CONCERNING S. JOHANNETTUS, A BOY KILLED BY JEWS IN THE DIOCESE OF COLOGNE. By Aegidius Gelenius.
CommentaryJohannettus, a boy killed by Jews in the diocese of Cologne (S.)
Seligenthal is a monastery of Conventual Franciscans, a thousand paces distant from Siegburg, Captured near Siegburg, following the bank of the Sieg river toward the East. Here a boy sent for the purpose of learning good letters (Johannettus was his name) was intercepted on the way by the Jews and killed in hatred of the faith with knives; killed by the Jews, one of which, resembling a pen-knife, enclosed in a silver box, is preserved in the church of Siegburg, formerly dedicated to S. Michael by S. Anno, Archbishop of Cologne. They believed they would conceal their crime by covering the innocent body with turf near the castle called zur Mühlen, which the family of Gebertshagen now possesses. But pigs, digging with their snouts, uncovered it, it is dug up by pigs; which the swineherd reported to the mother. She was preparing to place it on a cart to carry it to the cemetery at Troisdorf for customary burial; and would have done so, had not the horse, having come closer to Siegburg, at that road which still retains the boy's name, being called die Kindtsgass, reared up and refused to go further, by no force to be compelled to cross that hill. When this held the mother and her companions in astonishment, the horse halting and a hand extended, they began together to beseech God that he would deign to signify to them what that strange immobility of the balking horse portended: and soon they saw from the gaping coffin the boy's hand extended toward the left, toward Siegburg. Therefore they ran to the Clergy existing there and led the procession organized on the spot to where they had left the body. The horse carrying it it is brought to Siegburg: no longer had to be pulled and led, but going ahead of the procession of its own accord willingly, it began to lead those chanting psalms, until the Relics were carried into the church in triumphal fashion and placed in a tomb beside the old sepulcher of S. Anno. Where Johannettus became illustrious through great miracles, and the hand extended from the coffin, enclosed in silver, remained incorrupt until the Swedish devastation: especially the finger which his mother, desirous of Relics resplendent with so many miracles, had cut off, but was compelled to restore, because she could not set foot out of the church of S. Michael until, having revealed the theft, she had appeased her son. where he became illustrious through miracles, The chief grace by which this holy Innocent flourished, namely of obtaining offspring for barren marriages, has been a constant tradition even to these times, and the sequence of events is somehow taught by ancient paintings and monuments which the barbarity of the Swedes left at Siegburg. For the Relics of the sacred body, like other venerable remains, were scattered by heretical enemies; from whom the hand, redeemed together with the aforementioned instrument of martyrdom, is religiously preserved by the Most Reverend and Most Illustrious Lord Bertram von Bellinghausen, Prelate and temporal Lord of Siegburg. until the Swedish incursion.
The ancient veneration of him is attested by the chapel surviving in his name, A chapel dedicated to his name, in the place where the balking horse gave warning that they should not proceed further. Which chapel the possessors of the castle of zur Mühlen diligently repair, although they are heretics: for if it is neglected, the deaths and funerals of the leading persons among them are often observed to follow.
These things were sent to us in the year 1643 by that most diligent man, historiographer of the Archiepiscopal Church of Cologne and also a great admirer of this work of ours: the name is referred to this day. since religious veneration and worship, surviving in some degree to this day, is abundantly attested; nor is any day known that was specifically dedicated to this Saint, nor are any chronological indicators of the time when he suffered to be found: we believed he could most fittingly be reported on this day, and his memory joined with that of S. Simon of Trent, killed by similar barbarity: until more light may be brought from elsewhere.