The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, page 23
Rayneval told Minister Thiers in his report to Paris that he had tried everything to persuade the Cardinal to change his mind but could not get him to budge. Meanwhile, Montel had gone to consult with the chief rabbi in Rome, but the rabbi’s words were discouraging. The situation looked bleak, and the French chargé d’affaires sought guidance from Paris.
On July 8, the Minister sent his reply: “The conduct of the Holy See toward Monsieur Montel wounds the principles of international law no less than those of freedom of conscience.” The Pope, the letter continued, was ignoring “the inviolable laws of nature and of equality, the sacred rights of man and the rights of a father.… Monsieur Montel is not, strictly speaking, a Jew for us, but a French citizen who should be treated in the Papal States as the equal of his fellow citizens.” Therefore, the Minister concluded, France could not accept the rationale provided to the Count by the Secretary of State. Rayneval was directed to make immediate arrangements to have the Montels and their daughter sent directly back to France and to address a letter to the pontifical government demanding that the child be allowed to return to the patrie.20
On July 17, Count de Rayneval wrote back to Minister Thiers, letting him know that the Holy Office had, indeed, declared the baptism of the Montel girl to be valid. All his pleas had been rebuffed, and the Count had begun to despair of persuading the Holy See to change its mind. However, he reported, by redoubling his efforts, and with the considerable assistance of the enlightened Monsignor Capaccini, he was able to make the Secretary of State realize how much political damage would be caused by keeping the French child, and a way out of the impasse had been devised.
“The Cardinal Secretary of State has informed me that the Holy Father could not in good conscience return a child who had become Christian to her infidel parents.” Yet the Pope recognized the strength of French feelings on the matter. “Wishing to give the King’s government proof of its confidence,” the Count reported, the Pope “will put the child at my disposition as long as I give a vow that she will be raised in the Catholic religion, thus discharging the duties of his conscience.” Rayneval informed the French minister that because this solution would allow him to send the child and her parents wherever he pleased, he had accepted the Cardinal’s offer.
That the Holy See must have known what would happen to the child, should she be permitted to return to France, was evident to the Count, who wrote that he had on many occasions told them that “the King’s government does not have the power to make a Frenchman raise a child in a religion different from his own.” The assurances he had to give would merely allow the Church to observe proper form, for “it was clear that the Holy See was looking for a way to protect its conscience behind words. I thus agreed to respond as they asked me to.”
Before he could get the ministry’s reactions, Rayneval had to act. Receiving the July 18 letter from Cardinal Lambruschini setting out the Church’s terms for the agreement, the young Count, on July 21, sent his carefully worded reply: “I have no doubt that the King’s government will take care that it will be thus, and I am persuaded that it will employ, toward that end, all possible means. I dare to hope that, as a result, you will soon go ahead with the conciliatory intentions that you expressed to me and which the King’s government will certainly view as new testimony of the sentiments of His Holiness.”21
Count de Rayneval was uncomfortable about what he had done, for it seemed to go against the instructions he had received and might be perceived by his superiors in Paris as not properly upholding the honor of the French government. He thus concluded his letter somewhat defensively: “I believe that this solution, given the ideas that they have that it is an absolute obligation for the Holy See to ensure a Catholic education for the child, is the best that one could reasonably hope for, and I ardently hope that it receives Your Excellency’s approval.”22
On July 27, the Count wrote his last report to the French ministry on the case. The pontifical government had released the infant to him, and he had immediately returned her to her mother. On the twenty-fourth, mother and baby boarded a boat for Malta, where Montel was waiting for them.
