Chapter Title: Frankism: The History of Jacob Frank or of the Frankists

Chapter Author(s): JAN DOKTÓR

Book Title: New Directions in the History of the Jews in the Polish Lands
Book Editor(s): Antony Polonsky, Hanna Węgrzynek and Andrzej Żbikowski
Published by: Academic Studies Press

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Frankism:The History of Jacob
Frank or of the Frankists
JAN DOKTÓR

I n the literature on the subject—even the most up to date—the history of

Frankism is presented as the story of a charismatic messianic pretender and
his followers, and not as the history of the development of Jewish messianism,
which in the mid-eighteenth century emerged—in the southeastern border-
lands of the Polish Commonwealth—out of the Sabbatean underground.1

  1 This was already well expressed by the title and contents of the very first historical piece on
the subject of Frankism, written by Hipolit Skimborowicz, Żywot, skon i nauka Jakuba Józefa
Franka [The life, death and teaching of Jakub Józef Frank] (Warsaw: J. Unger, 1866), who
simply assumed that the history of Frank and Frankism are identical. The literature on the
subject of Jacob Frank and Frankism is vast. The best and most fully documented volume
is by Aleksander Kraushar, Frank i frankiści polscy 1726–1816. Monografia historyczna
osnuta na źródłach archiwalnych i rękopiśmiennych [Frank and the Polish Frankists 1726–
1816. A monograph based on archival and manuscript sources] (Kraków: G. Gebethner
i spółki, 1895). Another work which is still valuable today is Meir Balaban’s Letoldot hat-
nu‘a hafrankit, 2 vols. (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1934–35). There is a very important collection by
Gershom Scholem: Mechkarim umekorot letoldot ha-shabta’ut vegilguleha [Researches and
documents on the history of Sabbateanism and its transformation] ( Jerusalem: Mossad
Bialik, 1974). The latest books on Frankism are by Ada Rapoport-Albert, Women and
the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi 1666–1816 (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish
Civilization, 2011), and by Paweł Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the
Frankist Movement, 1755–1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011;
Polish translation: Wieloplemienny tłum. Jakub Frank i ruch frankistowski 1755–1816,
[Warsaw: W podworku, 2015]). My own works about Frank and Frankism are mainly Jakub
Frank i jego nauka na tle kryzysu religijnej tradycji osiemnastowiecznego żydostwa polskiego
[ Jakub Frank and his teaching against the background of the crisis of religious tradition of
eighteenth-century Polish Jewry] (Warsaw: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii PAN, 1991) and
Śladami mesjasza-apostaty. Żydowskie ruchy mesjańskie w XVII i XVIII wieku a problem kon-
wersji [In the footsteps of the Messiah-Apostate. Jewish messianic movements in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries and the problem of conversion] (Wrocław: FNP, 1998). At

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262 Part Two    Historiographic Questions

Thus it was supposed to have begun with Jacob Frank’s arrival in December
1755 in the commonwealth, when he was caught performing sectarian rites
with some other Jewish messianists. It was to end with his death in 1791 or else
(according to the modern literature on the subject) with the death of his daugh-
ter Eva in 1816. Such a take on Frankism can be partly explained by the state
of the sources, which are focused or even fixated on the charismatic character
of Frank. His sectarian comrades and rivals have virtually disappeared from
the records of history. Instead, his daughter Eva emerged as his alleged mes-
sianic successor. But, to be fair, his contemporaries were not really interested
in preserving the truth about the beginnings of the sect and its intricate fate. In
this essay, I present the most significant moments in the history of Frankism,
whose image in the historiography (including my own earlier works) requires
revision.

THE ARRIVAL OF JACOB FRANK IN THE COMMONWEALTH,

AND THE INCIDENTS IN LANCKORON
There is no doubt that the events of January 27, 1756, in Lanckoroń2 near
Kamieniec Podolski, when a number of messianic sectarians, including
Frank, ostentatiously manifested their Sabbatean faith, can be accepted as the
founding act of the movement that later came to be called Frankism.3 After
being revealed, the sectarians were assaulted by Jews gathered at the market,
denounced to the local authorities, and arrested. This began a spiral of events,
which culminated in two public debates with rabbis and in hundreds of sect
members joining the Roman Catholic Church. We still do not know, however,
why and with whom Jacob Frank traveled to the Polish Commonwealth. We
also do not know whether the incidents in Lanckoroń were accidental events
that brought about totally unexpected results, fraught with consequences—or
if this was, rather, a planned demonstration, if not a provocation. These are

the end of the twentieth century I published the most important Frankist sources: Rozmaite
adnotacje, przypadki, czynności i anekdoty Pańskie [Various divine annotations, cases, actions
and anecdotes] (Warsaw: Tikkun, 1996], quoted further as RA, and Księga słów Pańskich.
Ezoteryczne wykłady Jakuba Franka [A book of divine words. Ezoteric lectures by Jakub
Frank] (Warsaw: Semper, 1997), second complete edition: Słowa Pańskie [Divine Words]
(Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2016), quoted further as SP.
  2 Today, Zariczanka in Ukraine.
  3 I write at length about the Lanckoroń incident in my article, “Lanckoroń in 1756 and the
Beginnings of Polish Frankism: An Attempt at a New Outlook,” Jewish History Quarterly 3,
no. 255 (September 2015): 396–411.

