The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, page 32
Since I was involved in negotiations to get married and they told me that Father Feletti had dowries to give out, I went to find him and told him what I wanted. He told me that I should return on a certain day and he’d give me a reply when I took confession. And so I did, but I didn’t actually confess. I kneeled at the confessional, and Father Feletti told me that the dowry didn’t depend on him but on the Brothers of the Annunciation. I wasn’t able to get any, though, and I had to get married without a dowry.
Did you know, Carboni asked, that your neighbor in the Mortaras’ building, Geltrude Laghi, testified that “she had gone to visit you during the last days you spent at Elena Pignatti’s house, when you were about to get married, and you confided in her that you had gone to confess at San Domenico?”
“Well, I might have told her what I just told you about the dowry that I asked Father Feletti for.”
“Tell the truth, because Geltrude Laghi has testified that, in confiding in her, you told her that after you took confession at San Domenico, the friars took you into another room, where you were seized by a great fear, and they put you through an interrogation. What were they asking you about?”
“Geltrude told you a lie. I never told her that.”
“I am warning you again to tell the truth,” said the Magistrate. He told Anna that he had also called in Regina Bussolari, and that she had denied that Anna ever told her anything about baptizing Edgardo. “Since you yourself claim that you never told anyone else about the baptism, I ask you how could Father Feletti have come to know about it, and have you called to the Holy Office to interrogate you?” He continued: “You have admitted implicitly that it was you yourself who told them and, from what you said to Laghi, you told them as part of the confession you made at San Domenico. What do you say to that?”
“I didn’t report anything to them, either in the confessional or anywhere else, because in the confessional I only spoke to Father Feletti about my dowry.”
“And your conversation about your dowry took place around the same time as you were called in to be interrogated by the Holy Office about Edgardo’s baptism?”
“It was three or four days after I was called to be interrogated when I heard that Father Feletti had dowries to give, and I went to ask him for one.”
“How many times did you have occasion to go to San Domenico, and to speak with Father Feletti?”
“There were three times. Once to ask for the dowry, another to hear his answer at the confessional, and the third to respond to the interrogation on Edgardo’s baptism.”
“Aha! You see that even the way you give the order of your visits to San Domenico shows that first you went to the confessional, and only later to the interrogation.”
In addition, the magistrate added, Elena Pignatti had testified that, being curious about the four or five messages sent to Anna from San Domenico, she had asked her what they were all about.
“You told her that the Father Inquisitor had promised you a dowry, and in your last visit you led her to believe that you had been made to give a solemn oath never again to live with Jews, and not to speak of it with Elena or anyone on pain of excommunication.”
“No, I had the interrogation first, and only then asked for the dowry. And I was called to San Domenico only once by that man, and not four or five times.”
“And how was it that, on your return to Persiceto, you told your sisters about the baptism you had given Edgardo?”
“It was when we happened to be talking about Jews, and I told them about what I’d done to Edgardo.”
Their conversation had taken place, she added, sometime before she first heard the news about Edgardo’s abduction.
“So having had a vow of silence imposed on you by the Holy Office, you talked about it with your sisters? How is it that you find it so easy to break your oath?”
“I told my sisters about it, but I was sure they would never tell anyone else.”
The magistrate had one final question to ask. Anna had earlier testified that her only break in service to the Mortaras was when she left on her own initiative to work in another household. Hadn’t there been another time? Carboni asked.
“There was one other time I went away, about four months, to a midwife’s house, because at that time there was a boarder living at the Mortaras’ house, and I’d gotten in trouble.” Here, the transcript of Anna’s final testimony ends with the note: “She began to cry.”13
CHAPTER 21
Defending the Inquisitor
THE POLICE RAID on San Domenico and the arrest of the former inquisitor alarmed Bologna’s archbishop and others in the Church hierarchy. It was, for them, yet another clear sign of the new rulers’ intention of violating Church law, judging ecclesiastical activities by the secular laws of a godless government and humiliating the clergy. In the months since the new government had come to power in Bologna, it had fought a series of battles with the clergy, but never before had someone of Father Feletti’s rank been dealt with so brutally.
Shortly after the Inquisitor’s arrest, Cardinal Viale-Prelà sent a protest to the Governor, Luigi Carlo Farini, delivered personally by the Archbishop’s assistant, demanding the friar’s immediate release. Farini agreed to speak with the emissary and, according to the latter’s report, suggested that Father Feletti would be freed if he could prove that he had simply acted on higher orders. The Archbishop was unsure of what, in the terrible uncertainty of the new, chaotic situation, it was proper for the Inquisitor to say—indeed, whether it was permissible for him to say anything. He knew that Father Feletti was refusing to answer any questions about the workings of the Holy Office. Seeking instructions, the Archbishop wrote to Cardinal Giacinto De Ferrari, the Dominican who served as the Commissioner of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Rome.
