Monday, October 15, 2007
CAN A SAINT BE "DECANONIZED" - SIMON OF TRENT
The question often arises in regard to some of the recent canonizations under John Paul II. Perhaps the answer can be found in the story of Simon of Trent.
The website "Patron Saints Index" provides an entry for Simon of Trent which tells us his feast day was:
formerly 24 March; removed from the calender and veneration forbidden in 1965 by the Sacred Congregation of Rites
Apparently the answer is "yes" a saint can be "desainted". The entry further states
that Simon of Trent:
A child who was apparently murdered around Easter time. His death was attributed to local Jews who were accused of killing a Christian child out of hatred for Christ. Libel of the day claimed they needed his blood to make matzoh bread for Passover. Seventeen Jews were tortured into confessions. Miracles were reported through Simon's intercession, but the incident is a matter of anti-Semitism rather than sanctity.
The death date given is March 21, 1475, Trent, Italy.
There is quite a story behind this "decanonization". It is not only the story of a little boy through whose intercession miracles took place, it is also a story of a respected contemporary Jewish scholar and author who has been severely censored. Given the entry from the Saints Index, the entry for Simon of Trent in the Jewish Encyclopedia is worth considering:
Child victim of an alleged ritual murder by the Jews of Trent. He was the son of Andreas Unverdosben, a cobbler, or tanner, in Trent, and was born Nov. 26, 1472.
The Disappearance of Simon.
The harmonious relations between the Christians and the Jews in Trent had excited the anger of the semidemented Franciscan friar Bernardinus of Feltre, who was a son of a notorious enemy of the Jews. In his Lenten sermons (1475) he endeavored to incite the people against them, but instead provoked displeasure on the part of the Christians. Then he predicted that at the next Jewish Passover a ritual murder would occur. In accordance with this prediction, the child Simon, twenty-eight months old, disappeared on March 23, 1475. Bernardinus of Feltre, Johannes Schweizer (a neighbor of the Jews), and, at last, the excited people themselves declared that the child would be found among the Jews; but a careful search through the Jewish quarter, ordered by Bishop Hinderbach and executed by the podestà of Trent, Johann Sala, proved fruitless.
On the eve of Easter Monday, March 26, some Jews noticed the body of a child in the river, near the house of one of their number named Samuel. Without a moment's delay three of them, Tobias (a physician), Samuel, and Angelus, hastened to notify the bishop, but were not admitted to his presence. The podestà, however, visited the house of Samuel, took possession of the child's body, and ordered the arrest of those present—Samuel, Angelus, Tobias, Israel, Bonaventura, Toaff, and a second Bonaventura (the cook). After a medical examination of the body it was stated that death was the result of violence, not of accidental drowning. A baptized Jew, Johann of Feltre, who had been a prisoner for several years for theft, seized the apparent opportunity to shorten the term of his imprisonment by declaring that the Jews use the blood of Christians for ritual purposes at the Passover.
The article goes on to recount the trial and the use of torture to elicit a confession. Several Jews were executed. The pope and his representative became involved:
The Bishop of Ventimiglia reported to Rome that, as the result of careful investigations, he found the Jews innocent, that Simon had been killed by Christians with the intention of ruining the Jews, and that Bishop Hinderback had planned to enrich himself by confiscating the estates of those executed. ...Both Bernardinus of Feltre and Simon of Trent are said to have been canonized by Gregory XIII., about a century later, the former as a prophet, and the latter as a martyr.
In turning to Wikipedia for a more balanced viewpoint, we get:
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, 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" [1].
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. Although initial skepticism existed and Pope Sixtus IV prohibited the cult,[1] 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.
His entry in the Roman Martyrology for March 24 [4] reads:
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.
Wikipedia also tells us that it was Pope Paul VI who suppressed Simon's cult and had the shrine erected to him demolished.
The historian mentioned in the Wikipedia article has an article on the event at the www.haretz.com website. Here he tells us that the body of "Simon was found in the cellar of a Jewish family's house in Trent." However, he also questions any of the testimony associated with the trial because all of it was extracted under torture:
Then the pope intervened and suspended the trial. Appeals from the Venetian and Jewish communities moved Sixtus IV to appoint the Dominican Baptista Dei Giudici, Bishop of Ventigmiglia, as the apostolic commissioner to investigate the affair.
The trial in Trent was highly irregular. The 1247 Decretum of Pope Innocent IV had prohibited ritual murder trials on account of the judicial abuses involved and the violence against the Jews. Dei Giudici's task, therefore, was precisely to see whether abuses and excessive violence were involved in the judicial procedure in Trent.
Skeptical of the evidence he saw and disapproving of the popular cult that had arisen around the dead boy's body, Dei Giudici quickly headed into a collision course with the ruler of Trent, the prince-bishop Johannes von Hinderbach, who had taken upon himself the promotion of the cult of Little Simon in his native Germany. The case of Simon of Trent quickly became politically explosive - a scandal for some, a cause celebre for others.
According to the Haaretz article:
The testimonies from this notorious trial apparently presuaded Professor Ariel Toaff that "within Ashkenazi Judaism there werre extremist groups that could have committed such an act"...These arguments formed the basis of his controversial book "Bloody Passover," which has just been published in Italy.
The article also states:
Professor Toaff, however, is utterly misguided when he confuses the defiant words of a helpless man with the fantasized reality of the Christian authorities. For the Jews of Trent, and for other communities throughout the ages, Passover was indeed bloody, but it was the blood of the Jews that bore witness to a violent fantazy born out of intolerance.
Prof. Ronnie Po-chia Hsia is a historian, author of "Trent, 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial" (Yale University Press, 1992)
The article is dated February 18, 2007.
Professor Toaff has withdrawn the book according to another Haaretz article:
The author of a book on the ritualistic use of blood by Jews in Ashkenazi communities in the Middle Ages on Wednesday asked the book's Italian publisher to discontinue distribution in order to let him amend and annotate contentious sections.
Professor Ariel Toaff submitted his request to the El Molino publishing house just days after the book was released, due to the furor its publication caused around the world. The first edition of the book had sold out within a few days of its release.
Toaff told Haaretz earlier this week that he stood by the contention of his book, "Pasque di Sangue," that there is a factual basis for some of the medieval blood libels against the Jews. However, he said he was sorry his arguments had been twisted.
"I tried to show that the Jewish world at that time was also violent, among other things because it had been hurt by Christian violence," the Bar-Ilan history professor said. Of course I do not claim that Judaism condones murder. But within Ashkenazi Judaism there were extremist groups that could have committed such an act and justified it," he said.
He added, "I will not give up my devotion to the truth and academic freedom even if the world crucifies me."
According to the article the ADL
condemned Toaff's claims that some of the confessions extracted from Jews during post-Crusades trials were based on actual fact.
ADL Chairman Abraham Foxman said that Toaff's book serves the interests of anti-Semites. "It is hard to believe that anybody, not to mention an Israeli historian, would legitimize baseless claims of blood libel"...
The book is online in English translation here. I have just finished reading it.
I'm inclined to discount testimony acquired under torture. However, there are other passages in the book whose source is not testimony from this trial. Tomorrow I'll blog some of them.
