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The Attitude of the Catholic Church towards Jewish Ritual Murder
By Arnold Leese The following is extracted from a chapter of his
book, Jewish Ritual Murder. Then we come to Clement
XIV. Before he became Pope, he was Cardinal Ganganelli. He was despatched
by the Inquisition in 1759 to investigate Ritual Murder charges against the
Jews in Poland, and he wrote a long report about it. From beginning to end of Ganganelli’s report, there is
nothing that a scientific investigator would regard as evidence that Ritual
Murder was not practised by Jews. The Polish cases he admits were juridically
decided. But there is more.
Definitely, and far from being able to refute the charge of Ritual Murder
against Jews, Ganganelli admits the Ritual Murders of St. Simon of Trent
and of St. Andreas of Rinn in these words: “I admit then, as true,
the fact of the Blessed Simon, a boy three years old, killed by the
Jews in Trent in the year 1475 in hatred of the faith of Jesus Christ”; and
“I also admit the truth of another fact, which happened in the year 1462 in
the village of Rinn, in the Diocese of Brixen, in the person of the Blessed
Andreas, a boy barbarously murdered by the Jews in hatred of the faith of
JESUS CHRIST.” Read Ganganelli’s
admission about his own outlook when he went to Poland to investigate: “With my weak
faculties, I endeavoured to demonstrate the non-existence of the crime which
was imputed to the Jewish Nation in Poland.” The Cardinal set forth,
not to find out whether Ritual Murder existed in Poland or not, but “to
demonstrate the non-existence of the crime”! And yet, he had to admit the
crimes of Trent and of Rinn! Thus Clement XIV,
far from being a witness for the defence of the Jews, is an unwilling witness
of the truth of the anti-Jewish accusation. And what of the Popes
who have supported the Ritual Murder accusation by their acts? There are
many. Sixtus IV
approved in his Bull XII Kal. July, 1478, of the conduct of the Bishop who
dealt with the Jews in the St. Simon case at Trent. Gregory XIII
recognised Simon as a martyr and himself visited the shrine. Sixtus V
ratified the cult of St. Simon in 1588, allowing the celebration of
mass in his name. This is confirmed as a fact by Benedict XIV. Benedict XIV
himself in a Bull Beatus Andreas (1778, Venice, IV, p.
101 seq.), beatified both Simon and Andreas, two boys murdered
by the Jews “in hatred of the faith of Jesus Christ”; “the Jews,” he said,
“used every means to escape the just punishment that they had merited and to
escape the just anger of the Christians.” Pius VII,
24th November, 1805, confirmed a decree of the Congregation of Rites of 31st
August according to the Church at Saragossa the right to honour Dominiculus,
killed by the Jews in hatred of the faith of JESUS CHRIST. He also authorised
for the church at Toledo the same privilege in respect to St. Christopher,
the boy crucified by the Jews near that place in 1490. In 1867, the
Congregation of Rites authorised the cult of Lorenzino, at Vicenza,
Padua, ritually murdered by Jews. Gregory XVI,
also, gave his support to the anti-Jewish accusers when he honoured Gougenot
des Mousseaux by making him a Chevalier of the Order of St. Gregory the
Great, in reward for writing his book, Le Juif, le Judaisme et la
Judaisation des Peuples Chretiens, in which Gougenot des Mousseaux
devoted a chapter charging the Jews with Ritual Murder of Christians for the
sake of their blood. Pius IX
refused to see the Jew Montefiore when the latter was returning from his
visits to Egypt and to Constantinople, where he had bribed the Khedive and
the Sultan so that the Jews at Damascus could escape the consequences of their
guilt of the Ritual Murder of Father Thomas and his servant; this, in
spite of a shameless Jewish persistence which has been fully described in Sir
Moses Montefiore’s biography. That showed what Pius IX thought about
it. Pope Leo XIII
bestowed distinctions on Edouard Drumont, author of La France luive,
who accused the Jews of Ritual Murder therein. Remember that other
martyred boys, victims of Jewish Ritual Murder, have been regarded in many
places as saints without papal authority. Such locally beatified “saints” or
martyrs were St. William of Norwich (1144), St. Richard of Pontoise
(1179), St. Hugh of Lincoln (1255), St. Werner of Oberwesel
(1286) and St. Rudolph of Berne (1287). In every such case it is quite
obvious that the cult had the full approval at least of the episcopal
authorities over the places mentioned. Those who condemn the
Blood Accusation as a wicked invention for the purpose of persecuting Jews
and robbing them, must at the same time condemn wholesale some of the highest
dignitaries of the Catholic Church, men against whom nothing is known beyond
that they had excellent characters, like William Turbe, Bishop of Norwich to
give an English example. When the reader peruses
the details of the cases that I have cited in this book, he will realise that
Episcopal Courts have dealt with many of them; in other words, the Jews were
condemned by the existing religious authority of the day. Many of the earliest
records we have of these Ritual Murders come from the pens of Catholic
historians, such as the Bollandists, a body of Belgian Jesuits; a list
of the principal works on the subject will be found at the end of the book. Father Creagh,
Redemptorist, publicly accused Jews of the practice of Ritual Murder, on 11th
January, 1904, in a speech in Limerick. Perhaps I may best wind
up this chapter by giving the names of the twelve members of juries who
investigated, considered and condemned the Jews in the Ritual Murder case of
La Guardia in Toledo, together with their qualifications: (1) Maestre Fray Juan
de Santispiritus, Professor of Hebrew, Salamanca University; (2) Masetre Fray Diego
de Bretonia, Professor of Scripture; (3) Fray Antonio de la
Pena, Prior; (4) Dr. Anton Rodriguez
Carnejo, Professor of Canon Law; (5) Dt. Diego de
Burgos, Professor of Civil Law; (6) Dr. Juan de
Covillas, Professor of Canon Law; (7) Fray Sebastian de
Hueta; (8) Licentiate Alvaro
de Sant Estevan, Queen Isabel’s corregidor for Avila; (9) Ruy Garcia Manso,
Bishop Talavera’s provisor; (10) Fray Rodrigo Vela,
head of the Franciscan Monastery, Avila; (11) Dr. Tristan, Canon
of Avila; (12) Juna de Saint
Estevan. On the findings of such
men of standing we surely have every right to rely. |
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