The kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara

Abstract

This book deserves the attention of every scholar interested in contemporary Italian historical studies. While I had surmised that it dealt with an interesting but relatively inconsequential case from the archives of Italian religious history, it is the most gripping and informative study of the years surrounding Italian unification (circa 1860) 1 have ever found. In addition, it is a romantic and tragic story of one family's loss of a child, written in as engaging a style as any work of social history I have encountered. This is a tour de force and more than deserves its status as finalist for the National Book Award. The plot seems at first a simple tale of the tragedy of one family. In 1858 Momola Mortara, a Jewish merchant, was living quietly in Bologna with his wife Marianna and their seven children. Though only two years hence Bologna would be part of the united Italy and under (relatively) secular rule, at that time it was still one of the papal states, and the Church exercised considerable direct control over civic life. This became particularly evident to the Mortaras when the police knocked at their door, one night in June, to inform them that their six year old son Edgardo had been secretly baptized several years earlier by a former servant in their house. Since he was now a Catholic, he could not be raised by Jewish parents, and the police had instructions from the local Inquisitor to bring the child to the Inquisition offices. Thus begins a tale that is eventually implicated in the decimation of papal power in Italy and the formation of the liberal state. It directly involves Pope Pius IX, Napoleon III of France, Camillo Cavour (the first prime minister of unified Italy), several members of the Rothschild family, the British Sir Moses Montefiore, and other elite figures of the nineteenth century. Giuseppe Garibaldi even wrote some of the details of the case into his novel, I mille (1982 [19331, Cappelli). Though few in our time have heard of Edgardo Mortara (including, according to Kertzer, surprisingly few Italian historians), this story was front-page news throughout Europe for much of 1859 and 1860. Edgardo Mortara was in fact removed from his home and taken off to Rome. He was placed in the House of the Catechumens, established 300 years earlier by Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, in order to aid in the conversion of Jews and Muslims. There Edgardo began a long stay in the arms of the Catholic Church, while his parents, the international Jewish community, and a variety of judges, police officials, and diplomats from several countries struggled over his fate. This is a detective story in part, as the legal authorities had to decide whether in fact the baptism had taken place, whether the Church had the right to seize the child in any case, whether the subsequent establishment of a new state invalidated the Church's actions, and whether the Church could or should be required at that point to return the boy to his family. This book provides further evidence for the fact that it is often in the apparent asides of history that good historians find the material for unraveling the most important political and social events of the time. Like Natalie Zemon Davis' The return of Martin Guerre (1983, Harvard University Press) and Carlo Ginzburg's The cheese and the worms (1980, Johns Hopkins University Press), The kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara takes events that, though perhaps extraordinary, seem unlikely to have lasting historical significance. …