| Andreas Oxner | |
| Titles: | Child of Judenstein |
| Birth Name: | Anderl Oxner von Rinn |
| Birth Date: | 1459 |
| Birth Place: | Austria |
| Death Date: | 12 July 1462 (aged 3) |
| Death Place: | Rinn, Austria |
| Venerated In: | Folk Catholicism |
| Beatified Date: | 1752 |
| Beatified By: | Pope Benedict XIV |
| Major Shrine: | Judenstein |
| Issues: | Blood libel |
| Suppressed Date: | 1994 |
| Suppressed By: | Reinhold Stecher |
Anderl (Andreas) Oxner von Rinn, also known as Andreas Oxner, ( 1459 – 12 July 1462) 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 (Northern Tyrol, currently part of Austria).
Andrew was the child of day laborers Simon and Maria Oxner. After his father's death, 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 that he had sold the child to some traveling merchants.[1] The child's body was buried in a cemetery of Ampass.
In 1619, Hyppolyte Guarinoni allegedly 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. 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. The scene of the crime, known as the "Judenstein" (or Jews' Stone) became a place of pilgrimage.
The martyrdom was recorded by the Grimm Brothers in Deutsche Sagen (1816/1818).[2]
In 1752, Pope Benedict XIV beatified Anderl.
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.[3]