In the meantime, Fürstungar, alias Salomone da Composampiero, reaching Val Lagarina together with the apostolic commissioner,
abandoned Rovereto immediately to travel to Verona in an attempt to procure the services of Gianmarco Raimondi, one of the best lawyers
in the city. Having obtained an appointment, Fürstungar explained to the Veronese jurist, Raimondi, that, in the cause of the Jews of Trent,
he could count on the support of illustrious Roman prelates, and that even the apostolic commissioner himself had only arrived in the area
thanks to the considerable financial commitments assumed by the German-origin Jewish community to ensure the commissioner s very
appointment before the Pope. Raimondi was offered a fee at the rate of three florins a day to overcome his foreseeable hesitation, but to no
avail: Raimondi had no intention at all of taking the case (31).
At Trent, Israel Wolfgang had an unexpected meeting. Waiting for him one morning under the portico of Samuele s bank, was a German Jew
whom Wolfgang had met some time back, in his uncle s house at Erlangen, near Nuremberg. The German Jew told him that he, too, had
converted to Christianity, taking the Christian name of Giovanni Pietro in baptismal deed, registered at Mantua, but that he had remained
faithful in one way or another to the faith of his fathers. To allay suspicion, he told people that he had been moved to visit Trent by the
miracles of little Simon, but had, in reality, been sent by the general headquarters of the German Jews at Rovereto to make contact with
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Israel Wolfgang. In particular, he had been instructed on his mission in Trent by no less a personage than the usual Salomone da Piove, and
with him, Aronn da Castelnoveto (32). The latter was to be tried and condemned in 1488 for contempt for the Christian religion, together
with the other heads of the Ashkenzi community of the Duchy of Milan (33).
The Mantuan convert known as Giovanni Pietro asked Israel Wolfgang to place him in contact with the women detainees and to obtain
useful information from them; he moreover wished to obtain first-hand news about the goings-on at Buonconsiglio. Promptly satisfied, he
[Giovanni Pietro] was successful in meeting secretly with Brunetta, Samuele of Nuremberg s obstinate widow, and asked her whether she
and the other prisoners had been subjected to torture, despite the intimations of the commissioner and the Pope (34). But there was not much
time left. Not even to organize one last desperate attempt to arrange for the women s escape and conveyance to safety. The meeting between
Israel Wolfgang and Giovanni Pietro da Mantova, the German Jew from Erlangen, was on 18 October. Two days later, the Trent trials were
officially re-opened, on Hinderbach s initiative, with the explicit consent of the court at Innsbruck.
One week after that, Israel Wolfgang was already in trouble, betrayed by Lazzaro da Serravalle and Isacco da Gridel di Vedera, Angelo da
Verona s servants, as well as by Mosè da Franconia, teacher of Tobias s children, and Joav da Ansbach, the ignorant scullery boy in Tobias s
kitchen, who, tortured and confessing, out of envy or spite, had accused the young Saxon painter of responsibility for little Simon s murder
(35).
Israel Wolfgang was arrested on 26 October while dining at the castle, calmly and with a good appetite, with the bishop s officials and
courtiers. Immediately transferred to the prisons of the Buonconsiglio, he was subjected to an exuberant dose of torture to induce him to say
whatever he knew or imagined.
The other defendants were condemned and publicly executed between 1 December 1475 and 15 January of the following year. At the foot of
the scaffold, Mosè of Franconia and the coarse Joav both converted to the faith in Christ, in the hope of alleviating their own suffering (36).
Wolfgang was, deliberately, the last to be executed, condemned by Giovanni Hinderbach s tribunal on 19 January 1476.
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Offended and feeling betrayed, Hinderbach made no exception of any kind for Wolfgang, and punished him much more harshly than even
the principal defendants on trial; his body, cruelly broken on the wheel, was devoured by animals. The young Saxon painter and miniaturist,
"who said that he was less than twenty five years old, although he looked at least twenty nine", faced martyrdom without batting an eye,
dying a death which, both in his eyes and from the point of view of that German Judaism to which he belonged, he had been taught to court
to sanctify the name of God ('al qiddush ha-Shem).
His death was accompanied by unflaggingly indecorous anti-Christian grimaces and a scornful profession of polemical faith. The voluntary
sacrifice of Israel Wolfgang, the boy from Brandenburg, counter-balanced, or, more exactly, flanked, the involuntary sacrifice of little
Simon, in a holy tragedy in which the basic elements of the plot, cruel and bloody, had been composed centuries before, in Hebrew and
Yiddish, in German and in Latin, in the valleys washed by the muddy waters of the Rhine and the Main, the Rhône and the Danube, the
Adige and the Ticino, where it was said that the god of the rivers claimed their innocent victims every year.
"Yes, I am perfectly persuaded and convinced that killing Christian children and consuming their blood and swallowing it was a good thing
[...] If I could obtain the blood of a Christian boy for our Passover feast, of course I would drink it and eat it, if I could do so without
attracting too much attention. Know ye that, although I have been baptized, I, Israel, son of Meir, may he rest in peace, a Jew of
Brandenburg, intend, and have established in my soul, that I wish to die a true Jew. I had myself baptized when I saw that I had gotten
caught, and in doubt that I might be condemned to death, believing that I could avoid it, as actually happened. Know ye, therefore, that I,
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Israel of Brandenburg, Jew, do no consider anything believed and observed by the Christian religion to be true at all. I believe with an
unshakeable faith that the religion of Israel is correct and holy" (37).
But not everything had gone wrong, at least from Israel of Brandenburg s point of view. Not a single week had passed since his arrest before
the young Saxon Jew, in his cell, was informed that Hinderbach had finally given in, perhaps in part to counterbalance foreseeable criticism
of his decision to reopen the trials, and had consented to release the incarcerated women s children. These were Mosè and Salomone, the
children of
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of Verona and of Dolcetta; Seligman, Meir of Würzburg s young boy; Samuele da Nuremberg s daughter-in-law Anna s young boy, still in
diapers; and the numerous offspring of the late Tobias, whose four children were named Joske, Mosè, Chaim and David. An envoy from the
apostolic commissioner appeared at the castle of Buonconsiglio on 2 November and took delivery of the children, who were later taken to
Rovereto and entrusted to the Jews (38).
Little is known of their fate. Many of them were probably taken back to Germany and adopted by relatives or persons known by them, and
seem to have disappeared from the pages of history. Only Mosè and Salomone, Angelo da Verona s children, remained safely in Italy,
entrusted to the Ashkenazi community which had worked so actively to obtain their release (39). Following the confessions of Brunetta,
Samuele da Nuremberg s widow, and the other women, followed by their conversion to Christianity, which occurred in January 1477,
attempts to return the children to their mothers proved fruitless (40).
Bella, Anna and Sara, who had, at the time, voluntarily entrusted their children to the Jews of Rovereto -- now that they were converted and
baptized under the names of Elisabetta, Susanna, and Chiara -- wanted them back urgently, ceding to the pressures of those who wished them
to have the children baptized. Pope Sixtus IV himself, by a bull of 20 June 1478, addressed to Hinderbach, exhorted him to take all steps to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]