In that age of darkness and tribulation the hope of the Messiah flamed up again. In the middle of the seventeenth century the promised Redeemer made his appearance among the Turkish Jews in the person of Sabbataï Zebi, born at Smyrna in 1626. Sabbataï’s boyhood was spent in solitude and prayer; his early youth in Cabbalistic mysticism, in self-mortification and in a self-denial all the easier because Sabbataï was one of those happy, or unhappy, mortals who are born blind to the temptations of the flesh and to its joys. His strange life and even stranger ideas soon excited attention. Some pronounced the young man mad and others inspired. _He_ regarded himself as the Messiah, and revealed himself as such in the year 1648, which, mystics had foretold, was to see the first dawn of the Redemption. The Synagogue excommunicated Sabbataï for his presumption. But many believed in the handsome and eccentric youth. Sabbataï’s belief in his own Messianic mission and the devotion of his disciples were confirmed by persecution. Banished from Smyrna, the prophet wandered to Stamboul and Salonica, gaining adherents, and he took care that the year 1666, which had been fixed as that of the Messianic era, should find him in Jerusalem. That city both by virtue of its traditions and owing to the condition of its Jewish inhabitants--impoverished by extortion and ground down by oppression--afforded an environment eminently favourable to miraculous display. Thence Sabbataï journeyed forth in triumph to Aleppo, and finally returned to his native city, where his new glory made the Synagogue forget his earlier condemnation and disgrace. At Smyrna the enthusiasm of Sabbataï’s followers reached the height of frenzy. The Messiah’s fame and the madness of his disciples spread to the furthest corners of the earth--Venice, Leghorn, Avignon, Amsterdam, London. The Rabbis of Prague and Hamburg were suspected by the Orthodox of being secret adherents of the Prophet of Smyrna, and excommunicated each other as heartily as if they were Christian sectarians. In all these centres of Judaism the Kingdom of Heaven was believed to have come, the belief being shared by Christian Millennarians, and the Western Jews abandoned themselves to an extravagance of excitement scarcely compatible with elementary sanity. At Hamburg the synagogue was converted into a theatre of corybantic exaltation, wherein stately Spanish cavaliers and grey-bearded men of business might be seen hopping, jumping and twirling solemnly about with the scroll of the Law in their arms. Not less remarkable was the behaviour of believers in the East. In Persia the Jews refused to till their fields or to pay tribute, for, they said, the Messiah had come. From all these quarters homage and treasure poured into the court of Sabbataï, who now was universally hailed as King of Kings, and signed himself, or allowed his scribes to do so, “I, the Lord, your God, Sabbataï Zebi.”