It has frequently been argued that Jews can have played no part in Freemasonry at this period since they themselves were not admitted to the lodges. But this is by no means certain; in the article from _The Gentleman"s Magazine_ already quoted it is stated that Jews are admitted; de Luchet further quotes the instance of David Moses Hertz received in a London lodge in 1787; and the author of _Les Franc-Masons ecrases_, published in 1746, states that he has seen three Jews received into a lodge at Amsterdam. In the "Melchisedeck Lodges" of the Continent non-Christians were openly admitted, and here again the Rose-Croix degree occupies the most important place. The highest degrees of this rite were the Initiated Brothers of Asia, the Masters of the Wise, and the Royal Priests, otherwise known as the degree of Melchisedeck or the true Brothers of the Rose-Croix.
This Order, usually described as the _Asiatic Brethren_, of which the centre was in Vienna and the leader a certain Baron von Eckhoffen, is said to have been a continuation of the "Brothers of the Golden and Rosy Cross," a revival of the seventeenth-century Rosicrucians organized in 1710 by a Saxon priest, Samuel Richter, known as Sincerus Renatus. The real origins of the Asiatic Brethren are, however, obscure and little literature on the subject is to be found in this country.[436] Their further t.i.tle of "the Knights and Brethren of St. John the Evangelist"
suggests Johannite inspiration and was clearly an imposture, since they included Jews, Turks, Persians, and Armenians. De Luchet, who as a contemporary was in a position to acquire first-hand information, thus describes the organization of the Order, which, it will be seen, was entirely Judaic. "The superior direction is called the small and constant Sanhedrim of Europe. The names of those employed by which they conceal themselves from their inferiors are Hebrew. The signs of the third princ.i.p.al degree (i.e. the Rose-Croix) are Urim and Thummim....
The Order has the true secrets and the explanations, moral and physical, of the hierogyphics of the very venerable Order of Freemasonry."[437] The initiate had to swear absolute submission and unswerving obedience to the laws of the Order and to follow its laws implicitly to the end of his life, without asking by whom they were given or whence they came.
"Who," asks de Luchet, "gave to the Order these so-called secrets? That is the great and insidious question for the secret societies. But the Initiate who remains, and must remain eternally in the Order, never finds this out, he dare not even ask it, he must promise never to ask it. In this way those who partic.i.p.ate in the secrets of the Order remain the Masters."
Again, as in the _Stricte Observance_, the same system of "Concealed Superiors"--the same blind obedience to unknown directors!
Under the guidance of these various sects of Illumines a wave of occultism swept over France, and lodges everywhere became centres of instruction on the Cabala, magic, divination, alchemy, and theosophy[438]; masonic rites degenerated into ceremonies for the evocation of spirits--women, who were now admitted to these a.s.semblies, screamed, fainted, fell into convulsions, and lent themselves to experiments of the most horrible kind.[439]
By means of these occult practices the _Illumines_ in time became the third great masonic power in France, and the rival Orders perceived the expediency of joining forces. Accordingly in 1771 an amalgamation of all the masonic groups was effected at the new lodge of the _Amis Reunis_.
