These events in the Jews' quarter at Smyrna made a great sensation in ever-widening circles. The neighboring communities of Asia Minor, many members of which had betaken themselves to Smyrna, and witnessing the scenes enacted in that town, brought home exaggerated accounts of the Messiah's power of attraction and of working miracles, were swept into the same vortex. Sabbataï's private secretary, Samuel Primo, took care that reports of the fame and doings of the Messiah should reach Jews abroad. Nathan Ghazati sent circulars from Palestine, while the itinerant prophets, Sabbataï Raphael and Matathias Bloch, filled the ears of their auditors with the most marvelous accounts of the new redeemer. Christians also helped to spread the story. The residents, the clerks of English and Dutch mercantile houses, and the evangelical ministers, reported the extraordinary occurrences in Smyrna, and though they scoffed at the folly of the Jews, could not withhold half-credulous sympathy. Did they not see with their own eyes the ecstasies, and hear with their own ears the predictions, of the prophets and prophetesses of Sabbataï Zevi, the true redeemer? On the exchanges in Europe men spoke of him as a remarkable personage, and eagerly awaited news from Smyrna or Constantinople. At first the Jews were dazed by the reports that suddenly burst upon them. Was the long cherished hope, that one day the oppression and shame of Israel would be removed, and that he would return in glory to his home, at length to be realized? No wonder that nearly everywhere scenes similar to those in Smyrna were repeating themselves, that men's minds were filled with credulity, accepting mere rumors as accredited facts, or that wild excitement, ascetic living, and almsgiving to the needy, by way of preparation for the time of the Messiah, were followed here and there by prophetic ecstasies. Not only the senseless multitude, but nearly all the rabbis, and even men of culture and philosophical judgment, fell a prey to this credulity.