The report of his condemnation had preceded him; but he was nevertheless welcomed in his native city with almost regal honour. Every evening he paraded the streets, accompanied by a train of followers, carrying banners, and singing hymns in his praise. All resistance offered to him proved vain. A Jew of high rank, named Anakia, attacked him in the market-place, branding him as an impostor. But his fate did not encourage others to pursue the same course. He returned to his home, and had scarcely entered it, when he suddenly fell from his chair a corpse. The reader will not require to be told that Sabbathai’s friends declared this to be God’s judgment on the blasphemer! His pretensions now rose higher.[197] He assumed the state of a monarch. He divided the kingdoms of the earth among his partisans. He named his two brothers sovereigns of Judah and Israel, while he himself took the title of ‘the King of the Kings of the Earth.’ He ordered the name of the Sultan to be removed from the prayer offered up for the sovereign in the Jewish liturgy, and his own to be inserted in its place. Embassies arrived from foreign communities charged with rich presents and assurances of devoted loyalty. These were sometimes kept waiting two or three weeks for an audience. His picture was exhibited in public, surmounted by a golden crown; and multitudes of prophets of both sexes thronged the streets, declaring in the name of Heaven his approaching triumph. Some of these are said to have acquired in a moment a miraculous knowledge of Hebrew!