Three English tellings of the Sabbatai Zevi story

Abstract

As is well known there was a great deal of interest in the British Isles in Sabbatai Zevi's career. Almost as soon as he made public his Messianic pretensions, pamphlets were appearing in England in English telling of marvelous, miraculous events that were occurring that indicated that the Restoration of Israel was at hand.1 Part of the story, it was claimed, was even taking place in Great Britain. A ship with sails of white satin, and ropes of silk, with a sign saying "THESE ARE OF THE TEN TRIBES OF ISRAEL," is supposed to have washed up on the Scottish shore near Aberdeen harbor!2 The Dutch Millenarian, Peter Serrarius, a close friend and associate of many English Millenarians, sent news about Sabbatai Zevi to his friends in England, and wrote some of the most exciting and inspiring pamphlets of the time that circulated there.3 And, the secretary of the Royal Society of England, Henry Oldenburg, wrote to his friend, Benedictus de Spinoza, to find out if it was true that the King of the Jews had arrived on the historical scene.4 We do not know if Spinoza answered him, but Oldenburg found out from Serrarius and others all sorts of news from Constantinople, Corfu, Vienna and elsewhere, about what Sabbatai Zevi was doing, and about the tumult it was causing. Oldenburg's son-in-law, the important theologian, John Dury, based in Germany and Switzerland, spent much time trying to figure out where Sabbatai Zevi fitted in the expected Christian scenario about "the end of days."5 Serrarius became a complete believer and follower of the new Messiah, even accepting his conversion to Islam, and died on his way to meet Sabbatai Zevi.6 Discussions of Sabbatai Zevi and his followers appear in English writings up to the early eighteenth century. In the very popular Memoirs of a Turkish Spy living hidden in Paris, Sabbatai Zevi's agent in Vienna appears a major figure, and the Turkish Spy tries to convince him of the idiocy of his messianic beliefs, and to convert him to a rational religion.7