But it was at Thessalonica--now known as Salonica--that Sabbataï
gained the greatest following. For Thessalonica was the chief
stronghold of the Cabalah; and though the triangular battlemented
town, sloping down the mountain to the gulf, was in the hands of the
Turks, who had built four fortresses and set up twelve little cannons
against the Corsairs, yet Jews were largely in the ascendant, and
their thirty synagogues dominated the mosques of their masters and the
churches of the Greeks, even as the crowns they received for supplying
the cloths of the Janissaries far exceeded their annual tribute.
Castilians, Portuguese, Italians, they were further recruited by an
influx of students from all parts of the Empire, for here were two
great colleges teaching more than ten thousand scholars. In this
atmosphere of pious warmth Sabbataï found consolation for the apathy
of Constantinople. Not only men were of his devotees now, but women,
and maidens, in all their Eastern fervor, raising their face-veils and
putting off their shrouding _izars_ as they sat at his feet. Virgins,
untaught to love or to dissemble, lifted adoring eyes. But Sabbataï's
vision was still inwards and heavenwards; and one day he made a great
feast, and invited all his friends to his wedding in the chief
synagogue. They came with dancing and music and lighted torches, but
racked by curiosity, full of guesses as to the bride. Through the
close lattice-work of the ladies' balcony peered a thousand eager
eyes. When the moment came, Sabbataï, in festal garments, took his
stand under the canopy. But no visible bride stood beside him. Moses
Pinhero reverently drew a Scroll of the Law from the ark, vested in
purple and gold broideries, and hung with golden chains and a
breastplate and bells that made sweet music, and he bore it beneath
the canopy, and Sabbataï, placing a golden ring on a silver peak of
the Scroll, said solemnly:
"I betroth thee unto me according to the Law of Moses and Israel."
A buzz of astonishment swelled through the synagogue, blent with
heavier murmurs of protest from shocked pietists. But the more poetic
Cabalists understood. They explained that it was the union of the
Torah, the Daughter of Heaven, with the Messiah, the Son of Heaven,
who was never to mate with a mortal.
But a _Chacham_ (Rabbi), unappeased, raised a loud plaint of
blasphemy.
"Nay, the blasphemy is thine," replied the Bridegroom of the law
quietly. "Say not your prophets that the Truth should be the spouse of
those who love the Truth?"
But the orthodox faction prevailed, and he was driven from the city.
He went to the Morea, to his father's relatives; he wandered to and
fro, and the years slipped by. Worn by fasts and penances, living in
inward dreams of righteousness and regeneration, he grew towards
middle age, and always on his sweet scholarly face an air of patient
waiting through the slow years. And his train of disciples grew and
changed; some died, some wearied of the long expectation. But Samuel
Primo, of Jerusalem, became his devoted secretary, and Abraham Rubio
was also ever at his side, a droll, impudent beggar, professing
unlimited faith in the Messiah, and feasting with unbounded appetite
on the good things sent by the worshippers, and put aside by the
persistent ascetic.
"Tis fortunate I shall be with thee when thou carvest the Leviathan,"
he said once. "Else would the heathen princesses who shall wait upon
us come in for thy pickings."
"In those days of the Kingdom there shall be no more need for
abnegation," said Sabbataï. "As it is written, 'And thy fast-days
shall become feast-days.'"
"Nay, then, thy feast-days shall become my fast-days," retorted Rubio.
Sabbataï smiled. The beggar was the only man who could make him smile.
But he smiled--a grim, bitter smile--when he heard that the great fire
he had predicted had devastated Constantinople, and wrought fierce
mischief in the Jewish quarter.
"The fire will purify their hearts," he said.