"A RELIC OF THE DAYS OF WITCHCRAFT AND BLACK MAGIC."

ON 6th May, 1912, The Times published a letter, signed by many men of authority, protesting against what they called the revival of "the hideous charge of Ritual Murder" which was being brought against a Jew at Kiev. "The Blood Accusation," they said, "is a relic of the days of Witchcraft and Black Magic."

Unfortunately for the signatories of this letter, who numbered among them the Archbishops of Canterbury, York and Armagh, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Bishops galore, Dukes, Earls, Justices, Masters of Colleges and Editors, of that period, the Blood Accusation has nothing medieval about it at all; it was more rife in the 19th century than it was in medieval times!

Unfortunately also, Black Magic is in the same category. It is not medieval either; there never was a wider cult of Black Magic than there is in the year of Our Lord 1938!

How extraordinary it is that influential men can be induced to sign such a statement as I have quoted! And how strange it is that, where Jewish interests are at stake, these same influential Christian men will see nothing improper in attempting to prejudice the course of the criminal trial of the Jew Beiliss at Kiev, a course which they would never pursue in any other cause!

Let us confound the signatories of The Times letter out of the mouths of Jews themselves. The Jewish Encyclopedia, 1903, Vol. III, pp. 266-7, gives a list of Accusations of Ritual Murder made against the Jews through the centuries; 122 cases are listed in chronological order, and no less than 39 of them were made in the 19th century! There were far more than double the number of Blood Accusations made in the 19th century than in any previous century, according to this authoritative Jewish list.

Let us examine the list of Ritual Murder Accusations made by a converted Jew, Cesare Algranati, in 1913, and published in Cahiers Romains; here are listed 101 accusations, of which 28 were made in the 19th century and only 73 for all the eight preceding centuries! Even the Jew Roth gives the argument away, for he says (p. 16 of his Ritual Murder Libel and the Jew, 1935), "The nineteenth century proved little less credulous than those which preceded it."

"Anti-semitic" authors' lists of Blood Accusations agree in this respect with the lists made by Jews; Der Störmer, the paper of Julius Streicher, in a special Ritual Murder issue published in 1934, shows that in the 19th century 32 charges of ritual murder were made, which is ten more than in any other century in European history recorded by it.

The fact that the charges increase in number as the age becomes more and more enlightened is particularly significant, because the Jewish Money Power and its silencing activities are more developed than ever before and might have been expected to reduce the number of charges.

Sufficient has now been said to expose the absurdity of any attempt to consign the Blood Accusation to any medieval limbo.

It lives to-day; I may say with the great Sir Richard Burton (The Jew, the Gypsy and El Islam, 1898, p. 129): "At any rate, sufficient has been advanced in these pages to open the eyes of the student and the ethnographer; it will stand on record until Elijah."

CHAPTER VI.

"IT COULDN'T HAPPEN NOW."

THIS argument, "It couldn't happen now," seems quite good enough for a lot of people when it is applied to the matter of Jewish Ritual Murder. It is, perhaps, comforting to the democratic mind to think that "Progress" ensures that such an evil practice, even if it occurred in unenlightened days, could not have survived to-day.

I wish I could see any comfort in this argument, but I don't. There are no facts to support it.

That the Aryan peoples have progressed I do not deny; but I do not think there is any evidence to show any like progress among some of the other races.

Compare the following two happenings, noting the dates:

A.D. 117. From the account of Dio Cassius in 78th Book of his history, Chapter 32:

"Then the Jews in Cyrene (on the modern Tripoli coast of North Africa) choosing as their leader one Andreas, slew the Romans and Greeks, and devoured their bodies, drank the blood, clothed themselves in the flayed skins, and sawed many in half from the head downwards; some they threw to wild beasts and others were compelled to fight in single combat, so that in all 220,000 were killed. In Egypt they did many similar things, also in Cyprus, led by one of them named Artemion; and there another 240,000 were slain."

A.D. 1936. From Daily Mail, 17th September (describing the horrors of the Red Revolution in Spain):

"Baena (Cordoba Province): Ninety-one assassinations, mostly by shooting, hatchet blows, or strangling. Others were burned alive. Two nuns who had been dragged from the convent of the Mother of God, had their religious medals with the figure of the Virgin, nailed into the sockets of their eyes.

"La Campana (Seville): Reds, led by a woman, Concepcion Velarde Caraballo, who either killed or was responsible for killing 11 persons in prison. The prisoners were fired on until they fell, covered with petrol, and set on fire. Some were still writhing in the flames when the city was entered.

