The Sabbatian Movement in Turkey (1703-1708) and Reverberations in Northern Europe

T H E J E W I S H QUA R T E R LY RE V I E W, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Spring 2004) 300–317 The Sabbatian Movement in Turkey (1703–1708) and Reverberations in Northern Europe RICHARD H. P OPKIN AND STEPHANIE CHASIN WE DISCUSS IN THIS ESSAY 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 Histoire des Juifs 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 .1 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 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, Histoire des Juifs depuis Jesus-Christ jusqu’a present: Pour servir de continuation a l’Histoire de Joseph (The Hague, 1716). The Jewish Quarterly Review (Spring 2004) Copyright 䉷 2004 Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved. THE SABBATIAN MOVEMENT—POPKIN AND CHASIN 301 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.7 While 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 Fourth Symposium on the History of the Jews in the Netherlands, 7–10 December—TelAviv -Jerusalem, 1986, ed. Jozeph Michman (Jerusalem: Institute for Research on 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...