See Clarke Garrett, Respectable Folly; MZ/fllenartand and the French Revolution

in Franceand England (Baltimore, 1975), 185; Henri Mechoulan, introduction to Menasseh ben Israel, Esperance d'idrad(Paris, 1979), esp. 55-61; Richard H. Popkin, "Christian Jews and Jewish Christians in the Seventeenth Century," Jewidh
Christians and Christian Jewvs,ed. R. H. Popkin and G. M. Weiner (Dordrecht,

1994), 57-72; and Richard H. Popkin, "The Lost Tribes, the Caraites and the English Millenarians," Journal of Jevidh Studies 37:2 (1986): 213-27. 39. See Richard H. Popkin, "The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Indian Theory,"
AfenadsehBen Israel and Hid World, ed. Yosef Kaplan, Henry M6choulan, and Rich-

ard H. Popkin (Leiden, 1989), 67. 40. See Scholem, Sabbatai Sev4 335-36.

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stories of the famous Sabbatian." Heyman vowed to find out more about
this.41

The letters from Hochepied and Heyman to Cuper are the reason Sabbatai Zevi and his disciples are to be found in Basnage's history of the Jews. A series of letters between Cuper and Basnage in 1707 indicate that Basnage, a leading pastor and journalistic figure among the French refugees in the Netherlands, was working on a second edition of his history. Josephus had provided an account of the history of the Jews up to the Roman destruction of the Temple in the first century. Subsequently, there are accounts of Jewish developments in various parts of the world but no complete or comprehensive history.42 Basnage, in exile in the Netherlands, took up where Josephus left off. Basnage saw himself in the same historical camp as those writing the histories of various countries and movements. His was an attempt to be objective and to structure the material in a meaningful form. He sought to encompass what happened in Jewish communities all over the world and to deal with important Jewish theories, such as the kabbalah, in terms that European intellectuals could appreciate. In this sense, Basnage's is the first attempt
at a nontheological
history.43 Basnage was very close to Pierre Bayle, in

friendship and in spirit, and he used much the same historical and critical method. The documents we have found from the Cuper collection show that Basnage did not know about the Sabbatai Zevi episode while he was writing the second edition. Basnage sent a manuscript copy to Cuper in 1707 and, in a series of letters, Cuper gave his opinion about various points, evidencing a particular interest in the treatment of false messiahs in ancient and medieval times. As Cuper worked through the manuscript he realized there was no mention of Sabbatai Zevi. At this point, he recommended to Basnage that he read Johannes 'aLent and also forwarded him the materials he had been sent by Hochepied and Heyman. This led Basnage to include some of the Sabbatai Zevi story and part of one of Heyman's letters on the last page of the English edition that appeared in 1708.44Out of order and unconnected to the preceding material, it looked
41. Heyman to Cuper, July 10, 1708. 42. Menasseh ben Israel had said that he was going to undertake such a history. He included this venture in the list of books he intended to publish, which he appended to various writings. He died before accomplishing the task. 43. See Adam Sutcliffe, Judaidm and Enlihtenment (Cambridge, 2003), especially the chapter "The Limits of Erudition: Jacques Basnage and Pierre Bayle," 79-99. 44. Basnage to Cuper, October 8, 1707.