"Lore del Rio (Seville): 138 assassinated. They were dragged to the cemetery, lined up, and shot in the legs, being buried alive as they fell in a trench. When the town was entered hands could still be seen writhing above the ground."

I cannot see much difference in outlook between the Jewish devils responsible for both these massacres, even though there are 18 centuries between them!

In view of that, why boggle at the idea of Jewish Ritual Murder still surviving?

Why make such a fuss when Jews are charged with the practice of Ritual Murder? Other Asiatics are known to have practised it until 1850, and, if left to themselves, would doubtless have maintained the custom.

In India, from 10,000 to 50,000 murders were perpetrated every year by a religious body known as the Thugs. They were mostly people of Mahommedan extraction, but a number of Hindus were also involved. They used to worship Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction. Their custom was to club together, generally as travellers, when they would slowly gain the confidence of some innocent person, and at a given signal, would strangle him in a prescribed manner, which they regarded as a religious duty; then they would rob him if he had anything to be robbed of, and bury the body with such skill as to leave no trace. The Thugs actually received the protection of some of the native princes and chiefs who were thoroughly frightened of their power as a secret religious sect. How this reminds us of the attitude of the influential men in this country who adopt the same view of Masonry and Jewry!

Then the British Government decided the thing must stop. After many years of investigation, Sir W. H. Sleeman stamped out the Thug sect, and no Thuggee murders are on record since 1850. He found that Thuggee was hereditary among male members of a family, and he achieved his object by confining in segregation for life all male members of Thug families.

Now my point is that Thuggee happened; and happened in the 19th century until the British put an end to it under Sleeman. It was a long time before the British administration learned of the existence of Thuggee, so carefully was it concealed; another analogy with Jewish Ritual Murder!

"It couldn't happen now." Why not?

And on 13th September, 1937, a telegram was sent to The Times from Delhi reporting the sacrifice of a 17-year-old youth to propitiate the rain-god, in Sirmoor State. The youth was led through the village of Gunpur by a crowd of people headed by a priest and the village headman, and beheaded on a special altar to the accompaniment of devotional songs. The head was found by the police at the foot of the deity in the village temple.

As Aryan rule over India relaxes, Thuggee and other human sacrifices will re-appear.

"It couldn't happen now." Why not, again?

Here is an extract from Magick by the "Master Therion", published in 1929 by the Lecram Press, 26 Rue d'Hautpool, Paris, pp. 94-5:

". . . it was the theory of the ancient magicians that any living being is a storehouse of energy varying in quantity according to the size and health of the animal, and in quality according to its mental and moral character. At the death of the animal this energy is liberated suddenly. The animal should therefore be killed within the Circle, or Triangle, as the case may be, so that its energy cannot escape.... For the highest spiritual working one must accordingly choose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force. A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory and suitable.

A footnote on p. 95 says "(4) It appears from the Magical Records of Frater Perdurabo that he made this particular sacrifice on an average about 150 times every year between 1912 e.v. and 1928 e.v."

This footnote refers to the last sentence in the paragraph quoted above. The italics are all mine.

"It couldn't happen now." Why not, in the Devil's name?

Sir Richard Burton shows that the disappearance of children at Passover was talked of in Rome and in the other towns of Italy throughout the early part of the 19th century when efficient policing was unknown, as also throughout the century at Smyrna and other places in the Levant and in Turkey.

It couldn't happen now? But the Jewish method of cattle slaughter happens now and is specially exempted from the objects of the Slaughter of Animals Act, 1933, which Act orders that all cattle for Gentile food must be stunned with a mechanically-operated instrument before the throat is cut. The Jewish method is cutting the throat from ear to ear without any previous stunning. It has been condemned by a Government Commission held in 1904 as failing in rapidity, freedom from unnecessary pain and instantaneous loss of sensibility. Yet it "happens now" and is protected in this our England, by an English Law, and remains unattacked by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Why couldn't it happen now?

To this day, we learn from Jewish sources (B'nai B'rith Messenger, California, 3rd April, 1936) that the Samaritans, an unorthodox Jewish sect who keep Passover by solar computation, indulge in bloody sacrifices of animals on that feast-day; an account is given of a visit to the scene of sacrifice on Mount Gerizim in the 20th century, and these words are used:

"I have heard the wild, primitive scream of triumph as the knife is withdrawn from the neck of the lamb of sacrifice."

