Der Judische Ritualmord:

Eine Historiche Untersuchung

Von Hellmut Schramm, Ph.D

 

Jewish Ritual Murder:

An Historical Investigation

By Hellmut Schramm, Ph.D.

Translated into English

By

Regina Belser

 

There is comprehensive literature for the infamous case of the Trent boy-murder in 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 Civilita 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." (JudenbЭchlein 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 judgment 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, PodestЮ 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 JudenbЭchlein 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.  [Note the pincers in the angel’s hand below.]

 



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 jЭdischem 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.

 

Footnotes:
(13) Der Orient, Number 45 (7 November 1840).
(14) The important disclosures which the accused made about the far-spread use of the blood in the cult actions of the Jews will be treated in a special chapter (see page 398 etc.)

 

(388)

 

During the horrible "sacrifice" of little Simon of Trent in the house of the Rabbi Samuel, according to the Jew Angelus ("Angel") "all the Jews stood around the child, who was stretched out upon a board placed above a small container."

 

(389)

 

"And your death shall be with a blocking of your mouth like a beast, that dies and has not voice or speech." Gruesome tortures precede the actual slaughtering. In the Trent ritual-murder trial of 1475, the Rabbi Samuel testified that it is necessary that the victim give up the ghost while being tortured; otherwise the blood is no good! (Est necesse, quod ille puer moriatur in tormentis; aliter ille sanguis non est bonus.) [It is necessary that that boy should expire in torment; else that blood is not good.] In this case the victim, "ille puer," the boy Simon, was stabbed with needles and portions of his flesh were ripped away with tongs while he was fully conscious, at which [events] they spoke and sang in Hebrew: "So may all the enemies of Israel be destroyed. . ."