The founder of this lodge was Savalette de Langes, Keeper of the Royal Treasury, Grand Officer of the Grand Orient, and a high initiate of Masonry--"versed in all mysteries, in all the lodges, and in all the plots." In order to unite them he made his lodge a mixture of all sophistic, Martiniste, and masonic systems, "and as a bait to the aristocracy organized b.a.l.l.s and concerts at which the adepts, male and female, danced and feasted, or sang of the beauties of their liberty and equality, little knowing that above them was a secret committee which was arranging to extend this equality beyond the lodge to rank and fortune, to castles and to cottages, to marquesses and bourgeois"
alike.[440]
A further development of the Amis Reunis was the Rite of the _Philalethes_, compounded by Savalette de Langes in 1773 out of Swedenborgian, Martiniste, and Rosicrucian mysteries, into which the higher initiates of the Amis Reunis--Court de Gebelin, the Prince de Hesse, Condorcet, the Vicomte de Tavannes, Willermoz, and others--were initiated. A modified form of this rite was inst.i.tuted at Narbonne in 1780 under the name of "Free and Accepted Masons du Rit Primitif," the English nomenclature being adopted (according to Clavel) in order to make it appear that the rite emanated from England. In reality its founder, the Marquis de Chefdebien d"Armisson, a member of the Grand Orient and of the Amis Reunis, drew his inspiration from certain German Freemasons with whom he maintained throughout close relations and who were presumably members of the Stricte Observance, since Chefdebien was a member of this Order, in which he bore the t.i.tle of "Eques a Capite Galeato." The correspondence that pa.s.sed between Chefdebien and Salvalette de Langes, recently discovered and published in France, is one of the most illuminating records of the masonic ramifications in existence before the Revolution ever brought to light.[441] To judge by the tone of these letters, the leaders of the Rit Primitif would appear to have been law-abiding and loyal gentlemen devoted to the Catholic religion, yet in their pa.s.sion for new forms of Masonry and thirst for occult lore ready to a.s.sociate themselves with every kind of adventurer and charlatan who might be able to initiate them into further mysteries.
In the curious notes drawn up by Savalette for the guidance of the Marquis de Chefdebien we catch a glimpse of the power behind the philosophers of the _salons_ and the aristocratic adepts of the lodges--the professional magicians and men of mystery; and behind these again the concealed directors of the secret societies, the _real initiates_.
The Magicians
The part played by magicians during the period preceding the French Revolution is of course a matter of common knowledge and has never been disputed by official history. But like the schools of philosophers this sudden crop of magicians is always represented as a sporadic growth called into being by the idle and curious society of the day. The important point to realize is that just as the philosophers were all Freemasons, the princ.i.p.al magicians were not only Freemasons but members of occult secret societies. It is therefore not as isolated charlatans but as agents of some hidden power that we must regard the men whom we will now pa.s.s in a rapid survey.
One of the first to appear in the field was Schroepfer, a coffee-house keeper of Leipzig, who declared that no one could be a true Freemason without practising magic. Accordingly he proclaimed himself the "reformer of Freemasonry," and set up a lodge in his own house with a rite based on the Rose-Croix degree for the purpose of evoking spirits.
The meetings took place at dead of night, when by means of carefully arranged lights, magic mirrors, and possibly of electricity, Schroepfer contrived to produce apparitions which his disciples--under the influence of strong punch--took to be visitors from the other world.[442] In the end Schroepfer, driven crazy by his own incantations, blew out his brains in a garden near Leipzig.
According to Lecouteulx de Canteleu, it was Schroepfer who indoctrinated the famous "Comte de Saint-Germain"--"The Master" of our modern co-masonic lodges. The ident.i.ty of this mysterious personage has never been established[443]; by some contemporaries he was said to be a natural son of the King of Portugal, by others the son of a Jew and a Polish Princess. The Duc de Choiseul on being asked whether he knew the origin of Saint-Germain replied: "No doubt we know it, he is the son of a Portuguese Jew who exploits the credulity of the town and Court."[444]
In 1780 a rumour went round that his father was a Jew of Bordeaux, but according to the _Souvenirs of the Marquise de Crequy_ the Baron de Breteuil discovered from the archives of his Ministry that the pretended Comte de Saint-Germain was the son of a Jewish doctor of Strasburg, that his real name was Daniel Wolf, and that he was born in 1704.[445] The general opinion thus appears to have been in favour of his Jewish ancestry.