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 Frankism:The History of Jacob Frank or of the Frankists    263

important questions, because the answers could help us determine Frank’s

actual role in the movement, the extent to which Frank was its initiator and
actual leader in the initial phase (his leadership in the final phase is unquestion-
able), and the degree to which his image as founder was created and mythol-
ogized.
Jaakow Josef ben Leib, known as Frenk and later as Frank, was born in
Podolia in 1726 but left with his parents for Wallachia when he was barely
a year old. He saw himself as a Sephardic Jew, he did not know Yiddish (his
mother tongue was Ladino), and—as he admitted himself—he had no affinity
with Poland and the Polish Jews. Until the autumn of 1755, there was nothing
to indicate his messianic mission in Poland, particularly nothing coming from
him. The circumstances of his arrival in the commonwealth and his removal a
few weeks later are among the most important and least explained facts in the
history of Frankism. Frank did not come alone but with a large (more than ten)
group of Balkan sectarians. It included only one Polish Jew—his matchmaker
Nah . man ben Samuel from Busko, who had accompanied him during his cam-
paign in the Balkans after Frank’s wedding in 1752. We do not know whether
he came on his own initiative or was sent by someone. In the latter case, in my
view more probably, he could only have been instructed to make such a jour-
ney by the Koniosos of Thessalonica, the descendants of Sabbatean converts to
Islam, whose authority was accepted at that time by the majority of the follow-
ers of Sabbatai Zevi, including those in Poland.
The course of events that followed suggests that Frank arrived with his
companions to take part in a demonstration, which had been planned over
a period of time by the sectarians of Podolia in agreement with the area’s
church hierarchy. Having gathered in Czernowitz in Bukowina,4 the sectari-
ans from Wallachia (Frank was believed to be one of them) made their way
first to Korolevka, where Frank’s uncle resided, and from there on to Lwów
(Lviv) for talks with the clergy. Frank himself was not let into the curia. We do
not know the subject matter, the participants, or the development of the talks,
except for the fact that they were conducted on behalf of Frank by Nah  . man

 4 “In 1756, having collected the necessary funds, he went accompanied to Poland, to
Czerniowce—a town in Wallachia, located a few miles from the Polish border. There he
found another dozen Jews from his company”; Konstanty Awedyk, Opisanie wszystkich
dworniejszych okoliczności nawrócenia do wiary świętej Contra-Talmudystów albo historia
krótka, ich początki i dalsze sposoby przystępowania do wiary świętej wyrażająca [An account
of the all the conditions of the conversion to the holy faith of the anti-Talmudist, or a short
history describing their origin and reception of the holy faith] (Lwów, 1760), 10.

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264 Part Two    Historiographic Questions

of Busko.5 The church sources pass over this episode in silence. It is easy to
guess that the church simply did not agree to allow the foreigners led by Frank
to take part in the forthcoming operations. There is still the open question of
the Podolian sectarians’ attitude toward them and whether they shared any
objectives with Frank’s group.
Certainly, Frank decided to join in the game with his companions, prob-
ably expecting that the other participants would have to accept them. On
January 27th, he arrived with a group of his supporters, mainly from Wallachia,6
in “Lanckoroń where about twenty sectarians from Podolia had already gath-
ered.”7 According to church sources, this assembly was reported to have been
singing mystical songs; according to Frank’s sources, they were singing and
dancing; and according to Jewish sources they were caught performing an orgi-
astic ceremony that involved a naked woman (who, however, was not present
among the detainees). The multiplicity and diversity of the records concern-
ing the incident are symptomatic for the historiography of Frankism, and they
show how ideologically skewed and distorted is the documentation that was
produced about the movement from almost its very beginnings.
Everyone present at the inn was arrested by the town’s administrator,
but three days later the foreigners with Frank at their head were released
and expelled from the commonwealth.8 Most probably, they were simply
transported across the border to Chocim, where a Turkish garrison was sta-
tioned. Thus, they were not interrogated in the Kamieniec consistory, where
the remaining detainees were taken, and neither were they present among the
signatories of the sectarian “Manifesto,” which preceded the debate with the
rabbis in 1757. It is true that Frank returned to the commonwealth in April
of that year,9 but he was almost immediately rearrested and then definitively
removed. So, he made his way to Turkey, where he converted to Islam with a
group of supporters. A further game was then conducted solely by the Polish
sectarians, who were not particularly distraught after their guests had departed;

 5 Skimborowicz, Żywot, skon i nauka, 7.

  6 RA 17 mentions only the following as his Polish followers: “Jakubowski [Nah.  man of Busko]
and Jakób Lwowski [Natan ben Aaron],” which means that the remaining Podolian sectar-
ians present in the inn, including Elisha Shor with his sons (renamed Wołowski after bap-
tism), were not yet among his followers.
 7 Awedyk, Opisanie wszystkich dworniejszych, 13. Twenty names of Podolian sectarians
arrested at the inn are found in the documents of the later Inquisition in Kamieniec.
  8 “On the second day, Frenk and his staff, who assisted him in Turkish dress, [were] released
from prison”; Awedyk, Opisanie wszystkich dworniejszych, 15.
  9 See RA 19 and 20.

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 Frankism:The History of Jacob Frank or of the Frankists    265

but we shall not deal here with their independent activities, which led to the
Kamieniec Debate in 1757 and the condemnation and public burning of copies
of the Talmud in the central square of Kamieniec Podolski.

THE RETURN OF FRANK TO THE COMMONWEALTH, AND THE

DEBATE IN LWÓW
Barely a fortnight after the debate, the death of Bishop Mikołaj Dembowski—
who was in charge of the case of the Jewish sectarians—opened an opportunity
for Frank to embark on a new mission in Poland.10 In 1758, he finally managed
to win over the Catholic hierarchy, most significantly the new Archbishop of
Lwów and the future primate Konstanty Władyslaw Łubieński. Intriguingly, he
managed to do this as a Muslim, when he and his supporters were serving in
the Turkish garrison in Giurgiu on the Danube. This outlaw and convert to
Islam was invited to the commonwealth along with his Balkan supporters—
also Muslims—and spent many months living on the estate of the bishop of
Kamieniec. This indicated a radical change in the policies of the church and
state toward the sectarians. Just a few months prior to this, on June 11, 1758,
King August II issued a letter of safe conduct to the “counter-Talmudists,”
some of whom had recently fled to Bukovina, taking them under his protec-
tion. The letter guaranteed safety and even the right to claim compensation in
common courts—but only to the Polish Jews. It ostentatiously called upon the
Polish counter-Talmudists to continue the work commenced the year before in
Kamieniec Podolski, thus excluding Frank and his Balkan supporters, some of
whom, like him, were already Muslim.
This time Frank had clearly been invited to the commonwealth since he
settled with his Muslim companions on the estate of the bishop of Kamieniec.
The reasons for this turn are not clear. What is clear is that the hierarchy had
plans in connection with Frank. Perhaps they were not happy with the con-
duct of the Polish sectarians who—after their return—were delaying, staying
on the bishop’s estate, before taking the expected action. It was they whom
Frank joined, along with the Balkan supporters, some of whom were Muslim
converts. But, for the second time, Frank arrived in Poland in a new role and

10 Toward the end of his life, in Brno and Offenbach, as he was recalling his messianic way,
he believed his mission in Poland began with his return to the commonwealth and with
his teaching in Iwanie in 1759, when he persuaded the sectarians to undergo a collective
conversion. The disgraceful Lanckoroń episode does not even once appear on the pages of
Słowa Pańskie!

