ON BLESSED RUDOLPH THE BOY
SLAIN BY THE JEWS AT BERN IN SWITZERLAND.
AROUND THE YEAR 1287.
CommentaryRudolph, a boy slain by the Jews, at Bern in Switzerland (Bl.)
BY G. H.
Three young boys slain by the Jews in hatred of the Christian religion are celebrated in these days: of whom the first, named Werner, died at Wesel on the Rhine in the diocese of Trier in the year 1287, on April 19, on which we treat the Acts of his martyrdom at length. The second, according to Albertus, died in Poland around the 20th, in the year 1598. The third, in the same year 1287 as the first, or the following, was killed at Bern in Switzerland on this April 17, and he is called Rudolph, of whom we now treat. Peter Canisius of the Society of Jesus, Name inserted in the Calendar a man famous for outstanding learning and sanctity, among other lucubrations published a Martyrology in the German tongue printed at Dillingen in 1562 and 1573, with a Kalendar prefixed, in which on each day almost one Saint is proposed for public veneration, and this on April 17 is Rudolph the Martyr of Bern, on April 19 Werner the Martyr of Wesel. And the Martyrology of Canisius Rudolph is celebrated there in these words: "Likewise at Bern, of the holy boy Rudolph, who, crowned with martyrdom by the impious Jews, shone with very many miracles."
[2] of Ferrarius Following Canisius's example, Ferrarius begins this day with this Saint in his general Catalogue of Saints who are not inscribed in the Roman Martyrology, and has this: "At Verona in Switzerland, of St. Rudolph the Martyr." Where he calls "Verona" what by others is called Bern, the most powerful city among the Swiss cantons, but now deformed by heresy. Peter Cratepolius, in his treatise on the Saints of Germany, printed at Cologne in 1592, hands down this about our Martyr: "St. Rudolph the Martyr, a young man, and of Cratepolius whom the impious Jews killed for the Catholic religion, in the year of the Lord 1287. He rests at Bern in Switzerland." The same year of martyrdom was noted by Peter Canisius in the margin and by Ferrarius in the Notes; and it is asserted that by others he is referred to the following day, on which day in the monastic Martyrologies is referred some Rudolph, but a monk of the Church of Fulda, of whom we treat in the same place among the Passed Over.
[3] Acts from the Bern Chronicles offered by Murer Henry Murer, a Carthusian of Lucerne, in his Holy Helvetia published in German in the year 1648, offers some encomium on Blessed Rudolph the boy and Martyr, on page 299, and besides the already mentioned Martyrology of Canisius, cites a manuscript Chronicle of Bern extending to the year 1440, and another more recent Chronicle printed at Bern in 1627 by Michael Stettber, from which, saving the Catholic religion, he excerpted some things; and in chapter 1 he treats of the perfidy of the Jews, and their hatred against Christ and Christians, and their cruelty in killing Christian boys, and then in chapters 2 and 3 he proceeds thus.
[4] When Honorius IV the Pope presided over the Roman Church, and Rudolph I governed the Roman Empire, and the city of Bern had stood for 100 years from its founding, the Jews, of whom very many lived in that city, He is cruelly killed poured forth their innate envy and cruel hatred against Christian blood, when in the year 1288 at Bern they secretly carried off a boy by name Rudolph, and led into the house of a certain rich Jew in the cellar or underground room, having tortured him with many torments, they butchered him, and in hatred of Christ crowned him with martyrdom. But the innocent blood shed demanded vengeance from God, so that the cruel deed itself, although the cruel robber and murderer had applied every effort that it might be concealed, nevertheless at once became openly known. Therefore the body, disfigured with wounds and dead, was found, and taken up by his own with the greatest feeling of their souls. Then Rudolph, in the council of Priests and other wise men of Bern, He is honorably buried was judged to be an innocent boy and true Martyr of God, was carried into the principal church, and buried near the altar of the Most Holy Cross: which altar was afterwards called the altar of St. Rudolph, because of the many miracles performed for old and young, men and women; He shines with miracles by which almighty God manifested to all how grateful and acceptable to his divine mercy had been this innocent boy and his martyr.
[5] But after the said murder had become known and perceived, the Jews, guilty and accomplices of so great a crime, With the Jews either killed or driven into exile were arrested by order of the Senators of the city; the chief authors were set upon the wheel and according to their merit handed over to death; the rest, because they had knowledge of this crime and had consented to it, were driven into exile; and by order of the Senators it was decreed that no Jews thereafter should be admitted into the city of Bern, because of the aforesaid murder and several other urgent reasons. Afterwards, in the year 1440, the said parish church was destroyed, The body placed on the altar in 1440 and another much larger and more beautiful built: at which time the body of this Martyr was exhumed, placed in a leaden tomb, and enclosed in the altar of the Most Holy Cross; which was held in the highest veneration, not only by the citizens but by others living far from there, who used to visit it with great devotion and no less fruit. But when, in the year 1528, the orthodox Catholic faith was abolished, but in the year 1528 committed to the earth by heretics and nefarious heresy introduced, altars were cast down, images destroyed, and sacred ornaments taken away; and then the sacred body of this Martyr, with its leaden coffin, was committed to the earth.
