servus-immaculatae:St. Simon of Trent, a two-year-old boy from the Italian town of Trent kidnapped
servus-immaculatae: St. Simon of Trent, a two-year-old boy from the Italian town of Trent kidnapped by Ashkenazi Jews from his home on the eve of Passover 1475 A. D. He was murdered, his body mutilated and crucified head down. The killers were apprehended, confessed and found guilty by Bishop Hinderbach of Trent. Fifty years later, Pope Sixtus IV assembled a commission of six cardinals chaired by the best legal mind of that time for a retrial, and this court also found the murderers guilty. Records of the trial have survived for centuries. St. Simon’s worship was approved in 1588 by Pope Sixtus IV, and every year the town of Trent celebrated his feast with processions and fanfare - until 1965 A. D. In that year, to foster better relations with the Jews after Vatican II, Paul VI ordered the Trent case to be re-examined, and ruled that the confessions of the killers were unacceptable because they were obtained under torture. A decree forbade the cult of St. Simon of Trent. His cult was discontinued and prohibited, and the remains of the martyred child removed and hidden to avoid resumption of pilgrimages. In his research, Dr. Ariel Toaff made a thorough examination of those court records preserved at Trent. His discovery was that the confessions of the killers contained material that could not have been known to the Italian churchmen or police. The secret rites practiced by the Ashkenazi community, which could not have been known by the judges, were faithfully reproduced in the confessions. Toaff told Haaretz News: “I found that there were statements and parts of the testimony that were not part of the Christian culture of the judges, and they could not have been invented or added by them.” (10) Such data would seem to at least deserve a fair reading. One might expect that the Vatican in particular would welcome the confirmation by a Jewish scholar of the past findings of Church authorities in the Trent court hearings. But sadly, no hearing or welcome was forthcoming. Toaff discovered many cases of bloody sacrifices connected with the mutilation of children, the outpouring of blood and its baking in Matzo (unleavened Passover bread). The flood of blood accusations in the South Tyrol and upper Veneto at the end of the 15th century, were grounded in facts, according to Toaff’s research. Another Jewish scholar, Kenneth Stow, provides this summary of several chapters of Bloody Passovers: “Discussions of the negativity Jews expressed about Christianity during the festivals of Purim and Passover and the prominence of blood-imagery especially in Passover rituals (chapters 10 and 11) are followed by the opening words to chapter 12, which say ‘The use of the blood of Christian children in the celebration of Passover was apparently framed by precise rules, or at least this is what the deposition to the Trent trial indicate.” (11) -- source link