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266 Part Two    Historiographic Questions

with another—already messianic—legitimization. This is why in his Słowa

Pańskie (The Words of the Lord, i.e., Frank himself), he presents his arrival on
January 7, 1759,11 as the beginning of his messianic mission in Poland; it was
followed by several months of teaching on the bishop’s estate in Iwanie, where
he managed to persuade the sectarians into a collective conversion. But it is
doubtful whether the new messianic legitimization warranted him the position
of leadership among the Polish sectarians. There are many indications that he
only managed to attract a minority. Nevertheless, it was Frank who came out
with the new initiative, set the direction, and imposed the pace of the messianic
march of the Podolian sectarians.
Frank and his Balkan supporters initiated the second public debate with
the rabbis, which on this occasion was to extend across state borders. The writ-
ten proposal for the debate was put forward not by the Podolian sectarians—as
was the case before the Kamieniec debate—but by those from Hungary and
Wallachia. Their delegation went to Lwów, where on February 20 they made
an appropriate supplication to the consistory. Here they declared their readi-
ness to be baptized in the Roman Catholic Church and requested that another
public debate be organized with the rabbis (after that at Kamieniec Podolski),
in which they wished to raise the question of ritual murder: “We make a request
to Your Excellency for a field, on which we wish to carry out a second battle
with the enemies of Truth, and to demonstrate openly from the Holy books the
appearance in the world of God in human form, His sufferings for the nation of
mankind, the need for universal unity in God, and to prove their godlessness,
gross lack of faith, their worse than pagan desire for innocent Christian blood,
its spilling and its abuse.”12 Although the signatories wrote in their introduction
that they were acting on behalf of Jews from the states of “Poland, Hungary,
Turkey, Multenia, Wallachia and others,” the supplication to the Archbishop of
Lwów, Konstanty Łubieński, was signed exclusively by sectarians from abroad:
Moshe ben Israel from Sighet,13 his nephew Anczel (Ansel) Shloma and Major
ben David from the same town, Esdras ben Israel, Aaron ben Shmul from
Czerniowitz, and Moshko ben Yaakov from Bucharest.
Initially, the Polish sectarians were reluctant about the initiative. How
else can one explain the absence of their signatures under the supplication,
which must have drawn the attention of the authorities and of public opinion

11 Skimborowicz, Żywot, skon i nauka, 45.

12 Awedyk, Opisanie wszystkich dworniejszych, 26–27.
13 Syhot Marmaroski on the Cisa River on the current border between Romania and Ukraine.

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 Frankism:The History of Jacob Frank or of the Frankists    267

(the supplication was printed and widely circulated by order of the primate,
including his positive response). However, they were taken by surprise first by
Frank and then by the hierarchy, and when the foreign initiators withdrew—
for reasons unclear to us—they had to continue by themselves. Putting it
simply: the Polish sectarians stepped into the shoes Frank had made for them.
As for Frank himself, he used the initiative to make himself—at least temporar-
ily—the s­ ectarians’ leader. It was not his only initiative to this end. His position
in the sectarian community was greatly enhanced by the funds his Hungarian
and Balkan supporters collected, which he stewarded and oversaw. It was Frank
who for several months supported hundreds of Podolian sectarians living on
the estate of the bishop of Kamieniec,14 and it was he who imposed the direc-
tion of the messianic way, which led to the Roman Catholic Church.

˛ STOCHOWA “ARREST”
THE CZE 
Shortly after the baptism, some mysterious events took place, as the result of
which Frank was taken to Częstochowa and imprisoned in the Jasna Góra mon-
astery. However, the sources on this subject are highly problematic. Both the
church documents and the Frankist sources agree that the cause was Frank’s
denunciation to the church authorities by his own supporters. Gaudenty
Pikulski, to whom for unknown reasons the denunciation was delivered, pub-
lished it in its entirety (while Konstanty Awedyk provided a detailed discus-
sion). The denunciation, which was made by sectarians from Frank’s closest
circles, provided the formal grounds for starting the inquisition by the Warsaw
consistory.15

14 It was admitted in the supplications to the Primate and the King, dated May 16, 1759, by
their signatories Shloma Shor and Jehuda Leib Krysa: “Several hundred souls of both gen-
ders, in the villages belonging to the table of the Kamieniec diocese, with no means to feed
ourselves, we rent accommodation and survive universally on charity which was sent to us
by our brothers from the kingdom of Hungaria, from Wallachia and other towns.” Quoted
after Kraushar, vol. 1, 140. See also the following reproach by Frank in 1784: “I told you in
Iwanie and I asked you: Where shall we find the money for our needs? You advised me to
send out to Hungary” (SP 176).
15 Gaudenty Pikulski, Złość żydowska przeciwko Bogu i bliźniemu, prawdzie i sumieniu na
objaśnienie talmudystów. Na dowód ich zaślepienia i religii dalekiej od prawa Boskiego przez
Mojżesza danego [ Jewish spite towards God, their neighbors, truth and conscience on the
basis of the revelations of the talmudists. As proof of their blindness and how far their reli-
gion is from God’s truth as revealed through Moses.] (Lwów, 1760), 334–38.

