The families descended from them in Poland, Wolowski, Dembowski, Dzalski, are still at the present day known as Frenks or Shäbs. Frank was set at liberty by the Russians, after thirteen years' imprisonment in the fortress, played the part of impostor for over twenty years elsewhere, in Vienna, Brünn, and at last in Offenbach; set up his beautiful daughter Eva as the incarnate Godhead, and deceived the world until the end of his life, and even after his death; but with this part of his career Jewish history has nothing to do. For all these calamitous events, Jonathan Eibeschütz was in some measure to blame. The Frankists regarded him, the great Gaon, as one of themselves, and he did nothing to clear himself from the stigma of this suspicion. He was implored to aid the Polish Jews, to make his influence felt in refuting the charge of the use of Christian blood. He remained silent as if he feared to provoke the Frankists against himself. Some of his followers who had warmly upheld him began to distrust him, among them Ezekiel Landau, at that time chief rabbi of Prague. Jacob Emden had won the day, he could flourish over him the scourge of his scorn; and he pursued him even beyond the grave as the most abandoned being who had ever disgraced Judaism. The rabbinate had placed itself in the pillory, and undermined its own authority. But it thereby loosened the soil from which a better seed could spring forth. Whilst Eibeschütz and his opponents were squabbling over amulets and Sabbatian heresy, and Jacob Frank Lejbowicz was carrying on his Zoharistic frauds, Mendelssohn and Lessing were cementing a league of friendship, Portugal was extinguishing its funeral fires for the Marranos, and in England the question of the emancipation of the Jews was being seriously discussed in Parliament. CHAPTER VIII. THE MENDELSSOHN EPOCH. Renaissance of the Jewish Race--Moses Mendelssohn--His Youth-- Improves Hebrew Style--Lessing and Mendelssohn--Mendelssohn's Writings--The Bonnet-Lavater Controversy--Kölbele--The Burial Question--Reimarus--Anonymous Publication of his Work--Lessing's "Nathan the Wise"--Mendelssohn in "Nathan" --Mendelssohn's Pentateuch--Opposition to it--The "Berlin Religion"--Montesquieu--Voltaire--Portuguese Marranos in Bordeaux--Isaac Pinto--His Defense of Portuguese Jews-- Dohm and Mendelssohn--Joseph II of Austria--Michaelis-- Mendelssohn's "Jerusalem"--Wessely: his Circular Letter-- Mendelssohn's Death. 1750-1786 C. E.