The Augustan Reprint Society
JOHN EVELYN
THE HISTORY OF SABATAI SEVI,
The Suppos'd Messiah OF THE JEWS.
Christopher W. Grose
WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
University of California, Los Angeles
1968
George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles
Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles
Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
ADVISORY EDITORS
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Earl Miner, University of California, Los Angeles
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles
Lawrence Clark Powell, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
James Sutherland, University College, London
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
Edna C. Davis, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
INTRODUCTION
Till the conversion of the Jews.
The reader of John Evelyn's History of Sabatai Sevi, The PretendedMessiah of the Jewes or of the History of the Three LateFamous Impostors (1669) in which it is the most significant part,discovers a fascinating, if unoriginal, addition to the work of thegreat diarist and dilettante, the amateur student of engraving andtrees—and smoke. Evelyn's work was almost totally derived fromthe account of Sir Paul Rycaut, who was from 1661 secretary (andlater consul) for the Levant mercantile company in Smyrna. Rycautwas in fact responsible for what first-hand reporting there is in theHistory, and Evelyn's book preceded by only eleven years Rycaut'sHistory of the Turkish Empire 1623-1677, where the story first appearedunder the author's own name.
What gives Evelyn's Pretended Messiah its own interest ispartly the immediacy of the news of Sabatai Sevi, and partly the contextin which Evelyn places the story, a context to some extent indicatedin the title, History of the Three Late Famous Impostors.When the work was published in 1669, Sevi was neither the amusingcuriosity he is likely to be for the modern reader, nor the impertinentconfidence man suggested by Evelyn's "impostor." Evelynwas reviewing for an English audience one of the great crises inJewish history, the career of the man who has been called Judaism's"most notorious messianic claimant."[1] That career was not entirelypast history in 1669. Sevi lived until 1675, and even after his humiliationand final banishment in 1673 he could write to his father-in-lawin Salonica that men would see in his lifetime the day of redemptionand the return of the Jews to Zion; "For God hath appointedme Lord of all Mizrayim."...