J e w i s h  R i t u a l - M u r d e r :   a   H i s t o r i c a l   I n v e s t i g a t i o n
Der jüdische Ritualmord: Eine historische Untersuchung von Hellmut Schramm, Ph. D.

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A Bohemian chronicle reports from the same year (see Dr. E. Bischoff in Juden und Christenblut, Berlin, Dewald) [Jews and Christian Blood]: "After the envoys of Otto had withdrawn from Prague, the Jews resolved to commit a horrible crime at the holy Easter celebration against a Christian man; they dragged him to a concealed area, hanged him naked up on a tree, and while they stood around, some would spit on him, others struck him blows with their fists, and still others did to him (24) everything which Christ once had suffered from that hideous and infamous people."

Two years later, in 1305, Prague Jews again at Easter nailed a youth, who had been forced through poverty to become their servant, naked upon a cross and flogged him so long that he bled to death. The aroused people did not wait for the return of the King, Wenceles II, but fell upon the Jewish Quarter and "applied a radical remedy, in that they slew the entire Jewish population of Prague" (G.v.Ónody, p. 81, as well as Tentzel, Monatl. Unterr., 1693, p. 556).

In 1306 -- therefore during the reign of Philipp IV, all the Jews of France were driven out -- "for all time." But already in 1315 a royal ordinance of Louis X of 28 July proclaimed their recall: soon afterward the Baille ([royal]official) of Tours had to bring charges against a Jewish ritual-murderer of Chinon, and two of the murderers were hanged (Caro, p. 104); in 1321 the Jews at Annecy murdered a young cleric for ritual purposes and in consequence were expelled from the city by a decree of Philipp V (Denis de Saint-Martin, Gallia christ. II, 723); a year later they were expelled from all of France -- again "for all time. . ." "But the Jews are like the flies, one chases them away and soon there they are again. . ." maintained the honorable Frankfurt vice-headmaster of Classics Schudt in his Jüdischen Merkwürdigkeiten [Jewish Oddities](I, p. 115), who was by no means hostile to the Jews per se but was resigned [to this] as being their racial peculiarity!

In the County of Savoy several children disappeared, again at Easter time, and so also at Geneva, Rumilly, Annecy and elsewhere. A Christian, Jaquet of Aiguebelle, confessed that he had sold the children by arrangement with the Jew Acelin from Tresselve to other Jews. Acelin, for his part, admitted that he resold the children to his religious comrades. The latter had killed the children and from their brains and bowels had prepared a salve or aharace dish (i.e., charoseth, a sauce in which the bitter herbs are dipped on the first evening of the Passover) and given of it to all the Jews (H.L. Strack: Das Blut in Glauben und Aberglauben der Menscheit [Blood in the Religion and the Superstition of Humanity], Munich 1900, p. 144).

In 1331 the Jews of Überlingen (Baden) threw the son of a (25) citizen named Frey into a well. The countless incisions which were later discovered on the corpse allowed the determination to be made of the occurrence of a preceding withdrawal of the blood. Without first first waiting for the approval of the Emperor, known to be a friend of the Jews, the judges of the region executed sentence of death upon the authors of the crime (Chronik des Joh. Vitoduran).

According to the same chronicle of Vitoduran (covering the years 1215-1348 and preserved in its original textual form at the monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland and cited by Sigismund Hosmann in his Judenherz[Jewish Heart]), in 1346 in Munich a small child was murdered by Jews and [the body] deposited outside of the city. The body displayed more than 60 piercing wounds! Emperor Ludwig IV (1314-1347) gruffly rebuffed the parents of the child and forbid even the pilgrimage of the populace to the place where the body was found; "bombarded by their gilded arrows and blinded and corrupted by Jewish money. . .there was no lack of people who looked out for the interests of the Jews. . ." (Hosmann, p. 109)

Around the same time, in the region of Cologne, a small boy -- "Hänschen" [This is the diminutive and affectionate form of the name "Hans"] -- was taken by Jews on the way to his monastery school of St. Sigbert and in a "secret location" cut to pieces with knives until he expired (Acta sanct., März III, 502).

On Good Friday of the year 1347 the Jews of Messina crucified a child (H. Desp.: Le myst. du sang, p. 73).

