The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, page 11
In 1858, the paper carried what purported to be an eyewitness account of Momolo’s first visit to the Catechumens:
The first impression we have of this man seeing his son was most vivid. He momentarily lost the use of his reason altogether. But in a few moments he clutched the boy in his arms, he covered him with kisses, with caresses, and with tears, telling him of his desire, and that of his mother, to see him back in his own house, telling him that the whole family was, because of him, suffering the most painful desolation. By the end, such was the power of paternal love and pain that tears began to run down the boy’s cheeks.7
In another Catholic account, someone asked the boy why he spoke so little when his father visited him. Edgardo replied that it was because whenever he tried to speak, his voice trembled and he began to cry, since he could see the doleful effect his words had on his father. The child saw the love his parents and siblings had for him, “but the desire to be a Christian won out over it.”
One day, this same correspondent recounted, Scazzocchio accompanied Momolo to the Catechumens and, as they were leaving, leaned over to give Edgardo a kiss. Filled with revulsion by this unwanted attempt at intimacy, six-year-old Edgardo, with Scazzocchio already through the door, said: “If that man comes with my father again and wants to kiss me, I’ll take out an image of the Madonna and tell him to kiss it instead!”8
In these narratives, whenever Momolo visited him in the Catechumens, Edgardo could think of nothing except how much he wished his father would convert. One of the most prominent Church-linked papers in Italy at the time, L’armonia della religione colla civiltà, published a story titled “News of the Young Christian Mortara.” It described how Edgardo had gone off to the Catechumens “with extraordinary happiness.” The boy’s transformation was miraculous. He had entered the Catechumens with a single idea already “stamped on his forehead, and even more in his heart—the great benefit for him of being Christian, the singular grace that he had received through Baptism and, by contrast, the immense misfortune for his parents of being and wanting to remain Jews.”
In this version of the redemption story, when Edgardo heard that he was about to see his father for the first time, he was delighted, because “he hoped to be able to convert his father and make him Christian just the same as he.” But when the meeting took place and Edgardo discovered that despite his fervent pleadings his father remained obstinately attached to his religion, the boy broke into terrible sobbing.
L’armonia carried a report from an eyewitness at the Catechumens claiming that the little boy’s miraculous transformation was continuing at breathtaking speed. “Within a few days he had learned the catechism to perfection, and he makes the fullest and most exact professions of faith. He always insists on telling the Rector and others he speaks with that the Jews have no altars, no Madonna, no Pope, and he wants everyone to know that the Jews are not Christians. He declares that he wants to convert them, and he feels God’s grace speaking eloquently through him.”
The boy was a prodigy: “The Pope wanted to see him, and was enchanted by him. The child blesses the servant who baptized him, and who thus opened the door to the Catholic Church to him.” When someone asked him if he knew who Jesus Christ was, his face turned red with shame—the shame of his ancestors—as he replied, “Jesus Christ is the Savior of mankind, whom the Jews crucified.” The Catholic paper concluded by asking facetiously, “And they would like a boy so full of faith to be sent back into the Ghetto?”9
Reports of this kind, flooding out of Rome and reproduced by the Catholic press throughout Europe, came in response to the mounting movement being organized to win Edgardo’s release. Had the boy really been so transformed? Momolo and Marianna angrily denounced the Catholic accounts as infamous lies, but some of their allies, including Scazzocchio, who had sat in on a few of the disputed meetings that Momolo had with Edgardo, were not so sure where the boy’s loyalties now lay.
From the perspective of the liberals of Europe, the Church story had a fatal weakness: it was, on its face, absurd. A booklet published in Brussels in 1859, denouncing the Church for its kidnapping of Edgardo, first offers an account of what it says really happened, before then taking aim at the version of events that had been published in a Belgian Catholic newspaper:
“His father follows him to Rome, where he is permitted to see his child, who does not want to be separated from him any longer. The boy is afraid; he wants to see his mother and his sisters. He says that he will travel all through the night, if necessary, to see them. He wants to leave, but Church canons are against him.” The Church then mounts its counterattack. “The comedy is launched, aimed at stifling the scandal: The child is said to feel an irresistible calling. He cries; no longer is he in his father’s arms, no longer is he asking for his mother, but rather at the foot of a cross, calling for the sacred Virgin. He wants to be baptized again. He wants to baptize all the Jews. He will be a missionary so that he can convert them. All this at age six and a half!”
