Andreas Oxner


Anderl Oxner von Rinn, also known as Andreas Oxner, 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.

Initial accusations

Andrew was the child of day laborers Simon and Maria Oxner. After the death of his father, the mother entrusted the child to his uncle Johann Meyer, an innkeeper. On 12 July 1462, Andrew disappeared and his mother found his body hanging from a tree in a nearby forest. The uncle claimed he had sold the child to Jews returning from a fair. The child's body was buried in a cemetery of Ampass without any investigation.
In 1619, Hyppolyte Guarinoni heard a story about a little boy buried in Rinn who had been murdered by Jews, and allegedly dreamt that his year of death was 1462. Celebrations of the cult began in 1621 and, by the late 17th century, they occurred in all the Tyrol region.
Around 1677–85, the inhabitants of Rinn solemnly transferred Andrew's body to Rinn, imitating the cult of Simon of Trent. In 1722 a commemoration mass was first celebrated in his honour.
The alleged scene of the crime, known as the "Judenstein", became a place of pilgrimage and locus of antisemitism in the Catholic Church.

Tale

The tale of the Anderl's ritual murder, known as Der Judenstein, is largely part of a Tyrolian oral tradition and only a few written versions exist. It was recorded by the Grimm Brothers in Deutsche Sagen.

Veneration

In 1752, Pope Benedict XIV beatified Anderl, but in 1755 refused to canonize him and stated that the Roman Church did not formally venerate him.
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.
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.