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like what it was: a last-minute addition. In the third edition the material was fully incorporated into the section on the Jews in the Ottoman Empire.45 Basnage's Hiitoire des Juifs was extremely influential. The first edition of 1706 was so successful that an abridged edition was actually appended to an edition of Josephus, and a somewhat modified version was put out in Catholic France. A Dutch version appeared in 1726 and Solomon Maimon embarked upon a Hebrew translation in the late eighteenth century, although it was never completed. Hannah Adams also relied heavily upon the work in producing her own Hiitoly of the Jews (1812).46 Histoire des Jtfs was used as a basis for two eighteenth-century histories of the Jews in Danish and Yiddish.4 The Danish history by Ludvig Holberg was translated into German, thus transmitting Basnage's history, including his information about Sabbatai Zevi and his disciples, throughout Europe. For unexplained reasons, Basnage reports that Sabbatai Zevi was beheaded by the Turkish authorities. This account first appears in the 1708 English edition and is repeated in French in the 1715-16 edition.8 We do not know whether Basnage heard this story from reports sent by Hochepied and Heyman to Cuper. At any rate, Holberg accepted it at face value and reiterated it in his Dutch edition. This version does not, however, appear in Menahem Mann Amelander's Yiddish history of the Jews. Amelander instead discusses Sabbatai Zevi's conversion to Islam and remarks that one year after the false messiah's death "another imposter," Daniel Israel, appeared.9 Holberg took Basnage's comment 45. It was Professor Matt Goldish who first apprised us of the fact that Basnage did not discuss anything about Sabbatai Zevi until the English edition and that only in the third edition (1715-16) was the Sabbatian movement placed in historical context. 46. TheHidtoryof the Jewv from the Destruction of Jerusalem to theNineteenthCentury, 2 vols. (Boston, 1812). derJoodsche 47. Basnage, Vervolg op Flavitus Josephusof Algemene Hidtorie Naatsie (Amsterdam, 1726); Ludvig Holberg, JodiskehiAtorie fra verdens begyndelse, fortsatt til didsetider (Copenhagen, 1742); Menahem Mann Amelander, She'eritYidrael (Amsterdam, 1743). See G. Cerny, Theology, PolitiscandLettersat the Crossroads of European JacquesBadnage and the BayleanHuguenot Refugees in theDutch Civilization: Republic (Dordrecht, 1987), 185. Cerny notes that Amelander's history was printed seven times in Yiddish and ten times in Hebrew translation. 48. "You know, that [Sabbatai Zevi] pretended to be the Messiah; and that he abjur'd his Religion, turn'd Mahometan, and thirty six or thirty seven Years ago, lost his Head by order of Sultan Mfahomet" (emphasis in original), Historyof the Jewv,1708 ed., 758. 49. "Eenige jaren na den dood van SabbathaiZebi, deed zich een andere beIsrad genaamd, die te Slnyrna het voorzangers-ambt bij zijne drieger op, DaniffI geloofsgenooten vervulde" (emphasis in original). Amelander, She'erit Yidrael,

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that Daniel Israel's influence subsided after Cardoza's death to mean that the movement came to a complete and final end with Daniel Israel in 1706.50 However, as we show, the letters about the Sabbatians continued to arrive in the Netherlands from Smyrna, indicating that the movement lasted at least until 1709, the year before Heyman's return to the Netherlands. The letters concerning Daniel Israel and the return of Sabbatai Zevi cease when Heyman returns to the Netherlands to take up his new post at Leiden in 1710. There does not seem to be any further discussion of the matter of Daniel Israel or Sabbatai Zevi. The last we hear of Daniel Israel in Smyrna correlates well with the Dutch correspondence. Just at the time Hochpied and Heyman were hearing reports about new messianic stirrings connected with the reappearance of the lost tribes, Daniel Israel was producing a forged letter, ostensibly from the tribes and the "Childrenof Moses," announcing that the Messiah would come in 1710.51 Since Hochepied remained in Smyrna until his death in 1723, it is possible that, were his letters to be found, scholars could determine what happened to the remnants of the Sabbatian movement. The material we have uncovered so far opens up a new chapter in the story of the Sabbatai Zevi movement and poses some interesting questions as to the links between the Sabbatians and other, non-Jewish millenarian movements in Europe. Matt Goldish identifies the similarities in spirit possession that occur among the Quakers, the Alumbrados, the French Prophets, and the dervishes in the Ottoman Empire, remarking that they all have similar spiritual activities, even though there is little evidence of direct interaction.52Initially, Quaker practice was some sort
438. We were informed by Professor Yosef Kaplan that Amelander's description of the Sabbatai Zevi story is based on Thomas Coenen's book via the abridged Hebrew version published by Rabbi Jacob Emden in his anti-Sabbatian anthology. 50. "no one thinks about [Sabbatai Zevi] anymore. Only a single Jew, Daniel Israel, who lived in Smyrna, said that he still lived and would emerge from hiding after 40 years . . . he confirmed this from a passage in the book of the Prophet Daniel.... Many took him for a prophet, and believed that Sabbatai was still alive; so they celebrated his birthday . . . on the 18th of December. Neither the Turks nor the Christians in Smyrna knew about this. When they found out, Daniel had to leave the city. This was the end of the impostorship of Sabathai Tzevi, which was one of the most noteworthy happenings in Jewish history." Holberg, Hidtoryof the Jewv,2:647. We would like to thank Professor Chris Laursen at the University of California, Riverside for this information on Holberg. 51. Benayahu in Sefunot14, 197, n. 85. 52. Matt Goldish, "Vision and Possession: Nathan of Gaza's Earliest Prophecies in Historical Context," Spirit Possession in Judaidm: Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Matt Goldish (Detroit, 2003), 230-32.

