The troubled times, projecting shadows of a still more unhappy future, produced the melancholy phenomenon of another Messianic frenzy. Again it arose in the minds of mystics. The Zohar having adroitly been raised to the dignity of an approved authority, the Kabbala daily acquired more influence, although it was not studied in proportion to the zeal with which its authority was advocated. Three Kabbalists were particularly active in exciting the emotions and turning the heads of the people--Abraham of Granada, Shem Tob ben Joseph, and Moses Botarel. The first composed (between 1391 and 1409) a Kabbalistic work, a farrago of strange names of the Deity and the angels, of transposed letters, and jugglery with vowels and accents. Abraham of Granada had the hardihood to teach that those who could not apprehend God by Kabbalistic methods belonged to the weak in faith, were ignorant sinners, and like the depraved and the apostate were overlooked by God, and not found worthy of His special providence. He thought that the relinquishment of their religion by cultured Jews was explained by their fatal application to scientific study, and their contempt for the Kabbala. On the other hand, he professed to see in the persecutions of 1391, and in the conversion of so many prominent Jews to Christianity, the tokens of the Messianic age, the suffering that must precede it, and the approach of the redemption. Shem Tob ben Joseph Ibn-Shem Tob (died 1430) accused the Jewish philosophers, Maimuni, Gersonides, and others, of seducing the people to heresy and infidelity, and with being the real cause of apostasy in troubled times. In a work entitled "Emunoth" he made violent attacks on Jewish thinkers and philosophic studies generally, and taught that the salvation of Israel lies in the Kabbala, the oldest Jewish tradition, and the genuine, pure truth. The entire book is composed of grave charges against the more enlightened school of Jewish thinkers, and panegyrics of Kabbalistic nonsense. These two men, Abraham of Granada and Shem Tob, though narrow-minded, were sincere, differing in this respect from Moses Botarel (or Botarelo), also a Spaniard, from Cisneros, in Castile, who pursued his course with fraudulent intent. He gave out that he was a thaumaturge and prophet; he announced himself even as the Messiah. He prophesied that in the spring month of 1393 the Messianic age would be ushered in by extraordinary marvels. Later on he wrote a work full of lies and delusions. In his pride and boastfulness, he addressed a circular letter to all the rabbis of Israel, declaring that he was in a position to solve all doubts, and throw light on all mysteries, that he was the chief of the great Synhedrin, and a great deal more in the same charlatanic strain.