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268 Part Two    Historiographic Questions

Doubts arise not only from the contents of the denunciation—they

depart widely from what we know about Frank’s teachings at that time (and
we know quite a lot thanks to the many references to it in the The Words of the
Lord)—but also from the signatories, who stayed with Frank even after he was
imprisoned in the monastery and whom he did not reproach for the denun-
ciation. Even in 1866 the Frankist sources of Hipolit Skimborowicz did not
want to reveal the truth about these events. Frank indeed spoke about treason,
but he directed his accusation at entirely different individuals, whose names
Skimborowicz did not want to or could not reveal in public. Skimborowicz
only wrote that in the manuscript that was in his possession, Frank “names six
traitors who denounced him in Lwów, and mentions another six, whose con-
fessions threw him into the Częstochowa monastery. Indeed, the names we
have given above [the signatories of the denunciation submitted to Pikulski]
are not listed in the manuscript, but there are many other names, which again
we would not like to reveal here.”16
If his most faithful companions submitted a written denunciation of their
leader, proving that his teachings departed widely from Catholic orthodoxy,
and that he saw himself as a Jewish messiah, then what did they hope to achieve
with the denunciation? The sectarians’ spiritual guardians were not surprised
by the fact that the informers remained faithfully alongside his wife, moving
step by step with her, until they ended up in Częstochowa alongside Frank. We
can guess that they delivered the document with Frank’s agreement because
the church needed it as formal grounds for pursuing the steps agreed on with
Frank, and as a way of explaining their decisions to the public. Apart from this,
after the baptism a group of sectarians headed by Jehuda Krysa made their way
to Warsaw, independently of Frank,17 conducting talks there. It was they whom
Frank later accused of treason or at least of disloyalty.
Frank’s status in the fortress of Jasna Góra is not clear. The word arrest to
define Frank’s stay in the monastery is used only in Frankist sources (the Jewish
historians talk about imprisonment, while the church sources only mention
“residing”). The term arrest is surprising in the context of the events associated
with Frank’s stay in the fortress, as they are described in the same sources. And
so, two months before the announcement of an appropriate decision by the
church authorities, Frank arrived in Jasna Góra on February 4, 1760, with his
personal cook Kazimierz (probably due to fears of being poisoned), in his own

16 Skimborowicz, Żywot, skon i nauka, 60.

17 Kraushar, vol. 1, 162.

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 Frankism:The History of Jacob Frank or of the Frankists    269

coach—drawn by six horses purchased especially for this journey18—which

he then placed in storage with the bishop’s curia in Kraków, as if he expected to
leave soon afterward. Moreover, he was escorted by soldiers who were clearly
there for his security.19 He spent his first four days in the officers’ chamber,
then moved to dwellings especially prepared for him. Judging from these cir-
cumstances, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that his stay in Jasna Góra took
place with the knowledge and approval of the hierarchy—and, more than that,
resulted from some arrangements made between the hierarchy and Frank.
Bishop Kajetan Sołtyk’s takeover of the costs of maintaining Frank, his close
circle, and thirty families was probably part of those arrangements.
In this context, it is not surprising that he was quickly (though not imme-
diately) joined by his wife and children, who came to live with him, as well as
by his closest supporters, who settled in a nearby town for several years. He was
free to use the Hebrew writings he had brought with him and to stay in contact
with his circle. All this looks more like a residence in the safest (for Frank) place
in the commonwealth.
There is no church document mentioning a judicial trial at the consistory
or a sentence passed upon Frank. The only document that has survived is the
record of Frank’s interrogation—and only his, although reportedly his twelve
supporters who confirmed everything were also interviewed.20 On March 1,
1760, the priest Feliks Turski, the judicial officialis, circulated a document to
the clerical authorities; this was not the court ruling, but a proclamation (later
it was also published),21 in which he presented the official position of the
church in this matter. He stated enigmatically that “the Warsaw clerical author-
ities, having called upon the light of the Holy Spirit, have deemed it necessary
that the said Jacob Josef Frank from the community with others who are drawn
to the Holy Catholic Faith, be removed, and be put in a separate and safe place

18 “Going into arrest I bought myself a coach with horses” (SP 327). He must have done so
with the knowledge and assistance of the Church authorities, because after all he was staying
in the care of the Camaldolese Monastery in Bielany. In doing so he must have believed he
was not departing for very long.
19 “He had a convoy of royal lancers. A lieutenant sat with the Lord” (RA 58).
20 According to Awedyk, Opisanie wszystkich dworniejszych, 106, the first witness, Nah  . man
of Busko, confirmed the denunciation, “and the other eleven agreed with the first in their
answers.”
21 Uwiadomienie Zwierchności duchownej co do osoby Józefa Franka i żydów przechodzących na
wiarę chrześcijańską [Informing the religious hierarchy about the person Józef Frank and
Jews who converted to Christianity], Druk Biblioteki Ossolińskich, 1760, No.: 54874; see
Kraushar, vol. 1, 18 and 318.

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270 Part Two    Historiographic Questions

until a further Judgment of the Holy See in Rome, which is suited to judge
questions of faith.”
Some very interesting details of Frank’s stay in Jasna Góra were noted
by Cardinal Giuseppe Garampi (1725–92), who was the apostolic nuncio
in Warsaw from 1772. When he learned at the beginning of 1776 that he
was appointed the apostolic nuncio in Vienna22 and that Jacob Frank—
who after leaving the commonwealth settled in Brno, Moravia—would be
in his “care,” the nuncio made his way to Jasna Góra to question the Pauline
monks about their long-term ex-resident. He could expect that, three years
after Frank’s departure from Częstochowa, they would speak of him quite
openly. This is how he summed up his conversations with the Paulines in
his diary:23

I asked around about the behavior of Frank, the neophyte, who had
already been removed [relegate]. He took part in the Holy Mass every day,
was very godly and devoted; he spent the rest of his day in the study of
Hebrew books and writing. General Bibikov, who stayed there at the time
[after the fortress was seized by the Russians], talked to him a great deal.
And so did Prince Golitsyn. They talked even more with his daughter,
whom Frank had beside him. However, she did not part from her father
and turned out to be highly virtuous [onestissima]. Later Bibikov returned
to Warsaw and made an order to release [reliascatio] Frank, which did

