Part 1

Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper, Moti Ben-Ari and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY

JOHN EVELYN

THE HISTORY OF SABATAI SEVI, _The Suppos'd Messiah_ OF THE JEWS.

(1669)

_Introduction by_ CHRISTOPHER W. GROSE

PUBLICATION NUMBER 131 WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

1968

GENERAL EDITORS

George Robert Guffey, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Maximillian E. Novak, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Robert Vosper, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_

ADVISORY EDITORS

Richard C. Boys, _University of Michigan_ James L. Clifford, _Columbia University_ Ralph Cohen, _University of Virginia_ Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Arthur Friedman, _University of Chicago_ Louis A. Landa, _Princeton University_ Earl Miner, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Samuel H. Monk, _University of Minnesota_ Everett T. Moore, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Lawrence Clark Powell, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ James Sutherland, _University College, London_ H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., _University of California, Los Angeles_

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

Edna C. Davis, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_

INTRODUCTION

_And you should if you please refuse Till the conversion of the Jews._

The reader of John Evelyn's _History of Sabatai Sevi, The Pretended Messiah of the Jewes_ or of the _History of the Three Late Famous Impostors_ (1669) in which it is the most significant part, discovers a fascinating, if unoriginal, addition to the work of the great diarist and dilettante, the amateur student of engraving and trees--and smoke. Evelyn's work was almost totally derived from the account of Sir Paul Rycaut, who was from 1661 secretary (and later consul) for the Levant mercantile company in Smyrna. Rycaut was in fact responsible for what first-hand reporting there is in the _History_, and Evelyn's book preceded by only eleven years Rycaut's _History of the Turkish Empire 1623-1677_, where the story first appeared under the author's own name.

What gives Evelyn's _Pretended Messiah_ its own interest is partly the immediacy of the news of Sabatai Sevi, and partly the context in which Evelyn places the story, a context to some extent indicated in the title, _History of the Three Late Famous Impostors_. When the work was published in 1669, Sevi was neither the amusing curiosity he is likely to be for the modern reader, nor the impertinent confidence man suggested by Evelyn's "impostor." Evelyn was reviewing for an English audience one of the great crises in Jewish history, the career of the man who has been called Judaism's "most notorious messianic claimant."[1] That career was not entirely past history in 1669. Sevi lived until 1675, and even after his humiliation and final banishment in 1673 he could write to his father-in-law in Salonica that men would see in his lifetime the day of redemption and the return of the Jews to Zion; "For God hath appointed me Lord of all Mizrayim."[2] Indeed, a remnant of Judaeo-Turkish Shabbethaians called Dönmehs apparently exists in Salonica to the present day.

Whatever the appeal of Sevi's story may be for modern readers--as a mode of fiction, perhaps, or an instance of mass hysteria--Evelyn's discovery of an exemplum for religious and political enthusiasts may seem forced or reductive. In 1669, however, the interest of Englishmen in Jewish affairs was by no means merely academic--or narrowly commercial. There were, it is true, English sportsmen in 1666 who were actually betting on the Sevi career--ten to one that the "Messiah of Ismir" would be crowned King of Jerusalem within two years. And what was most disturbing about Sevi to the English nation as a whole was perhaps the disruption of trade, in which Sevi's father was intimately involved, as the agent of an English mercantile house. At the height of the furor, Jewish merchants were dissolving businesses as well as unroofing their houses in preparation for the return to Jerusalem. But the prime significance for Evelyn--perhaps more than for Rycaut--is revealed in the instinctive mental connection between Jewish and Christian history, or ways of thinking about history, on the one hand, and political realities in England on the other. Only nine years had passed since the return of Charles II and the displacement of the Protectorate, with its remarkable Jewish elements. As for the return of the Christian Messiah and an imminent reign of the saints, Sevi might well have reminded Evelyn of the English "impostor," the Quaker Jacob Naylor, whose messianic claims were publicly examined at Bristol in 1657. Far more important to Englishmen of the period, however, was the episode involving the mission of the Amsterdam rabbi Menasseh ben Israel to Cromwell's England in 1655, a year after Naylor's first appearance.

