Andreas Oxner

Andreas Oxner
Child of Judenstein
Born Anderl Oxner von Rinn
c. 1459
Austria
Died 12 July 1462 (aged 3)
Rinn, Austria
Venerated in Folk Catholicism
Beatified 1752 by Pope Benedict XIV
Catholic cult suppressed
 1994 by Reinhold Stecher

Anderl (Andreas) Oxner von Rinn, also known as Andreas Oxner, (c. 1459 – 12 July 1462) is a folk saint of the Roman Catholic Church. A later writer alleged that the three-year-old boy had been ritually murdered by the Jews in the village of Rinn (Northern Tyrol, currently part of Austria).

Initial accusations

Andrew was the child of day laborers Simon and Maria Oxner. After the death of his father, the mother entrusted the child to his uncle Johann Meyer, an innkeeper. On July 12 1462, Andrew disappeared and his mother found his body hanging from a tree in a nearby forest. The uncle claimed he had sold the child to Jews returning from a fair. The child's body was buried in a cemetery of Ampass without any investigation.[1]

The ritual murder accusation did not arise until after 1620, by the pen of Hyppolyte Guarinoni. Around 1677–85, the inhabitants of Rinn solemnly transferred Andrew's body to Rinn, imitating the cult of Simon of Trent. In 1722 a commemoration mass was first celebrated in his honor.

The alleged scene of the crime, known as the "Judenstein" (or Jews' Stone),[2] became a place of pilgrimage and locus of antisemitism in the Catholic Church.

Veneration

In 1752, Pope Benedict XIV beatified Anderl, but in 1755 refused to canonize him and stated that the Roman Church did not formally venerate him.[3]

Popular theatrical performances based on the writings of Guarinoni were performed until 1954 and facilitated the spread of the blood libel legend. The Brothers Grimm revived the tale in 1816 when they published the first volume of their German legends. In 1893, a book appeared, Four Tyrolian Child Victims of Hassidic Fanaticism by Viennese priest Josef Deckert.

In 1985, Bishop of Innsbruck Reinhold Stecher ordered the body transferred from the church to the parish cemetery, and forbade his cultus in 1994.

See also

See also the articles of other children whose deaths in medieval times gave rise to the persecution of the Jews:

Sources

  • Rainer Erb: Es hat nie einen jüdischen Ritualmord gegeben. Konflikte um die Abschaffung der Verehrung des Andreas von Rinn. Wien 1989.
  • Bernhard Fresacher: Anderl von Rinn. Ritualmordkult und Neuorientierung in Judenstein 1945–1995. Innsbruck und Wien 1998. ISBN 3-7022-2125-5
  • Andreas Maislinger und Günther Pallaver: « Antisemitismus ohne Juden - Das Beispiel Tirol ». In: Wolfgang Plat (Hg.), Voll Leben und voll Tod ist diese Erde. Bilder aus der Geschichte der Jüdischen Österreicher. Herold Verlag, Wien 1988. ISBN 3-7008-0378-8
  • Ingrid Strobl: Anna und das Anderle. Eine Recherche. Frankfurt am Main 1995. ISBN 3-596-22382-2
  • Richard Utz: "Remembering Ritual Murder: The Anti-Semitic Blood Accusation Narrative in Medieval and Contemporary Cultural Memory." In Genre and Ritual: The Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals. Ed. Eyolf Østrem. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press/University of Copenhagen, 2005. Pp. 145–62.

References

  1. ↑ "ANDREW OF RINN, BL.", New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1 (2nd ed.), 2003, p. 406
  2. ↑ Medieval Sourcebook: A Blood Libel Cult: Anderl von Rinn, d. 1462 www.fordham.edu.
  3. ↑ "ANDREW OF RINN", Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2 (2nd ed.), 2007, p. 144
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