After this time a regular search was made after the Kabbala of Lurya and Vital. Whoever was in possession of copies, and offered them for sale or publication, found ready purchasers. Messengers were employed to give this fraud currency in the Jewish communities. Israel Saruk, or Sarug, a German, one of Lurya's disciples, introduced the Luryan Kabbala into Italy, gained many adherents for it, and much money for himself. His account of his master's miracles offended the taste of very few. From Italy he betook himself to Holland, and there gained a disciple who knew how to give the Kabbalistic frenzy a philosophic complexion. Alonzo, or Abraham, de Herrera (died 1639), a descendant of the Great Captain, the viceroy of Naples, was introduced by Saruk into the mysteries of the Luryan Kabbala. Having lived a Christian during the greatest part of his life, he was more familiar with non-Jewish philosophy than with Jewish literature; therefore it was easy to deceive him into taking dross for gold. He felt clearly that Lurya's Kabbala betrayed resemblances to Neoplatonic philosophy, but this disturbed De Herrera little, or rather, it confirmed the Kabbalistic teaching, and he endeavored to explain one by the other. Finding it impossible to reconcile the two systems, he, too, fell into idle talk and rambling expressions. Abraham de Herrera, who, as has been stated, became a Jew at a ripe age, could not learn Hebrew, and hence had his two Kabbalistic works, the "House of God" and the "Gate of Heaven," translated by the Amsterdam preacher Isaac Aboab from Spanish into Hebrew, and in his will set apart a considerable sum of money for their publication. The author and translator doubtless thought that they had rendered an inexpressibly great service to Judaism. But by the meretricious splendor which these works imparted to the Kabbala, they blinded the superficial minds of the average Portuguese Jews, who, in spite of their knowledge of classical literature and European culture, abandoned themselves to the delusions of the Kabbala. Manasseh ben Israel and all his older and younger contemporaries in Holland paid homage to mysticism, and had no doubt of its truth and divinity. In Germany and Poland two men, half Polish and half German, brought Lurya's Kabbala into high estimation: Isaiah Hurwitz (Sheloh), called the Holy, and Naphtali Frankfurter, to whom we may perhaps add the credulous Solomon, or Shlomel, of Moravia, who glorified the silliest stories of wonders performed by Isaac Lurya, Vital, and their circle, in letters sent to Germany and Poland, which were eagerly read and circulated.