22 Giuseppe Garampi was a confidante of Pope Clement XIV and represented him in 1764 at
the coronation of Joseph II Habsburg in Frankfurt am Main. In 1772, he became the papal
nuncio in Warsaw, and from 1775 he held the office of the nuncio in Vienna until 1785, that
is, throughout Frank’s stay in Brno. In the same year, Frank left for Offenbach. It is highly
probable that they met personally during Frank’s several visits to Vienna. It is puzzling that
this great clergyman and intellectual was a nuncio only in Warsaw and Vienna, and precisely
at the time when Frank was staying in Poland and Austria. Was he perhaps supervising him
and his case on behalf of the Holy See? It was probably Frank who mediated the arrange-
ments with regard to his new residence in Brno, Moravia, and who secured the Emperor’s
protection. He knew a good deal about Frank, but he was clearly surprised by what he heard
from the Pauline monks in Jasna Góra.
23 Extensive excerpts from the diary were published by Ignaz Philipp Dengel, Nuntius Josef
Garampi in preussisch Schlesien und in Sachsen im Jahre 1776. Quellen und Forschungen aus
italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken [Nuncio Josef Garampi in Prussian Silesia and in
Saxony in the year 1776. Sources and studies from Italian archives and libraries], vol. 5
(Rome: Loescher & Co., 1903), 223–68. The only scholar to pay attention to those notes
was Jakub Szacki, “An unbekanter makor tsu Jakob Franks biografye” [An unknown source
to the biography of Jakob Frank], Yivo bleter, Journal of the Yiddish Scientific Institute 34
(1950): 294–96.

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 Frankism:The History of Jacob Frank or of the Frankists    271

happen. He is now staying in the lands of Austria and lives in opulence,

because again swarms of supporters are running to him with gifts.24

The monks had no reservations about the behavior of Frank and his daughter
and did not treat them as prisoners but residents.

THE EXILE IN BRNO AND THE UNIFICATION OF THE NEOPHYTE

CAMP UNDER FRANK’S LEADERSHIP
When the confederates surrendered the monastery to the Russians on August
18, 1772, after the two-year siege and eighteen days of intensive fighting,
together with the residents Frank and his family, General Bibikov—having
consulted with the Russian mission in Warsaw—ordered Frank to leave the
monastery. Frank, by then an unwanted resident, returned to Warsaw but “took
the back roads”25 in his own coach, which he collected from the bishop. But not
for long.
One might wonder, did Frank want to leave the commonwealth or was he
forced to? Nobody wanted him there—neither the Jews, the church, nor the
neophytes whom he had convinced or forced to change religion. This is how
he reproached the remorseful neophytes in 1784 in Brno: “Having left deten-
tion and arrived in Warsaw, I found none of you, and hence you blasphemed to
the rulers, I had to leave the country that is God’s succession. After all you had
heard from me that I would go for Poland, and I had to go to another country,
until this day.”26 We can conclude from these bitter words that it was the sec-
tarians and neophytes who did not want Frank among them and it was they
who persuaded the authorities to throw him out of the country. It is interesting
that to the end of his life Frank regretted leaving not just Poland but even the
Jasna Góra monastery—“It would have been better for me to remain detained
in Częstochowa till this moment”27—and he did not think of the time he spent

24 “Rochiesi quel che ne fu del neofito Frank giá quivi relegato. Questo sentiva la S. messa ogni
giono e mostravasi divoto; nel resto della gioranata studiava libri ebraici e scrivea. Il generale
Bibicov, allorchèfu qui, si compiacquè molto Della sua conversazione, come se ne compia-
ceva il principe Galiczin, e piu ancora della foglia che Frank avea seco, la duale però non si
discontáva mai dal fianco del padre ed era onestissima. Bibicov tornado poi a Varsavia mandò
l’ordine, acciò Frank fosse rilascatio, e così seguì. ora è nei stati austriaci e si trata sfarzosa-
mente, giachè dai suoi seguaci raccoglie frequenticontribuzioni.” I. Ph. Dengel, vol. 5, 239.
25 RA 83.
26 SP 114.
27 Ibid., 595.

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272 Part Two    Historiographic Questions

there as wasted: “I spent time in Częstochowa, and I took from there what
I needed.”28
It is very telling that the Polish authorities refused to grant Frank a pass-
port to leave the country, which in fact meant that he would have no right of
return to the commonwealth. However, he was issued passports by the envoys
of the three states partitioning Poland: Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Neither
of his two surviving passports mention Frank’s nationality or his origins. They
emphasize, instead, that he was a merchant, therefore leading an itinerant life.
Though he was leaving the commonwealth, there was no question of his being
a subject of the Polish king.29
Almost immediately after Frank crossed the southern border of the
commonwealth, the Austrian imperial court began to receive the first denun-
ciations of him—even before the informers knew his place of abode. The
authorities in Vienna and then Brno set up investigating proceedings, from
which a large proportion of the documentation has been preserved.30 A partic-
ularly strong impact was made (though seemingly mainly on historians) by the
denunciation of a Jacob Galiński and sent first to Vienna and then—in virtually
unchanged form—to Brno, when Frank’s presence in the city became publicly
known. Preserved in the Viennese archive, and published first in translation by
Aleksander Kraushar and then in the original German by other historians, it
was and still is treated as a primary source of knowledge about the history and
doctrine of the sect—originating as it does from the sect’s heart. Like other
denunciations of Frank that were sent to the Austrian authorities—and treated
by them as devoid of any foundation or credibility—it did not have an impact
on the history of Frankism. The credibility of Galinski’s denunciation, and
indeed of its author, is highly questionable. There are many signs indicating
that it is not the work of a rebel neophyte from Frank’s camp, but of the here-
siarch’s Jewish opponents.31
The rift in the sectarian-neophyte camp did not last forever—they had
too much in common, and solidarity in a new environment was too great a
value to sacrifice on the altar of the faction leaders’ personal ambitions. We

28 Ibid., 474.
29 The text of the two preserved passports was published by Kraushar, vol. 2, 3–4.
30 An extensive section was published by Oskar K. Rabinowicz, “Jacob Frank in Brno,” JQR,
New Series 57 (1967): 429–45.
31 I have written on this subject in “Historycy frankizmu i ich źródła: fałszerze, wydawcy i inter-
pretatorzy” [The historians of frankism and their sources: forgers, publishers and interpret-
ers], Jewish History Quarterly 1, no. 245 (March 2014): 101–6.