Saint-German seems first to have been heard of in Germany about 1740, where his marvellous powers attracted the attention of the Marechal de Belle-Isle, who, always the ready dupe of charlatans, brought him back with him to the Court of France, where he speedily gained the favour of Madame de Pompadour. The Marquise before long presented him to the King, who granted him an apartment at Chambord and, enchanted by his brilliant wit, frequently spent long evenings in conversation with him in the rooms of Madame de Pompadour. Meanwhile his invention of flat-bottomed boats for the invasion of England raised him still higher in the estimation of the Marechal de Belle-Isle. In 1761 we hear of him as living in great splendour in Holland and giving out that he had reached the age of seventy-four, though appearing to be only fifty; if this were so, he must have been ninety-seven at the time of his death in 1784 at Schleswig. But this feat of longevity is far from satisfying his modern admirers, who declare that Saint-Germain did not die in 1784, but is still alive to-day in some corner of Eastern Europe. This is in accordance with the theory, said to have been circulated by Saint-Germain himself, that by the eighteenth century he had pa.s.sed through several incarnations and that the last one had continued for 1,500 years. Barruel, however, explains that Saint-Germain in thus referring to his age spoke in masonic language, in which a man who has taken the first degree is said to be three years old, after the second five, or the third seven, so that by means of the huge increase the higher degrees conferred it might be quite possible for an exalted adept to attain the age of 1,500.
Saint-Germain has been represented by modern writers--not only those who compose his following--as a person of extraordinary attainments, a sort of super-man towering over the minor magicians of his day.
Contemporaries, however, take him less seriously and represent him rather as an expert charlatan whom the wits of the _salons_ made the b.u.t.t of pleasantries. His princ.i.p.al importance to the subject of this book consists, however, in his influence on the secret societies.
According to the _Memoires authentiques pour servir a l"histoire du Comte de Cagliostro_, Saint-Germain was the "Grand Master of Freemasonry,"[446] and it was he who initiated Cagliostro into the mysteries of Egyptian masonry.
Joseph Balsamo, born in 1743, who a.s.sumed the name of Comte de Cagliostro, as a magician far eclipsed his master. Like Saint-Germain, he was generally reputed to be a Jew--the son of Pietro Balsamo, a Sicilian tradesman of Jewish origin[447]--and he made no secret of his arden admiration for the Jewish race. After the death of his parents he escaped from the monastery in which he had been placed at Palermo and joined himself to a man known as Altotas, said to have been an Armenian, with whom he travelled to Greece and Egypt[448]. Cagliostro"s travels later took him to Poland and Germany, where he was initiated into Freemasonry[449], and finally to France; but it was in England that he himself declared that he elaborated his famous "Egyptian Rite," which he founded officially in 1782. According to his own account, this rite was derived from a ma.n.u.script by a certain George Cofton--whose ident.i.ty has never been discovered--which he bought by chance in London[450]. Yarker, however, expresses the opinion that "the rite of Cagliostro was clearly that of Pasqually," and that if he acquired it from a ma.n.u.script in London it would indicate that Pasquilly had disciples in that city. A far more probable explanation is that Cagliostro derived his Egyptian masonry from the same source as that on which Pasqually had drawn for his Order of Martinistes, namely the Cabala, and that it was not from a single ma.n.u.script but from an eminent Jewish Cabalist in London that he took his instructions. Who this may have been we shall soon see. At any rate, in a contemporary account of Cagliostro we find him described as "a doctor initiated into Cabalistic art" and a Rose-Croix; but after founding his own rite he acquired the name of Grand Copht, that is to say, Supreme Head of Egyptian Masonry, a new branch that he wished to graft on to old European Freemasonry.[451] We shall return to his further masonic adventures later.
