Home / Browse / Philosophy & History of Ideas / The History Of the Three late famous Impostors, viz. Padre Ottomano, Mahomed Bei, and Sabatai Sevi.
EVELYN, John.
The History Of the Three late famous Impostors, viz. Padre Ottomano, Mahomed Bei, and Sabatai Sevi.
The One, pretended Son and Heir to the late Grand Signior; The Other, a Prince of the Ottoman Family, but in truth, a Valachian Counterfeit. And the Last, The Suppos'd Messiah of the Jews, in the Year of the true Messiah, 1666. With a brief Account of the Ground, and Occasion of the present War between the Turk and the Venetian. Together with the Cause of the final Extirpation, Destruction, and Exile of the Jews out of the Empire of Persia.
Publisher: In the Savoy, printed for Henry Herringman, 1669
Stock code: 69040
Price: £1,500 Currency Conversion
First edition of Evelyn's accounts of three religious pretenders (his title a deliberate echo of the notorious De tribus impostoribus), two of them gleaned from Pietro Cesii and the third from Sir Paul Rycaut. English interest in the pseudo-Messiah Sabbatai Sevi (1626–1676) was particularly heightened at this time. Christian authors identified the apocalyptic year as 1666, a prediction that had formed part of the grounds for the appeal to Cromwell to readmit Jews to England. The narrative of Sabbatai's apostasy by conversion to Islam in that significant year was employed by Rycaut and Evelyn more as a critique of enthusiastic English millenarians than of the folly of his disappointed Jewish followers.
Octavo (160 × 97 mm). Contemporary tree sheep, neatly rebacked to style with red spine label. Old library label to front pastedown, another label removed from the same place. Trimmed a little close at head, a few trivial blemishes, but a very good copy.