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 Frankism:The History of Jacob Frank or of the Frankists    273

do not know the circumstances under which Frank managed to win over the
hearts and minds of the majority of the messianic neophytes, but this almost
certainly happened after the death of Dominik Antoni Krysiński and on the
wave of the new messianic proclamations. We learn a little about the course of
events from this note included in Rozmaite adnotacje (Various annotations):

In 1784 a messenger arrived in Brünn and then the Lord gave an order
to write this letter, saying that the lambs will be led through the hands of
the shepherd.32 On 7 November the Lord gave a sign and said: this week
begins a new year for the company; blessed be the one who lasts, that one
will be signed into the register, even though they had signed long ago but
are still hesitating. At the same time he demanded that even those who
had been to Brünn should sign into the register, and the Lord himself
signed his and [his wife’s] names. On the 26th the register returned from
Warsaw and everyone was signed in.33

We are clearly dealing here with a breakthrough moment in the sect’s history,
which was marked by the arrival in Brno of the mysterious messenger. We can
guess that the messenger brought from Warsaw a loyalty declaration from the
sectarians who so far had not recognized Frank’s leadership and mandate. Now
this was confirmed by personal enrollment in a new “register” of the faithful,
which was to guarantee salvation.
In 1784 Frank accused the repentant sectarians, who had come to Brno,
saying that for twenty-five years they had been following some (unnamed) rival
of his, and only recently found shelter under his wing:

You should have said, we were going to that state [i.e., baptism] behind
our leader, why should we listen to another man? . . . but you instantly
turned your backs on me, and were opposed to me, and followed the
blind, and said that a soul was already in the world and that you recog-
nized who had what soul, and you gave support and searched for other
foreign gods, which I did not order you to do; I understood I would have
a vineyard, but here only dry bushes remained. Lastly, after leaving

32 Jeremiah 33:13. This chapter of the prophesy announces the renewal of the covenant and
forgives the apostates their sins: I shall purify them of all the sins with which they transgressed
against Me and I shall forgive them all their misdeeds with which they sinned against Me and
disobeyed Me ( Jeremiah 33:9).
33 RA 100.

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274 Part Two    Historiographic Questions

detention and reaching Warsaw, I did not find any of you, and hence you
had blasphemed to the rulers, I had to leave the country that was God’s
succession; after all you had heard from me that I would go for Poland,
and I had to go to another country, until this day, and this for you, so you
would not perish eternally. God save and I with you together [sic]. From
this day at least stay united.34

It was at that time, in 1784, when—clearly on Frank’s own instructions—they

began recording his “chats” (which is what Frank calls his speeches in the oldest
known manuscript of Słówa Pańskie [The Words of the Lord], quoted exten-
sively by Hipolit Skimborowicz); these were addressed primarily—as is clear
from their content—to new followers from the until then rival sectarian-neo-
phyte faction. This meant breaking up with the till-then strictly observed sec-
tarian tradition that forbade recording in writing not only the doctrine but also
any inside details regarding the sect’s way of life.35
To strengthen his authority, particularly among newly recruited followers,
Frank ordered that same year, 1784, that “each man should appear three times
a year.”36 However, he could not see larger groups of Polish neophytes in the
modest house in Brno’s Petersburgerstrasse without attracting police attention.
Immediate efforts were therefore made to find a new residence, where Frank
could set up a court appropriate to the new requirements.37 He finally found
such a place in the castle of Wolfgang Ernst II of Isenburg in Offenbach, which
had been abandoned since the Thirty Years’ War. Here, after refurbishing it, he
spent the last years of his life surrounded by crowds of followers, mainly from
the commonwealth.38 There are no grounds to support the view, popular in the

34 SP 114.
35 On the circumstances of the origin and history of the edition of Words of the Lord see
J. Doktór, “The Words of the Lord: Jakub Frank at the crossroads of esotericism,” Jewish
History Quarterly 3, no. 259 (September 2016).
36 I.e., at Frank’s court; SP 424.
37 Echoes of these efforts can be found in RA 108: in 1785 “Franciszek and Michał Wołowski
took a letter to [Teodor] Wessel the treasurer, announcing that the Lord wished to stay at his
residence. They wished to go and view his palace in Pilica [Libartowska Wola near Pilica] on
his estate, but the Lord wrote [telling them] not to go there until such time as the Lord lets
them know about it.”
38 Werner estimates that sometimes up to four hundred resided there: Klaus Werner, “Versuch
einer Quantifizierung des Frank’schen Gefolge in Offenbach am Main 1788–1818” [An
attempt to quantify Frank’s adherents in Offenbach am Main 1788-1818], Frankfurter
Judaistische Beiträge 14 (Frankfurt Judaic Studies, 1986): 153–212, and by the same author:
“Ein neues ‘Frankistendokument,’” Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 17 (1990): 201–11.

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 Frankism:The History of Jacob Frank or of the Frankists    275

literature, that for some reason the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II expelled
Frank from his territories. It was Frank himself who abandoned his current
protector and moved over to a more convenient place. The Austrian archives
contain no documents regarding the circumstances of his departure. Rozmaite
adnotacje gives the laconic information that in June 1786, “the Lord and the
Emperor had a great skirmish in Laxenburg. The Emperor told the Lord to
send away all the people and pay all the debts.”39 This note can be interpreted
in various ways, but the earlier efforts to find a better location for Frank abroad
suggest that this is how the emperor reacted to the information that the neo-
phyte had scorned his care and protection.