Here is a paragraph from a periodical which shall be unnamed, of 1936, showing that the urge to the "Mysteries" is not dead:

"The sophisticated Pharisee of the 20th century unceasingly gives thanks that he has outgrown the fables and rituals of the Ancients. The worldly-wise man loves the evident and is exasperated by that which is not evident. Plutocrat and proletarian alike regard themselves as victimised by that person whose words or actions they do not understand. We love the obvious because it flatters us, and hate the mysterious because it damns our intelligence with faint praise. Riddles are irksome. The modern cry is for facts. Yet, with facts for his fetish, the modernist is more foolish than his forebears. Decrying superstition, he is most superstitious; rejecting fancies, he is the fanciful product of a fictitious age. The modern world is bored with its own importance; life itself has become a botheration. Suffering from chronic ennui, how can a world ever become interested in anything but itself? Smothered in their self-complacency, these all-sufficient ones ask for facts. But what facts are there that fools can understand? How can the helpless superficial grasp the hopelessly profound, for are not realities reserved for the wise?"

Alongside this clotted nonsense was a picture of a ritual murder, with the victim crucified, below it, a portrait of the author, an obvious Jew.

I take it that "it would happen now" if this Jew had his way!

CHAPTER VII.

JEWISH RITUAL MURDER IN ENGLAND BEFORE THE

EXPULSION OF 1290.

THE first known case happened in 1144; after that, cases cropped up from time to time until the Jews were expelled from the realm by Edward I. The most famous of these cases was that of Little St. Hugh of Lincoln in 1255. I record these cases in chronological order; and I do not deny the possibility of some of them in which details are lacking, being "trumped-up" ones, where death may have been due to causes other than ritual murder and the Jews blamed for it; but the case of St. Hugh, particularly, was juridically decided, and the Close and Patent Rolls of the Realm record definitely cases at London, Winchester and Oxford. There seems no reason to doubt that many cases of ritual murder have been unsuspected and even undiscovered.

1144. Norwich. A twelve-year-old boy was crucified and his side pierced at the Jewish Passover. His body was found in a sack hidden in a tree. A converted Jew, called Theobald of Cambridge, confessed that the Jews took blood every year from a Christian child because they thought that only by so doing could they ever obtain their freedom and return to Palestine, and that it was their custom to draw lots to decide whence the blood was to be supplied; Theobald said that last year the lot fell to Narbonne but in this year to Norwich. The boy was locally beatified and has ever since been known as St. William. The Sheriff, probably bribed, refused to bring the Jews to trial.

In J. C. Cox's Norfolk Churches, Vol. II, p. 47, as also in the Victoria Country History of Norfolk, 1906, Vol. II, is an illustration of an old painted rood-screen depicting the Ritual Murder of St. William, the screen itself is in Loddon Church, Norfolk, unless the Power of Jewish Money has had it removed. No one denies this case as a historical event, but the Jews of course say it was not a Ritual Murder. The Jew, C. Roth, in his The Ritual Murder Libel and the Jew (1935) says: "Modern enquirers, after careful examination of the facts, have concluded that the child probably lost consciousness in consequence of a cataleptic fit, and was buried prematurely by his relatives." How these modern enquiries arrived at a conclusion like that after all these years, Mr. Roth does not say; nor is it a compliment to the Church to suggest that its ministers would allow the boy's death to be celebrated as a martyrdom of a saint without having satisfied themselves that wounds on the body confirmed the crucifixion and the piercing of the side. And why the relatives should bury the boy in a sack and then dig it up and hang it in a tree would puzzle even a Jew to explain.

John Foxe's Acts and Monuments of the Church records this ritual murder, as did the Bollandists and other historians. The Prior, William Turbe, who afterwards became Bishop of Norwich, was the leading light in insisting that the crime was one of Jewish Ritual Murder; in the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by a Jew!) it is made clear that his career, quite apart from this Ritual Murder case, is that of a man of great strength of character and moral courage.

1160. Gloucester. The body of a child named Harold was found in the river with the usual wounds of crucifixion. Sometimes wrongly dated 1168. Recorded in Monumenta Germania Historica, Vol. VI (Erfurt Annals); Polychronicon, R. Higdon; Chronicles, R. Grafton, p. 46.

1181. Bury St. Edmunds. A child called Robert was sacrificed at Passover. The child was buried in the church and its presence there was supposed to cause 'miracles.' Authority: Rohrbacher, from the Chronicle of Gervase of Canterbury.

