The story met with ready acceptance and popularity. Eight editions of
the pamphlet appeared in 1602, and the fortieth edition before the end
of the following century. It was translated into Dutch and Flemish with
almost equal success. The first French edition appeared in 1609, and the
story was known in England before 1625, when a parody was produced.
Denmark and Sweden followed suit with translations, and the expression
"eternal Jew" passed as a current term into Czech. In other words, the
story in its usual form spread wherever there was a tincture of
Protestantism. In southern Europe little is heard of it in this version,
though Rudolph Botoreus, parliamentary advocate of Paris (_Comm.
histor._, 1604), writing in Paris two years after its first appearance,
speaks contemptuously of the popular belief in the Wandering Jew in
Germany, Spain and Italy.
The popularity of the pamphlet and its translations soon led to reports
of the appearance of this mysterious being in almost all parts of the
civilized world. Besides the original meeting of the bishop and
Ahasuerus in 1542 and others referred back to 1575 in Spain and 1599 at
Vienna, the Wandering Jew was stated to have appeared at Prague (1602),
at Lübeck (1603), in Bavaria (1604), at Ypres (1623), Brussels (1640),
Leipzig (1642), Paris (1644, by the "Turkish Spy"), Stamford (1658),
Astrakhan (1672), and Frankenstein (1678). In the next century the
Wandering Jew was seen at Munich (1721), Altbach (1766), Brussels
(1774), Newcastle (1790, see Brand, _Pop. Antiquities, s.v._), and on
the streets of London between 1818 and 1830 (see _Athenaeum_, 1866, ii.
561). So far as can be ascertained, the latest report of his appearance
was in the neighbourhood of Salt Lake City in 1868, when he is said to
have made himself known to a Mormon named O'Grady. It is difficult to
tell in any one of these cases how far the story is an entire fiction
and how far some ingenious impostor took advantage of the existence of
the myth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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