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of spiritualized Judaism, and its founder, George Fox, traveled around England, crying out, "To be a Jew externally is nothing, to be a Jew internally is everything." The Quakers were merchants all over Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and the new colonies. Similarly, Alumbrados, sixteenth-century Spanish mystics who claimed to have direct communication with God, appeared among the clergy that sought spiritual contact with the American Indians and the natives of various Asian communities. A more extreme form of this type of mysticism appeared in the preaching of Miguel de Molinos. In his spiritual guide he advocated a form of devotion called Quietism, whereby the practitioner tried to extinguish all desires and allow the soul to become completely absorbed in God. This doctrine was very popular at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, especially in northern Europe. The dervishes seem to have appeared in many centers of the Ottoman Empire, including Constantinople, Tirana, and Cairo, where travelers were able to witness public performances in which the dervishes' ecstatic activity induced a state of exhaustive intoxication and sometimes unconsciousness. The French Prophets were first known through reports of their spiritual activities carried on secretly in France and then through the amazing reenactments in England and the Netherlands. Reports about the followers of Sabbatai Zevi from 1665 onward tell of similar behavior patterns. All these groups produced believers who made prophecies, participated in inspirational spiritual possession, and predicted glorious future events. The letters in the Cuper archive document how an important European
account of Sabbatianism, that of Jacques Basnage's Hitoire des Jutfs, came out of the reports by two Dutchmen who were in Turkey in the early eighteenth century. Basnage's history provided the basic story of the Sabbatian movement for the next century. Projects like Basnage's were undertaken to provide an account of Judaism from the fall of the Temple to the present day. Undoubtedly, one major reason for his study was to inform a non-Jewish audience about the current state of the Jews, as well as their possible conversion in the near future. Other tasks, like those undertaken by the Dutch consul and minister in Smyrna, were conducted to discover the present state of Jewish existence in the Ottoman Empire and send reports back to the Netherlands. Hochepied and Heyman applied their millenarian Calvinist outlook to the situation of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire and especially the Sabbatian movement with its promise of an imminent messianic culmination. This fit with the general expectation of northern Protestants coming from works like those of Pierre Allix and from the emergence of the French Prophets on En-

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glish and Dutch soil. The Dutch Sephardic community had, to a great extent, accepted Sabbatai Zevi, so what happened after his conversion to Islam became of great concern to those looking for signs of the end of days. Sabbatianism, therefore, did not come to an abrupt end after the death of Sabbatai Zevi, with vestiges to be found only in the Donmeh sect. The letters from Cuper, Heyman, and Hochepied clearly indicate an ongoing and active interest by Jews who continued to follow Sabbatai Zevi and his disciples, stimulated by the millenarian and messianic fervor that existed in both Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Perhaps further research into Dutch sources will throw more light on what happened to the Sabbatian movement in Turkey in the latter part of the eighteenth century.