1192. Winchester. A boy crucified. Mentioned in Jewish Encyclopedia as being a false charge. Details lacking.

1232. Winchester. Boy crucified. Details lacking. Mentioned in Hyamson's History of the Jews in England; also in Annals of Winchester; and conclusively in the Close Roll 16, Henry III, membrane 8, 26.6.1232.

1235. Norwich. In this case, the Jews stole a child and hid him with a view to crucifying him. Haydn's Dictionary of Dates of date 1847, says of this case, "They (the Jews) circumcise and attempt to crucify a child at Norwich; the offenders are condemned in a fine of 20,000 marks." Further authority Huillard Breolles Grande Chronique, III, 86. Also Close Roll, 19 Henry III, m. 23.

1244. London. A child's body found unburied in the cemetery of St. Benedict, with ritual cuts. Buried with great pomp in St. Paul's. Authority: Social England, Vol. I, p. 407, edited by H. D. Traill.

1255. Lincoln. A boy called Hugh was kidnapped by the Jews and crucified and tortured in hatred of Jesus Christ. The boy's mother found the body in a well on the premises of a Jew called Joppin or Copinus. This Jew, promised by the judge his life if he confessed, did so, and 91 Jews were arrested; eventually 18 were hanged for the crime. King Henry III himself personally ordered the juridical investigation of the case five weeks after the discovery of the body, and refused to allow mercy to be shown to the Jew Copinus, who was executed.

Hugh was locally beatified, and his tomb may still be seen in Lincoln Cathedral, but the Jewish Money Power has evidently been at work, for between 1910 and 1930, a notice was fixed above the shrine as follows:

"The body of Hugh was given burial in the Cathedral and treated as that of a martyr. When the Minster was repaved, the skeleton of a small child was found beneath the present tombstone. There are many incidents in the story which tend to throw doubt upon it, and the existence of similar stories in England and elsewhere points to their origin in the fanatical hatred of the Jews of the Middle Ages and the common superstition, now wholly discredited, that ritual murder was a factor of Jewish Paschal Rites. Attempts were made as early as the 13th century by the Church to protect the Jews against the hatred of the populace and against this particular accusation."

At a recent visit to Lincoln of the Jewish Historical Society, in 1934, the Mayor, Mr. G. Deer, said to them: "That he (St. Hugh) was done to death by Jews for ritual purposes cannot be other than a libel based upon the prejudices and ignorance of an unenlightened age." The Chancellor on the same occasion said: "It was quite obviously one of the very many cases of slander spread about the Jews from time to time. No doubt, the child died or fell down the well."

These people, Jews and Gentiles, bring no evidence whatever for their statements; it couldn't have happened, they say. Why not?

Was Henry III, weak in character as we know him to have been, ever charged with being an immoral man? Did the judges not examine the body, which was only four weeks dead? Is Haydn's Dictionary of Dates (1847 edition) medieval and superstitious when it said of this case "They (the Jews) crucify a child at Lincoln, for which 18 are hanged"? There are no 'ifs' and 'buts' here! Or does Copinus's confession not tally with that of Theobald, quoted above in the first Norwich case? Copinus said, "For the death of this child, nearly all the Jews in England had come together and every town had sent deputies to assist in the sacrifice."

No one questions the historical facts in this case; but Jews and Judaised Gentiles unite in denying the fact of Ritual Murder.

Strack, in his The Jew and Human Sacrifice, written in defence of the Jews against the Blood Accusation, omits all mention of this famous case, which is the subject of the Prioress's Tale (Canterbury Tales) of Chaucer and is referred to in Marlowe's Jew of Malta. Hyamson's History of the Jews in England devotes the whole of Chapter IX to "Little St. Hugh of Lincoln," showing the importance of the Ritual Murder issue in the Jewish mind to-day.

The following Close Rolls of the Realm refer to the case of St. Hugh: Henry III, 39, m. 2, 7.10.1255; 39, m. 2, 14.10.1255; 40, m. 20, 24.11.1255; 40, m.13, 13.3.1256; 42, m. 6; 19.6.1258. And the Patent Rolls, Henry III, 40, m.20, 26.11.1255; 40, m.19, 9.12.1255; 40, 27.3.1256; and 40, m.5, 20.8.1256.