In a superior category to Saint-German and Cagliostro was the famous Swabian doctor Mesmer, who has given his name to an important branch of natural science. In about 1780 Mesmer announced his great discovery of "animal magnetism, the principle of life in all organized beings, the soul of all that breathes." But if to-day Mesmerism has come to be regarded as almost synonymous with hypnotism and in no way a branch of occultism, Mesmer himself--stirring the fluid in his magic bucket, around which his disciples wept, slept, fell into trances or convulsions, raved or prophesied[452]--earned not unnaturally the reputation of a charlatan. The Freemasons, eager to discover the secret of the magic bucket, hastened to enrol him in their Order, and Mesmer was received into the Primitive Rite of Free and Accepted Masons in 1785.[453]
s.p.a.ce forbids a description of the minor magicians who flourished at this period--of _Schroeder_, founder in 1776 of a chapter of "True and Ancient Rose-Croix Masons," practising certain magical, theosophical, and alchemical degrees; of _Ga.s.sner_, worker of miracles in the neighbourhood of Ratisbonne; of "the Jew Leon," one of a band of charlatans who made large sums of money with magic mirrors in which the imaginative were able to see their absent friends, and who was finally banished from France by the police,--all these and many others exploited the credulity and curiosity of the upper cla.s.ses both in France and Germany between the years of 1740 and 1790. De Luchet, writing before the French Revolution, describes the part played in their mysteries by the soul of a Cabalistic Jew named Gablidone who had lived before Christ, and who predicted that "in the year 1800 there will be, on our globe, a very remarkable revolution, and there will be no other religion but that of the patriarchs."[454]
How are we to account for this extraordinary wave of Cabalism in Western Europe? By whom was it inspired? If, as Jewish writers a.s.sure us, neither Marlines Pasqually, Saint-Germain, Cagliostro, nor any of the visible occultists or magicians were Jews, the problem only becomes the more insoluble. We cannot believe that Sanhedrims, Hebrew hieroglyphics, the contemplation of the Tetragrammaton, and other Cabalistic rites originated in the brains of French and German aristocrats, philosophers, and Freemasons. Let us turn, then, to events taking place at this moment in the world of Jewry and see whether these may provide some clue.
8
THE JEWISH CABALISTS
It has been shown in the preceding chapters that the Jewish Cabala played an important part in the occult and anti-Christian sects from the very beginning of the Christian era. The time has now come to enquire what part Jewish influence played meanwhile in revolutions. Merely to ask the question is to bring on oneself the accusation of "anti-Semitism," yet the Jewish writer Bernard Lazare has shown the falseness of this charge:
This [he writes] is what must separate the impartial historian from anti-Semitism. The anti-Semite says: "The Jew is the preparer, the machinator, the chief engineer of revolutions"; the impartial historian confines himself to studying the part which the Jew, considering his spirit, his character, the nature of his philosophy, and his religion, may have taken in revolutionary processes and movements.[455]
Lazare himself expresses the opinion, however, that--
The complaint of the anti-Semites seems to be founded: the Jew has the revolutionary spirit; consciously or not he is an agent of revolution. Yet the complaint complicates itself, for anti-Semitism accuses the Jews of being the cause of revolutions. Let us examine what this accusation is worth....[456]
In the light of our present knowledge it would certainly be absurd to ascribe to the Jews the authorship of the conspiracy of Catiline or of the Gracchi, the rising of Jack Straw and Wat Tyler, Jack Cade"s rebellion, the _jacqueries_ of France, or the Peasants" Wars in Germany, although historical research may lead in time to the discovery of certain occult influences--not necessarily Jewish--behind the European insurrections here referred to. Moreover, apart from grievances or other causes of rebellion, the revolutionary spirit has always existed independently of the Jews. In all times and in all countries there have been men born to make trouble as the sparks fly upward.
Nevertheless, in modern revolutions the part played by the Jews cannot be ignored, and the influence they have exercised will be seen on examination to have been twofold--financial and occult. Throughout the Middle Ages it is as sorcerers and usurers that they incur the reproaches of the Christian world, and it is still in the same role, under the more modern terms of magicians and loan-mongers, that we detect their presence behind the scenes of revolution from the seventeenth century onward. Wherever money was to be made out of social or political upheavals, wealthy Jews have been found to back the winning side; and wherever the Christian races have turned against their own inst.i.tutions, Jewish Rabbis, philosophers, professors, and occultists have lent them their support. It was not then necessarily that Jews created these movements, but they knew how to make use of them for their own ends.