On 2 March 1349 Jews stole the four-year-old son of a Zurich shoemaker and cut up his body; the blood was collected. The body was thrown into the so-called Wolfsbach [literally: Wolf's Creek] where it was soon discovered in the mud. An altar was erected in Münster, "through which devotion increased by the day, until the city renounced the old Catholic faith; thereby the devotion of all their old forebears vanished and was entirely extinguished. . ." (H. Murer, Helvetia sancta, p. 312).

In 1380 at Hagenbach in Swabia some Jews were caught in the act at the moment when they were slaughtering a child kidnapped from his parents. They were burned (M. Crusius, Jahrbücher von Schwaben Teil III, Buch 5) [Yearbooks of Swabia, Part III, Book 5)].

According to the decree of 15 July 1394 the Jews under the government of Charles VI were expelled from France because of repeated ritual-murders of children (26) and other intrigues injurious to the community; in the actual Kingdom of France, there was no longer one single Jew for a span of a century; only in the enclave of Avignon belonging to the Pope did a Jewish community maintain itself.(12)

In 1401 in Diesenhof in Württemberg, the four-year-old Konrad Lory was slaughtered; his blood was supposed to be delivered to the Jew Vitelmann by a groom [i.e., stable hand] for three Gulden; the former was burned and the latter broken on the wheel (Acta sanct., 2nd Volume of April, p. 838).

The Acta sanctorum [Deeds of the Saints] (II, April, p. 838) and H. Desportes (p. 74) list further ritual-murders -- all at Easter time -- for the year 1407 in Crakow, 1413 in Thuringia and for 1420 in Tongern in Limburg. The Judenbüchlein of Johann Eck of the year 1541 reports that in the year 1420 Archduke Albrecht of Austria had 300 Jews burned at Vienna, because these men had murdered three children.

In Ravensburg in the year 1429 between Easter and Whitsunday [=Pentecost] the Swiss student Ludwig van Bruck was tortured to death by three Jews with many torments and a horrible sexual violation (Acta sanct., 3rd Volume of April, p. 978/980).

On Good Friday (!) of the year 1442 or 1443 -- due to difficult external circumstances the date given varies -- the four-year-old girl Ursula Pöck disappeared in Lienz (in the Tyrol). After "a search was carried out for her on land and in the water over many days with diligence and industry with no success, the body was found in a creek: it was covered all over with piercing wounds and totally emptied of blood (Corpusculum punctis ubique confossum, sanguis ex corpusculo elicitus et effusus). On the basis of further inquiries the Jews of Lienz were brought in as suspects in the murder. At first they denied [involvement] persistently; but when faced with the body and as a result of strong admonitions -- of torture or the coercing of confessions there is not the slightest suggestion -- they unanimously admitted the crime. A Christian woman, Margareta Praitschedlin, had decoyed the child into their hands (27) in return for gifts of money! She, too, confessed her crime in full compass. "She has told how she had found the child at a place and had picked her up kindly with sweet words and matched the aforesaid Jews in her violence." The Jew Samuel, "who was first to put his hands on the child and had committed the greatest unchristian murder and torture" was, as emerges from the documents published by George Tinkhauser in Number 10 of the Katholischen Blätter aus Tirol [Catholic Paper of the Tyrol], broken on the wheel and with him a dog. Another Jew, Joseph, was condemned to the gallows and hanged with a dog at his feet. Praitschedlin was tied together with two old Jewesses at her back and burned. Five Jewish children were baptized! To all Jews entry to the city remained forbidden. At last, in the year 1494 the nobles of Kärnten repeatedly requested of the Emperor the expulsion of all Jews from their lands. The Emperor Maximilian I finally ordered this in the well-known Edict of Schwäbischwerd of 1496 (on the Wednesday after the fourth Sunday before Easter). As reason for the expulsion was given, among other things, "that they (the Jews) have pitifully tortured even Christian children and used their blood for their damnable substance" -- "There is almost no land, and in each land, hardly one region to be found, in which the Jewish cruelty has not washed its murderous hands in the blood of innocent Christian children. . ." wrote Jacob Schmid in his Ehrenglanze der gefürsteten Grafschaft Tirol [Honorable Glory of the Princely County of the Tyrol] (II, p. 141, new edition of Innsbruck 1843).