For two centuries after their expulsion from England by Edward I--that is, until the seventeenth century--Jews either avoided England entirely or lived there in deliberate obscurity. Some Spanish and Portuguese Jewish refugees from the Inquisition did arrive in England; but particularly after the execution for treason of Elizabeth's physician Roderigo Lopez in 1594, they could remain only as "Crypto-Jews." It was during the Puritan regime that the Jewish position in England really improved, and the removal of the legal bar dates from the conference summoned by Cromwell in response to the demands of Menasseh.[3] The interest in Rabbinical literature displayed by learned men like Joseph Scaliger, Johann Buxtorf, Hugo Grotius, and John Selden, together with a general Old Testament emphasis in Protestant scriptural study, made Judaism a more fashionable interest than it had been in previous years. Cromwell's own encouragement of Menasseh is usually viewed as an expression of his tolerationist principles and the hope that the return of Jews to England would aid in extending trade with Spain and Portugal, and even with the Levant. An additional facet of his general reception of Menasseh is relevant to Evelyn's _Pretended Messiah_. A chief argument in _The Humble Address of Menasseh ben Israel_ (November 5, 1655) was the Amsterdam rabbi's belief that since England was the only country rejecting the Jews, their readmittance would be the signal for the coming of the Messiah. Fifth-Monarchy enthusiasts recalled the prophecies of _Daniel_ and _Revelations_ and linked them with the relatively immediate experience of the Thirty Years' War; motives of mercantile jealousy were to some extent offset by millenarian anxiety. Indeed, the possibility of an imminent millennial reign of the saints could be the strongest kind of argument for showing favor to the Jews. Cromwell all but proselytized at the meetings of the conference; ultimately, because of the opposition of commercial interests, he was forced to dissolve it.

We can perhaps best understand Evelyn's account of Sabatai Sevi, "the Messiah of Ismir," against this background of English Protestant millennial thinking, admirably summarized in Michael Fixler's recent study.[4] As Fixler suggests, it was possibly to discredit the Fifth-Monarchy men that Rycaut first included the account in what was to become his _History of the Turkish Empire_. At any rate, Sevi himself was hardly the mere con-man Rycaut and Evelyn portray; the mask, indeed, is _erepta_ only with the greatest of difficulty. Because Rycaut was interested in trade and cultural _mores_, his (and consequently, Evelyn's) account neglects features of the story which are of primary interest to more psychologically inclined readers. We are told almost nothing, for example, of the details of Sevi's solitary youth; his physical attractiveness; his clear voice as well suited to lascivious Spanish love-songs (interpreted mystically) as to Psalms; and his early rejection of the Talmud for the practical Cabala, with its strenuous, self-mortifying asceticism. One would gather from Evelyn that only the deluded followers of the "impostor" and not Sevi himself imposed such punishments as self-burial, and bathing in the sea, even in midwinter. More surprising, perhaps, is the almost total neglect of Sarah, Sevi's third wife, mentioned in the _Pretended Messiah_ only as the "Ligornese Lady" whom Sevi acquired after freeing himself "from the Incumbrances of a Family." In fact, the beautiful and engaging Sarah seems to have become an integral part of the movement, a movement which in its early stages was all-male. A prostitute notorious in her own right, primarily for her claims to be the destined bride of the Messiah, Sarah apparently escaped miraculously from a Christian convent after being cared for as an orphan of the savage Chmielnicki massacres in Poland. As he was later to do with a more formidable rival to his exclusive claims (Nehemiah ha-Kohen, who ultimately exposed him as a fraud) Sevi called Sarah to Cairo in 1664, claiming to have dreamed of her as _his_ future bride. Eventually, after his "conversion," she followed him even into the Turkish seraglio where he bore the title Mahmed Effendi.

Other details are missing from Evelyn's _Pretended Messiah_; the interested reader may pursue the strange tale in Graetz's _History of the Jews_ or the partly fictionalized biography by Joseph Kastein, _The Messiah of Ismir_.[5] We may note in passing one additional incident. After his first banishment from Smyrna (as a result of pronouncing the sacred tetragrammaton in Hebrew), Sevi met the mystic Abraham ha-Yakini, who subsequently forged in archaic characters and style a document entitled "The Great Wisdom of Solomon"--a document accepted by Sevi as an authentic "archeological" revelation. The event was shortly followed by a bizarre celebration of Sevi's marriage as the Son of God ("En Sof") with the Torah, and may have provided climactic metaphysical confirmation of Sevi's hopes. In the manner of the old apocalypses, it pronounced Sevi the "saviour of My people, Israel," one who in time "shall overthrow the great dragon and kill the serpent."[6]

