Rabbinic persecution on simultaneous pilgrimages to Palestine to meet the Messiah (1699). The Shabbetian movement in the Slavic countries found its last and grossest expression in the Frankist agitation (1726-1816). Northern Africa, too, became a stronghold of Shabbetian sentiment as a result of the unfortunate political conditions which prevailed there in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Civil war and the cruelties of the fanatic, Muley Arshid, brought misery upon the Jews of Morocco, Fez and Tafilet. Jacob Sasportas, writing in 1669 to the communities of Northern Africa, warning them of the spread of the Shabbetian heresy among them, referred to the wars and misfortunes which have come upon them, and to their tribulations which he stated are double those of Jewry elsewhere.21 III. The Christian Mystic Background As far as Christendom is concerned, the seventeenth century was one of vast confusion and conflict. Mystic sects increased in number and in volume and superstition was rampant throughout Europe among Catholics and Protestants alike. The Thirty Years' War disorganized the whole intellectual life of Europe. "Yet it was not till the period (1580-1620) that the growth of superstition and of delusions . . became epidemic in Germany. Among the princes of the age we find every kind of fixed delusion, from the visions of Christian of Denmark to the ravings of John Frederick of Weimar. Nor should the inveterate endurance and rank growth of countless petty superstitions be overlooked, which seemed to place life and death under the control of dealers in astrological certificates and magical charms."22 The Thirty Years' War did not improve matters. "Terror, suffering, the loss of all effective spiritual guidance and the absence of all controlling mental discipline, drove the population at large... headlong into the wildest and most irrational ,קיצור צ'נ'צ' see) ובפרט גלילות המערב אשר גלותם כיפול ומכופל בערך אחרים 21 pp. 96 and 100). 22 A. W. Ward, The Cambridge Modern History, IV, p. 6. varieties of misbelieving. . . . Within the years 1627-8 the Bishop of Würzburg is stated to have put to death nine thousand witches and wizards, and between 1640–1 nearly one thousand of these unfortunates are said to have been sent to the stake in the single Silesian principality of Neisse."23 The mystic movements which began in Western Europe simultaneously with the Reformation, continued throughout the seventeenth century, and they were all filled with apocalyptic intoxication. A contemporary, Friedrich Brekling, enumerates one hundred and eighty visionaries of that century, men and women, who were millenarian dreamers and eschatologists.24 This magico-scientific age was on the threshold of revolutionary movements in science and philosophy, but as yet the mind of man had not emancipated itself from its mystic vagaries. Chemistry, astronomy and medicine were still steeped in alchemy, astrology and magic. In a similar manner were the spiritual movements of the age beset with theosophic fabulism and strange occult doctrines. (a) In Germany. The outstanding leader of the spiritual reformers of the seventeenth century was, of course, Jacob Boehme, "the shoemaker theosophist of the Renaissance." Boehme was overwhelmed with the consciousness that the age was on the threshold of the Great Visitation and the New Kingdom. "It was a time which all the prophets have prophesied of . . . the fierce anger of God is at hand, the Last Judgment is at the door. God will purge the earth with fire and give every man his wages. The Harvest comes, this garment will remain no longer, everything will be gathered into the barn."25 In his Mysterium Magnum (1623) he writes: "Also it (Gen. 22.5) intimates very presumably that He (Jesus) will certainly come again to us from the place whither 23 Ibid., p. 423. 24 See Gottfrid Arnold's Kirchen und Ketzer Historie, Frankfurt a. M., 1715, IV, Chap. XIX. 25 The Threefold Life of Man, 1619, ed. William Law, II, 15.3, 16; see also 12.34. he has gone which times is now near; and his voice to prepare the Bride has already sounded; and therefore hold not this for an uncertain fiction; the Morning Star and Messenger of Annunciation has appeared."26 In answer to the Thirty-eighth of the Forty Theological Questions propounded to him, "What are the things that shall come to pass at the end of the world?" he writes: "You know well what Daniel, Ezekiel and David say in their prophecy, especially the Revelation of Jesus Christ. In them lies all that shall heretofore come to pass, and they also spoke magically (mystically) of things to come. But in our writings, you have them more clearly, for the time is now neared the end; and therefore it appears the more plainly what shall be done at the end."27 Boehme, believing in the impending advent, was also concerned about the Jews. He urged them to accept the Christ as a preliminary act to their Redemption. He believed that the time of the "recalling" of the Jews was near at hand. "Therefore we admonish the Jews that they learn to know their Messiah, for the time of their visitation is at hand, wherein they shall be redeemed from the captivity