Which side was lying and which telling the truth was self-evident:
Between the miracle of a six-year-old apostle who wants to convert the Jews and the cry of a child who keeps asking for his mother and his little sisters, we don’t hesitate for a moment. The nature of the truth is too obvious when set alongside the clear signs of deceit. When nature appears, when the heart speaks (and only the heart can speak at that age), the conviction is irresistible. There is not a person who loves their children, not a father, nor a mother, nor a brother, nor sister, who believes the account given in L’Indépendance.10
Defenders of the Church appeared not to realize that, to many, their account sounded too good to be true. The single most influential Church article on the taking of Edgardo, which appeared in Civiltà Cattolica in November 1858 and was subsequently excerpted in Catholic papers throughout Europe, recounted the miraculous transformation that came over the boy as soon as he set foot in the House of the Catechumens. The effects of the baptismal sacrament erupted in the child:
“He is mentally sharper and more perceptive than is usually to be found in a boy who is barely seven.” On entering the Catechumens, “he showed a marvelous happiness. He declared that he did not want to be anything other than what he was, that is, a member of Christendom.… As for his attitude toward his parents, the change that came over him was practically instantaneous.” He implored the Rector not to let his parents take him away: “He begged to be raised in a Christian home, to avoid those seductions and perhaps even the violence that, under the paternal roof, would most likely have met him.”
The Civiltà Cattolica account sketched a central theme in the Catholic narrative: Edgardo had a new father—“I am baptized,” he said, “I am baptized and my father is the Pope.”11 He had a new mother, the sacred Virgin Mary, and a new family, the “grande famiglia cattolica.”
One day, according to yet another Catholic version of Edgardo’s early encounters with his father at the Catechumens, “his father reminded him of the fourth of the Ten Commandments, that he should obey his parents and return home. ‘I will do,’ he responded, ‘just exactly what the Holy Father says. Here he is,’ and he points to the bust of the reigning Holy Pontiff.” Later, seeing a sister’s habit laid out, and knowing that it belonged to the mother of another boy who was a neophyte in the Catechumens, he was silent for a moment and then said wistfully: “Oh, if only my own mother were to wear a sister’s habit!”12
If Edgardo in fact told his father that he did not want to return with him, that he now regarded the Pope as his true father and wanted to devote his life to converting the Jews, this message seems not to have registered with Momolo. Momolo’s own impressions of his meetings with his son were very different from those reported in the Catholic press, and his concerns focused not on his son’s loyalties or supposed conversion but on the obstacles he faced in getting Church authorities to release Edgardo from captivity.
In early September, after having seen Edgardo several times, Momolo got more bad news. The experts of the Rome Jewish community had prepared a brief for the Pope, bringing together citations from twenty different Church authorities, aimed at convincing the Pontiff to have Edgardo returned to his family. On September 7, a delegation from the Jewish community presented it to Cardinal Antonelli. To their surprise, even before reading the document, the Secretary of State told them not to expect a positive response. As one of the delegation wrote the next day to Baron de Rothschild in Paris, “His Eminence expressed himself in such a way as to remove any hope on the matter.”13
A blow of a different kind came a few days later, when Momolo received an unsettling letter from Bologna jointly written by Marianna’s brother Angelo Padovani and her brother-in-law, Angelo Moscato. They could hold off no longer, they wrote, for “if up to now we tried to spare you further unhappiness, we think it our duty to delay no further, since we see that only your presence here might repair things.” His business, they told him, faced collapse as a result of his absence, and they warned that “if you do not return right away, you and your family may be ruined. Get back while there is still time, and get here without delay.”
