Simon of Trent

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Saint Simon of Trent (Cult suppressed)
Illustration in Hartmann Schedel's Weltchronik, 1493
Youth, catalyst
Born	Early Fall 1472
Died	March 21(?), 1475
Venerated by	Roman Catholics (formerly)
Feast	March 24 (no longer celebrated)
Attributes	Youth, martyrdom, blood feud (formerly)
Patron saint of	Children, kidnap victims, torture victims (unofficially) revenge, libel, murder, anti-Semitism (formerly)

(Saint) Simon of Trent (* Late 15th century - died ca. March 21, 1475) was a boy from the city of Trento, Italy whose disappearance was blamed on the leaders of the city's Jewish community based on confessions probably extracted under torture.

The disappearance of Simon Unverdorben, also known as Simeon, was the cause of a major blood libel in Europe with ramifications that lasted almost five centuries. Shortly before Simon went missing, Bernardo da Feltre, an itinerant Franciscan preacher, had delivered a series of sermons in Trent in which he vilified the local Jewish community. 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.

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. 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. [1] [2]

In 1965, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church began to reinvestigate the story of Saint Simon and opened the trial records anew. Finally declaring the episode a fraud, the cult of Saint Simon was suppressed by Pope Paul VI and the shrine erected to him was dismantled. He was removed from the calendar, and his future veneration was forbidden, but some Catholics have ignored this suppression and continue to venerate the holy little boy of Trent.

In 2001 the local authorities of the Autonomous Province of Trento promoted a common Catholic and Jewish prayer at the site where the ancient Jewish synagogue in Palazzo Salvadori was located, in a sort of reconciliation between the city and Jewish community.[3]

Although historians agree that it seems highly unlikely that Simon was murdered by Jews ^{[citation needed]}, the murder is still promoted as a fact by some. The actual cause of Simon's disappearance and murder remains a mystery.