The Holy Child of La Guardia (Spanish: El Santo Niño de La Guardia) (died 1491) was the purported victim of a ritual murder by the Jews in the town of La Guardia in the central Spanish province of Toledo (Castile–La Mancha). On November 16, 1491 an auto-da-fé held outside of Ávila concluded the case with the public execution of several Jewish and converso suspects who confessed to the crime under torture. Among the executed were Benito Garcia, the converso who initially confessed to the murder. However, no body was ever found, and due to contradictory confessions, the court had trouble coherently depicting how events took place.
Like Pedro de Arbués, the Holy Infant was quickly made into a saint by popular acclaim, and his death greatly assisted the Spanish Inquisition and its Inquisitor General, Tomás de Torquemada, in their campaign against heresy and crypto-Judaism. The cult of the Holy Infant is still celebrated in La Guardia. Significantly, he became known in the legend as Christopher (Cristóbal) meaning Christ-bearer.
Read more about Holy Child Of La Guardia: Background, Judicial Process, Legend, In Art and Literature, Impact
Famous quotes containing the words holy and/or child:
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
—Bible: New Testament, Ephesians 2:19-22.
“Indeed, it is that ambiguity and ambivalence which often is so puzzling in women—the quality of shifting from child to woman, the seeming helplessness one moment and the utter self-reliance the next that baffle us, that seem most difficult to understand. These are the qualities that make her a mystery, the qualities that provoked Freud to complain, “What does a woman want?””
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