The devotion to this slaughtered child is not yet extinguished today [i.e., 1943; and now ?] in Lienz. The father of the child had a tablet erected in 1452 at the grave of the little martyr, originally to be found at the cemetary of the city parish church with the inscription: "Thomas Pöck had this made to the memory of his daughter Ursula, whom the Jews tortured on Good Friday and who lies buried here." (According to Dr. Jos. Deckert: Vier Tiroler Kinder, Opfer des chassidischen Fanatismus, 1893 [Four Tyrolean Children, Victims of the Hassidim Fanaticism]).

In 1452 several Jews at Savona (near Genoa) killed a two-year-old child; they perforated the body in every direction, caught the blood in the vessels in customary use at the circumcision of their sons, and cast the blood-emptied corpse into a (28) cesspool. The blood, mingled with pieces of fruit, was eaten in ritual Form (A. Spina, de bello Judaeorum III, 7) [Concerning the War of the Jews]. The young son of the physician Salomon of Genoa stated the following as an eye-witness of this bestial murder: "They led in a Christian child of two years: one Jew took him by the right arm, the other by the left arm, the third by the head -- thus cross-like -- the fourth had a sharp and long needle or graving tool and he pierced the child in the belly and then the heart, quickly drew it out and then quickly stabbed again, the blood flowed out copiously into the basin until the child died, and they threw [the body] into a hidden room, and they dipped berries, apples and other fruits into the blood and ate them."

The witness had also eaten of this "and such a horror at this came over him, that he wasn't able to eat for two days and it was all the same to him, if they wanted to pull out his bowels and guts" (from the Judenbüchlain of Dr. Joh. Eck).

In 1453 Breslau Jews enticed a child to them, fattened him for some time and then stuck him [inside] a barrel with nails, which they rolled back and forth until the blood was withdrawn from the victim in this manner. (H. Desportes, le myst. d. s., p. 76).

In July of the year 1462 ten Jewish merchants, returning from the market in Bozen which in earlier times had four markets, passed through the Inn valley. They had already "come to terms" [i.e., in a business agreement] in advance a month before with the farmer Hans Mair from the village of Rinn near Innsbruck: he, the godfather and uncle of the three-year-old Andreas Oxner, who had been entrusted to the protection of his uncle after the early death of his father, resolved to deliver his ward to the Jewish gang without the knowledge of the boy's mother in return for a hatful of Jewish gold pieces. "The mother of little Andreas had hired herself out as a harvester at Amras which was about two miles distant, but wasn't able to take her child along that far away. That is what the betrayer had counted on. Thus she gave the child over to the protection of his godfather and urgently recommended him to his protection. It was not without misgiving that she took leave of her child.

Andreas of Rinn When the mother had gone some distance, the farmer gave the Jews an agreed-upon signal from his house. . .Two of the Jews now secretly entered the house of the farmer, filled his hat with the agreed-upon quantity of gold pieces (400-600 Ducats) (29) at which he led them up the wooden stairs to the room where the child still softly slept. He awakened the child, dressed him in his clothes and handed him over to the strange men. . ." (from Dr. Jos. Deckert: Vier Tiroler Kinder, etc.). As a precaution, the Jews had brought along a Rabbi. In a birch forest not far from the village of Rinn, the child was slaughtered: the rabbi placed his sacrificial victim on a stone block, which survives in historical tradition today [and now?] as the "Jew-stone" in the pilgrim church under the same name, founded by Emperor Maximilian I; on this the child was circumcised according to Jewish rite. The veins in his arms were opened and the blood carefully collected in copper bowls. Every single one of the Jews committed exceptional atrocities on the victim, even the dead body was further profaned and then hung up on a tree, which was supposed to represent a cross. The murderers got away unpunished. The farmer Mair of Rinn, the guardian of "Anderl [diminutive of Andreas] of Rinn" succumbed to madness and had to be restrained in chains in his own house. The victim of the ritual-sacrifice was buried at first at the cemetary of Rinn, but later buried in a special niche. Around this niche the story of the martyr is immortalized in image and inscription. Pope Benedict XIV in the Bull Beatus Andreas [Blessed Andreas] took the occasion of February 22, 1755 to deal with the Jewish ritual-murder at some length. Further, before this, there were the notes of the Bollandists (Acta sanct., II, July, p. 462) as well as the Beschreibung der Marter des heiligen Andreas von Rinn of Ignatius Zach (Augsburg, 1724) [Description of the Torture of Saint Andreas of Rinn]. The cult of the child martyr has lasted up until our own day; The Diocese of Brixen on July 12th celebrates the feast of the blessed Andreas of Rinn, its diocesan patron. Dr. Jos. Deckert writes in addition (Vienna, 1893): "The child of Rinn was thus really the victim of fanatical Jewish hatred and is rightly revered as a martyr by the Catholic Church." The church in the Diocese of Brixen has, among others, a prayer which says that "the blessed Andreas was killed by disloyal Jews in the cruelest fashion".

