latter notion), while the rabbis would appeal to the priests’ distrust of “enthusiasm” and of private revelations extra ecclesiam. Various understandings of the fundamental nature of what was gradually becoming a mass religious movement forming around Frank were formulated, put forward, and tested against one another during the ongoing debate. Podolian Sabbatians, the Jewish authorities, and the bishop and his aides all tried to fit the developing events into their respective visions of history, redemption, and society; what we know today as Frankism emerged as a product of the clash of ideas, contradictory strategies, interests, and commitments of these groups.
As discussed in Chapter 1, after the public violation of the Fast of Esther in Kopczyńce and the hearing in Dembowski’s court in late March 1756, Frank left the Commonwealth and headed home to Salonika (according to a Polish source, those arrested in Kopczyńce were set free on condition that they would disperse to their homes).1 He was not directly involved in the developments that took place in the Kamieniec diocese in 1756–57, and it is unclear what influence he did have on the course of events. Later Frankist sources imply that he did not authorize actions of the Sabbatian party in Kamieniec. He seems to have lost some authority: during Frank’s sojourn in Turkey, Yehudah Leyb Krysa assumed the leadership of the group in Podolia and was probably responsible for the strategy developed in the contacts with the bishop.2 However, the Jesuit Konstanty Awedyk claimed that Frank was constantly pulling strings behind the scenes and that upon leaving Poland, he told his followers to present themselves as adherents to two main tenets: a belief “in the Holy Trinity, that is, in One God in three persons” and the rejection of “the Talmud as full of errors and blasphemies.”3 While Awedyk’s description of Frank’s role is probably an ex post embellishment (his book was published in 1760, when Frank had firmly established his leadership over those Podolian Sabbatians, who were Christians by then), the description of the subject of debate is accurate.
On 2 August 1756, a manifesto was submitted to the Kamieniec consistory. Twenty-one named Sabbatians from Jezierzany, Kopczyńce, Nadworna, Busk, Zbrzezie, Rohatyn, Satanów, and Lanckoronie claimed to speak on behalf of Jews in other countries who held similar beliefs. They asserted that, upon lengthy consideration, they had concluded that the Talmud was blasphemous and contrary to reason and God’s commandments. The signatories complained to the authorities that because of their anti-talmudic position, they had been persecuted, excommunicated, expelled, and falsely accused by their enemies, the “teachers and advocates of the Talmud.” They demanded that the Talmud should be rejected and consigned to the flames and stated their intention to “declare to the entire world” the principles of their faith, which they proclaimed themselves to prove true in a public disputation. Their principles were:
1. We believe in everything that was taught and commanded by God in the Old Testament.
2. The Holy Scriptures cannot be comprehended by human reason without the assistance of Divine Grace.
3. The Talmud is full of scandalous blasphemies against God and should be rejected.
4. There is One God who created everything.
5. This God is in Three Persons, indivisible as to their nature.
6. God can take a human body upon Himself and be subject to all passions except for sin.
7. In accordance with the prophecies, the city of Jerusalem will not be rebuilt until the end of time.
8. The messiah promised in the Old Testament will not come again.
9. God Himself will remove the sin of the First Parents. This God is the true messiah, incarnate.4
The manifesto was presented in Latin and signed with the full Hebrew names of its proponents. The Latin translation from Hebrew was executed by one of the most interesting characters in the early phase of Frankism, the Polish nobleman Antoni Kossakowski, called Moliwda (1718–86).5 Antoni grew up in the house of Dominik Kossakowski, father of the future bishop of Livonia and a member of the Targowica Confederation, Józef Kossakowski. Having secretly married “a peasant, daughter of a local mill man,”6 he fled his family’s wrath to Russia, where he became an “elder” of the Greek Orthodox sect of Philipovtsy (a radical branch of the schismatic Old Believers). Later, he claimed that “under the name Moliwda, he ruled one of the Greek islands”7 and reportedly spent time in one of the monasteries on Mount Athos.8 Contemporaries marveled at his mastery of oriental languages including Turkish, Tatar, Hebrew, and Aramaic, as well as his “profound knowledge of the Scriptures and Holy Fathers.”9
The Philipovtsy had numerous contacts with the Jews; in Poland, their faith was considered so close to Judaism that some members of the Polish nobility wanted them to pay the Jewish poll tax.10 Moliwda met Frank somewhere in the Balkans and saw in him a chance for a return to Poland. His exact role in the formulation of the Frankist manifestos and points for the disputations is a matter of conjecture, but it is certain that he was one of the most important sources of information on the selected Christian concepts that helped construct the Frankist teachings.11
Awedyk would have us believe that Frank was himself responsible for the formulation of the main points of the August 1756 manifesto. This seems unlikely: the anti-talmudic intent of the document had not appeared in earlier Sabbatian polemics, and it did not stem organically from any Sabbatian doctrines. The account of Ber of Bolechów, according to which this anti-talmudic element was the personal contribution of Bishop Dembowski, is more convincing. According to Ber, the Sabbatians told the bishop how they had been pursued by the rabbinate; they requested a formal edict granting them rights to establish an autonomous community, to engage in the same trades that other Jews engage in, and to be exempt from the jurisdiction of the rabbinate. The bishop responded: “We cannot set you apart and distinct from the whole community of Israel until you demonstrate that the statements of the Talmud are false and contain lies. Then you will be released from the [obligations] of the Talmud according to a verdict we will issue. And if you demonstrate the Talmud’s hostility toward the Christian faith, it will be possible to condemn it for burning, and you will easily obtain a royal writ of privileges.”12
Since the Jewish religion had in Poland the status of a recognized faith, religio licta, Dembowski (or the Frankists) could not launch a frontal attack on Judaism as such. They could, however, invert the strategy employed by the bet din of Satanów and condemn a particular form of Judaism for its alleged deviation from its own principles. Defining the target of polemics as “Talmudism” was a clever move: although formally the Sabbatians undermined only one text of a broader canon, for most Jews such a challenge would be tantamount to an attack on the very substance of their religion. Accordingly, Sabbatian tenets were presented as based solely on the text of the Pentateuch. Ber Birkenthal stated that at that critical juncture, “the Christians started to call [the Sabbatians] Contra-Talmudists.”13 Others maintain that the Frankists themselves “stopped calling themselves believers in Sabbatai Tsevi and started to call themselves Contra-Talmudists.”14 Whoever was behind the new denomination of the group, the intention was to adapt the Frankist case to the broader framework of the Catholic polemics against the Talmud.
The canon law principles giving the Church authority to defend Judaism against internal heresy, which I discussed in Chapter 1, were commonly employed by the priests in their polemics against the Talmud: in his argument that the pope may punish Jews for inventing heresies against their own religion, Innocent IV explicitly stated that this was the basis for his order to burn the Talmud.15 The anti-talmudic thread appeared also in Christian documents concerning the Frankists: the initial justification of the Kamieniec consistory court’s jurisdiction over the Jews arrested in Lanckoronie already contained a reference to Clement VIII’s bull Cum Hebraeorum malitia incipiente (1569), forbidding the reading of the Talmud and condemning it to be burned.16
In
