only a lever by which to raise himself; he wished to play a brilliant part and surround himself with a mysterious halo. Circumstances were exceptionally favorable to him. He married in Nicopolis (Turkey) a very beautiful wife, through whom he attracted followers. He collected by degrees a small number of Turkish and Wallachian Jews, who shared his loose principles, and held him to be a superior being--the latest embodiment of the Messiah. He could not, however, carry on his mischievous schemes in Turkey, where he was persecuted. Frank appears to have obtained intelligence of the schism in Poland caused by the Eibeschütz controversy, and thought that he might utilize the propitious moment to gather round him the Sabbatians of Podolia, and play a part among them, and by means of them. He came suddenly amongst them, visiting many towns of Podolia and the Lemberg district, where secret Sabbatians resided, with whom he may have been in communication previously. They fell, so to speak, into his arms. Frank needed followers, and they were seeking a leader. Now they found one who had come to them with a full purse, of the contents of which he was not sparing. In a trice he won the Sabbatians of Podolia. Frank disclosed himself to them as the successor of Sabbataï, or, what was the same thing, as the new-born soul of the Sabbatian chief Berachya. What this manifestation signified was known to the initiated. They understood by it the blasphemous and at the same time absurd theory of a kind of Trinity, consisting of the Holy and Most Ancient One, the Holy King, and a female person in the Godhead. Frank, like his predecessors, attributed the chief importance to the Holy King, at once the Messiah and God incarnate, and possessed of all power on earth and in heaven. Frank ordered his followers to address him as the Holy Lord. In virtue of his participation in the Godhead, the Messiah was able to do all things, even miracles, and Frank did perform miracles, as his followers maintained. The adherents whom he brought in his train, and whom he gathered round him in Poland, believed so strongly in his divine nature that they addressed to him mystic prayers in the language of the Zohar, with the same formulas that the Donmäh of Salonica were wont to address to Jacob Querido and Berachya. In short, Frank formed a sect from the Sabbatians of Podolia, called by his name, "Frankists." Their founder taught his disciples to acquire riches for themselves, even by fraudulent and dishonest means. Deceit was nothing more than skillful artifice. Their chief task was to undermine rabbinical Judaism, and to oppose and annihilate the Talmud. This task they undertook with a passion which perhaps owed its origin to the constraints imposed upon them through fear of persecution. The Frankists opposed the Zohar to the Talmud, and Simon bar Yochaï, its alleged author, to the other authorities of the Talmud, as though in