of their misery and be made over again."28 And again: "Therefore do the Jews in vain hope for another Master or Ruler, although, indeed, he will come to them also in the time of his revelation, manifestation or appearing, which time is near, wherein the kingdom of Christ will be manifested to all people.29 Boehme's faith was shared by most of the mystic dissenters and sectarians of the age, many of whom were exceedingly friendly to the Jews. The return of the Jews to the Holy Land and their conversion to the faith in Christ was dogmatically inseparable from the Second Coming of Jesus and the establishment of the Kingdom. Convinced of the millennial approach these mystic sectarians therefore urged upon the Jews to accept Jesus so as to be 26 Op. cit., 48.13; see also 69.13; 76.50; 77.69-70. 27 The Forty Questions, II, p. 112. 28 Mysterium Magnum, 37.36; also see verse 59 and 51.42. 29 Ibid., 76.50. prepared for their promised restoration. Again the dissenters spent most of their theologic odium upon Rome, the Beast of the Apocalypse, the Antichrist, and the Jews were accordingly spared. In the seventeenth century the Christian scholarly world was very much taken up with the study of Hebrew and Hebrew literature. This movement, which began seriously with Reuchlin in the early sixteenth century, now reached its crest in Scaliger, the Buxtorfs and their disciples.30 Many contacts were thereby established between Jewish and Christian scholars, who now freely exchange their mystic and apocalyptic hopes. At least three German scholars of adventist tendencies are known to have communicated their Messianic hopes to the great Jewish Messianist of the seventeenth century, Manasseh ben Israel-Abraham Franckenberg of Silesia (1593–1652), John Mochinger of Danzig (1603-1652) and Paul Felgenhauer of Bohemia. This last mystic and chiliast (1593 after 1660) was convinced of the swift approach of the Judgment Day. In 1620 he wrote his Chronologie, in which he maintains that the world is in reality 235 years older than is generally assumed, and that Jesus was born in 4235 a. m. This being the case, the world has only 145 years more to last, since it must terminate in the year 6000. Men may therefore expect the early unfoldment of the great drama of the End of Days.31 Felgenhauer dedicated his Bonum Nuncium Israeli, written in Latin, in 1655, to Manasseh ben Israel. In this work the writer sets forth his reasons for expecting the immediate advent of the Messiah and the restoration of the Jews. He bases his arguments upon Scripture and 30 Steinschneider has enumerated a great many sixteenth-century Christian scholars who were interested in Hebrew literature and who translated Hebrew books. See his "Christliche Hebraisten," Zeitschrift für Hebräische Bibliographie, I-V. Translations were made from the works of Gikatilla, Cordovero, Vital and from the Zohar, and the Messianic works of Abarbanel were frequently translated. Translations were also made of the in and of .חזוק אמונה Isaac of Troki's See Michaud, Biographie Universelle, XIII, p. 491. upon esoteric knowledge which had been prophetically revealed to him. He points to the three signs of the Messiah's coming-universal disorders, the coming of Elijah and a universal outpouring of the prophetic spirit. He intimates that he himself is the Elijah sent to announce the Messiah. He writes: "For he comes whom you greatly desire, the Messiah whom Jehovah announces to you, who is the true and only Elias, the Lord God, who hath sent me in His Spirit to announce to you the nativity of that child and son, whose name is Adonai, Wonderful Counselor, the mighty Zabaoth, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. With the birth of this son who is given to you and of this child who is born to us, there comes and is manifested the throne of the true David, who is no other than that Adonai promised to us.32 Wherefore now a great light shall shine for that people, which has hitherto walked in darkness, upon those who dwell in the land of the shadow of death hath the light shined; while Jehovah hath multiplied the nation, He hath increased the joy of Israel and Judah."33 Felgenhauer seems to have been tremendously impressed by the comets which appeared in 161834 and 1652 and regarded them as portents of the Great Judgment. The wars in Poland likewise fed his apocalyptic dreams. "We accordingly announce to you Jews," he writes, "what we have seen in a divine vision, that is to say (what) Jehovah and the Spirit of the Messiah, and the Messiah whom God hath sent35 in order to announce and proclaim to you Jews and Israelites the Good Tidings of Israel; and in order that you may be able to recognize the time of the Seventh Trumpet, whether it falls or has fallen in the year 1618, in which that great comet appeared, which announced to us the Seventh Trumpet and the first judgment which ended in the year 1648. Further, that 32 Jer. 23, 33. 33 Is. 9.1-2. See Bonum Nuncium Israeli, ed. Amsterdam, 1655, p. 61. 34 Another German mystic, Ludwig Gifftheil, was also moved to prophesy by the appearance of this comet (see Arnold, Kirchen, etc., IV, p. 1032a. 35 Is. 48.16. 36 Rev. 8-9. |