1257. London. A child sacrificed. Authority: Cluverius, Epitome Historia, p. 541. Details lacking.

1276. London. Boy crucified. Authority: The Close Roll of the Realm, 4, Edward I, membrane 14, 3.3.1276.

1279. Northampton. A child crucified. Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, 1847, says of this case: "They (the Jews) crucify a child at Northampton for which 50 are drawn at horses' tails and hanged." Further authorities: Reiley, Memorials of London, p. 15; H. Desportes, Le Mystore du Sang.

1290. Oxford. The Patent Roll 18 Edward I, mem. 21, 21st June, 1290, contains an order for the gaol delivery of a Jew, Isaac de Pulet, detained for the murder of a Christian boy at Oxford.

Only one month after this, King Edward issued his decree expelling the Jews from the Kingdom. There is, then, every reason to believe that it was the Oxford murder which proved the last straw in toleration.

The reader will see (p. 20) that it was a similar ritual case which was one of the main stimulants to the King and Queen of Spain to expel professing Jews from that country in 1492.

The Jews, in attempting to escape responsibility for these deaths by Ritual Murder, do not hesitate to impugn the probity of two of the Kings of England, against whose moral character no one else has dared to cast a slur. Here are some examples. From the Jewish Chronicle Supplement, April, 1936, p. 8 (speaking of the Lincoln case in the reign of Henry III):

"Henceforth and especially under the zealously Christian Edward I, the Crown and its officers became almost a worse peril to the Jews than mobs intent on loot and led on by fanatic priests and money. When 18th century writers of history began to examine the old records in a new sceptical temper, some may be found venturing on such unkind surmises as that the alleged crucifixions of Christian children only seemed to happen when kings were short of money." The foul accusation against men of upright character is repeated by the Jew Hyamson (History of the Jews in England, 1928 edition, p. 21), who writes: "It has also been pointed out that the Blood Accusation was as a rule made at a time at which the Royal Treasury needed replenishing."

To deny that the cases of St. William of Norwich and St. Hugh of Lincoln were Jewish Ritual Murders is to accuse certain English Kings, certain English Clergy, and certain English administrators, known to be men of good morals, of murdering and torturing Jews to get their money, after accusing them of horrible crimes. In the case of St. Hugh, the sentence was juridical; in the case of St. William, the mob took the matter into their own hands because the Sheriff would take no action himself.

Whom do you believe -- the Jews or the English?

"It is difficult to refuse all credit to stories so circumstantial and so frequent." So says Social England concerning Ritual Murders in England Vol. I, p. 407, 1893, edited by H. D. Traill.

A significant fact is that Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, at least up to 1847, quoted the Ritual Murders in Norman and Plantagenet England as undisputed facts. In later editions in the sixties, all mention of them is extirpated! We may take it that the Jewish Money Power began to dictate to the Press in England somewhere in the fifties of the last century.

CHAPTER VIII.

WELL AUTHENTICATED CASES IN EARLY AND MEDIEVAL TIMES, 1171 TO 1510.

IN this, and subsequent chapters, I place descriptions of cases in chronological order, in which there seems to me to be no reason whatever to dispute the historical accuracy of the facts given.

In this Chapter, I record such cases between 1171 and 1510 inclusive; and I would point out to the reader the great importance of the murder of St. Simon of Trent in 1475 and of the Toledo case in 1490; in fact, should the reader be one of those who approach the subject as unbelievers, I recommend that he should read about these two cases first, and the others after.

The following abbreviations are used in this Chapter among the references to authorities:

Magd. Cent. for Magdeburg Centuries, a Protestant History of the Christian Church compiled at Magdeburg, sixteenth century.

Chron. Hirsaug. for Chronicon Hirsaugiense, a history produced by Abbot J. Trithemius, 1514.

Cosm. Munst. for Sebastian Munster's Cosmographia Universalis, 1544.

Spec. Vinc. for Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum Historiale, of 13th century.

1171. Blois, France. At Passover, a Christian child was crucified, his body drained of blood and thrown into the river. A number of Jews were executed. Authority: Monumenta GermaniÁ Historica, VI, 520; Magd Cent., 12, c. 14 and 13, c. 14.

1179. Pontoise. The authorities for this case are the Bollandists (Acta, Vol. III, March, 591); Madg. Cent., 23, c. 14; Spec. Vinc, 129, c. 25; and Cosm. Munst., 23, c. 14. A boy named Richard was tortured, crucified and bled white. Philip Augustus's chaplains and historians, Rigord and Guillaume l'Armoricain, attested this case. The body of the boy was taken to the Church of the Holy Innocents in Paris and he was canonised as St. Richard.