FRANKISM AFTER FRANK’S DEATH

The image of the charismatic patriarch of the neophytes and his court in
Offenbach was later extrapolated by historians and feature writers and applied
to both the earlier and later history of the movement. This is particularly true
with regard to the court of his daughter Eva, who remained in Offenbach for
twenty-five years after Frank’s death and was promoted by historians to the rank
of the sect’s leader. Mysterious documents—which appeared under extraordi-
nary circumstances several decades after her death and disappeared straight
after publication—were very helpful to this end.40 First came the memoirs of
Moses Porges, describing the Frankist courts in Offenbach in two versions:
one was related by Leopold Stein on the basis of Porges’s story, and the other
was allegedly written by Porges himself. Added to this are the wonderfully
discovered records of the interrogations of three Frankist fugitives from Eva’s
Offenbach court—one of them Porges—conducted in 1800 in Fürth. There
is also a similar record of an interrogation from Kollin. These testimonies cor-
roborate one another as well as Porges’s memoirs, and thus lend each other
credence. However, they do not agree with historical facts and the documents
preserved in the city archives of Offenbach. It is worth taking a closer look at
these documents, which are still regarded by historians as the primary and
indeed only sources of knowledge about the court of Frank’s children.
The first to come to light were the memoirs of Porges von Portheim in
the journal Achawa. Vereinsbuch [Love. A Book of the Association]. They were
published there by the Prague rabbi Leopold Stein, who maintained that it

39 RA 103.
40 See Doktór, “Historycy frankizmu,” 95–101.

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276 Part Two    Historiographic Questions

was the verbatim account—recorded by the rabbi himself—of a respected

Prague factory owner, unnamed but still alive, who had spent a year and a half
in the court of Eva Frank in Offenbach at the end of the eighteenth century.41
However, the issue of these memoirs’ authorship—both those published by
Stein and the later reworked and expanded version—remains unclear. This is
because of the involvement of two von Portheim brothers, the sons of Gabriel
Porges, who were to stay at Eva Frank’s court between 1798 and 1799: Moses
(1781–1870) and Leopold (1785–1869). In Stein’s account the matter seems
straightforward: his interlocutor says that “after half a year my younger brother
arrived in my wake”42—so it appears that the author of the account is Moses,
and his younger brother is Leopold. But other documents say otherwise.
Stein ended his story with an announcement that he would provide a more
extensive written testimony.43 And indeed such a testimony did come into
being, though quite late. It did not find its way into the hands of historians until
1929, and one can doubt whether its author is Moses Porges, as was claimed by
its first publisher Natan M. Gelber. The “original” manuscript of Porges’s mem-
oirs, written in German, was supposedly in the possession of the von Portheim
family. Gelber translated the text into Yiddish and published it.44 He admitted in
the introduction that he had never seen the original and only had at his disposal
a copy of a fragment, prepared in Vienna by the scholar and collector Max von
Portheim. The manuscript containing the complete memoirs was said to be in the
possession of Mrs. Augusta Portheim in Smichov near Prague. But Gelber did not
even try to get hold of it and was satisfied with a copy, which he deemed credible.
Three years later the “original” German text of Porges’s memoirs, or, strictly
speaking, the fragments concerning the court of Eva Frank, was published by
the rabbi of Frankfurt am Main, Caesar Seligmann.45 The text does not differ
from Gelber’s translation, but we are told by the publisher that it certainly did
not originate from the Viennese Portheim family. The rabbi was to discover it in
Frankfurt itself in the collection of the Meyer family (“Frankfurter Freiherrlich

41 Leopold Stein, “Mittheilung über die Frankistensekte” [A pilgrimage to Offenbach], in

Achawa Vereinsbuch [Love. A book of the association] (1868), 154–68.
42 Stein, “Mittheilung über die Frankistensekte” [Information of the Frankist sect], 159.
43 Ibid., 160.
44 Natan M. Gelber, “Di zikhroynes fun Moses Porges” [Memoirs of Moses Porges], YIVO
Historishe Shriftn I (1929) col. 253–296.
45 Caecar Seligman, “Eine Wallfahrt nach Offenbach,” Frankfurter israelitisches Gemeindeblatt
[The communal bulletin of the Frankfurt Jewish community] 6–7 (February–March
1932): 121–23 and 150–51. This edition has one paragraph missing, which was published
by Gelber in the Yiddish translation.

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 Frankism:The History of Jacob Frank or of the Frankists    277

von Meyerschen Familie”). The author of those memoirs, s­ upposedly, was not
Moses but—according to Kraushar—Leopold Porges. Nor does the publisher
mention the fact that the published memoirs of the stay at the court of Eva
Frank were a fragment of a greater whole.
Gelber not only published Porges’s “memoirs” in Yiddish but also other
documents concerning the Offenbach court translated by him from the
Hebrew manuscript; this too was not the original, but merely a copy. Scores of
years earlier, in 1877, the documents had been published in German transla-
tion by Rabbi Samuel Back.46 The story of their origins and publication is very
unclear, not to say suspect. Back took them from the archives of the Prague
council. As he wrote in his introduction, they belonged to Podiebrad, the secre-
tary who had received them from the descendants of Landau; now the council
board had decided to make them available to the historian for the purposes of
publication. There is no other confirmation that these documents existed in
the Prague archive, and if they did ever exist, they mysteriously disappeared
from there immediately after their publication.47 However, copies were discov-
ered in the archive of Max Portheim and from there they found their way to
Gelber. As in the case of the Porges memoirs, neither the original records of the
interviews nor the copies on which their publication was based have survived.
The Porges story takes place in 1798 and 1799 in the castle at Offenbach,
where the Frank siblings (Eva and her brothers Roch and Joseph) were to live,
along with a large number of servants, guards, teachers, resident Frankists from
Warsaw and the Czech area, and, finally, guests. Similarly, in the second version
of the memoirs, published by Gelber and Seligman, we read of the “residents of
a castle” that had a huge courtyard and was surrounded by walls. In reality, after
her father died and the Polish Frankists left Offenbach, Eva moved with a small
number of courtiers (maids) to a fairly small house, “Zu den drei Schweizern,”
at the corner of Frankfurter and Canalstrasse (now Kaiserstrasse), and in 1796
to a two-story house at the junction of Canalstrasse and Judenstrasse, which
could not contain such a large company as Porges described, and where there

46 Samuel Back, “Aufgefundene Aktenstücke zur Geschichte der Frankisten in Offenbach”

[Frankist court documents found in Offenbach], Monatsschrift für Geschichte und
Wissenschaft des Judenthums [Monthly for the history and study of Jewry] (1877): 189–92
and 232–40. Aleksander Kraushar either did not know this publication or ignored it.
47 Gershom Scholem in Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 7 ( Jerusalem 1971), col. 70 says: “The
important file on the Frankists in the Prague community archives was removed by the pres-
ident of the community at the end of the nineteenth century, out of respect for the families
implicated in it.”