Around Easter time of the year 1468 the Jews in the small Spanish city of Sepulveda, at the behest of their Rabbi (30) Salomon Pecho, nailed a young girl to a cross and pierced her all over. By order of the Bishop Juan Arias de Avila, the convicted Jews were brought to Segovia. Following the judicial process the main perpetrators were condemned to death at the stake, the remaining Jews who had taken part in the torture were, for one group, condemned to the gallows and the wheel, while those of the other group were strangled in prison. The rest were expelled from the city (Colmenares in Historia de la insigne ciudad de Segovia and Synopsis episcoporum Segoviensium, p. 650).

Simon of Trent A comprehensive literature treats the infamous case of the Trent boy-murder of the year 1475, which in its time aroused the greatest sensation in the entire cultural world of the West. This ritual-murder and its accompanying circumstances are even in our day extraordinarily informative in more than one respect.

Probably the first person who was able to report this crime to his countrymen authentically and in detail was the first Saxon Landrentmeister [Master of Revenues for Saxony], Johann von Mergenthal, who in the year 1476 under the leadership of Duke Albrecht of Saxony undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the retinue of the latter. This journey led him also through Trent, "where Germany ends and Italy begins." Here the populace still was feeling the impression of the wicked deed one year after the bestial murder, and Mergenthal was able to set down his written report, as it were, "on the scene," in his travel book which was later published by a D. Hieronymus Weller at Leipzig.

Because the objection to this record could be made of [being] a belated account -- inexact because the report did not provide documentary evidence -- we will not base our own account on it, any more than upon the pictorial representations of this murder made by contemporaries, such as (for example) the extremely instructive woodcuts in the Judentum [Judaism] of Georg Lieb (Volume II of the Monographien zur deutschen Kulturgeschichte [Monographs for German Cultural History], p. 17/20.)

In the Vienna Hofbibliothek [Court Library] however, there still today is incontrovertible evidence: the comprehensive trial documents composed in medieval judicial Latin of the Trent child-murder from the year 1475! These are not disputable. The 613 folio pages of the Vienna Codex come from the hand (31) of the recorder of the Trent trial, Johann v. Fatis Furthermore, the library of the Vatican at Rome possesses a Latin handwritten codex from the years 1476-78, composed following the Trent ritual-murder trial from the year 1475/76. Pope Sixtus IV charged a commission of six cardinals and outstanding jurists in Rome with the task of re-checking once again the trial documents. The most important Italian legal scholar of his time, Franz Panvino of Padua, held the chairmanship of this commission. This was the context in which the codex was composed. This interesting manuscript was made use of on many occasions, as emerges from the frequent marginalia, but was then missing again for centuries. In a special Bull of 20 July 1478, Sixtus IV had declared the court procedure to be faultless and bestowed the highest praise upon the conscientiousness of the judges -- and Pope Benedict XIV designated the codex as authentic. In 1881 this old manuscript was rediscovered and published in excerpt form in the Italian newspaper Civilità cattolica. In the governorship archive at Innsbruck the Catholic vicar Dr. Jos. Deckert was in charge of over 200 document files (interrogation protocols), letters and drafts relating to Simon of Trent, originally preserved in the Consistorial Archive of Trent and originating in the year 1475; Deckert published the result of this in the framework of his 1893 treatise : Vier Tiroler Kinder, Opfer des chassideischen Fanatismus, which had as consequence, that today there still exists but one copy of this "dangerous" work in one single public library of Greater Germany! [and today??]

In 1588 [the year of the Spanish Armada] and in 1593 a so-called Relatio italica was printed at Trent. The historiographers already mentioned several times, the Bollandists (Acta sanct., Martii, tom. III, p. 494 etc.) worked from it and, what is of most significance for us, they included in their report a detailed letter of the famous physician Hans Mathias Tiberinus, who had to examine the body as expert witness and already 14 days later communicated his findings to the city council at Brixen. In addition, the indisputable and fully objective findings from the examination of the body, determined by three Trent physicians still before the arrest of the villains, have been handed down to us! They convey to us in the most precise way the horrible (32) manner of death of the 28 month-old, who was later beatified by the Church.