Good as Evelyn's _Pretended Messiah_ may have been for contemporaries as a review of recent "news," and we must not underestimate this function, to the modern reader it seems closer to fiction, of a peculiarly propagandistic and ironic kind. Aside from omissions from the story--partly a matter of ignorance or failure in perception, and partly deliberate exclusion of inconvenient material--Evelyn's enthusiastic acceptance of his source's frequent theatrical metaphors is one measure of the distance from history of the _Pretended Messiah_. When Evelyn's Sevi is grave, it is a "formal and pharisaical gravitie" which is "starcht on." His motives in general seem highly conscious, even deliberate; and despite a certain doubleness in the point of view of the _Pretended Messiah_, the reason for Sevi's comic simplicity is not difficult to discover. Sir Paul Rycaut, as I have suggested, seems primarily interested in the effects of the movement on trade. The most vehement thinking of the book, though ascribed to an unnamed opponent of Sevi, could well be that of Rycaut himself:

[The opponent observed] in what a wilde manner the whole People of the Jewes was transported, with the groundless beliefe of a _Messiah_, leaving not onely their Trade, and course of living, but publishing Prophesies of a speedy Kingdome, of rescue from the Tyranny of the Turk, and leading the Grand Signior himself Captive in Chaines; matters so dangerous and obnoxious to the State wherein they lived, as might justly convict them of Treason and Rebellion, and leave them to the Mercy of that Justice, which on the least jealousie and suspicion of Matters of this nature uses to extirpate Families, and subvert the Mansion-houses of their own People, much rather of the Jewes, on whom the Turkes would gladly take occasion to dispoile them of their Estates, and condemn the whole Nation to perpetual slavery.

(pp. 78-79)

Evelyn retains this and similar material, apparently never suspecting that the Turks may well have been hesitant from real fear; but the burden of his emphasis is more overtly political and religious. Evelyn is less than ingenuous, perhaps, in associating Sevi with Peter Serini's fake brother, or even with Mahomed Bei--another of the "late famous impostors." But the connection does have the effect of putting Sevi in an imaginary world where all masks will be discovered and the truth known. Ultimately, Evelyn's Jews, like Dryden's and Milton's, are English--"_our_ modern Enthusiasts and other prodigious Sects amongst us, who Dreame of the like Carnal Expectations, and a Temporal Monarchy" (sig. A8; italics mine). One hardly needs to fill out the reading. With a traditional reminder that "the Time is not yet Accomplished," Evelyn warns English sectarians to beware of misleading fictions--"to weigh how nearly their Characters approach the Style and Design of those deluded wretches."

Evelyn's words here suggest something of the wider interest of the _Pretended Messiah_. For in threatening the modern enthusiasts, as it were, with the status of comic fiction, he also hinted at the literal immediacy of such explicitly imaginative works as _Absalom and Achitophel_, _Paradise Regained_, and _Samson Agonistes_. What Evelyn's _Pretended Messiah_ helps to reveal, then, is not only the potential metaphoric value of news itself, but also the peculiar proximity of poetry to "history" in a period when historical thought was inseparable from apocalyptic myth.[7]

University of California, Los Angeles

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

[1] Michael Fixler, _Milton and the Kingdoms of God_ (London, 1964), p. 244.

[2] Joseph Kastein, _The Messiah of Ismir_, trans. Huntley Paterson (New York, 1931), p. 323.

[3] For an account of the events leading to the extra-judicial opinion of Glyn and Steele, see Samuel R. Gardiner, _History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1660_, III (London, 1901), 216-222.

[4] _Milton and the Kingdoms of God_ (London, 1964), especially pp. 237-249.

[5] Heinrich Graetz, _History of the Jews_, V (Philadelphia, 1895), 118-167. See also Henry Malter, "Shabetai Zebi B. Mordecai," _The Jewish Encyclopedia_, X (1905).

[6] Kastein, p. 77.

[7] For a provocative study of apocalypse in fiction, see Frank Kermode, _The Sense of An Ending_ (Oxford, 1966).

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The text of this edition is reproduced from a copy in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

THE HISTORY Of the THREE late famous IMPOSTORS,

{_Padre Ottomano_, viz. {_Mahomed Bei_, and {_Sabatai Sevi_.

