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 |
| Major shrine | Judenstein |
| Controversy | Blood libel |
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). The story is an example of a Blood libel common in medieval Europe.
Andrew, if he existed at all, was supposedly the child of day laborers Simon and Maria Oxner. After his father's death, the mother allegedly entrusted the child to his uncle Johann Meyer, an innkeeper. On 12 July 1462, Andrew disappeared, and his mother found his body hanging from a tree in a nearby forest. The uncle claimed that he had sold the child to some traveling merchants.[1] The child's body was buried in a cemetery of Ampass without any investigation.[2]
In 1619, Hyppolyte Guarinoni allegedly heard a story about a little boy buried in Rinn who had been murdered by Jews, and dreamt that his year of death was 1462. Research suggests that a child named Andreas Oxner perhaps never existed.[1] Nonetheless, celebrations of the cult began in 1621 and, by the late 17th century, they occurred in all the Tyrol region.[3]
Around 1677–85, the inhabitants of Rinn solemnly transferred Andrew's body to Rinn, imitating the cult of Simon of Trent. The alleged scene of the crime, known as the "Judenstein" (or Jews' Stone),[4] became a place of pilgrimage and locus of antisemitism in area.
The tale of the Anderl's ritual murder, known as Der Judenstein (The Jews' Stone), is largely part of a Tyrolian oral tradition and only a few written versions exist.[3] It was recorded by the Grimm Brothers in Deutsche Sagen (1816/1818).[5]
In the year 1462 in the village of Rinn in Tyrol a number of Jews convinced a poor farmer to surrender his small child to them in return for a large sum of money. They took the child out into the woods, where, on a large stone, they martyred it to death in the most unspeakable manner. From that time the stone has been called the Jews' Stone. Afterward they hung the mutilated body on a birch tree not far from a bridge.
The child's mother was working in a field when the murder took place. She suddenly thought of her child, and without knowing why, she was overcome with fear. Meanwhile, three drops of fresh blood fell onto her hand, one after the other. Filled with terror she rushed home and asked for her child. Her husband brought her inside and confessed what he had done. He was about to show her the money that would free them from poverty, but it had turned into leaves. Then the father became mad and died from sorrow, but the mother went out and sought her child. She found it hanging from the tree and, with hot tears, took it down and carried it to the church at Rinn. It is lying there to this day, and the people look on it as a holy child. They also brought the Jews' Stone there.
According to legend a shepherd cut down the birch tree, from which the child had hung, but when he attempted to carry it home he broke his leg and died from the injury.
— Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsche Sagen (1816/1818), no. 353. Trans. D. L. Ashliman, 2005.
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.[6]
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.
The cult of Anderl von Rinn persisted in Austria until the 1990s. In 1985, Bishop of Innsbruck Reinhold Stecher ordered the body transferred from the church to the churchyard of Judenstein, and forbade his cult in 1994. Some ultra-conservative Christians still make a procession to his grave every year.[3]