Nor was this all. Although, they wrote, it broke their hearts to have to add to his miseries, they felt duty-bound to report that Marianna,
who, from the fatal moment when her son was torn from her, has always been in poor health, is now reduced to a truly pitiable state. When she was able to write, she always forced herself to write in a reassuring way so that you would not be alarmed on her account, and so that you would not feel so badly that it would detract from the energy you are in such great need of there. But we can no longer keep up this vain illusion, for if we did, when you do come back and see her in such a bad way, you would be doubly pained.
You well know the one medicine that would bring her back to life! the news that you were bringing your son back with you to put in her arms! Ah, if you could only send a telegram with such news, you would without doubt find her in a very different state.
Knowing that Momolo had promised Edgardo that he wouldn’t leave Rome without him, and knowing how much it would pain Momolo to break that promise, Padovani and Moscato added, “Assure your son that your absence will only be temporary, and that you will return soon to embrace him and to take him back to the bosom of his family.” They added that Momolo could comfort Edgardo with assurances that, in his father’s absence, other members of the Jewish community—such as Scazzocchio—would be allowed to visit him.14
The letter jolted Momolo, and he hurriedly made arrangements for the long return trip by coach to Bologna. He would have to leave Edgardo behind. On September 25, back in the city where it all began, Momolo wrote to Scazzocchio in Rome. The letter reveals a man buried beneath a cascade of miseries, yet neither bitter nor consumed by anger, a loving father and dedicated husband, still hopeful that the Pope would release his son.
Having left Rome with a broken heart, after a very pleasant trip I arrived in the bosom of my poor family. Unfortunately, I found them in a state of desolation, and my business in total disorder. I will do everything possible to repair the latter, but as for the sad state in which I found my wife, the possibility of a cure remains rather far off. She asks for nothing except news of our kidnapped son, she wants nothing other than him, and she will have neither peace nor health until he is returned to her. For that, I have unwavering faith in the unquestionable sense of justice of the High Pontiff, in the strength of the arguments we have already presented, and in the new documents that we will send in soon which, as they say, will cut the head from the bull. God willing, my presentiments will soon be borne out.
Momolo had another worry as well, for Marianna’s distraught state had robbed her of her once plentiful milk, and little Imelda was suffering as a result. Even if they had not suffered the death of their baby boy the previous year, they would have been concerned about Imelda’s health, for they lived at a time when a quarter of all children died before their first birthday, and when there was no good alternative to breast milk.
For now, I have the consolation that despite the fact that my wife has suffered so and suffers still, Heavenly Providence will not allow my little baby daughter to suffer and will, by some miracle, ensure that she grows normally. However, so that we don’t lose our new one, the doctor thinks we should not further abuse her by continuing to feed her milk that has for too long been unhealthy. Within the week, despite what we would like, we have to wean her. We will have to wait and see what becomes of her then.
Job-like, Momolo added, “Ah! my dear Signor Secretary, unfortunately one misfortune brings with it a hundred others!”
“I fervently pray,” he wrote, “that you go often to see my beloved son, shower him with kisses for me, comfort him all you can and assure him of my unceasing efforts to get him back, to bring him back to me and to his mother, his brothers, and his sisters.”
CHAPTER 8
Pope Pius IX
EDGARDO’S NEW FATHER, Pius IX, may well be the most important pope in modern history. The fact that his reign, from 1846 to 1878, was the longest of any pope since Peter himself was merely a demographic achievement, a product of his relative youth at ascension to office and his longevity. But his reign marked a watershed, the uneasy transition from an outworn medieval papacy, uncomfortably combining the roles of temporal prince and spiritual head, to one presiding over no armies and no state. This transition to modernity, however, came not because of the Pope’s efforts but despite them.