The confessions of the eight main accused, held in solitary confinement and also separately questioned, which coincided in the smallest details, however, yield the following shocking picture: In the first days of Holy Week of the year 1475, in which the Passover feast fell on Holy Thursday, the heads of the Jewish families of Trent arrived at the house of the most respected of them, by the name of Samuel, on whose property the local meeting place of the Jews, the synagogue, as well as the Jewish school were situated. They were complaining about the fact that the Easter baking of the matzos could not be prepared because the blood from a Christian child was lacking. Samuel offered a "prize" of 100 gold Ducats for the procurement of the sacrificial victim. The Jew Tobias betook himself into the streets which were nearly empty of human traffic around the time of the evening Mass on Holy Thursday. Before the house of his parents a 28-month-old child was at play, Simon Gerber. He was lured away with games to the house of Samuel and there locked within until full darkness.

The eldest of the Jews, an old man of 80 years, Moses "the Old One," began the slaughtering by ripping out a piece of flesh from the child's right cheek with pincers; the other Jews followed suit. The down-flowing blood was caught in a tin platter. In a similar manner the right leg was mutilated. The remaining parts of the body were punctured with long, thick needles (acum a pomedello), in order to obtain the last of the blood. Finally the circumcision was performed. At the conclusion, the executioners imitated the crucifixion, in that they held the convulsively jerking creature stretched in the four directions with the feet extended uppermost (in modum crucis), as the rest of the Jews again pierced him with needles and sharp instruments. The murderers screeched: "That is what we did with Jesus, to [such an end] may all our enemies come forever." The still weakly breathing child was killed by smashing his skull bones; at this, the Jews joined in a hymn of praise to Yahweh. The child's blood was collected into a pot and divided among the individual Jewish families. The Easter banquet could be prepared.

(33)The child's corpse, displayed upon the Almenor (altar) of the synagogue on Good Friday and befouled, mocked and profaned by all of the Jews residing in Trent, was -- after it had temporarily been hidden under the straw of a storehouse -- finally thrown into a watery ditch which flowed past in the vicinity of the house. In order to divert from themselves the suspicion which was growing ever stronger, the Jewish criminals believed themselves to be especially cunning when they were first to give report to the Bishop of Trent of the horrifying discovery of a mutilated child body, after the parents, supported by numerous inhabitants, had vainly searched and the city gates had been closed as a precaution. Yet they thereby delivered themselves up [to justice]. The type of wounds, never before seen, and the tender age of the victim brought the authors and instigators [of the crime] before the court. Here they finally admitted -- separately questioned from one another -- all details of the shameful crime. The wives of two of the main accused gave the informative statement that already, in earlier years, similar child-murders had been performed which had all, however, remained undiscovered.

During the trial three attested documents were presented concerning four Jewish child-murders, which all occurred in the Diocese of Constance, and two blood-murders in Endingen, another in Ravensburg (1430) and one in Pfullendorf (1461). Moreover, two of the accused admitted to the Protocol their complicity in the child-murders in Padua, where in earlier centuries several children were slaughtered, and at Regensburg, where a child had been bled to death.

The trial, conducted by the Trent authorities with extraordinary thoroughness, extended over three full years; just under the date 7 July 1478 there appears in the documents the note (Rome): causa contra Judaeos finita! There were good reasons for this long duration of the proceedings!

The rich Jews of Italy, although in their social standing still held within certain limits, exercised a great influence already at that time by means of their money and their physicians at the courts of Italian princes and even at the papal court. Supported by their well-off racial comrades living abroad, particularly in the commercial regions (34) of South Germany, they set heaven and hell in motion to suppress the Trent trial or at least to salvage what was still to be salvaged -- "for the golden calf bestirred itself: and the Jews from all nations pooled much money and accomplished much with it." (Judenbüchlein of D. Joh Eck!)

