Followers of the pseudo-Messiah Jacob Frank. They formed a Shabbatean sect, many members of which formally embraced Catholicism in 1759, although continuing to maintain various Jewish practices in secret. Among themselves, the Frankists were known as "believers" or "Zoharites." Although no scholar, Jacob Frank (1726-1791), the movement's leader, was an ambitious and charismatic personality. He was influenced by the doctrines of Shabbetai Tsevi, first in his native Podolia and later in Turkey, where he made contact with the Dönmeh and began to regard himself as a reincarnation of Shabbetai Tsevi, the 17th-century false Messiah. Declaring that he would complete Shabbetai Tsevi's mission, Frank developed a kabbalistic theology that was an amalgam of Jewish and Christian beliefs. Frank's theology, however, was much simpler than that of Shabbetai Tsevi. According to his system, which closely paralleled the Christian trinity, God's nature consisted of three separate incarnations: the "First One" (Shabbetai Tsevi), the "Holy Lord" (Jacob Frank), and "the Lady," a female Messiah (or, as Frank referred to her, "the Virgin," namely, a combination of the Shekhinah and the Virgin Mary).
Frank demanded of his followers an ironclad commitment to religious nihilism. The true "believer" had to be prepared for "descent into the abyss," which meant not only abandoning all religious and moral codes but indulging in orgiastic sexual rites as well (see Antinomianism). To pursue these goals successfully, adherents had to assume the "burden of silence." They were expected to pass from one religion to another, their ultimate goal being the attainment of "secret knowledge." Conversion to Christianity was simply one means of attaining that objective.
After a ban of Excommunication had been pronounced against them at Brody in 1756, the "Zoharites" enlisted the support of Nicholas Dembowski, the Catholic bishop of Kamenets-Podolski, who ordered the excommunicating rabbis to defend the Talmud at a public Disputation in the following year. When the rabbis were judged to have lost the debate, thousands of copies of the Talmud were seized and burned. Two years later, in 1759, another disputation was held and this time the rabbinical spokesmen outwitted their opponents. Shortly afterwards, thousands of Frankists converted to Catholicism, Jacob Frank himself arranging to be baptized a second time in Warsaw Cathedral. However, when the Polish clergy learned that his trinitarian doctrine was not identical with that of Christianity and that he was still regarded by his followers as the Messiah, Frank was arrested and spent 13 years in prison (1760-1773). As had been the case with Shabbetai Tsevi, imprisonment enhanced Frank's Messianic stature among the "believers." Upon his release, he moved to Brno and later to Offenbach (near Frankfurt), where the sect was reorganized under the "Holy Lord" (who now styled himself "Baron von Frank"). Subsequently, from 1791 until 1817, it degenerated still further under "the Queen" (Frank's daughter Eva-Emunah) and then ceased to exist. Many well-to-do Frankists intermarried with the Polish aristocracy; their descendants included Adam Mickiewicz, Poland's national poet. Others, in Bohemia and elsewhere, reverted to Judaism. See also Messianic Movements.