To this report Rayneval appended the text of Cardinal Lambruschini’s letter of July 18, in which the findings of the Holy Office investigation into the baptism and the agreement reached with the French representative were set out. The Holy Office had decided that the child should be removed from her parents and placed in the House of the Catechumens. However, because the case involved subjects of the French king, the Pope, “wanting to demonstrate to His Majesty and to the royal Minister his full confidence in the loyalty of the French government, is disposed to release this girl, now baptized, to Your Lordship, provided that in the name of your government you will assure the Holy See that the said government commits itself to raising her in the Catholic religion.” The Secretary of State’s letter went on to emphasize that “the matter is of such great importance to the Holy Father’s conscience that, without this condition, he would not be able to allow the release of this child.”23
In taking stock of the whole affair, Rayneval recalled that he had had two goals: “to return the child to her parents, and to avoid creating any serious conflict between the two governments.” It had not been easy. The French chargé d’affaires, a member of a diplomatic and aristocratic family—his father had been French ambassador to Spain—was only 27 years old. Cardinal Lambruschini, famous for his intransigent faith, held out against any compromise. It had taken ten long meetings between Monsignor Capaccini and the Secretary of State, in addition to the Count’s own meetings, to convince the Cardinal. The Secretary of State was concerned about the precedent that might be set; for him the Church’s right and indeed obligation to keep baptized Jewish children away from their parents was absolute. “I have to observe, apropos of this affair,” the Count concluded, “that the hatred and contempt for the Jewish race, even on the part of the most enlightened souls here, remain in full force.”24
The actual outcome of the Montel case was, then, the reunification of a baptized baby with her Jewish parents. But even if those who prepared the brief for Rome’s Università Israelitica in 1858 had known all the details, it would have done them little good. If the child had been returned to her parents, the Vatican could rightly argue, it had been despite the Holy See’s explicit instructions to the contrary. If there had been any slippage, it was the fault not of the Church but of the untrustworthy French.
Those who met with Pius IX to discuss the Mortara case were struck by how animated he became when the subject came up, and reported his lament that in the matter he was being vilified for doing what was right, for doing his sacred duty. One of the stories that raced through political circles in Rome following the Duke de Gramont’s stormy audience with the Pope on the Mortara affair, described a pained pope pointing to the image of Jesus on a crucifix on the wall behind him and saying, “That one there will defend me.”25 And to the ambassador from the kingdom of the Two Sicilies—an unlikely Mortara protester, since the kingdom had banished Jews entirely three centuries before—Pius IX is said to have replied, “I know what my duty is in the matter, and God willing, I will let them cut off my hand rather than be found wanting.”26
The Pope was not above a conspiratorial view of the forces lined up against him. No organized opposition to papal rule was permitted in the Papal States, and so he had some grounds to worry about conspiracies, which from the time the Restoration began had plagued the papacy. Those opposed to the temporal power of the pope were not only branded agents of the devil but cast together in one large, godless cabal run by the Freemasons. A Civiltà Cattolica article illustrates the Pope’s thinking. The minister of a great power, the journal reported, had come to plead for Edgardo Mortara’s return to his parents “in the name of the needs of modern society.” “What you call modern society,” the Pope replied, “is simply Freemasonry.”27
In this struggle between good and evil, Pius IX’s principled stand in opposing Edgardo’s release fed the adulatory cult that developed around him, a cult that would continue to grow despite—or perhaps because of—the many political reverses that the Pope and the Church suffered in the years ahead. A typical hagiographical biography, written by a Frenchman a decade after the Mortara affair, depicts an embattled leader, unbending in his commitment to the eternal truths of the Catholic faith, waging war against the devil’s forces. The Mortara case is cited in this context as one of the triumphal examples of the Pope’s commitment to principle over expediency: “To the strongest outbursts of evil against him, Pius IX never stopped showing an unshakable confidence in the promises of the divine Founder of the Church. One day he told Monsieur de Gramont, the French ambassador, pointing to the ivory crucifix on his work table, ‘I rely only on the One there.’ ” And the biographer continued: “During the affair of the young Mortara, he told a French priest: ‘Many men with good intentions but with little faith have written to console me. They tell me that I must be really frightened and terribly unhappy.’ Then, he adds, with a sweet smile [referring to himself in the third person]: Ipse vero dormiebat (Yet he slept well).” And his biographer concluded: “The Pope understood how his divine Master had been able to go peacefully to sleep in the middle of the storm that tossed the boat of the apostles.”28
Louis Veuillot, publisher of the Catholic newspaper L’Univers, painted a similar picture of the heroic, embattled pope. On February 23, 1859, during his visit to Rome, Veuillot met with the Pope, who wanted to talk about the dangers that the Church faced. “He said that he felt calm and had no fear, but that all he could see were all the blows being aimed at him, from England, Italy, Germany, and even Russia.” Pius IX told the French journalist that he would risk his life to defend the papacy’s temporal rule, “because temporal power is necessary for the Church’s full freedom, and the full freedom of the Church is necessary for all Catholic society and for all humankind.” Painfully aware of the superior political strength of the forces lining up against him, the Pope ruminated: “Undoubtedly, order will one day be restored. But after how much time? and at the cost of what catastrophes!”