The uprisings against the Jews of Italy up until then had been caused, as in other nations, mostly by their inhuman usury, which even many princes favored for various reasons -- "loans" at 80-100% [interest rates] and more were the rule. Now however, through Trent, "things were coming to light which the Jews wished to be covered by eternal night" (Deckert). A thirst for blood, a satanic fanaticism was revealed which surpassed any capacity of the imagination; rumors which till then had been constantly nourished by bad experiences, had found their confirmation, that in human society racially alien individuals, with complete consciousness, murder and slaughter in order to obtain blood for ritual purposes, and that all this is grounded in tradition kept with strict secrecy! What wonder, that no means was left untried -- from gold to poison. . . According to Deckert, one passage (p. 15) in the documents reads exactly: "The people of Trent would like to preserve the honor of their paternal city according to their powers against the Jews, who would have set heaven and hell into motion in order to obtain in Rome (!) one commissioner favorable to their case. They procured many patrons for themselves with money. . ."

We begin with the prince in charge, Duke Sigismund of Austria: he had the trial stop for the first time, just a few weeks after its start, during the interrogations. The second interruption was caused by Pope Sixtus IV, who gave the curt justification that the arrival of his authorized Legate, whom he had advised beforehand, should be awaited; Bishop Hinderbach of Trent, who was conducting the investigation, received a papal letter, according to which he might not further proceed against the Jews, because some princes disapproved of the whole case!

The announced Papal Legate then made his appearance in the person of the "Commissar" Bishop Baptista dei Giudici (35)von Ventimiglia, referred to in the documents in the abbreviated form of his place of birth. He was a favorite of the Pope, his countryman and most intimate confidante. In the letter already cited, he is most enthusiastically recommended by the Pope as "Professor of Theology," as "vir doctrina ac integritate praeditus" [i.e., "a man gifted in doctrine and with integrity"], and therefore a man "outstanding" in scholarship and honesty. If we have the right, considering "our mental disposition" (Paul Nathan), to doubt the first quality, then it is all the more worthwhile to examine more closely the second when it comes to the matter of excerpts from the documents!

On his way from Rome to Trent, he appeared in Venice in the company of three Jews, but had to "withdraw from there unwelcomed" due to the prevailing mood of the populace, which was hostile to Jews. "There can be no doubt that the Jews, through their influence at the Papal Court" -- so wrote the Catholic Vicar Deckert -- "managed to get Ventimiglia [appointed] as Legate, as a man favorable to their interests."

In Trent the Legate was -- as he himself admits in a letter -- received in the friendliest fashion by Bishop Hinderbach; the latter put at his disposal his magnificent castle as living quarters and supported him in the most willing way in the investigation of the entire affair. But shortly after his arrival, Ventimiglia -- who had openly shown his friendliness to Jews -- entered into close relations with the Jewish spy "Wolfgang." After barely three weeks he found his quarters in the bishop's palace too damp and unsuitable, complained about his affected health and withdrew to Roveredo -- in truth, Hinderbach would have been able to keep too close an eye on him: "In Trent no one could have come to him without jeopardy (that is, unseen!) for fear of the bishop (Hinderbach) and the people; but there [Roveredo] he would have a more secure place." There, in Roveredo, in the Jewish headquarters, the wealthy Jews had assembled with their lawyers; already on the 24th of September, Ventimiglia could report to Hinderbach that "the advocates of the Jews have appeared before him, in order to defend their case. . ." Moreover, they put forward the proposal that the trial documents be turned over to them; they, the Jews, had given him to understand at the same time that they would procure the remedies for the restoration of his, the Legate's, health!

(36) On the 1st of October 1475 Hinterbach complained that he has seen through "the intrigues of the faithless Jews and bad Christians," who "having been bought by money and presents, win over the minds of the princes and of some prelates and draw them to their side. . .The Jews and some doctors [= university scholars] sit at Roveredo where the Legate also is staying under the pretext of poor health. They are seeking to diminish the documents and make them disdained (extenuare et floccipendere). They consult on a daily basis in Roveredo. . .they seek to win influence with the Doge (Mocenigo of Venice - we will yet have occasion to return to his machinations!), so that he will intervene for the release of the Jews still imprisoned. The Jews were looking to bribe all, and already, so one hears, they had managed to obtain much from the Pope and some cardinals at Rome; but one could hardly believe it. . ."

