JEWISH RITUAL MURDER
A.D. 1475
Trento, Italia.
The Strange, Sad Saga of Saint Simon of Trent
The Setting for the Crime
Trent (Trento in Italian) was no Eastern European backwater town full of ignorant kulaks. It was in 1475 already an old and beautiful northern Italian city, experiencing the height of Renaissance art and culture. It had universities and a highly educated professional class. It's people were of typically northern Italian stock, with a good dose of Alpine and German in the mix. Standards of literacy were high for the times. It was a Catholic city with many churches and devout religious people. Later in the 1500's it would host the famous Councils of Trent launching the Catholic Counter-Reformation against the encroachments of Protestantism. It was a clean, healthful, prosperous city growing and expanding in trade, culture and the arts. Trent was a comfortable place to live the good life of Renaissance times.
A Baby Boy Dissapeared
The cultured citizens were shocked when a thirty-month-old boy, Simon, disappeared. Just as in child abduction cases today, the parents and citizenry went through a period of shock and disbelief as efforts to find the boy failed. Perhaps, they hoped, he had only been disobedient, and went off somewhere to play with other children. As the time grew later and later, another kind of shock and terror took hold as they began to realize that any chance of finding the boy alive was fast fading away. The parents of little SImon must have felt awful. They were both away from home when the child went missing, perhaps attending Holy Week services. What terrible anguish and misgivings were felt by these frightened parents? If you have ever had a child or loved a child, you can place yourself in this horrid situation.
It seems that Simon played outside after hte family dinner, last seen sitting on the front steps of his home. Later testimony revealed that he was approached by one Tobias, a Jewish resident of Trent. Tobias was no ordinary citizen. He was a doctor, a surgeon to be exact, skilled in the use of knives and blades. Tobias became friendly with the boy, eventually picking him up and bearing him away to the house of a co-conspirator, one Samuel. Simon was not seen alive again. This all happened on 21 March 1475 on a Thursday. To be precise, it was Maundy Thursday of Holy Week- and it was also Passover. The crime, occuring as it did during this high holy season, attracted much attention. Eventually the focus of public attention fell upon the Jews. They were seen with the lad, and the full story soon unfolded. In a curious development, the body was "discovered" by some of the Jews in the river. This may have been a tactical move by the cult to go ahead and let the body be found, hopefully directing attention away from them. [Compare with teh Tizsa-Eszlar Case of 1882] After all, if they found the boys body in the water, then he probably drowned accidentally as the not yet three-year-old could not swim. If believed, then a funeral would be the end of it- or so they hoped.
Poor Simon's body was in the Adige River that flowed not far from the house of the co-conspirator, Samuel. The matter was not handled so easily. The boy's naked body had singular and extraordinary wounds and incisions. The child also showed recent signs of circumcision! Further examination showed that the body was almost completely bloodless. It was clear that he had not drowned.
What Really Happened to Little Simon?
Charged along with Dr. Tobias were seven other conspirators: Samuel (whos home was the crime scene); two twin brothers named Saligman; Vitalis (or Veitel); Moses; Israel and Mayr. Because of the religious ritual circumstances of the killing, Bishop Hinderbach of the Diocese of Trent presided over the trial. A thorough investigation and interrogation ensued, albeit some of it under judicial torture. Soon the disgusting, sorded details of this unspeakable crime emerged. According to the confessions of his abusers, Simon suffered greatly at their hands. All the tortures, including the slow exsanguination, happened whil the child was alive and aware! The old records contain the genuinely frightening and graphic details, which are truly repelling to most readers. We have chosen Sir Richard Burton's casenotes for this account. His scholarship and thoroughness in research are undisputed and exemplified in the quotation.
WILL CONTINUE IN PART 2