It was then that the subject of Edgardo Mortara came up. The Pontiff, Veuillot reported, recalled “that during all the hubbub raised on that occasion by the freethinkers, the disciples of Rousseau and Malthus, we steadfastly sustained the cause and the right of the Church.” He went on about the deplorable ignorance that was revealed among many Christians, “who seemed no longer to know the character, obligations, and divine privileges that came with baptism.… Many lies were propagated, many mistaken facts and erroneous doctrines. The ministers of various powers were hardly any better than the journalists. They stated a number of useless propositions which simply betrayed the ignorance of those who advanced them.”
Rather than seeing Edgardo’s capture and the decision to hold on to him as demonstrating the Church’s continued ability to bring the powers of coercion to bear in the substantial lands under its control, the Pope drew the opposite conclusion. The case showed the triumph of spiritual principle over those who held the power of arms. He used a parable to explain his thinking: “If a very powerful sovereign came and told the Pope, ‘Pay me millions!’ the Pope, to avoid greater misfortunes, would go along, asking God not to demand later too severe a reckoning for the plunderer. But when someone tells the Pope, ‘Give me a soul!’ all the force in the world could not make him consent. There is no danger so great that it would make him give in, because the Vicar of Jesus Christ has nothing more precious than the souls who belong to Jesus Christ.” What was being demanded, in Pius IX’s eyes, was the soul of a little Jewish boy from Bologna. He would not give in, though the costs, he knew, would be high.29
Each year, shortly after New Year’s, it was the Pope’s custom to receive a delegation from the Roman Jewish community, the officers of the Università Israelitica. It was a tradition that went back centuries, with roots in the annual homage paid by the Jews to the emperor of Rome. The first recorded meeting between Rome’s Jews and a pope dates from 1119, but the practice had long been in abeyance before Pope Leo XII resuscitated it in 1827.30
The Jews who went to see Pius IX each year had learned that the nature of their encounter depended entirely on the Pope’s mood. The delegation that came to see him on February 2, 1859, no doubt did so with some trepidation, for in the wake of the international storm of protest over the Mortara case, Pius IX was not likely to be kindly disposed. If that was their expectation, it proved to be only too accurate.
Sabatino Scazzocchio, the young secretary of the Università Israelitica, felt it his duty, in the brief opening report that was customary on these occasions, to make a plea on behalf of the Mortaras, couching it in the accustomed phrases of reverence, respect, and appreciation for the good Pope. But at once Pius IX flared up in anger: “Oh, certainly, certainly, you have given a wonderful display of your loyalty this past year, stirring up a storm all over Europe about this Mortara case!” Scazzocchio tried to defend himself, denying that Rome’s Jews had had a hand in the attacks against the Pope, but Pius IX was not to be placated so easily: “You, yes, you have thrown oil on the fire, you have stoked the conflagration.… But this doesn’t surprise me,” he continued. “You lack the experience, you don’t yet have the gray hair that these gentlemen here do,” and here he pointed to the secretary’s older colleagues. “You are crazy, crazy, not to say a scoundrel. You bragged that the Mortara couple would not be able to see me without you! Crazy! Who are you? What power do you have? What authority do you have that would feed such boastfulness?”