The priest (!) Paul de Novaria, a Jewish spy, had slipped into the Bishop's castle and for two months copied the trial documents, since Hinderbach had not delivered these to the Jewish attorneys. In a trial convened in connection with this [i.e., the copying of the documents by de Novaria], this "priest" admitted to having been in negotiation with the Jews of Novarra, Modena, Brescia, Venice, Bassano and Roveredo for the freeing of the imprisoned Jews. He had advised removing the grating from the ditch so that the witnesses could say that little Simon had fallen into the ditch and been swept away. . .He had received funds from the Jews with which to bribe the valet of the Bishop, so that the former would poison the Bishop; 400 Ducats had been promised to him, should his plan succeed.

The Bishop's Secretary, Gregor, had been assigned the leadership of this part of the trial. At the beginning of the trial the accused priest refused to confess orally, he would only do so in writing. In an unguarded moment, he cut off his tongue "scaplro liberario -- thus, with a pen-knife -- and threw it into the toilet. . .The same priest Paul had still been hired to poison the city magistrate of Trent, Hans v. Salis.

To give the trial against the ritual-murderers yet another twist, through a shameful maneuver (37) (promises of money, a hoax involving a letter of safe-conduct) a completely unsuspecting incorruptible Trent citizen by the name of Anzelin was lured to Roveredo, held prisoner in his quarters by Ventimiglia against all law and tortured daily so that he would accuse a Trent couple (Zanesus Schweizer) of the child's murder! Later, this unfortunate man stated that the Papal Legate inflicted upon him a "painful interrogation" (= torture) so that he would say what he knew nothing about. . .For the most part he was hidden under a bed; only when Jewish visitors had come was he allowed to emerge. Every evening Jews came to them to consult with the Legate. The Jews had often counted out money. Finally, because nothing could be gotten from him, he was released on condition that he would say nothing about the incident!

Since this scandal, too, had proven ineffective, Ventimiglia grasped at a final remedy: on the basis of forged instructions ostensibly from the Pope, he attempted to pull the entire trial illegally into his own hands with the removal of the Trent authorities, indeed, his presumption went so far as to forbid the Trent Bishop any further proceedings against the Jews, under the threat of excommunication and being denied entry to the church; Ventimiglia encouraged the Jews to admit nothing, and told them that they would soon all be at liberty!

But "in these long, hard struggles for truth and justice" (Deckert) Hinderbach, who was surrounded by German men who were impervious to Jewish bribery, finally came off the victor. Through his energy a trial procedure had been made possible, which can stand as a laudable exception before history and its research and which can still, centuries later, supply us with the most valuable material.

At the end of October 1475, Hinderbach gave a report about the exact investigation, the capture of the guilty, their consistent confessions, and their just conviction to all eligible princes. He possessed the courage to designate the "investigation" which the Papal Legate had begun, concisely as well devastatingly in his accounting, as curruptam inquisitionem.

(38)Ventimiglia had finally dug his own grave: his "mission" had taken on such a scandalous shape that the Pope had to leave him to his fate, good or bad. The populace had risen against the Legate and mocked him in derisive songs as Caiaphas [i.e., the High Priest who plotted Christ's death] and as "pseudoantistes Judaeorum" [antistes, the Latin term for a temple overseer or priest; thus: a pretended high priest of the Jews] much to the anger of the Pope. "But it has displeased the Pope that his Legate has been everywhere convicted [i.e., in the judgement of the people] of injustice, that satires and epigrams have been published against him and that he has also been mocked pictorially. Hinderbach would like to put a stop to this in his diocese" (documents). At the end of 1477 in an energetic letter, Hinderbach asked the Pope "to make an end to this scandal at last. . .all are rebelling against this, and he (the Pope) might want to appoint another man Commissar, who would be a friend of the truth."

"Rarely has a Legate so deeply damaged the papal prestige in Germany..." (Deckert).

Baptista dei Giudici von Ventimiglia withdrew grudgingly to Benevento. In order that their valuable ally not completely drop from their sight, the Jews leased a garden behind his house, "to have easy access to him," according to a letter of 23 March 1481. No successor was named; apparently Rome had no one whom it could hold as immune to Jewish attempts at bribery.

Hinderbach, born in Hesse (born 1418 at Rauschenberg in Hesse) in observance of his governmental duties conducted the trial to its just conclusion despite indescribable difficulties. He had spurned at repeated intervals high sums of money from Jewish bribery (as can be concluded from his own letters), which was all the more to his credit since he often had to struggle with financial embarrassment. He did not even fear death by poison, which had been threatened for him.

