{{Short description|Purported Austrian ritual murder victim}} {{Infobox saint | name = Andreas Oxner | image = Anderl von Rinn in Judenstein.jpg | imagesize = | alt = | caption = Andreas Oxner | titles = Child of Judenstein | birth_name = Anderl Oxner von Rinn | birth_date = {{circa}} 1459 | birth_place = Austria | home_town = | residence = | death_date = 12 July 1462 (aged 3) | death_place = Rinn, Austria | venerated_in = Folk Catholicism | beatified_date = 1752 | beatified_place = | beatified_by = Pope Benedict XIV | major_shrine = Judenstein | feast_day = | attributes = | patronage = | issues = Blood libel | suppressed_date = 1994 | suppressed_by = Reinhold Stecher }}
'''Anderl (Andreas) Oxner von Rinn''', also known as '''Andreas Oxner''', ({{circa}} 1459 – 12 July 1462) is a Blessed of the Roman Catholic Church. The three-year-old boy was said to have been ritually murdered by the Jews in the village of Rinn (Northern Tyrol, currently part of Austria).
==Initial accusations== Anderl was supposedly the child of day laborers Simon and Maria Oxner. After his father's death, his mother allegedly entrusted the child to his uncle, Johann Meyer, an innkeeper. On 12 July 1462, Anderl 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 people described in one source as 'travelling merchants' and in multiple as Jews.<ref name="Smith">{{Cite book |last=Smith |first=Helmut Walser |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tFP0AgAAQBAJ&dq=Andreas+Oxner&pg=PA107 |title=The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town |date= |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-393-24552-3 |location=New York, NY |pages=107 |language=en}}</ref> According to Hyppolyte Guarinoni, the story did not take on the blood libel superstition that Jews had murdered the boy until 1475, thirteen years after the death.<ref name="Smith" />
== Tale == 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.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=Medieval Sourcebook: A Blood Libel Cult: Anderl von Rinn, d. 1462|url=https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/rinn.asp|last=Halsall|first=Paul|date=1997|website=Internet History Sourcebooks Project - Fordham University|publication-date=1999|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170323071712/http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu:80/source/rinn.asp |archive-date=23 March 2017 |access-date=}}</ref> It was recorded by the Grimm Brothers in ''Deutsche Sagen'' (1816/1818).<ref name=":022">{{Cite web|title=Anti-Semitic Legends|url=http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/antisemitic.html|last=Ashliman|first=D. L.|authorlink=D. L. Ashliman|date=2005|website=University of Pittsburgh|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000303100044/http://www.pitt.edu:80/~dash/antisemitic.html |archive-date=2000-03-03 |access-date=}}</ref> {{Quote|text=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.|author=Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm|title=|source=''Deutsche Sagen'' (1816/1818), no. 353. Trans. D. L. Ashliman, 2005.}}In 1619, Hyppolyte Guarinoni claimed to have 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. While research suggests that a child named Andreas Oxner might have never actually existed,<ref name="Smith" /> celebrations of the cult began in 1621 and, by the late 17th century, they occurred in all the Tyrol region.<ref name=":0" /> 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), became a place of pilgrimage and locus of antisemitism in area.<ref name=":0" />
== Veneration == In 1752, Pope Benedict XIV beatified Andreas, but in 1755 refused to canonize him and stated that the Roman Church did not formally venerate him.<ref name=":0" />
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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ryssen |first=Hervé |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofantisemitism/page/n1/mode/2up |title=History Of Anti Semitism |publisher=The Barnes Review |year=2016 |isbn=978-1-937787-51-6 |location=Washington D.C. |publication-date=2018 |pages=347 |language=fr |translator-last=Pokier |translator-first=Carlos Whitlock}}</ref>
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.<ref name=":0" />
==See also== Other children whose deaths in medieval times gave rise to the persecution of the Jews:
*Harold of Gloucester *Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln *Robert of Bury *Simon of Trent *Werner of Oberwesel *William of Norwich *Gabriel of Białystok
==References== {{Reflist}}
== Further reading ==
*Rainer Erb: ''Es hat nie einen jüdischen Ritualmord gegeben. Konflikte um die Abschaffung der Verehrung des Andreas von Rinn''. Wien 1989. *Bernhard Fresacher: ''[http://www.fresacher.net/uploads/media/Fresacher_Anderl_von_Rinn.pdf Anderl von Rinn. Ritualmordkult und Neuorientierung in Judenstein 1945–1995]''. Innsbruck und Wien 1998. {{ISBN|3-7022-2125-5}} *Andreas Maislinger und Günther Pallaver: « Antisemitismus ohne Juden - Das Beispiel Tirol ». In: Wolfgang Plat (Hg.), ''Voll Leben und voll Tod ist diese Erde. Bilder aus der Geschichte der Jüdischen Österreicher''. Herold Verlag, Wien 1988. {{ISBN|3-7008-0378-8}} *{{Interlanguage link multi|Ingrid Strobl|de}}: ''Anna und das Anderle. Eine Recherche''. Frankfurt am Main 1995. {{ISBN|3-596-22382-2}} *Richard Utz: "Remembering Ritual Murder: The Anti-Semitic Blood Accusation Narrative in Medieval and Contemporary Cultural Memory." In ''Genre and Ritual: The Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals.'' Ed. Eyolf Østrem. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press/University of Copenhagen, 2005. Pp. 145–62.
==External links== *[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/rinn.asp Fordham University: The Jesuit University of New York; Medieval Sourcebook: A Blood Libel Cult: Anderln von Rinn d. 1462]
{{Authority control}}{{Blood libel}}{{DEFAULTSORT:Oxner, Andreas}} Category:1450s births Category:1462 deaths Category:15th-century Austrian people Category:15th-century Christian saints Category:Child murder in Austria Category:Blood libel Category:Antisemitism in Austria Category:Austrian Roman Catholic saints Category:German Roman Catholic saints Category:Roman Catholic child saints Category:Christian antisemitism in the Middle Ages Category:Folk saints Category:People from Innsbruck-Land District Category:Year of birth uncertain Category:Medieval Austrian saints Category:Religious controversies in Austria