Cardinal De Ferrari was well informed about the Mortara case, for it was to him that Father Feletti had written, on October 26, 1857, to report the first rumors that a Jewish boy had been baptized in Bologna. Feletti had requested authorization to proceed with an inquiry, and it was De Ferrari who, on November 9, writing from the central office of the Inquisition in the Vatican, had sent the Bologna inquisitor the fateful instructions to proceed. Of all this, the Bologna court and the magistrate, Carboni, knew nothing.1
Now, little more than two years later, Father Feletti was languishing in prison. On February 11, the Commissioner of the Holy Office responded to Cardinal Viale-Prelà’s letter:
I have been asked whether the prisoner may respond that he was carrying out Superior Orders from Rome, etc. The immediate answer is that there is no difficulty in giving this answer, although he should add what Saint Peter said: Obbedire oportet Deo magis quam hominibus [Obey God before man]. Now fearing that that letter [authorizing Father Feletti to have Edgardo taken] has been lost, we thought it most prudent to refer the matter to Your Most Reverend Eminence to do the best you can.
Ten days later, the Archbishop wrote again to the Commissioner with word of a disturbing new development. It no longer looked as though getting the friar out of jail would be as simple as they had thought:
I had sent my Pro-Vicar to Signor Farini to speak on behalf of Father Feletti, and he responded that to free him nothing more would be necessary than affirming, as I said, that he had merely carried out superior orders. But now, it seems, they no longer consider such a declaration to be sufficient. We have written Signor Farini to remind him of his assurances and to bring the matter to a close, and I await his reply. I will not fail to do everything possible for the prisoner.2
After his second interview with Anna Morisi, Magistrate Carboni was almost ready to prepare his brief for the prosecution. But before doing so, he wanted to make one last attempt to get the Inquisitor to talk. On March 6, Carboni entered the Torrone prison and was escorted to Father Feletti’s cell.
The friar seemed happy to have the company but began on a peevish note, for there was something he had been mulling over. If they were so concerned with illegal acts committed in connection with the case before them, why, he wondered, had they not gone after “the Jew Momolo Mortara, who broke the laws promulgated by the Church forbidding him from keeping any Christian in his service, laws designed to prevent just such a situation as this.” But the friar’s irritation soon subsided, and he returned to higher ground, recalling the Holy Office instructions he had received via the Archbishop: “The judgments of the Church should certainly not be subject to any other authority that is inferior to it, for Catholic doctrine teaches me that the Faith of Peter cannot be subject to the judgment of any other. It is not right for anyone to sit in judgment over the decisions that emanate from the Apostolic Faith in matters of Faith and conduct.”
It was now time for the magistrate to begin his final interrogation. Carboni realized that his best chance of getting a conviction was proving that the former inquisitor had broken the laws that were in effect at the time of Edgardo’s abduction. If Father Feletti proved able to demonstrate that, in ordering the boy seized, he was simply following higher orders that were legally formulated, he could be found guilty only by the retroactive application of the new law of the land, and there were many both in the courts and in the government who would not want to set such a precedent.
“Do you persist even today,” Carboni began, “in maintaining that, in ordering Lieutenant Colonel De Dominicis to seize the Mortara child, you were executing an order received from the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office?”
“Yes, sir. I was only the loyal executor of the orders received from the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome.”
Yet, the magistrate responded, neither Marshal Caroli, the carabiniere officer who processed the order that the Inquisitor had sent the police, nor Brigadier Agostini, who had been shown the letter by De Dominicis, recalled its saying anything about his acting on orders received from Rome. Unless you show me the letter you received from Rome or other such proof, warned Carboni, I will have to conclude that the abduction was your idea.
In sending an order to the police, responded Father Feletti, there was no need to cite any authority higher than his own. As for the proof that he had acted on orders from Rome, it was sufficient to note that “the boy was received by the Rector of the Catechumens in Rome, and that the Holy Father was kind enough to want to see this boy himself, bless him, and act as his father in all senses of the term.” For Father Feletti, the suggestion that he would have acted on his own in such a matter, without instructions from the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Rome, was insulting: “It is a mortification that I accept from the hand of God, and it comforts me that no one who knows me would think so poorly of me.”
Why, then, asked Carboni, would he not show them the order he claims he received from Rome?
In all those things I could discuss without breaking my oath to the Holy Office, responded the friar, I have. “But when it involves things that I am not allowed to talk about, I don’t believe I am remaining silent to be discourteous, for on the contrary, it would be in my own interest to speak. But my conscience absolutely forbids me to give you any response.”
But, the magistrate asked Father Feletti, why, if he was simply following orders he received from the Holy Office, had he given Agostini four scudi as a special reward for his services?
“I just paid Agostini for the expenses that he and the boy incurred on their trip. I gave him the four scudi purely as a tip, for his inconvenience, as he himself is the father of a family.”
The magistrate turned next to the question of the baptism itself. When Momolo Mortara had first come to see the Inquisitor, while the police were stationed by his son’s side back at the house, he had asked him why he believed that Edgardo had been baptized. Why had the Inquisitor offered no explanation?
“I told the Jew Mortara that his son had been baptized, but I could not give him any explanation because of the oath by which I am bound.”