The _One_, pretended _Son_ and _Heir_ to the late _Grand Signior_;

The _Other_, a _Prince_ of the _Ottoman_ Family, but in _truth_, a _Valachian Counterfeit_.

And the Last, The Suppos'd _MESSIAH_ of the _Jews_, in the _Year_ of the true _Messiah_, 1666.

With a brief _Account_ of the _Ground_, and _Occasion_ of the present _War_ between the _TURK_ and the _VENETIAN_.

Together with the _Cause_ of the final _Extirpation_, _Destruction_ and _Exile_ of the _JEWS_ out of the EMPIRE of PERSIA.

* * * * *

In the _SAVOY_, Printed for _Henry Herringman_ at the Sign of the _Anchor_ in the Lower-Walk of the _New-Exchange_. 1669.

To the READER.

_The Great_ Scaliger _was wont commonly to say_, Omnis Historia bona, _that all_ History _was_ good; _meaning, that it was_ worthy _of_ notice, _so it were_ true, _and_ matter _of_ fact, _though the_ Subject _of it were never so_ trivial. This, _though but a_ Pamphlet _in bulke, is very_ considerable _for the_ Matters _it containes, and for that it endeavours to informe, and disabuse_ _the_ World _of a current_ Error, _which has mingled, and spread it selfe into divers grave_ Relations _that have been_ Printed, _and confidently published many Yeares without Suspition._

_How I came to be enlightned for these_ Pieces, _I have in part declar'd in my_ Dedicatory _Addresses; and if I forbear to publish the_ Name _of that Intelligent_ Stranger, _and that other_ Person, _from whom I received my_ Informations; _You are to know, that it is not out of fear of being detected of_ Imposture, _whil'st we declare against it, and which cannot serve any_ Interest _of the_ Relators; _but because, being_ Strangers, _or_ Itinerants, _and one of them upon his return into his_ _Native_ Country _(which may possibly engage them to passe by_ Malta, _and other_ Levantine _parts obnoxious to these_ Discourses) _it would appear but ingrateful in us to expose them to an_ Inconvenience. _Let it suffice to assure you, that they are_ Persons _of no mean_ Parts, Ingenuity _and_ Candor; _well acquainted with the_ Eastern Countreys _and_ Affaires, _and that have themselves been witnesses of most of these Transactions._

_It were to be wish'd that our_ Christian Monarchs _had alwayes near them some dextrous_ Person _of this_ Gentlemans _abilites; were it but to_ Discover _such_ Cheates _as frequently appearing under the Disguise of Distressed_ Princes, Merchants, _&c. are, to truth, but_ Spies, _and bold_ Impostors, _and whom otherwise 'tis almost impossible to_ detect; _not to suggest the many other good_ Offices, _as to the_ Eastern Commerce _and_ Affaires, _they might be_ useful _in. But this is more than I have_ Commission _to say from those who have no other design in what they_ Relate, _than their_ Affection _to_ Truth. _It is not yet a full_ Year _since there went a Crafty_ Varlet _about the_ Countrey, _who pretended himself to be the_ Brother _of the famous_ Peter Serini _(whose brave and_ Heroick Actions _had so celebrated him against the_ Turkes) _and related a_ Story _by his feign'd_ Interpreter, _how he fortun'd to be cast on shore on the_ West _of_ England, _as he was conducting_ Supplies _from abroad._ This _he perform'd with a confidence and success so happily, as caus'd him to be_ receiv'd, presented, _and_ assisted (_like another_ Mahomed Bei) _by divers_ Persons _of_ Quality, _and some of them my nearest_ Acquaintance, _in his Pretended Journey to_ Court; _But being at last discover'd in a_ Tipling-house _on the_ Rode, _where un-mindful of his_ Part _and_ Character, _he call'd for a_ Pot _of_ Ale _in too good_ English, _and a more natural_ Tone _than became so great a_ Stranger, _and the_ Person _he put on, we heard no more of the_ Gamester: _I wish our_ Fin-land Spirit, _who is of late dropt out of the_ Clouds _amongst us, prove not one of his_ Disciples; _for the_ Age _is very fertile; and I am told, that our_ Mahomed _having receiv'd his_ Ajuda de Costo _from the Bounty and Charity of a great_ Person _of more easie_ Beliefe, _is slipt aside for fear of the_ Porters-Lodge, _and yet 'tis_ possible _you may hear more of him before his_ Ramble _be quite at a period._

