INTRODUCTION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR of this earliest surviving biography of Sabbatai Zevi, Zikaron livnei yisra’el (‘Memorial to the Children of Israel’), we know only what we can gather from his book. It is not much.

From the signature at the end of his preface we know his name was Baruch son of Gershon, and that he or his ancestors were from the town of Arezzo in Tuscany. He was related to the prominent Modena family of the Formigginis; he proudly claims as his uncle ‘the distinguished and accomplished gentleman Rabbi Samuel Formiggini’, who helped Nathan of Gaza escape from a tight spot at Il Finale di Modena. If we had any inclination to question Baruch's Italian origins, his habit of sprinkling his Hebrew with Italian words would settle our doubts. So would the Italian provenance of the surviving manuscripts of his Memorial. About what we would really like to know—how old he was when he wrote his book, what his life experience had been, what personal encounters he had with the Sabbatian movement and its leaders—he gives no clue at all.

His narrative covers the entire life of his messiah, from Sabbatai's birth on the Ninth of Av 1626 to his eventual ‘concealment’, which Baruch represents— not without some precedent—as a death followed by a resurrection. Nathan's ‘departure’ is also mentioned, though in a very vague and ambiguous manner. The apostasy, whose character as apostasy is deliberately blurred, stands at about the midpoint (§16). The biography proper is preceded by a preface, in which Baruch sets out the aim and method of his book, as well as its intended audience. After this comes an opening section, which might (and perhaps once did) itself serve as preface, quoting rabbinic proof- texts to the effect that the messiah, like Moses before him, must go through a period of ‘concealment’ after his initial appearance.

As a sort of appendix to his book, after telling of the ‘departures’ of Sabbatai and Nathan, Baruch provides an account of the would-be messiah Joseph ibn Tsur, whose activities in Morocco date from a few years before Sabbatai's death (§§27–8).