David Tebel Sprinz was actually a rather well-known rabbi. Born in 1400, he had governed the Talmudic academy of Bamberg until 1448, and moved to Nuremberg around the middle of the century, taking control of the local yeshiva. He was still alive in 1474, carrying on his activity at Poznán in Poland [575]. Samuele’s information in this respect was therefore correct, although we have no way of knowing how much truth there might be in his assertions relating to the subject of the teachings which Sprinz is alleged to have imparted orally in relation to the blood rituals. It is, however, a fact that three German rabbis, all of top-level importance, were implicated in the Trent trials in various ways relating to the transmission of traditions relating to ritual child murder, the use of blood in the Jewish Passover and the contemptuous commemoration of the Passion of Christ.Together with David Tebel Sprinz of Bamberg, we find the names of Jodenmeister Moshè of Halle, who also moved to Posnán just like his predecessor, and Shimon Katz, president of the rabbinical tribunal of Frankfurt am Main. It seems hardly accidental to me that none of the Ashkenazi rabbis -- from the most famous to the least well-known -- active in the German-origin Jewish communities of northern Italy is mentioned in the trial records; the only rabbis mentioned are ones whose activity was always carried on in Germany.
The observation that neither Italian Jews nor Italian Jewish communities were ever accused of committing ritual child murders compelled the Trent judges to investigate this phenomenon in order to determine whether or not the Italian Jews were simply unaware of the custom or
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rejected it as contrary to the principles of Judaism, in contrast to the Jews of Germanic origin.
If he had been able to speak freely, Samuele, from the lofty height of his Hebraic doctrine of Ashkenazi origin, might have replied with ill-concealed scorn that Italian Jews were not authoritative because they were ignorant in terms of rabbinical culture, not very observant, and very careless about the observation of ritual standards [576]. Instead, he restricted himself to admitting that Italian Jews did not possess this custom in their texts, nevertheless adding, immediately afterwards, that "it appeared in the texts of Jews from overseas", an intentionally inexact term, perhaps an allusion to the Judaism of Babylonia and, indirectly, to Ashkenazi ultramontane Judaism [577].
On the other hand, even if we consider the confessions of Samuele and the other defendants to have been sincere and valid, and even accepting the realities of the dissemination of a ritual of this kind among the Jews of Medieval Germany, it appears beyond doubt that – as also emerges from the records of the Trent trials -- in the world of Ashkenazi Judaism, there were people who rejected this ritual, considering it in conflict with Jewish law. The persons responsible for the scandalous plural child murders at Endingen, in Alsace, in 1462, confessed that they had feared that any one of them might have revealed the details of the crime to the elders of the local Jewish community, knowing that the elders would have unhesitatingly reported them to the police authorities [578].
Returning to the facts of the Trent case, [at least] according the confession of Samuele da Nuremberg, in the days preceding the Jewish Passover, the defendants are alleged to have instructed Maestro Tobias to meet two German Jewish travelers passing through Trent in those days to inquire whether they were prepared to agree to abduct a Christian boy and conceal him in Samuele’s house. But the two Ashkenazi Jews, David and Lazzaro "of Germany", decisively rejected the proposal, notwithstanding the fact that it was accompanied by an offer of the considerable sum of one hundred ducats. They had no intention of getting mixed up in matters of this kind.
The words of the two travelers clearly reveal their capacity as emissaries from the Jewish communities of Germany, who were, as usual, invited to Italy every year, in the spring, to arrange for the purchase of cedars for the autumnal feast of the “Capanne” or “Frascate” [“little sheds” and “covered market stalls”; the Jewish Feast of the Autumn Harvest] (Sukkot). In general, the objective of these specialist wholesale
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suppliers of ritual oranges for German Judaism was the Italian Riviera, particularly, San Remo. Lazzaro and David, on the other hand, were headed for Riva on the Lago di Garda, where they knew that what they were needed could be found in the green orchards surrounding that delightful body of water [579].