Under date 1080, Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, 1847, p. 282, says: "Thinking to invoke the divine mercy, at a solemnisation of the Passover, they (the Jews) sacrifice a youth, the son of a rich tradesman at Paris, for which all the criminals are executed and all Jews banished [from] France."

1192. Braisne. Philip Augustus attended to this case personally, and had the criminals burnt. It was a case of the crucifixion of a Christian sold to the Jews by Agnes, Countess of Dreux, who considered him guilty of homicide and theft. Authority: Histoire des Ducs et Comtes de Champagne, IV, 1st part, p. 72, Paris, 1865 by A. de Jubainville; Spec. Vinc., 129, c. 25; Gaguin, L. 6, De Francis; Magd. Cent., 12, c. 14, col. 1670.

1235. Fulda, Hesse-Nassau. Five children murdered; Jews confessed under torture, but said the blood was wanted for healing purposes. Frederick II exonerated the Jews from suspicion, but the Crusaders had already dealt with a number by putting them to death. Frederick II called together a number of converted Jews, who denied the existence of Jewish ritual murder. But Frederick's bias is evident in his own words when, in publishing his decision, he gives his objects in calling these people together, "although our conscience regarded the innocence of the aforesaid Jews adequately proved on the ground of several writings." Had Frederick II lived to-day, he would have relied little upon religious literature in deciding whether Jewish Ritual Murder exists or not. Authority: Chron. Hirsaug., and Magd. Cent., 13, c. 24.

1247. Valreas, France. Just before Easter, a two-year-old girl's body was found in the town moat with wounds on forehead, hands and feet. Jews confessed under torture that they wanted the blood of the child, but did not say that it was for ceremonial purposes. Pope Innocent IV said that three of the Jews were executed without confessing, but the Jewish Encyclopedia, 1903, Vol. III, p. 261, says they confessed.

1250. Saragossa. A boy crucified, afterwards canonised as St. Dominiculus. Pius VII, 24th Nov., 1805, confirmed a decree of the Congregation of Rites of 31st August, according this canonisation.

1261. Pforzheim, Baden. An old woman sold a seven-year-old girl to the Jews, who bled her, strangled her and threw the body into the river. The old woman was convicted on the evidence of her own daughter. A number of Jews were condemned to death, two committing suicide. Authorities: Bollandists, Acta, Vol. II, p. 838; Rohrbacher, L' Histoire Universelle de l'Eglise Catholique, Vol. XVIII, pp. 697-700; Thos. Cantipranus, De ratione vita Vol. II, xxix. The child was canonised as a saint.

1287. Berne. Rudolf, a boy, was murdered at Passover in the house of a rich Jew called Matler. Jews confessed that he had been crucified; many were put to death. The boy was canonised as a martyr, and his name can be found in several martyrologies. Documental authorities: Bollandists, Acta, Vol. II, April; Helvetia sancta (H. Murer); Karl Howald, Die Brunnen zu Bern, 1848, p. 250; Cosm. Munst., 13, p. 482. But a stone monument still exists in Berne commemorating the crime. It is called The Fountain of the Child-Devourer, and is now on the Kornhausplatz. It represents a monster, with a Jewish countenance, eating a child. The figure wears the Judenhut, the hat prescribed for the Jews to wear by decree of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. This monument was first placed in a street of the Jews' quarter as a reminder of the monstrous crime and as a punishment for the whole of Berne Jewry. Later, it was removed to its present situation.

1288. Troyes, France. Some Jews were tried for a ritual murder and 13 were executed by burning. Authority: Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906, Vol. XII, p. 267.

1286. Oberwesel, on the Rhine. A boy named Werner was tortured for three days at Passover, hanged by the legs and bled white. The body was found in the river. This boy was beatified in the diocese of Treves, and his anniversary is on 19th April. A sculptured representation of this ritual murder is still to be seen in the Oberwesel Church. Authorities: Aventinus, Annals of Bavaria, 1521, 17, p. 576; Chron. Hirsaug., Magd. Cent., 13, c. 14.