[6] As to why nefarious men commit these slaughters of children, various causes are alleged. Various causes for which Jews seek out the blood of children Antonius Bonfinius in his History of Hungary, Decade 5, book 3, writes thus of them: "When from the elders they extracted by the torment of tortures the causes of committing so great a crime, they found that there were four, by which at Tirnau then, and often elsewhere in other regions, the Jews had bound themselves to this crime. First, that thus they were persuaded by the authority of their elders, that the blood of a Christian man, applied to the foreskins in circumcision, was a suitable remedy for staunching blood. Second, that the same, given in food, they esteemed to have great power in generating love among themselves. Third, that since men and women equally among them suffer from menstrual flux, they had experienced the blood of a Christian man drunk to be a suitable medicine for that disease. Fourth, that they might execute an ancient but secret decree among themselves, by which by daily sacrifices in some region they are compelled to offer to God the blood of a Christian: whereby they said that it came about that in that year the lot had fallen to the Jews of Tirnau." Thomas of Cantimpré, book 2, chapter 29, article 23, says: "It is most certainly established that every year in each province they cast lots, which city or town shall hand over Christian blood to other cities." And then he signifies that it is applied as a remedy against the flux of blood; that from the curse of the parents the vein of this crime still runs in the children through the stain of blood: that by this inappropriately flowing the impious offspring should be inexpiably tortured, until one should penitently recognize themselves guilty of the blood of Christ, and be healed. And he adds: "Moreover, I have heard a certain most learned one of the Jews, converted to the faith in our times, say, that a certain almost-prophet of theirs had prophesied to the Jews at the end of his life, saying: 'Most certainly know this: in no way can you be healed of that most shameful torment which you suffer, except by Christian blood alone.' Which word the blind and impious Jews always snatching up, introduced the shedding of Christian blood every year in every province, that by such blood they might recover." So far Cantimpré. Others add other causes, or rather inventions of a most wicked nation, to fit the superstitious minds of their own for committing the crime more easily, and to disguise the injury to the Christian name and the cruel hatred under the pretense of some necessity and utility; for example, that they deny that without that blood Hebrew mothers, suffering the most difficult labors, can successfully give birth.
[7] Further examples of the same cruelty through Germany in other years also If more examples are sought, let them be read which on March 25 we bring forth before the Passion of William of Norwich. But what need is there of foreign examples, when Germany alone supplies many? For on the same day June 29, on which in the year 1255 at Lincoln St. Hugh suffered, St. Henry also suffered at Weissenburg in Alsace in the year 1220, whose tomb is still said to be visible in the middle of the church there, and the history of the Passion to be had; therefore we gladly mention him here, that a copy of the aforesaid history may come to us from him who possesses it, or may be indicated by others who know where it is, by what means it may be obtained. There are also mentioned by our Bolland in a certain little commentary some Anonymi near Fulda on the borders of Franconia and Hesse killed in the year 1236, whose bodies were translated to Haguenau. Likewise a seven-year-old girl at Forchheim in the diocese of Bamberg in Franconia in 1261, and in 1286 an anonymous boy at Munich in Bavaria, whom Stero mentions at the year 1288; and another nine-year-old boy in 1292 at Constance in Swabia, then in 1345 in Henry concerning whom the Colmar Annals published by Urstisius. We mention these now, that if anyone knows anything of their cult and of the day of their Passion or annual commemoration, he may have the kindness to inform us. I would say the same of St. Henry, concerning whom Rader in Holy Bavaria confesses that he has read nothing about his being killed at Munich around the year 1345, except in Aventinus; and not even observing how ineptly he recorded the note of time: "the 6th day before the Kalends of June, after the ascension of Christ into heaven, on the Sabbath day." Perhaps Aventinus read "the 6th day before the Kalends of June" and "the year 1346," when Easter was celebrated on April 16.
[8] Let there be added to these three from Thuringia, Bohemia, Hungary. Of the first writes Siffrid, a priest of Meissen, in his Epitome which is had, mutilated at the beginning and beginning from the year 458, among the German writers collected and published by Pistorius, and ends with the year 1307. Siffrid writes this of Conrad the Martyr: "In the year 1303 the perfidious Jews, and in 1307 in the boy Conrad accustomed to the shedding of Christian blood, took a certain clever school boy, by name Conrad, son of a certain Knight in the city of Weissensee in Thuringia, and afflicting him with many torments, and with all his nerves and veins cut drawing out all his blood, before the feast of Easter cruelly killed him. But almighty God, who is glorious in his Saints, did not suffer the slaughter of the innocent boy to be concealed, and destroyed the murderers, and adorned the martyrdom of the innocent with many miracles. For when the said Jews secretly
led him through several places of Thuringia for burial, they could by no means hide him, God so disposing. Therefore bringing him back to the aforesaid city of Weissensee, they hanged him in a certain vineyard. At last, when so cruel a murder was betrayed and the truth of the matter discovered, the soldiers leaping forth from the castle and the citizens of the same city and the rest of the common people, together with Margrave Frederick, son of Albert Landgrave of Thuringia, killed them in troops as they resisted."
[9] So Siffrid. Concerning the second, but anonymous, John Dubravius speaks toward the end of book 18 of the Bohemian History, in matters done in the year 1305 or the following: "On the sacred day of the Preparation Good Friday, the Jews committed a most atrocious crime against a Christian man. Namely, dragged to a hidden place, they suspended him naked on a cross; and the bystanders, one spitting on him, another beating him with rods, others finally representing all those things which once Christ suffered from that most savage and most impious nation. This butchery of the Jews, to which nothing can be added in cruelty and hatred toward Christians, the people of Prague avenged with as much cruelty as they could, even with new punishments devised, and set up a monument to the new Martyr from the spoils of the Jews." and in 1494 in a certain Hungarian Concerning the third, Bonfinius testifies in this manner in the same book and chapter: "In the year 1494," he says, "the Jews, a well-born young man, secretly seized at Tirnau in Hungary and led into a neighboring house, suddenly blocking his throat, miserably strangled him, and with his veins opened, while he was gradually and with sobs breathing out his life, partly drank his blood, partly kept it for others; and the body, dissected limb by limb, they buried limb by limb in the ground." Whether these have any cult in their own places, we cannot say; we give an occasion for inquiry to others, who, stirred by this indication, will perhaps deign to instruct us or our successors more fully.