The Sabbatian-Frankist Network

A messianic claim and its heirs, followed across a century from Ottoman Smyrna to the courts of Habsburg Europe

The Sabbatian movement began with one man's messianic claim in Ottoman Smyrna, and it did not end when he died a convert in exile. This dossier follows the claim as it traveled: from Sabbatai Sevi to Nathan of Gaza who organized it, to Jacob Frank who inherited it and led his followers through baptism and a baronial court, to the cousin who carried the network into Vienna's esoteric lodges and the Paris of the Terror. At each stop it marks what the record confirms and what it only attributes, including the state investigations that went looking for a conspiracy and found none.

Sabbatean and Frankist Networks in 18th-Century Europe: A Documentary Study

Primary source documentation of the spread and suppression of Sabbatean-Frankist movements across Poland, Moravia, and the Ottoman Empire.

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