1462. Rinn, Innsbruck. A boy called Andreas Oxner was bought by the Jews and sacrificed for his blood on a stone in the forest. The body was found by his mother in a birch-tree. No Jew was apprehended because, the border being near, they had fled when the crime was made known. The Abbe Vacandard, defender of the Jews, says there was no trial. Well, of course there wasn't. Even in 1937 there is no trial for a crime where the criminals have escaped! The boy has been sanctified by Pope Benedict XIV in his Bull Beatus Andreas, Venice, 1778, which says he was "cruelly assassinated by the Jews in hatred of the faith of Jesus Christ." This last is admitted by Pope Clement XIV, who wrote his report on the investigation he made into the matter of Jewish Ritual Murder when, as Cardinal Ganganelli, he had been commissioned by Pope Benedict XIV to go into the matter; and in this report, he says "I admit the truth of another fact, which happened in the year 1462 in the village of Rinn, in the Diocese of Brixen, in the person of the Blessed Andreas, a boy barbarously murdered by the Jews in hatred of the faith of Jesus Christ." No one questions the historical occurrence of this case. An engraving on wood representing the Ritual Murder still exists in the church.

1468. Sepulveda, Segovia, Spain. The Jews sacrificed a Christian child on a cross. The Bishop of Segovia investigated the crime, and ordered the culprits to Segovia, where they were executed. It is important to know that this Bishop was himself son of a converted Jew; Jean d'Avila was his name. Colmenares's History of Segovia records the facts of the case, which was juridically decided by a man of Jewish blood. That may be the reason that one finds no mention of it in Strack's book in defence of the Jews, The Jew and Human Sacrifice.

1475. The Case of St. Simon of Trent.

In 1475, a three-year-old boy named Simon disappeared in the Italian town of Trent; the circumstances were such that suspicion fell upon the Jews. Hoping to avert this suspicion, they themselves "found" the child's body in a conduit where they afterwards confessed to having thrown it. Examination of the body, however, revealed that the boy had not been drowned; there were strange wounds on the body, of circumcision and crucifixion. About seven Jews were arrested; they were tortured and confessed that the boy had been ritually murdered for the purpose of obtaining Christian blood to mix with the ceremonial unleavened bread; these confessions were made separately and agreed in all essential details. The Jews were tried and were ultimately executed. The officer in charge of the investigation of the crime, Jean de Salis de Brescia, had before him a converted Jew, Jean de Feltro, who described how his father told him that Jews of his town, Lanzhat, had killed a child at Passover to get the blood of which they partook in wine and cakes.

No one has ever dared to try and deny the historical events of this case; only the Jews invent "reasons" why it was not Ritual Murder! But there is no escape from the opposite conclusion. In 1759 in answer to a Jewish appeal from Poland, the Inquisition sent Cardinal Ganganelli (later he became Pope Clement XIV) to investigate and report on the whole subject, with particular reference to the many cases then being reported in Poland; although this man went out with a biased mind in favour of the Jews (in his report, he says: "With my weak faculties I endeavoured to demonstrate the non-existence of the crime which was imputed to the Jewish nation in Poland," hardly the spirit in which to enter upon such an investigation!), he actually says of this Trent case (see Report of Cardinal Ganganelli, in C. Roth's The Ritual Murder Libel and the Jew, 1935, p. 83): "I admit then as true the fact of the Blessed Simon, a boy three years old, killed by the Jews in Trent in the year 1475 in hatred of the faith of Jesus Christ (although it is disputed by Basnage and Wagenseil); for the celebrated Flaminio Cornaro, a Venetian Senator, in his work On the Cult of the Child St. Simon of Trent (Venice, 1753) disposes of all the doubts raised by the above-mentioned critics."

The Jews try to throw discredit on the judges who condemned the Jewish murderers by quoting Pope Sixtus IV who refused to sanction the cult of St. Simon; but the reason for this was that the cult was not then authorised by Rome, but was a popular movement without authority and contrary to Church discipline; this same Pope later expressed his approval of the verdict on the Jews in the Papal Bull XII Kal. July, 1478.

We have not only the testimony as to the correctitude of the proceedings from Sixtus IV; but also that of several other Popes; such as Sixtus V, who regularised the popular cult of St. Simon by ratifying it in 1588, as cited by Benedict XIV in Book I, Ch. xiv, No. 4 of his On the Canonisation of the Saints; also by this same Pope Benedict XIV in his Bull Beatus Andreas of 22nd February, 1755, in which he confirms Simon as a saint, a fact omitted from the arguments of that advocate for the Jews, Strack (The Jew and Human Sacrifice); Gregory XIII recognised Simon as a martyr, and even visited the shrine; and, as already stated, Clement XIV was obliged to recognise that it was a case of Jewish murder in hatred of Christianity.

St. Simon's shrine is in the Church of St. Peter, Trent; relics of him are still shown, among them the sacrificial knife.