"With him stood courageously in the battle the German men, Podestà of Trent, Hans v. Salis, and the city chief Jacob v. Spaur, who bowed neither to Jewish nor to Italian intrigues, as is provable from repeated documentary protestations" (Deckert).

Because of the threatening danger of plague, the approbation of the trial documents in Rome was delayed. (39)Finally, on the 20th of June 1478, the Bull of Pope Sixtus IV to Bishop Hinderbach confirmed that the trial against the Jews had been conducted ad normam veri juris [= to the standard of true or valid law]. The children of the executed Jews were supposed to be baptized.

According to the Judenbüchlein of D. Eck, Trent cost the Jews 120,000 Gulden. "For the Jews, according to their practice, have exerted themselves with gold and money so that [their] misdeeds be suppressed; they offered Duke Sigismund many thousand Gulden if he would let the Jews off; they wanted to build a new castle for Bishop Johann v. Hinderbach. . ."

Those who had been convicted of the crime of child-murder had died the most shameful sort of death: after having been broken on the wheel they were next tortured and burned. Moses "the Old One," the head of the Jewish community, had already killed himself in prison. Four of those who were complicit or accomplices were baptized and pardoned.

The synagogue-house of Samuel was torn down and Hinderbach had a chapel for the victim erected on the site, which was enlarged in 1647 through donations of the citizens of Trent. Since attacks by Jewish rabble were feared, Emperor Maximilian gave orders for the guarding of the grave of the martyr, whose name was accepted into the Roman Martyrology under Gregory XIII. In 1480, Hinderbach had to address the bishops of Italy in a circular due to misuse by mendicant friars of the collection for the holy martyr Simon! To the present day, Simon of Trent is the patron saint of the Diocese of Trent and his feast day is celebrated on the fourth Sunday after Easter. In the 19th century, no Jew dared to spend a single night in the city of Trent (13). A special brotherhood had [instituted] a watch over it, so that the old edict of banishment against the Jews was upheld and executed.

On the altar of the church of San Pietro of Trent stands the sarcophagus of the child, which holds the still extraordinarily well-preserved body in a crystal casket. The body rests naked on a pillow and the countless wounds, according to the report (1893) of (40)Deckert, for whom it was made possible to view the relics of the "santo bambino," are still clearly recognizable: "Whoever, though, expects today to see in the relics of the child merely a mummified skeleton, is totally mistaken. The body is still completely well-preserved. . .Held to the light, I even saw the fine hair of the head. The wound of the right cheek is clear to see; similar to it are numerous piercing wounds over the whole body. . .Over 400 years have elapsed since the death of the child, and that's how well the relics are preserved. . ." Even the tools of torture, the pincers, knife, needles and a cup in which the blood was caught, are preserved in this chapel.

The Trent trial documents(14) from the year 1475 found a late so-called "revision" by the Jew Moritz Stern, in the Jewish sense of course, faithful to the principle: what is not deniable must be at least subsequently falsified and distorted, so that in the end someone not initiated must receive a totally distorted picture. Upon this irresponsible type of portrayal, a German researcher of world reputation, Dr. Erich Bischoff, whom no one could bring under the embarrassing suspicion of "anti-Semitism," passed a devastating judgment in his foundation-making work in this subject of 1929, Das Blut in jüdischem Schriftum und Brauch [Blood in Jewish Scripture and Custom]. It may be taken as evidence of bad conscience that Moritz Stern occupied himself merely with the the already widely available, allegedly coerced-by-torture statements of his racial comrades -- but simply held back the most important thing, the Protocol of the three physicians which was received before the interrogation! That Stern finally accuses the Trent Bishop Hinderbach, presiding at the time of the murder, without any indication of reason and proof, of "preparing" the trial documents after [the trial], serves only as a rounding out of what has already been said about these "researches" by competent experts.

The Trent pronouncement of sentence took drastic measures; one could almost have promised a lasting effect from it. Yet already, five years later, in 1480, in the (41) Portobuffole region, belonging to the Republic of Venice, the seven year-old boy Sebastian Novello of Bergamo is slaughtered by several Jews. Here too the case against the Jews could be made and their guilt proved beyond doubt in interminable hearings. On St. Mark's Place in Venice, in front of the Doge's Palace, the criminals were publicly burned.

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Copyright 2001 by R. Belser. Reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission of the translator is not permitted. All rights reserved.