Born in 1792 in Senigallia, near Ancona, Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti was the last of nine children, his father a count. It was common at the time for a younger son of a noble family to dedicate himself to a high clerical career, and in Mastai-Ferretti’s case there were a number of signs that the fit might be a good one. Even as a youth he seemed to have a spiritual quality about him, and his family’s inclination to place him in the Church was reinforced when, at age 15, he began to have his first epileptic seizures. Mastai-Ferretti was never much of a student, and the upheavals caused by the Napoleonic wars and occupation disrupted his studies. Even his sympathetic biographer Roger Aubert writes that the future pope’s education was limited, and that “in history, canon law, and even in theology his notions would always be superficial.”1 In 1819, Mastai-Ferretti received ecclesiastical dispensation to become a priest despite his epileptic episodes, although with the restriction that he could not celebrate mass alone; he had to be assisted by a fellow clergyman.
Mastai-Ferretti’s career in some ways paralleled that of Michele Viale-Prelà. Both men were born to elite families in the provinces, both were younger sons, and both had close family ties in the Church hierarchy. One of Mastai-Ferretti’s uncles was a bishop, and another was a canon of Saint Peter’s. The future Pius IX had been a priest for only a few years when he was assigned to the papal diplomatic corps and, in 1823, sent for two years to Chile. Unlike Viale-Prelà, however, he was not by temperament or ability particularly suited for a diplomatic career and was undoubtedly pleased when in 1827, at age 35, just eight years after becoming a priest, he was named Archbishop of Spoleto, in the Papal States. Five years later he became Bishop of Imola, not far from Bologna. In 1845, the year before becoming pope, Mastai-Ferretti, by now a cardinal, was called upon to fill in for his neighbor, the Archbishop of Ferrara, and, amidst great pomp, baptized a young Jewish man, Samuele Coen.2
When, on June 1, 1846, Pope Gregory XVI died, after a fifteen-year reign, hopes sprouted that the reactionary pope’s successor might be someone better suited to come to terms with the new currents sweeping Europe, the movement away from the old regimes of autocrats and noblemen toward a system of nations based on constitutional rule and the separation of Church and state. Following brief deliberations, and barely two weeks after his predecessor’s death, Giovanni Maria Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti, Bishop of Imola, was elected pope, taking the name of Pius to honor Pius VII, the pope who had befriended him in his youth in Rome and who, arrested and sent into exile by Napoleon in 1809, lived to return as ruler of the Papal States upon the Corsican’s fall five years later.
People in the Papal States initially saw Pope Pius IX as the answer to their prayers. In a series of measures taken in the first eighteen months of his papacy, he set out on a reforming path. He pronounced an amnesty, releasing a thousand political prisoners; he named Pasquale Cardinal Gizzi, a noted liberal, as his first secretary of state; he named commissions to study economic, judicial, and welfare reforms; and he relaxed press censorship. In championing the introduction of gas street-lighting and the expansion of railways—two signs of modernity his predecessor had disdained—the Pope solidified his reputation. His reform movement extended to the Jews as well. He established a high-profile commission of inquiry into the conditions in the ghetto, and in response to its report, among other changes, he abolished the much-reviled forced sermons and allowed the better-off ghetto residents to petition for permission to move to homes outside the old ghetto walls.3
The reaction in Bologna was typical. In the aftermath of the papal pardon, large, enthusiastic crowds paraded through the streets of the city, carrying white banners and torches and shouting their praises to the new pope. Flowers and garlands adorned the copies of the papal edict of pardon that were posted on columns around the city, and crowns were placed atop effigies that appeared all over the city center.4
All this would soon change. In the face of the revolutionary movements sweeping Europe at the beginning of 1848, rulers throughout the continent faced the unappetizing choice of either granting constitutions—and hence turning their subjects into rights-holding citizens—or fleeing. Pius IX was a reformer in the sense that he viewed some aspects of the old system as corrupt and in need of change, but he was far from a democrat. Yet he, too, felt constrained to grant a constitution in Rome in March 1848 in the wake of the constitutions granted by the kings of Sardinia and the Two Sicilies the month before.