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278 Part Two    Historiographic Questions

would be no space for military exercises and parades. Similarly, there were no
walls on which they were to keep guard, and which the three runaways were
supposed to leap over. In fact, we do not know how many of them there were.
In Stein the only escapees are Moses Porges and his brother. In the reports
from Fürth there are already three of them: besides the Porges brothers, there
is Jonas Hofsinger, which is why in the second version of Porges’s memoirs,
published by Gelber and Seligman, there are also three.
The same is true with regard to other details. The description of the
teachings that were allegedly conducted at Eva’s court by three elders with
long beards wearing Polish outfits is purely fantastical. In Encyclopedia Judaica,
Gershom Scholem even identified the elders by name, seeing in them the edi-
tors of Słowa Pańskie.48 The description comes from Porges’s account pub-
lished by Stein. Then it was simply copied from that publication into the later
memoirs he allegedly wrote up himself. The tale of the elders dressed in the
Polish way, wearing long beards and giving lectures in Hebrew—according to
the second version of Porges’s memoirs—is quite striking in its absurdity. We
know from other sources that before being baptized Frankists shaved off their
beards and never grew them again. It is also doubtful if any of them would have
been able to lecture in a language of which they did not have active command
even in their Jewish youth.
The authors of the documents had only a faint idea of what went on at
Eva’s court and even of where it was located. It is also certain that Porges never
stayed at Eva Frank’s court in Offenbach—he would at least have known where
she resided at the time. Besides, it would defy reason for the young sectarians
from Prague’s prominent Jewish families, allegedly escaping from conscription,
to make their way to the “Polenhaus” in Offenbach—as Eva Frank’s house was
colloquially known—whose residents were closely watched by their neighbors,
the authorities, and the police. The presence of young Jews from Prague in the
small town (at the time it had about five thousand residents), and their weekly
attendance at the Holy Mass for as long as a year and a half, would have been
quickly noticed and noted.

48 Cf. entry “Frank Jacob” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 7, 69: “The literary activity of the
sect began at the end of Frank’s life, and was centred at first at Offenbach in the hands of
three learned ‘elders’, who were among his chief disciples: the two brothers Franciszek and
Michael Wołowski (from the well-known rabbinic family Shor) and Andreas Dembowski
(Yeruham Lippmann from Czerniowitz). At the end of the eighteenth century they com-
piled a collection of Frank’s teachings and reminiscences, containing nearly 2,300 sayings
and stories, gathered together in the book Słowa Pańskie (The words of the Master; Heb.‚
divrei ha-adon‘) which was sent to circles of believers.”

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 Frankism:The History of Jacob Frank or of the Frankists    279

The fixation on these documents of questionable value (they could

r­ easonably be described as fake) is even more surprising when we consider that
other Frankist documents that emerged after Frank’s death are either ignored
or treated in a cursory manner. The most significant of these are the letter from
Frank’s last secretary, Antoni Czerniewski, to the Warsaw machna;49 the anony-
mous “Isaiah Prophesies”;50 and the so-called “Red Letter.”51 These three docu-
ments are the only credible Frankist testimonies that emerged after Frank’s death.
They deserve careful and critical analysis because the circumstances of their
origin are not entirely clear, and their clarification could expand our knowledge
of the final period of the history of the sect. Another key could and should be the
analysis of all the fully preserved or quoted fragments of the manuscripts of Słowa
Pańskie. The story (very tangled, so it seems) of their editing; the chronological
order of the making of copies; the removal, addition, and encoding of inconve-
nient information; the internal polemics (e.g., “The letter from Jakubowski of
Warsaw” in the so-called Brulion Lubelski—the Lublin Notebook)—all these can
reveal the history from another perspective.
To recapitulate: we have an exceptional number of sources concerning the
history of Frankism but these are of an extremely varied degree of credibility
and are often dubious. Further, the way in which historians make use of them
gives rise to doubt. Consequently, the depiction of Frankism in the literature
on the subject is still very imperfect and—as I hope this text has illustrated—
requires considerable revision.

Translated from Polish by Barbara Howard

49 It was published by Kraushar, vol. 2, 94–96, who however dated it incorrectly, believing that
it regarded Czerniewski’s actual diplomatic mission from an earlier period, when Frank was
living in Brno, Moravia.
50 Extensive excerpts were published by in his monograph, Frank i frankiści polscy, vol. 2, 186–
218.
51 The letter was published on several occasions. First, Peter Beer published a German trans-
lation of the letter addressed to the kahal of Prague. Peter Beer, Geschichte, Lehren und
Meinungen aller bestandenen und noch heute bestehenden religiösen Sekten der Juden und der
Geheimlehre oder Kabbalah [The history, doctrine and opinions of all former and still exist-
ing religious sects among the Jews and the secret doctrine of the Kabbalah], vol. 2 (Brno,
1923), 319–39. Second, Mark Wisznicer published the letter in the original Hebrew and
Russian translation addressed to the communities of Crimea (Tataria)—Mark Wisznicer,
Posłanie frankistow 1800 goda [A Letter from the Frankists of 1800] (Petersburg, 1914).
Third, the letter was published along with a facsimile by Ben Zion Wacholder, Hebrew Union
College Annual 53 (1982): 265–93. All three letters sound almost identical and differ only in
minor detail.

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