In short, the Ritual Murder of St. Simon at Trent is supported by such evidence that those who doubt it are thereby condemning without reason high juridical and ecclesiastical authorities whose probity and intelligence there is not the slightest excuse to deny.

1480. Venice. This case, as admitted in the Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906, Vol. XII, p. 410, was settled by trial. Three Jews were executed.

1485. Padua, Italy. The victim in this case was canonised as St. Lorenzino, Pope Benedict XIV mentioning him as a martyr in his Bull Beatus Andreas. This case was attested by the Episcopal Court of Padua.

1490. Toledo. This is a most important case, the circumstances of which have been clarified for us by W. T. Walsh in his interesting book on Isabella of Spain, 1931 (Sheed and Ward), in which he devotes pp. 441 to 468 to his researches on this Ritual Murder charge. Had it not been for Mr. Walsh, I might have been influenced by the Jewish EncyclopÁdia's statement (1903, Vol. III, p. 262) that "Modern historians even deny that a child had disappeared at all" in this case! Strenuous efforts were made by Loeb and H. C. Lea to clear the Jews from guilt of this murder; as also by Abbe Vacandard. Walsh shows that on 17th October, 1490, a Jew named Yuce confessed to having been present at the crucifixion of a boy called Christopher at La Guardia, near Toledo. He made this confession without the "aid" of any torture; he was not even threatened with that for one year after his confession. On 19th July, 1491, Yuce was promised immunity from punishment for himself and described the whole crucifixion and gave the names of his accomplices. On 25th October, 1491, a jury of seven noted Renaissance scholars who occupied the Chairs at Salamanca University examined the case and were unanimous in finding Yuce guilty. Not until after this did Yuce undergo torture. This torture was applied to make him say for what reason the boy Christopher had been crucified instead of being killed in any other way; but no "leading" questions were employed in the examination. After this, the case went before a second jury of five learned men of Avila, who considered the evidence concerning Yuce's accomplices, who had been arrested and under examination; they unanimously declared them guilty. Eight Jews (some of them Marranos, or pretended converts to Christianity) were executed.

Writing of the efforts made to discredit the trials in this case, Walsh says (p. 464): "Must we assume that they (the two learned juries) were all murderous fanatics, willing to sacrifice innocent men, and that Dr. Loeb, Dr. Lea, and on the Catholic side the somewhat too credulous Abbe Vacandard were better qualified to weigh the evidence after the lapse of four centuries?"

Walsh is not an "anti-semite." He is a historian, and has not suggested that ritual murder is part of any official Jewish ceremony. But he says: "The historian, far from being obliged to make wholesale vindication of all Jews accused of murder, is free, in fact, bound to consider each individual case upon its merits."

Walsh states (p. 441) that this case of Ritual Murder was "one of the chief factors, if not the decisive one, in the decision of Fernando and Isabel" (for the expulsion of the Jews from Spain). He shows that the complete record of testimony in the trial of one of the accused has been available since it was published in 1887 in the Bulletin of the Royal Academy at Madrid (Vol. XI, pp. 7-160), from the original manuscript. (This was, of course, before the Red revolution!)

Walsh charges Lea, the pro-Jewish author, of intellectual dishonesty (p. 628) in writing in his Inquisition in Spain decrying the influential men who were jurors in this case.

"If the Inquisitors sent eight men to a shameful death without being convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of their guilt, the honest verdict of history cannot shrink from finding not only Torquemada and his judges, but King Fernando and Queen Isabel, Cardinal Mendoza and several of the most illustrious professors of Salamanca University guilty of complicity in one of the most brutal judicial murders on record." (Walsh, p. 442.)

Those who shrink from charging the Jews with the practice of Ritual Murder thereby condemn some of the finest characters on the stage of European history.

Finally, we must record that the murdered boy was canonised as St. Christopher on the authority of Pope Pius VII.

1494. Tyrnau, Hungary. A boy was bled white and killed. The Jew culprits were betrayed by the confession of women, who were persuaded to do so by the sight of some instruments of torture, which however were not applied to them. The Jews, arrested after this confession, themselves confessed that this was the fourth child they had killed for the blood, but they said they wanted this for medical purposes. Authority: Bollandists, Acta, April, Vol. II, 838.

1510. Brandenberg. Several Jews were accused in Berlin of buying a small Christian boy, bleeding him and killing him. They confessed, and 41 were executed. Authorities: Richard Mun, Die Juden in Berlin; Sir Richard Burton, The Jew, the Gypsy and El Islam, 1898, p. 126.