“Well,” Carboni demanded, “at least now explain and justify how, when, and by whom the boy was baptized, how news of it got to the Holy Office, and what efforts were made to verify it before ordering the separation of a Christian boy from his Jewish family.”
“The Supreme Sacred Congregation, having recognized the boy’s baptism to be valid, ordered me to have him sent to Rome to the College of the Catechumens. The Supreme Sacred Congregation is aware of every act, every bit of investigation that was believed to be necessary for this purpose, and it alone may provide you with the details on that investigation.”
Carboni was annoyed:
“Enough, Reverend Father, of this evasive way of responding, which not only precludes you from any useful means of defense, but may give rise to some interpretations that are unfavorable to you.”
“I am truly sorry you think I am being evasive in answering the questions about the investigation undertaken into the Mortara boy’s baptism. When I have been interrogated about things I can talk about, I have responded straightforwardly with what clarity I can. But about the things you are now asking me I cannot respond at all without permission from the Supreme Sacred Congregation in Rome.”
“Since you do not want to or you cannot produce the records that we have asked you for, at least tell me who it was who reported Edgardo’s baptism, and which persons were interviewed to verify it.”
“The oath that one takes calls God as witness of that truth or act that is being asserted, and the violation of this oath brings divine punishment. I am more concerned about the salvation of my soul than about any punishment inflicted in this world simply as a result of my obeying the orders that were given me by the Head of the Catholic Church by means of the Sacred Congregation. I do not wish to incur divine punishment by violating the oath of secrecy that I gave with regard to the acts of the Holy Office.”
But, the Magistrate asserted, you can rightly say that you did not voluntarily break your oath but were compelled to do so in order to defend yourself in a criminal trial.
“I leave my defense in God alone, in the Most Holy Virgin Mother of Mercy, who is the refuge of all sinners, and in the intercession of the prayers that the child Edgardo Mortara raises before God for me, which I learned about many months ago from someone in Rome who works for the Pope.”
Since you have refused to offer any proof of what you say, Carboni told the friar, this court has had to do everything it could to discover the truth. We have interviewed Anna Morisi and heard her story of having baptized Edgardo. “But,” he added, “aside from her statement, we have not been able to obtain any other confirmation. Indeed, her assertion not only was found to be exaggerated, because at the time of that illness the boy was never in danger of dying, but it was denied by the very people who were cited to prove it.” And none of these witnesses, said Carboni, reported ever being summoned by the Inquisitor so that their testimony could be heard. “I call on you once and for all,” the magistrate implored, “to abandon your stubborn silence and tell me that you did not order the Mortara child taken away simply on Anna Morisi’s assertion alone.”
“I have already said that when I am asked about acts regarding the Holy Office I cannot respond. Let me only say that the order for taking the Mortara boy came to me from the Supreme Sacred Congregation, which certainly had the proof necessary to reach such a finding.”
Carboni was not to be put off. The timing of Anna Morisi’s testimony about the baptism, he said, should have led you to view it with suspicion. She had just left the Mortaras’ service following a heated argument and was likely to be angry and bitter toward them, ripe for a vendetta. Adding to such suspicion, said Carboni, was the proof that he had collected from many sources of the young woman’s dishonesty and lack of loyalty. In the light of all this, asked the magistrate, do you still remain silent about the efforts you made to establish the truth of the alleged baptism?
“I reply once more that I cannot give you any response.”
The end was near. Carboni had prepared a draft of his findings, which would soon be sent to the court for the final phase of the trial. Before leaving Father Feletti after this, their last duel, he read it to the friar. He pointed to the lack of any evidence to support the friar’s claim that he had acted on higher orders. Moreover, the Inquisitor had done nothing to verify Anna Morisi’s story about having baptized the child years earlier, despite ample reasons for doubting it. The magistrate added that the taking of the child had upset the whole city and aroused the condemnation of the press; he described the scene of a mother wailing, of a father tearing out his hair, and of policemen who were themselves moved to tears by the inhumane task the Inquisitor had given them. Do you contest the fact that by this course of conduct you have made yourself liable for punishment? asked Carboni.
Father Feletti had his last chance to respond to the magistrate before the case went to the judges.
To your narration of the facts I have nothing to oppose, except to note that I gave the orders best designed to lessen the pain of the boy’s mother and father. But I don’t know by what law you can proceed against me for having carried out an order that I received from the Supreme Sacred Congregation of Rome two years ago under a government that was legally recognized by all the Powers of Europe.…
It isn’t true that this action upset the whole city, because when people learned that the Mortara boy was taken away because he had been baptized, no one talked about it anymore. As for the newspapers, there were other papers that were moderate and full of good sense. They spoke of the case with those fair and just ideas that are required in dealing with a religious matter.
I commiserate with the Mortara parents for their painful separation from their son, but I hope that the prayers of the innocent soul succeed in having God reunite them all in the Christian religion.
As for my order to De Dominicis to take the boy, I gave it in writing in the name of the supreme authority, and I told him to show it to the Mortaras themselves just so that they would not think that it was simply my own personal order.
