Panegirico in onore di San Simone Martire cittadino e comprotettore di Trento, recitato in questa cattedrale dal Reverendissimo Padre Maestro Pier Tomaso Campana, inquisitore generale del S. Ufficio di Crema

4to (220 x 165 mm). 12, [2 blank] pp. Collation: A⁶.  Unbound. Woodcut historiated initials and woodcut portrait of St. Simonino on the title page. Handwritten corrections to some letters. Some occasional staining and fxing, but a good copy.

The Panegirico in onore di San Simone Martire is a ceremonial sermon devoted to the cult of Simonino of Trent, a child whose death in 1475 gave rise to one of the most notorious ritual-murder accusations against the Jewish community in early modern Europe.  According to the traditional narrative promoted after 1475, the child had allegedly been murdered by members of the local Jewish community in a supposed ritual killing. Modern historical scholarship, however, has demonstrated that the accusation was unfounded and that the subsequent trials relied heavily on torture, coercion, and anti-Jewish prejudice. The cult of Simonino became a powerful instrument of religious propaganda and remained active until the twentieth century, when the Catholic Church formally suppressed the devotion after historical reassessment. The text combines hagiography, civic identity, and anti-Jewish polemic within a public liturgical setting. The work was almost certainly printed as an occasional publication connected with a specific feast or celebration in the cathedral of Trento. In bibliographical terms, such pamphlets were frequently issued only once for immediate ceremonial use; unless evidence of a later reprint survives, the extant edition may reasonably be described as the first and probably only edition. Pier Tomaso Campana, the author and preacher of the sermon, was a Dominican theologian and inquisitor who served as Inquisitore generale del Sant'Uffizio di Crema. Campana, member of the Arcadia's Academia under the name Britide Eaceoas well, authored numerous hagiographical and panegyrical works characterized by elaborate Baroque rhetoric and uncompromising doctrinal orthodoxy. 

OCLC, 797329708. 

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