It is thus that in the Great Rebellion we find them not amongst the Ironsides of Cromwell or the members of his State Council, but furnishing money and information to the insurgents, acting as army contractors, loan-mongers, and super-spies--or to use the more euphonious term of Mr. Lucien Wolf, as "political intelligencers" of extraordinary efficiency. Thus Mr. Lucien Wolf, in referring to Carvajal, "the great Jew of the Commonwealth," explains that "the wide ramifications of his commercial transactions and his relations with other Crypto-Jews all over the world placed him in an unrivalled position to obtain news of the enemies of the Commonwealth."[457]
It is obvious that a "secret service" of this kind rendered the Jews a formidable hidden power, the more so since their very existence was frequently unknown to the rest of the population around them. This precaution was necessary because Jews were not supposed to exist at that date in England. In 1290 Edward I had expelled them all, and for three and a half centuries they had remained in exile; the Crypto-Jews or Marranos who had come over from Spain contrived, however, to remain in the country by skilfully taking the colour of their surroundings. Mr.
Wolf goes on to observe that Jewish services were regularly held in the secret Synagogue, but "in public Carvajal and his friends followed the practice of the secret Jews in Spain and Portugal, pa.s.sing as Roman Catholics and regularly attending ma.s.s in the Spanish Amba.s.sador"s chapel."[458] But when war between England and Spain rendered this expedient inadvisable, the Marranos threw off the disguise of Christianity and proclaimed themselves followers of the Jewish faith.
Now, just at this period the Messianic era was generally believed by the Jews to be approaching, and it appears to have occurred to them that Cromwell might be fitted to the part. Consequently emissaries were despatched to search the archives of Cambridge in order to discover whether the Protector could possibly be of Jewish descent.[459] This quest proving fruitless, the Cabalist Rabbi of Amsterdam, Mana.s.seh ben Israel,[460] addressed a pet.i.tion to Cromwell for the readmission of the Jews to England, in which he adroitly insisted on the retribution that overtakes those who afflict the people of Israel and the rewards that await those who "cherish" them. These arguments were not without effect on Cromwell, who entertained the same superst.i.tion, and although he is said to have declined the Jews" offer to buy St. Paul"s Cathedral and the Bodleian Library because he considered the 500,000 they offered inadequate,[461] he exerted every effort to obtain their readmission to the country. In this he encountered violent opposition, and it seems that Jews were not permitted to return in large numbers, or at any rate to enjoy full rights and privileges, until after the accession of Charles II, who in his turn had enlisted their financial aid.[462]
Later, in 1688, the Jews of Amsterdam helped with their credit the expedition of William of Orange against James II; the former in return brought many Jews with him to England. So a Jewish writer is able to boast that "a Monarch reigned who was indebted to Hebrew gold for his royal diadem."[463]
In all this it is impossible to follow any consecutive political plan; the role of the Jews seems to have been to support no cause consistently but to obtain a footing in every camp, to back any venture that offered a chance of profit. Yet mingled with these material designs were still their ancient Messianic dreams. It is curious to note that the same Messianic idea pervaded the Levellers, the rebels of the Commonwealth; such phrases as "Let Israel go free," "Israel"s restoration is now beginning," recur frequently in the literature of the sect. Gerard Winstanley, one of the two princ.i.p.al leaders, addressed an epistle to "the Twelve Tribes of Israel that are circ.u.mcised in heart and scattered through all the Nations of the Earth," and promised them "David their King that they have been waiting for." The other leader of the movement, by name Everard, in fact declared, when summoned before the Lord Fairfax at Whitehall, that "he was of the race of the Jews."[464] It is true that the Levellers were by profession Christian, but after the manner of the Bavarian Illuminati and of the Christian Socialists two centuries later, claiming Christ as the author of their Communistic and equalitarian doctrines: "For Jesus Christ, the Saviour of all Men, is the greatest, first, and truest Leveller that ever was spoken of in the world." The Levellers are said to have derived originally from the German Anabaptists; but Claudio Jannet, quoting German authorities, shows that there were Jews amongst the Anabaptists. "They were carried away by their hatred of the name of Christian and imagined that their dreams of the restoration of the kingdom of Israel would be realized amidst the conflagration."[465] Whether this was so or not, it is clear that by the middle of the seventeenth century the mystical ideas of Judaism had penetrated into all parts of Europe. Was there then some Cabalistic centre from which they radiated? Let us turn our eyes eastward and we shall see.
