|
B e f o r e 1 8 4 0
------------------------------------------------------------------
Page 2
(p. 23)
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Otto had withdrawn from Prague, the Jews resolved to commit a horrible crime at the holy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.
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).
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.
Go to: Before 1840/Page 3
Back to Table of Contents
|