At the beginning of the eighth century, Serenus, a Spanish Jew, gave himself out as a Messiah, preached, had some disciples, and, like them, died in misery.
Several false Messiahs arose in the twelfth century. One appeared in France in the reign of Louis the Young; he and all his adherents were hanged, without its ever being known what was the name of the master or of the disciples.
The thirteenth century was fruitful in false Messiahs; there appeared seven or eight in Arabia, Persia, Spain, and Moravia; one of them, calling himself David el Roy, passed for a very great magician; he reduced the Jews, and was at the head of a considerable party; but this Messiah was assassinated.
James Zeigler, of Moravia, who lived in the middle of the sixteenth century, announced the approaching manifestation of the Messiah, born, as he declared, fourteen years before; he had seen him, he said, at Strasburg, and he kept by him with great care a sword and a sceptre, to place them in his hands as soon as he should be old enough to teach. In the year 1624, another Zeigler confirmed the prediction of the former.
In the year 1666, Sabatei Sevi, born at Aleppo, called himself the Messiah foretold by the Zeiglers. He began with preaching on the highways and in the fields, the Turks laughing at him, while his disciples admired him. It appears that he did not gain over the mass of the Jewish nation at first; for the chiefs of the synagogue of Smyrna passed sentence of death against him; but he escaped with the fear only, and with banishment.
He contracted three marriages, of which it is asserted he did not consummate one, saying that it was beneath him so to do. He took into partnership one Nathan Levi; the latter personated the prophet Elias, who was to go before the Messiah. They repaired to Jerusalem, and Nathan there announced Sabatei Sevi as the deliverer of nations. The Jewish populace declared for them, but such as had anything to lose anathematized them.
To avoid the storm, Sevi fled to Constantinople, and thence to Smyrna, whither Nathan Levi sent to him four ambassadors, who acknowledged and publicly saluted him as the Messiah. This embassy imposed on the people, and also on some of the doctors, who declared Sabatei Sevi to be the Messiah, and king of the Hebrews. But the synagogue of Smyrna condemned its king to be impaled.