The Pope was just warming up, his animus against Scazzocchio—who represented for him the height of gall, a Jew who would try to get the Pope to do his bidding—now exploding. “But that wasn’t enough for you. You went to the editors of the newspapers, you even went to the editorial office of Civiltà Cattolica to protest and to distort the facts. You even tried to play theologian [referring to the Pro-memoria and Syllabus Scazzocchio had submitted on the Mortaras’ behalf], but here someone must have helped you because certainly you know absolutely nothing about theology. The newspapers can write all they want. I couldn’t care less about what the world thinks!”
The Pope then turned to the rest of the Jewish delegation, and briefly made them, too, feel the weight of his wrath. “I suppose these are the thanks I get for all the benefits you have received from me! Take care, for I could have done you harm, a great deal of harm. I could have made you go back into your hole.” At this point, the Pope began to calm down, and he added: “But don’t worry, my goodness is so great, and so strong is the pity I have for you, that I pardon you, indeed, I must pardon you.”
It was the delegates’ turn to speak again. Giacobbe Tagliacozzo, a leader of the Università Israelitica who had been corresponding with Momolo Mortara over the previous few months, addressed the Pope: “We are very upset to see that Your Holiness seems to want to blame us for the polemics in the newspapers. But in fact we had absolutely no part in it. On the contrary, we profoundly deplore the way the newspapers have exploited a case that we ourselves have spoken of without ever trespassing the limits of moderation that befit our humble devotion to you.” Tagliacozzo, carried away in his urgent attempt to placate the Pope, spoke in ever louder tones. The Pope interrupted him, saying, “Lower your voice. Do you forget before whom you are speaking?” Tagliacozzo quickly asked the Pope’s pardon, explaining, “It must be knowing our innocence that pushes me despite myself to go beyond the proper bounds.” He continued: “A clear proof of everything I have said is that not a single newspaper account of the Mortara case has ever reported its exact and true circumstances, while they would certainly have done so if they had had any help from us.” And he concluded, “Sanctity, let me repeat, we have never in this case strayed from the long and proven devotion that we have always maintained, even in those times when maintaining it was risky for us.” He added, lest the Pope miss his point, “I refer here to the period of the revolutionary upheavals.” In short, even when under pressure to join in the revolt against papal power in 1848, Rome’s Jews had remained loyal to the Pope.
But the Pope was not impressed by this argument, responding: “Oh, certainly, it was easy enough to predict that those uprisings would be brought to an end. We are not in Africa, where the cannibals can take control. Fortunately, we are in Europe.”
The conversation then returned to the Mortara case. With the Pope now more calm, Tagliacozzo ventured one last attempt to get him to change his mind, arguing that given Anna Morisi’s dubious morals, her account of having baptized the child should not be given too much credence. To this the Pope responded that although the woman might be of poor moral character, she had no reason to make the story up. Tagliacozzo countered by speculating that Morisi had acted out of spite, seeking revenge against the family who had fired her. The Pope replied: “In any case, it is the boy himself who wants to become Christian. Do you think I should have driven him away? I know that someone might say that he was influenced by his environment, but let me tell you that in fact he made his decision freely.” And he added: “If Mortara hadn’t taken a Catholic girl into his service, he would have nothing to complain about today.”
Scazzocchio had by now built up the nerve to speak again, and was eager to defend himself. Another demonstration, he told the Pope, that fomenting press campaigns against the Pontiff was totally alien to them was the following: Various foreigners had recently come to him as word had spread that, in response to the Mortara affair, the papal police were rounding up Christian servants and chasing them out of the ghetto. Although the journalists had pressed him for confirmation, they had had to leave empty-handed, because the Jewish community of Rome wanted to avoid any clamor in the press. The Pope again was not impressed. Why, he asked, had they not told the journalists that the police were simply enforcing the law of the land, which prohibited Jews from having Christian servants?
