The Molcho and Reubeni affair: nine years and a stake at Mantua

A century and a half lies between the expulsion from Spain and Shabbetai Tzvi, and in the middle of it stands this affair—the loudest before Shabbetai.

In 1523 a man appeared at Venice calling himself David Reubeni, brother of King Joseph who ruled a Jewish state in the Arabian desert. He proposed an alliance: give arms, and the Jews will field an army against the Turks. Where he really came from is unknown to this day.

He was heard seriously. Pope Clement VII received him and gave him a safe-conduct; King John III of Portugal received him in 1525. In the sixteenth century the thought of an alliance with an eastern kingdom against the Ottomans was not mad.

But it truly resounded where he had not reckoned. In Portugal the anusim were watching—baptised by force, living a double life. For them this was no ambassador but a sign. Diogo Pires, secretary of the High Court of Appeals, circumcised himself and became Solomon Molcho.

Their roads then parted and met again. Molcho went east, became a scholar of Talmud, studied kabbalah with Rabbi Joseph Taitazak at Salonika, and published there in 1529 the Sefer ha-Mefoar. Back in Italy he spoke of a near redemption and made predictions; the flooding of the Tiber on 7 Tishrei 5291 and an earthquake in Portugal in Tevet came to pass, and the pope began to listen to him. When the Inquisition condemned Molcho to the stake, Clement VII saved him by putting another man in his place.

In 1532 both came to Regensburg to the Emperor Charles V—with the same proposal of a joint army. The emperor ordered both seized. Molcho was tried at Mantua by an ecclesiastical court and condemned to burning; a pardon was offered at the price of returning to Christianity, and he refused. Reubeni was sent to Spain and died in prison.

Molcho never declared himself the messiah, and to call him a false messiah is wrong. He spoke of the nearness of redemption and died sanctifying the Name; Rabbi Joseph Karo and Rabbi Solomon Alkabetz referred to him. How this history was regarded in the Jewish world was never simple, and has remained so.

A robe and a banner attributed to him lay in the Pinkas synagogue at Prague—the earliest mention is 1628—and are now in the Jewish Museum there. The attribution comes from tradition, not from a document.