After considerable preparations, the disputation between the leaders of the Contra-Talmudists and a number of rabbis took place in Kamenetz, in the summer of 1757, in the presence of Bishop Dembovski and representatives of the Catholic clergy. The contest lasted seven days. The discussions centered around certain peculiar utterances in the Talmudic Haggada, which the Frankists cited as evidence of the "blasphemous" character of the Talmud. The rabbis retorted feebly, hampered by their inadequate mastery of the Polish language; moreover, when the dispute turned on the fundamental dogmas of Judaism, they refused to discuss them in the presence of Catholic priests. The Bishop received the impression that the Talmudists had been defeated. In the autumn of 1757 he issued a rescript imposing a fine upon the Talmudists, to be paid out to their opponents, for having insulted them at the fair of Lantzkorona, and ordering that all Talmud copies found in the diocese of Podolia be taken away from their owners and delivered to the flames.
The revolting scenes of the time of Louis IX., of France, and Pope Paul IV. were re-enacted. Thousands of Talmud copies were taken away from the Jews and carried to Kamenetz, where they were publicly burned on the market-place. The sectarians witnessed their revenge on their persecutors and triumphed. It is difficult to say how this triumph would have ended, had not Bishop Dembovski suddenly died, in November, 1757. The sectarians were deprived of their mainstay, and became again the target of the Kahal authorities. In 1758 they finally succeeded in obtaining a safe-conduct from King Augustus III., but even this could not rescue them from the uncomfortable position peculiar to those who, having forfeited the sympathies of their own, have not yet been able to gain the confidence of strangers.
At that critical juncture the sectarians decided to recall Jacob Frank, their leader, from Turkey. The latter immediately appeared in Podolia with a new plan, which, he hoped, would at once rid him and his adherents of all opponents. In the discourses delivered before his followers Frank dwelt a great deal on his exalted mission and on the divine revelations which commanded him to follow in the footsteps of Sabbatai Zevi. Just as Sabbatai had been compelled to embrace the Mohammedan faith temporarily, so he and his adherents were predestined from above to adopt the Christian religion as a mere disguise and as a stepping-stone to the "faith of the true Messiah." Filled with thirst for revenge, the sectarians hit upon the fiendish thought of lending the weight of their testimony to the hideous ritual murder accusation, which was agitating the whole of Poland at that time, claiming many a victim in the Jewish ranks.
In 1759 the Frankists were busily engaged in negotiations with the highest representatives of the Polish Church concerning their proposed conversion to Christianity. They requested at the same time that they be allowed to hold a public disputation with the rabbis, whom they hoped to expose before the non-Jews. The Primate of the Polish Church Lubinski and the Papal Nuncio Serra received the advances of the Frankists with considerable skepticism. But the temporary administrator of the diocese of Lemberg, Canon Mikolski, insisted that their request be complied with. A second religious disputation between the Talmudists and the Frankists, presided over by Mikolski, was held in Lemberg, and took up eleven sessions (July-August, 1759). At this disputation the Orthodox Jews were represented by a number of Talmudists, headed by the Rabbi of Lemberg, Hayyim Rapoport, while the cause of the sectarians was championed by Solomon Shorr and Leib Krysa, the principal associates of Frank, as well as several learned Catholic theologians.
The sectarians advanced seven theses as a basis for discussion. Six dealt with the Messianic belief and the dogma of the Trinity, the latter having been practically adopted by them in its Christian formulation. The seventh asserted that "the Talmud considers the use of Christian blood obligatory." The discussion about the first six clauses was rather tame and conventional, largely owing to the fact that the rabbis, who were afraid of offending the religious susceptibilities of the Christians, declined in many cases to state their views. Only when it came to the last point, the malicious accusation of ritual murder, were the rabbis energetic in refuting it, protesting vehemently against the Frankists, who openly appeared as the enemies of their people.
When the disputation was over, the sectarians were called upon to prove their devotion to Christianity by immediate action. The conversion of the Frankists began. The baptismal ceremony was performed with great solemnity in the churches of Lemberg, members of the Polish nobility acting as sponsors. The neophytes assumed the family names and titles of their godfathers, and in this way received admission into the ranks of the Polish nobility. In Lemberg alone 514 men and women, among them Leib Krysa, Solomon Shorr, and the other fellow-workers of Frank, were converted in the course of 1759 and 1760. Frank entered Lemberg with great pomp, riding in a carriage drawn by six horses and surrounded by a large body-guard. Here he submitted to a preliminary baptism, desiring to complete the ceremony with greater solemnity in Warsaw. Having arrived in the Polish capital, Frank petitioned King Augustus III. to act as his godfather. The King consented, and the conversion of the sectarian chief to Catholicism took place in November, 1759, with extraordinary splendor, in the presence of the royal family and the court dignitaries. At his baptism Jacob Frank assumed the name Joseph.
However, the attitude of the Polish clergy towards the newly-converted sectarians remained as skeptical as theretofore. Frank's obscure past, his strange manner of living, the reverence accorded to him by his followers, who styled him the "Holy Lord"—all this was bound to arouse the suspicion of the ecclesiastic authorities. The indiscretion of some Frankists, or perhaps a secret denunciation, confirmed the clergy in their suspicions. They learned that the conversion of the sectarians had been an act of hypocrisy, that Frank continued to pose among them as Messiah and "Holy Lord," and that the Trinity professed by them had very little in common with the corresponding Christian dogma. They decided to investigate the matter, and, in case their suspicion should prove true, to indict the leaders of the sect before the ecclesiastic courts.
In January, 1760, Frank was arrested in Warsaw by order of the highest Church authorities, and subjected to a searching cross-examination. With all his astuteness, the chief of the Frankists failed to convince the judges of his Christian Orthodoxy. Many of the depositions made by his disciples or by himself only strengthened the case against him. The ecclesiastic court, having previously ascertained the attitude of Rome through the Papal Nuncio, sentenced Frank to imprisonment in the citadel of Chenstokhov and to detention in the local monastery, so as to prevent all contact with his followers.
Thirteen years (1760–1772) Frank remained in the citadel, but the Catholic clergy failed in its purpose. The Frankists continued their relations with the "Holy Lord," who as a suffering Messiah was now surrounded in their eyes with a new halo. They even managed to penetrate into Chenstokhov itself, and settled in large numbers on the outskirts of the town, which, in accordance with old Messianic notions, they designated as "the gates of Rome."197 They beheld in Frank's fate a repetition of the destiny of Sabbatai Zevi, who had been equally kept prisoner in the castle of Abydos, near the capital of Turkey. They were inspired by Frank's mystical discourses and epistles, the gist of which was that their only salvation lay in the "holy religion of Edom," a term by which he understood a strange medley of Christian and Sabbatian ideas. The new religion was devoid of any truly religious or moral element, and the same applies to the life of Frank, who cynically expressed himself to his followers: "I have come to rid the world of all the laws and statutes which have been in existence hitherto." There was nothing reminding one of an apostle about the conduct of the "Holy Lord," based