A single incunabula leaf from Hartmann Schedel’s book, “Weltchronik” [Nuremberg Chronicle]. Nuremberg, 1493. Latin. Uncolored.
Bearing a large woodcut illustration of the supposed ritual murder of the child Simon of Trent by Jews (whose names appear in the illustration).
On March 23, 1475, a two-and-a-half-year-old Christian child by the name of Simon disappeared from his parents’ home in Trent in northern Italy; three days later, on the eve of Good Friday (the anniversary day of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion), his body was found near the home (or in the cellar or well) of a Jew who was a resident of the city, a moneylender by the name of Samuel. After the body was found, the Bishop announced that all of Trent’s Jewish community, including a number of converted Jews, is guilty of the child’s murder. All of the city’s Jews were arrested, tortured, and some were executed, by fire or beheading. Simon was declared a saint by the pope, and his memory was commemorated annually in the month of March, until his status as a saint was cancelled in 1965. The recto of the leaf is illustrated with three additional woodcuts: a comet; Christian, King of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and Hercules, Duke of Ferrara. Leaf ca. 23.5X35 cm. Framed: 43X53 cm. Good condition. Tears around the edges. Unexamined out of frame.