Even the commemorative pamphlet on little Simon, who was now a saint, published in Rome one hundred years after his death, with the obvious intention of recalling the facts relating to his martyrdom through education and admonishment, found space to praise the noble act of these two Jews in denouncing a ritual which they found detestable, considering it a true and proper betrayal of Jewish teachings. The consideration that precisely a clearly hagiographic source, such as the Summary of the Life and Martyrdom of Saint Simon, Child of the City of Trent , a text which is moreover openly anti-Jewish, should preserve and translate their words in a sense of positive appreciation, constitutes grounds for reflection. If nothing else, it sounds like a confirmation of the existence of a general belief that Ashkenazi Judaism was anything but monolithic in this sense.
"They (Lazzaro and David) prudently responded that they did not wish to commit similar follies and that they (with Moshè) wished them ill, because God did not command such things; on the contrary, He says, ‘Thou shalt not kill’, and that child murder was a new ceremony and against the law, which did not wish God’s followers to shed innocent blood, such as that of a child, just because the child was a Christian. And if they thought about these things properly, they would discover that they were entirely invented, because there was no basis for them in the texts. Apart from that, they said that it was not right for a Jew to eat blood, as these men wished to do, by kneading the unleavened bread with a certain amount of blood" [580].
This same Giovanni da Feltre, the converted son of Shochat da Landshut, a person far from inclined to find anything justifiable in Jews and Judaism, had no difficulty in admitting that, in Germany, the ritual of blood of using the blood of Christian children in the ceremonies of the Jewish Passover was only practiced by fundamentalist orthodox Ashkenazi sects. The same Summary of the Life and Martyrdom of Saint Simon briefly reports the ex-Jew’s explicit notes in this regard. "The convert Giovanni said that not all the Jews do this; but that sometimes, out of contempt for Christ and in revenge for the tribulations which they suffer because of that same Christ, our Lord" [581]. It goes without saying that the problem did not even exist among Italian Jews, the Sephardim, or oriental Jews, who made up the overwhelming majority
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of the medieval Jewish world. But this majority was not always the most self-assertive, experiencing a serious inferiority complex compared to an Ashkenazi Judaism which considered itself the inimitable prototype of true religious orthodoxy (which was, moreover, created in its own image and resemblance) [582]. Medieval Ashkenazi Judaism made up a hermetically sealed orthodoxy, which fed upon itself, confined by a myriad of minute ritualistic regulations, which they considered binding on all, the mere memorization of which constituted an arduous and almost impossible task.
575
On the life and rabbinical activity of David Tebel Sprinz at Bamberg, Nuremberg and Poznán, see
576
Samuele in fact is said to have claimed that ignorant Ashkenazi were not aware of this custom either. Maestro Tobia da Magdeburg, as we have seen, although he was a physician, was not very well versed in Hebraic culture, seeking to persuade the inquisitors that he had become aware of the blood ritual only having come into contact, at Trent, with the same Samuele, with Mosè "the Old Man" da Würzburg and with Angelo da Verona. "Tobias [...] se numquam usum fuisse dicto sanguine nec unquam dici audivisse de dicto sanguine, nisi hiis diebus quibus Samuel, Moises et Angelus sibi dixerunt" (cfr. Esposito and Quaglioni,
577
"Et dicit quod ipsi Iudei Italici non habent istud in scripturis suis, sed bene dicitur quod de hoc est scriptura inter Iudeos qui sunt ultra mare" (cfr. ibidem, p. 251).
578
On this argument, see K. von Amira,
579
"(Lazarus et David de Alemania) responderunt se nolle intromittere in illa re, quia dicebant se esse impeditos ad faciendum alia, quia volebant ire in Riperiam territorii Brixiensis ad emendum de citronis, causa portandi illos in Alemaniam" [“(Lazarus and David of Germany) said they didn’t want to get mixed up in this business, because they said they were prevented from doing otherwise, because they wanted to go to Riva in the Brescian region and buy citrus fruit, to take it to Germany”] (cfr. Esposito and Quaglioni,
580
582
In an important essay, Isadore Twersky (