_You have at the end of the last_ Impostor _an_ Account _of the_ Jews _Exile out of that Vast_ Empire _of_ Persia, _happening but the other day; which, together with the miscarriage of their late_ Messiah (_the_ Twenty-Fifth _Pretender to it as I am credibly inform'd, it stands in their own_ Records) _might, one would think, at last open the_ Eyes, _and turne the_ hearts _of that_ obstinate _and miserable_ People: _But whil'st the_ Time _not yet_ Accomplish'd, _I could_ _wish our modern_ Enthusiasts, _and other prodigious_ Sects _amongst us, who Dreame of the like Carnal_ Expectations, _and a_ Temporal Monarchy, _might seriously weigh how nearly their_ Characters _approach the_ Style _and_ Design _of these Deluded_ Wretches, _least they fall into the same_ Condemnation, _and the Snare of the_ Devil.

* * * * *

ERRATA.

_PAge 15, Line 17, Read_ deside. _l. 28 r. dignità, 18. 6. r. Spina Longa, 21 l. 12. r._ DETECTED. _24 l. 23, r. It'aser. 30. 14. dele and. 58. l. 17. Essendo. l. 21. promessa per gli suoi Profeti e padri nostri. 59. l. 2. r. digjuni. 66. 11. r._ should be wrought. _77. l. 18. r._ not onely. _85. 22. r._ one that (as it was said). _93. l. 22. r._ tenor. _97.15. dele_ which, and read _it. 99. 7. r._ As that. _110. l. 12. r. Cymeterie._

* * * * *

THE END

THE HISTORY OF _SABATAI SEVI_,

The Pretended _Messiah_ of the _Jewes_, In the Year of our _Lord_, 1666. The _Third Impostor_.

According to the Predictions of several _Christian_ Writers, especially of such who Comment on the _Apocalyps_, or Revelations, this Year of 1666 was to prove a Year of Wonders, of strange Revolutions in the World, and particularly of Blessing to the _Jewes_, either in respect of their Conversion to the _Christian_ Faith, or of their Restoration to their Temporal Kingdome: This Opinion was so dilated, and fixt in the Countreys of the Reformed Religion, and in the Heads of Phanatical _Enthusiasts_, who Dreamed of a Fift Monarchy, the downfall of the _Pope_, and _Antichrist_, and the Greatness of the _Jewes_: In so much, that this subtile People judged this Year the time to stir, and to fit their Motion according to the season of the Modern Prophesies; whereupon strange Reports flew from place to place, of the March of Multitudes of People from unknown parts into the remote Desarts of _Arabia_, supposed to be the _Ten Tribes_ and _halfe_, lost for so many Ages. That a Ship was arrived in the Northern parts of _Scotland_ with her Sailes and Cordage of Silke, Navigated by Mariners who spake nothing but _Hebrew_; with this Motto on their Sailes, _The Twelve Tribes of Israel_. These Reportes agreeing thus near to former Predictions, put the wild sort of the World into an expectation of strange Accidents, this year should produce in reference to the _Jewish_ Monarchy.

In this manner Millions of People were possessed, when _Sabatai Sevi_ first appear'd at _Smyrna_, and published himself to the _Jewes_ for their _Messiah_, relating the greatness of their approaching Kingdome, the strong hand whereby God was about to deliver them from Bondage, and gather them from all partes of the World. It was strange to see how the fancy took, and how fast the report of _Sabatai_ and his Doctrine flew through all partes where _Turkes_ and _Jews_ inhabited; the latter of which were so deeply possessed with a beliefe of their new Kingdome, and Riches, and many of them with promotion to Offices of Government, Renown, and Greatness, that in all parts from _Constantinople_ to _Buda_ (which it was my fortune that year to Travel) I perceiv'd a strange transport in the _Jewes_, none of them attending to any business unless to winde up former negotiations, and to prepare themselves and Families for a Journey to _Jerusalem_: All their Discourses, their Dreames, and disposal of their Affaires tended to no other Design but a re-establishment in the Land of Promise, to Greatness, Glory, Wisdome, and Doctrine of the _Messiah_, whose Original, Birth, and Education are first to be recounted.