Simon of Trent

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(Saint) Simon of Trent (Cult suppressed)
Illustration in Hartmann Schedel's Weltchronik, 1493
Youth, catalyst
Born	Early Fall 1472
Died	March 21(?), 1475
Venerated by	Roman Catholics (formerly)
Feast	March 24 (no longer celebrated)
Attributes	Youth, martyrdom, blood feud (formerly)
Patron saint of	Children, kidnap victims, torture victims (unofficially) revenge, libel, murder, anti-Semitism (formerly)

(Saint) Simon of Trent (Simonino di Trento; born late 15th century, died ca. 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 confessions probably extracted under torture.

1 Background
2 Suppression of cult
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Background

The disappearance of Simon Unverdorben, also known as Simeon, was the cause of a major blood libel in Europe with ramifications that lasted almost five centuries. 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 for use in baking their Passover matzohs and for occult rituals secretly adhered to by them.

Giving a succinct background to the story, an Israeli journalist 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" [2].

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. Over one hundred miracles were directly attributed to "Little Saint Simon" within a year of his disappearance, and his cult spread across Italy, Austria and Germany. His veneration was confirmed (equivalent to beatification) in 1588 by Pope Sixtus V and he was considered a martyr and a patron of kidnap and torture victims. In the same year Sixtus V canonized the boy of Trent and approved a special Mass in honor of "little Simon" to be said in the diocese of Trento, Italy. ^[1]^[2]

Simon of Trent's martyred body. Engraving, Nürnberg, around 1479.

Stone medallion with the purpoted martyrdom scene of Simonino di Trento. Palazzo Salvadori, Trent

A 17th century image of Simon of Trent

[edit] Suppression of cult

In 1965, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church began to reinvestigate the story of Saint Simon and opened the trial records anew. Finally declaring the episode a fraud, the cult of Saint Simon was suppressed by Pope Paul VI and the shrine erected to him was dismantled. He was removed from the calendar, and his future veneration was forbidden, but some Catholics ignored this suppression and continued to venerate him.

In 2001 the local authorities of the Autonomous Province of Trento promoted a common Catholic and Jewish prayer at the site where the ancient Jewish synagogue in Palazzo Salvadori was located, in a sort of reconciliation between the city and Jewish community.^[3]

In February 2007 the Italian-born Israeli historian Ariel Toaff published a book in Italy entitled Pasque di Sangue (Bloody Easter) in which he claimed that dried blood was sometimes used at the time for medical purpose, and that there was a Jewish itinerant peddler from Venice connected with the trial who dealt in this substance. His claims raised a storm in Israel and Italy. Toaff's colleagues accused him of deeply flawed scholarship, of crediting Inquisition confession documents which had been obtained under torture or falsified and pointed out that a Jew, who acted as crown witness for some time, helped the judges with his knowledge. Ariel Toaff has withdrawn the book since and wants to restate relevant passages.^[4]

Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, author of a book on the Trent case, commented the controversy.