Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial

Interrogation by torture is NOT an invention of the CIA. All the elements of the CIA-funded research into brutal interrogation by psychiatrist Ewen Cameron - extreme prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation, depersonalization, recurring torture, threats of death - were well if not scientifically understood in 15th Century Italy. Instead of electric prods and water-boarding, the authorities in the Papal and Hapsburg states used the "strappado." The victim's hands were tied behind his lower back and he was hoisted into the air until his feet dangled. If the pain didn't produce immediate "confession", the victim might be hoisted higher, dropped suddenly and jerked sharply aloft again. Obviously his shoulders were dislocated. To vary the pain, hot boiled eggs would be put in his armpits. Then, when any bit of submission was yielded, the victim would be isolated again for a few days before a resumption of torture. Such practices were in a sense already illegal - condemned by canon law - but they were wide-spread, and favored by the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Few indeed were the victims of such torture who weren't broken and who didn't "learn" the scripted confession expected of them. Giordano Bruno withstood several years of torture in the dungeons of Rome before he was burned alive, with his jaw nailed shut to prevent him from declaring innocence, in the Campo dei Fiori. His statue is visible from my apartment window in Rome. In the Tirolean city of Trent in 1475, the three Jewish heads of families and their several male dependents accused of the "ritual murder" of a Christian child withstood the strappado to varying degrees, denying guilt anywhere from one session to dozens of sessions. In the end, however, they all agreed to confess... and then essentially had to be instructed under torture as to what precisely they would need to confess before they would be granted the relief of death. The show-trial in Trent was far from the only such horrible charade of justice in the history of European anti-Semitism, and the three-family Jewish community of Trent was not the largest to be exterminated under the leadership of the Franciscans and other Preaching Observants, but the Prince-Bishop of Trent, Johanes Hinderbach, had strong motives for publicizing and justifying his persecution of the ritual murder charges. The outcome was the foundation and dissemination of a cult of miracles performed by the "child martyr" Simon of Trent, a cult which persisted and served its vicious anti-Semitic purpose until 1965, when it was abolished by the Vatican! Actually, the Pope in 1475, the Sixtus whose Vatican chapel we all admire as a triumph of humanism, was more than a little suspicious, both of the Jewish guilt and of the subsequent miracle tales, but he didn't have time or care enough to intervene effectively, though the bishop he commissioned to investigate, Baptista dei Giudici, concluded that the trial was a malevolent sham and the miracles bogus. Simo

These blood libel stories have been taken to heart in the Islamic Mid East and are, sadly, now believed by different people, still inventing stories that dehumanize other peoples and beliefs. Densely written and meticulously researched, Dr. Hsia has written a work more academic than the casual reader may be looking for. To those who are looking for an understanding of the basis/current of the blood libel (and, less of import today, host desecration), this is a good place to begin.

This book is a case study of a ritual murder trial that destroyed a small Jewish community. I learned a lot from this book, including: 1. The amazingly small size of medieval Jewish communities. Trent contained 30 Jews in three households; even Rome contained only a couple of thousand Jews at the end of the 15th century. 2. That ritual murder cases weren't just against Jews. The Catholic Church also used ritual murder accusations against heretics and in witchcraft cases. 3. That ritual murder cases involved judicial proceedings as well as mob justice. In the Trent case, the local government relied on 3 witnesses before arresting Jews: an ex-Jew who claimed to have been told 15 years earlier that Jews used blood in preparing matzos, a Christian woman whose son got lost in a Jewish defendant's shed 14 years earlier, and another Christian woman who heard a boy crying near a Jew's house. The authorities had no interest in the fact that the Jewish defendants voluntarily came forward with the corpse of the alleged victim. 3. The heavy use of torture. The Christian authorities recognized that these three witnesses' testimony was not adequate to prove guilt. So they tortured the Jews (mostly using the strappado, for which the victim had his or her hands tied behind his back with a long rope and was then hoisted up in the air by a pulley) until they confessed. After enough pain, the prisoner would confess to anything. Even after the Jews confessed, the authorities continued to torture them in order to ensure that they told roughly identical stories, and to ensure that their stories included certain details that the authorities imagined would be present. By coercing confessions, the strappado had the added advantage of stripping the Jews of the dignity of martyrdom. 4. Local authorities' use of public pressure and semi-idolatrous cults to make the ritual murder case popular and discourage the papal bureaucracy (which at the time was far more enlightened than local bishops) from cracking down on anti-Semitic murders. In the Trent case, the local bishop started a semi-idolatrous cult around the two year old boy who was allegedly murdered, starting a shrine to the Blessed Simon Martyr of Trent, encouraging poetry and paintings in his honor, and spreading rumors about miracles created by the boy. (The author does not seem sure about the boy's actual fate; he seems to think that the boy either drowned accidentally or was murdered by someone else who then placed the body in a Jew's cellar). 5. The quasi-pornographic nature of anti-Semitic propaganda; the bishop encouraged woodcuts with anatomically correct pictures of Simon's alleged circumcision by the Jewish defendants.

The 475 trials of Trent mark a very important chapter in Jewish history. The history of genocide and murder dates back to the early days of Europe. Here, in Trent, three Jewish families were accused of murdering a young Christian boy through ritual practices. The now-infamous trial lasted more than three years, during which many Jewish men and women were tortured during brutal interrogations and forced to confess to a crime they had not committed.The book is a good read that never boggles down in too much details. Hsia gives all the necessary information for the reader to understand the time and place as well as the events surrounding the death of little Simon. His study of 15th century Italy is visually appealing to the reader, as the facts are written down to be easily understood by anyone.Thought-provoking, precise and well written, Trent 1475 brings you back to a time and place where torture was the popular recourse during judicial interrogations, where the Jewish population was misunderstood and badly treated, where torture was so brutal that people would lie and condem themselves just to avoid being brutalized.This book will appeal to historians, but also to the curious and inquisitive minds. Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial is an important book that teaches us about our past and about our violent history.