Since the sixteenth century the great ma.s.s of Jewry had settled in Poland, and a succession of miracle-workers known by the name of Zaddikim or Ba"al Shems had arisen. The latter word, which signifies "Master of the Name," originated with the German Polish Jews and was derived from the Cabalistic belief in the miraculous use of the sacred name of Jehovah, known as the Tetragrammaton.
According to Cabalistic traditions, certain Jews of peculiar sanct.i.ty or knowledge were able with impunity to make use of the Divine Name. A Ba"al Shem was therefore one who had acquired this power and employed it in writing amulets, invoking spirits, and prescribing cures for various diseases. Poland and particularly Podolia--which had not yet been ceded to Russia--became thus a centre of Cabalism where a series of extraordinary movements of a mystical kind followed each other. In 1666, when the Messianic era was still believed to be approaching, the whole Jewish world was convulsed by the sudden appearance of Shabbethai Zebi, the son of a poulterer in Smyrna named Mordecai, who proclaimed himself the promised Messiah and rallied to his support a huge following not only amongst the Jews of Palestine, Egypt, and Eastern Europe, but even the hard-headed Jews of the Continental bourses.[466] Samuel Pepys in his Diary refers to the bets made amongst the Jews in London on the chances of "a certain person now in Smyrna" being acclaimed King of the World and the true Messiah.[467]
Shabbethai, who was an expert Cabalist and had the temerity to utter the Ineffable Name Jehovah, was said to be possessed of marvellous powers, his skin exuded exquisite perfume, he indulged perpetually in sea-bathing and lived in a state of chronic ecstasy. The pretensions of Shabbethai, who took the t.i.tle of "King of the Kings of the Earth,"
split Jewry in two; many Rabbis launched imprecations against him, and those who had believed in him were bitterly disillusioned when, challenged by the Sultan to prove his claim to be the Messiah by allowing poisoned arrows to be shot at him, he suddenly renounced the Jewish faith and proclaimed himself a Mohammedan. His conversion, however, appeared to be only partial, for "at times he would a.s.sume the role of a pious Mohammedan and revile Judaism; at others he would enter into relations with Jews as one of their own faith."[468] By this means he retained the allegiance both of Moslems and of Jews. But the Rabbis, alarmed for the cause of Judaism, succeeded in obtaining his incarceration by the Sultan in a castle near Belgrade, where he died of colic in 1676.[469]
This prosaic ending to the career of the Messiah did not, however, altogether extinguish the enthusiasm of his followers, and the Shabbethan movement continued into the next century. In Poland Cabalism broke out with renewed energy; fresh Zaddikim and Ba"al Shems arose, the most noted of these being Israel of Podolia, known as Ba"al Shem Tob, or by the initial letters of this name, Besht, who founded his sect of Hasidim in 1740.
