Simon of Trent
(Cult suppressed)
|
 |
| Youth,
catalyst |
| Born |
Early 1472 |
| Died |
21 March 1475 |
| Venerated by |
Roman Catholics (formerly) |
| Feast |
March 24 (no longer celebrated) |
| Attributes |
Youth, martyrdom |
| Patron saint
of |
Children, kidnap victims, torture victims |
Simon of Trent ( ; ); also known as
Simeon; born late 15th century, died c.
March 21, 1475) was a boy from
the city of Trento,
Italy
whose disappearance was blamed on the leaders of
the city's Jewish community based on their
confessions under torture, causing a major blood libel in Europe with
ramifications that continue to the present day.
Background
Shortly before Simon went missing,
Bernardo da Feltre, an itinerant
Franciscan preacher, had delivered a series of
sermons in Trent in which he vilified the local Jewish community.
When Simon went missing around
Easter, 1475,
his father thought that he must have been kidnapped and murdered by
Jews. According to his story, the Jews had drained Simon of his
blood, supposedly for use in baking their
Passover matzohs and for
occult rituals that they allegedly secretly adhered to.
Giving a succinct background to the story, historian Ronnie Po-chia
Hsia writes: "On Easter Sunday 1475, the dead body of a 2-year-old
Christian boy named Simon was found in the cellar of a Jewish
family's house in Trent, Italy. Town magistrates arrested 18 Jewish
men and five Jewish women on the charge of ritual murder - the
killing of a Christian child in order to use his blood in Jewish
religious rites. In a series of interrogations that involved
liberal use of judicial torture, the magistrates obtained the
confessions of the Jewish men. Eight were executed in late June,
and another committed suicide in jail" .
The leaders of the Jewish community were arrested, and seventeen of
them confessed under torture. Fifteen of them, including Samuel,
the head of the community, were sentenced to death and
burned at the stake. Meanwhile, Simon
became the focus of veneration for the local Catholic Church. The
local bishop, Hinderbach of Trent, tried to have Simon canonized,
producing a large body of documentation of the event and its
aftermath. Over one hundred miracles were directly attributed to
Saint Simon within a year of his disappearance, and his cult spread
across Italy, Austria and Germany. However, there was initial
skepticism and
Pope Sixtus IV sent
Bishop of Ventimiglia, a learned Dominican, to investigate. The
veneration was restored in 1588 by the Franciscan
Pope Sixtus V. The 'saint' was eventually
considered a martyr and a patron of kidnap and torture victims.
Simonino
was never canonized as a saint,, although the Franciscan pope
approved a special Mass in honor of Simonino ("little Simon") to be
said in the diocese of Trento, Italy. The cult survived until 1965, when, in the
wake of the Holocaust, it was abolished by the Pope.
His entry in the old Roman Martyrology for March 24 read:
- Tridénti pássio sancti Simeónis púeri, a Judǽis sævíssime
trucidáti, qui multis póstea miráculis coruscávit.
(Translated) At Trent, the martyrdom of the boy St. Simeon, who was
barbarously murdered by the Jews, but who was afterwards glorified
by many miracles.
Simon of Trent does not appear in the new Roman Martyrology of
2000, nor on any modern Catholic calendar.
Image Gallery
Image:Pietro Stefanoni Simon von Trient.jpg|
Portrait of St
Simon of Trent, 1607, etching,, 28.7 x 21 cmImage:Altobello
Melone Simonino Trento.JPG|Altobello Melone, Simon of Trent,
ca.1521, oil on panel, Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trent
(Italy)Image:Simonino Bienno2.JPG|Unknown painter,
Ex
voto; fresco, end of XV century, church of Santa Maria
Annunciata, Bienno (BS),
ItalyImage:Simon_einblattdruck.JPG|Incunabulum of Friedrich
Creussner, Nuremberg, 1475Image:Simon einblattdruck 2.JPG|Simon of
Trent's martyred body. Engraving, Nürnberg, around
1479.Image:Simonino.jpg|Stone medallion with the purported
martyrdom scene of Simonino di Trento.
Palazzo Salvadori, TrentImage:Schedel
judenfeindlichkeit.jpg|Illustration in Hartmann Schedel's
Weltchronik, 1493Image:Simonino Bienno.jpg|Unknown
painter, fresco, end of XV century, church of Santa Maria
Annunciata, Bienno (BS), ItalyImage:Simonino Trento.jpg|School of
Niklaus Weckmann, 1505-15, polychrome wood, cm. 79 x 109, Museo
Diocesano Trentino, Trento (Italy)File:Trento-statue of Simon of
Trent in via Simonino.jpg|Statue of
Simon of Trent on the
facade of a palace in Trento (situated in "Via del
Simonino")Image:Judensau_Frankfurt.jpg|Martyrdom of Simon of Trent
above a
Judensau.Image:Judensau_from_Frankfurt.jpg|Martyrdom
of Simon of Trent above a
Judensau.
References
- Toaff Controversy
- Paul Oskar Kristeller, The Alleged Ritual Murder of Simon of
Trent (1475) and Its Literary Repercussions: A Bibliographical
Study,Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, Vol.
59. (1993), pp. 103-135
- Jewish Encyclopedia
- Biblioteca Sanctorum, vol. 11, p. 1186
- A Blood Libel Cult:Anderl von Rinn, d.1462
(Medieval Sourcebook)
- R. Po-Chia Hsia Trent 1475, Yale University Press, 135;
Marco Polo und Rustichello: „notre livre“ und die
Unfaßbarkeit der Wunder
- The Roman Martyrology, March 24, [1] retrieved May 8, 2007
See also
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