Name Andreas Oxner Died 1462, Rinn, Austria | Major shrine Judenstein | |
 | ||
Venerated in Roman Catholic Church, Folk Catholicism Beatified 1755 by Pope Benedict XIV | ||
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).
Contents
Initial accusations
In 1475, in the wake of the blood libel of Simon of Trent, the bones of a child were brought to the parish church of Rinn. The ritual murder accusation did not arise until after 1620, by the pen of Hyppolyte Guarinoni, a doctor who, at that time, was attached to a lay sisterhood (beguinage) of noblewomen in Hall. Having probably heard of the murder through rumors, in 1642 he wrote a book on the crime: Triumph Cron Marter Vnd Grabschrift des Heilig Unschuldigen Kindts (translated roughly as "Martyrdoms Triumph Crown and Epitaph of the Holy Innocent Child"). The alleged scene of the crime, known as the "Judenstein" (or Jews' Stone), became a place of pilgrimage and locus of antisemitism in the Catholic Church.
Veneration
In 1753, Pope Benedict XIV permitted the veneration of Anderl, beatifying him in 1755. This facilitated the spread of the antisemitic legend through popular theatrical performances, which were based on the writings of Guarinoni and were performed until 1954. 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 1994, the Bishop of Innsbruck, Reinhold Stecher, formally prohibited Oxner's veneration by local groups, based on the accrued anti-semitic imagery and beliefs surrounding his cult. This veneration of Oxner was and remains a part of a larger history of accusations of child-murder, host desecration, and cannibalism allegedly committed by Jewish communities, but largely disproven by later scholarship, known as the blood libel.