Besht, whilst opposing bigoted Rabbinism and claiming the Zohar as his inspiration, did not, however, adhere strictly to the doctrine of the Cabala that the universe was an emanation of G.o.d, but evolved a form of Pantheism, declaring that the whole universe was G.o.d, that even evil exists in G.o.d since evil is not bad in itself but only in its relation to Man; sin therefore has no positive existence.[470] As a result the followers of Besht, calling themselves the "New Saints," and at his death numbering no less than 40,000, threw aside not only the precepts of the Talmud, but all the restraints of morality and even decency.[471]
Another Ba"al Shem of the same period was Heilprin, alias Joel Ben Uri of Satanov, who, like Israel of Podolia, professed to perform miracles by the use of the Divine Name and collected around him many pupils, who, on the death of their master, "formed a band of charlatans and shamelessly exploited the credulity of their contemporaries."[472]
But the most important of these Cabalistic groups was that of the Frankists, who were sometimes known as the Zoharists or the Illuminated,[473] from their adherence to the Zohar or book of Light, or in their birthplace Podolia as the Shabbethan Zebists, from their allegiance to the false Messiah of the preceding century--a heresy that had been "kept alive in secret circles which had something akin to a masonic organization."[474] The founder of this sect was Jacob Frank, a brandy distiller profoundly versed in the doctrines of the Cabala, who in 1755 collected around him a large following in Podolia and lived in a style of oriental magnificence, maintained by vast wealth of which no one ever discovered the source. The persecution to which he was subjected by the Rabbis led the Catholic clergy to champion his cause, whereupon Frank threw himself on the mercy of the Bishop of Kaminick, and publicly burnt the Talmud, declaring that he recognized only the Zohar, which, he alleged, admitted the doctrine of the Trinity. Thus the Zoharists "claimed that they regarded the Messiah-Deliverer as one of the three divinities, but failed to state that by the Messiah they meant Shabbethai Zebi."[475] The Bishop was apparently deceived by this manoeuvre, and in 1759 the Zoharites declared themselves converted to Christianity, and were baptized, including Frank himself, who took the name of Joseph. "The insincerity of the Frankists soon became apparent, however, for they continued to inter-marry only among themselves and held Frank in reverence, calling him "The Holy Master.""[476] It soon became evident that, whilst openly embracing the Catholic faith, they had in reality retained their secret Judaism.[477] Moreover, it was discovered that Frank endeavoured to pa.s.s as a Mohammedan in Turkey; "he was therefore arrested in Warsaw and delivered to the Church tribunal on the charge of feigned conversion to Christianity and the spreading of a pernicious heresy."[478] Unlike his predecessor in apostasy, Shabbethai Zebi, Frank, however, came to no untimely end, but after his release from prison continued to prey on the credulity of Christians and frequently travelled to Vienna with his daughter, Eve, who succeeded in duping the pious Maria Theresa. But here also "the sectarian plans of Frank were found out,"[479] and he was obliged to leave Austria.
Finally he settled at Offenbach and supported by liberal subsidies from the other Jews, he resumed his former splendour[480]
with a retinue of several hundred beautiful Jewish youth of both s.e.xes; carts containing treasure were reported to be perpetually brought in to him, chiefly from Poland--he went out daily in great state to perform his devotions in the open field--he rode in a chariot drawn by n.o.ble horses; ten or twelve Hulans in red or green uniform, glittering with gold, by his side, with pikes in their hands and crests on their caps, eagles, or stags, or the sun and moon.... His followers believed him immortal, but in 1791 he died; his burial was as splendid as his mode of living--800 persons followed him to the grave.[481]
Now, it is impossible to study the careers of these magicians in Poland and Germany without being reminded of their counterparts in France. The family likeness between the "Baron von Offenbach," the "Comte de Saint-Germain" and the "Comte de Cagliostro" is at once apparent. All claimed to perform miracles, all lived with extraordinary magnificence on wealth derived from an unknown source, one was certainly a Jew, the other two were believed to be Jews, and all were known to be Cabalists.
Moreover, all three spent many years in Germany, and it was whilst Frank was living as Baron von Offenbach close to Frankfurt that Cagliostro was received into the Order of the Stricte Observance in a subterranean chamber a few miles from that city. Earlier in his career he was known to have visited Poland, whence Frank derived. Are we to believe that all these men, so strangely alike in their careers, living at the same time and in the same places, were totally unconnected? It is a mere coincidence that this group of Jewish Cabalist miracle-workers should have existed in Germany and Poland at the precise moment that the Cabalist magicians sprang up in France? Is it again a coincidence that Martines Pasqually founded his "Kabbalistic sect" of Illumines in 1754 and Jacob Frank his sect of Zoharites (or Illuminated) in 1755?