Prominent among these stories is an account of the expulsion of devils from a house in Posen, which produced a great sensation at the time. Evil spirits had been constantly haunting the inhabitants of the house. At first they sought advice of the local Jesuit priests. When the remedy employed by the latter proved of no avail, the inhabitants invited the famous magician and miracle-worker Joel Baal-Shem[186] from Zamoshch.[187] The miracle-worker subjected the demons to a regular cross-examination, demanding an explanation why they refused to abandon the ill-fated house. At the cross-examination the demons argued that the house was theirs by inheritance, inasmuch as they were the legitimate children of the former owner of the house, a Jewish artisan who had had relations with a female devil. As a result, a conference of the rabbis of Posen was held in the presence of the above-mentioned miracle-worker, and their verdict was that the demons had no claim to immovable property in places populated by human beings, but were limited in their right of residence to forests and deserts. Such was the spiritual pabulum on which the Jewish masses were fed by their leaders. A writer of the beginning of the eighteenth century makes the observation, that "there is no country where the Jews are so much given to mystical fancies, devil hunting, talismans, and exorcism of evil spirits, as they are in Poland." The demand brought forth a supply, and even the celebrated rabbis frequently devoted themselves to Cabalistic exercises. One of these was the Rabbi of Ostrog and Posen, Naphtali Cohen (1640-1719), of whom the following curious incident is related. After settling in Frankfort-on-the-Main, he made the people believe that he had discovered a magic formula against fire. As luck would have it, a fire broke out in his own house, and destroyed a considerable part of the Jewish quarter. The ill-fated Cabalist was sent to jail on the charge of careless handling of fire during his pyrotechnic experiments (1711). After his release from prison Naphtali Cohen led the life of a wanderer, entering into suspicious relations with Hayyun, the notorious emissary of the Sabbatian sect, though afterwards, when Hayyun's heresy had been unmasked in Amsterdam, he renounced all connection with the heretic. During the contest which for many years was waged by Emden against Eibeshütz and his mysterious talismans,[188] the majority of Polish rabbis sided with Eibeshütz. Evidently they found nothing objectionable in the attempt to cure diseases by means of cabalistically inscribed talismans. 3. THE SABBATIAN MOVEMENT