During the Holy Week of 1475 a Christian child was drowned at Trent, and its body was caught in a grating close to the house of a Jew. The priests immediately saw in the accident evidence of ritual murder, and, by exhibiting the body in public, they stirred up the populace against the supposed murderers. All the Jews of the city, male and female, young and old, rich and poor, were cast into prison by order of the Bishop. A baptized Jew came forth as accuser, and the prisoners, put to the torture, confessed that they had slain little Simon and drunk his blood on the night of the Passover. A Jewess was said to have supplied the weapon for the crime. With the exception of four Jews, who embraced Christianity, the rest were banished from Trent. Cardinal Hadrian, writing half a century later, describes the rocks of Trent as a place “where the Jews, owing to Simon’s murder, dare not even approach.”[77] Meanwhile the corpse of the child was embalmed and advertised by the monks as a wonder-working relic. Thousands of pilgrims repaired to the shrine, and, such is the power of faith, swore that they saw the remains shining with an unearthly light. The miracle brought profit to the monks, and yet they, with as little logic as gratitude, denounced those whom they considered its proximate cause. The fame, or infamy, of the incident spread far and wide. In Great Britain it is believed to have given rise to the ballad of the _Jew’s Daughter_; in other countries it gave rise to persecution of the Jews. But the Doge and Senate of Venice, on the Jews’ complaining of their danger, ordered the Podesta of Padua to take them under his protection, repudiated the charge of murder as an impudent fiction, and, when Pope Sixtus IV. was besought to add little Simon to the roll of the other young martyrs slain by Jews, he not only emphatically refused to do so, but sent an encyclical to all the towns of Italy, forbidding them to honour Simon as a saint.