(ANTISEMITICA).

...

(ANTISEMITICA).

(SIMON OF TRENT). Officium proprium Sancti Simonis innocentis et mart. Tridentini, per totam diœcesim Trident. a sæcularibus et regularibus dominica III post Pascha celebrandum.

Title-page with engraving featuring “triumphant Simon.”

pp. 19. Touch browned. Contemporary wrappers. 8vo.

Trento (Tridenti / Trent), Giovanni Battista Monauni, c. 1783.

“An Account of Saint Simon the innocent and martyr. Tridentine… to be celebrated…on the 3rd Sunday after Easter.”

Simon of Trent (Simonino di Trento) was a boy from the city of Trent, Italy, whose disappearance around Easter, 1475, was blamed squarely on the leaders of the city's Jewish community based upon confessions extracted under torture. The veneration for the missing boy by the Catholic Church resulted in a ruthless blood libel that rampaged across Europe with ramifications that lasted almost five centuries.

Within a year of his disappearance numerous miracles were directly attributed to"Little Saint Simon", and his cult spread across Italy, Austria and Germany. His veneration was confirmed (equivalent to beatification) in 1588 by Pope Sixtus V who canonized the boy and approved a special Mass in his honor.

In 1965, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church reinvestigated the story of Saint Simon and opened the trial records anew. Declaring the events questionable, the cult of Saint Simon was suppressed by Pope Paul VI and the shrine erected to him was dismantled, although Catholics in some quarters ignored this suppression and continued to venerate the cult.

For further, see Madga Teter, Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth (2020) pp. 43-89.