The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, page 42
And what of that damning bit of evidence, that no one would open the door to the police officer summoned by Bolaffi after Rosa’s fall? The prosecution charges that this shows that the family was busy cleaning up blood and concocting an alibi. But, in fact, even before that officer came, the first policeman on the scene, called from the street by a neighbor, had arrived. He had already gone up to the Mortara apartment and been admitted right away. He had gone to the window from which Rosa fell, and found nothing. If the Mortaras were trying to cover something up, why admit the first policeman and not the second? The reason there was initially no response to the second policeman, the lawyer argued, was because of the sad state in which those in the apartment found themselves. Both mother and daughters had practically fainted away, Momolo himself had fallen and was being helped back into bed, and the room in which they were all to be found was itself far from the front door.
As for any material proof that, even were a murder committed—and there was no murder—it was Momolo who committed it, all we have is imagination. “It is worth considering the kind of arguments that were judged sufficient to yank a citizen from his bed while he was afflicted with a painful illness and take him to jail and keep him there for several months,” said Momolo’s lawyer. “Indeed, we believe that because we are dealing with the Jew Mortara, it is all the more important that we employ some common sense.”
Even the briefest consideration revealed that Momolo would have had no motive for murdering Rosa. “The interest that an employer might have in discovering that his servant had stolen in a previous job is that of firing her, not killing her.… You would have to be dealing with a maniac, and if this is what you thought, the police should have taken him to Bonifazio [insane asylum], not to Murate [prison].”
This gets to the second point, the claim that Momolo Mortara is a violent, hot-tempered person. “Those of us who have the honor of knowing the Mortaras are well able to testify that what hurts Momolo and his family even more than his being in jail and more than suffering this trial is to see him accused of having little love for his family, for he is a man who shows the greatest tenderness toward his wife and children.”
The lawyer then returned to the reason for Momolo’s renown, as well as for his misery.
From the time that the papal guards took Edgardo, his favorite child, from him, he was beset by a tremendous anguish! Everyone knows about this scandalous case, and all can imagine how it might change someone’s character to see his treasured son torn from his breast and his religion, without warning, in the thick of the night, without pity, amidst the boy’s, the mother’s, and his brothers’ and sisters’ screams. From the moment of that agonizing scene … he became, it’s true, a bit brooding and apt to grumble. But his nature was so gentle and good that, deep down, he has always stayed the same. For him, the old saying is apt: “The dog that barks doesn’t bite.”
The defense lawyer concluded with an appeal to the judges to rise above the popular prejudices against the Jews, and above the hatred aimed at Momolo in particular, a man viewed by many as having caused the Church much misery. The long-suffering father should be allowed to return to his family, a family that had already suffered enough. With this, the defense rested.
On June 30, 1871, having examined all the testimony, the medical evidence, and the briefs and arguments of the Prosecutor and the two defense lawyers, the three judges of Florence’s Royal Court of Appeal issued their decision. They rejected Mancini’s arguments and found “that the wound on Tognazzi’s head was inflicted by Momolo Mortara in his apartment, as a result of a sudden rage, and that Tognazzi was then thrown from the window to make it look like suicide.” The judges noted the medical evidence that Momolo could not have thrown her out of the window without help and concluded that “others must have assisted him in this barbarous deed.” At home at the time that the crime was committed, the judges found, were Momolo, his wife, his twin daughters, his son Ercole, his friend Flaminio Bolaffi, and three small children.
Here, however, the judges found themselves in a quandary: “Although there is no doubt that some of the above-listed individuals helped Momolo Mortara throw the unfortunate Tognazzi from the window … we have no special reason to conclude that any one rather than any other lent a hand to the wicked deed. We must, then, apply the rule that suggests that it is better to abandon the accusation rather than have it weigh on both the innocent and the guilty together.” Clearly, the judges concluded, all of them were lying, trying to protect a husband, wife, parent, child, or friend. But the determination that they were lying did not justify finding them guilty of pushing Rosa from the window.
As a result, the judges decided “not to proceed, due to a lack of evidence, against Flaminio Bolaffi, Ercole Mortara, and Marianna Padovani Mortara.” They bound Momolo over to Tuscany’s highest court, the Court of Assizes, which was responsible for making the final ruling on all murder cases. Flaminio Bolaffi was released from jail, after spending almost three months locked up.
Momolo, in worsening health, remained in jail for another three and a half months while he awaited his fate, his condition steadily deteriorating. Finally, on Wednesday, October 18, Augusto Groppi, president of the Court of Assizes, called the final trial to order. A stricken Momolo sat in a special chair that had been prepared for him, next to his lawyer. After hearing opening arguments, the three-judge panel, on October 21, heard from the two medical examiners. The newspapers, reporting the trial, focused on their testimony that the mortal wound to Rosa Tognazzi’s forehead had not been caused by the knife found in her pocket. Rather, they testified, it had been caused either by a blunt instrument or by the fall.1
On Friday, October 27, following the closing arguments, the judges reached their verdict. Momolo Mortara was found not guilty. They ordered him released from the jail in which he had lived for almost seven months. A month later, he died.
EPILOGUE
WHILE HIS FATHER was in jail, accused of murder, and his mother was facing charges of sending a bleeding 23-year-old woman hurtling four stories to her death, Edgardo was living happily under an assumed name in a convent of the Canons Regular in Austria. The following year, he moved to a monastery in Poitiers, France, where he continued his theological studies. Pius IX, now an old man, had not forgotten his son. The Pope wrote regularly to the Bishop of Poitiers, asking how Edgardo was doing and expressing the hope that he would soon be ordained a priest. In 1873, having received a special dispensation—at 21, he was still shy of the minimum age for priesthood—Pio Edgardo Mortara was ordained. The Pope sent Edgardo a personal letter on this occasion, expressing his immense satisfaction and asking the young man to pray for him. According to Edgardo, the Pope also established a lifetime trust fund of seven thousand lire to ensure his support.1
Known as a scholarly man—reputed to preach in six languages, including the notoriously difficult language of the Basques, and to read three others, Hebrew among them—Father Mortara dedicated his life to spreading the faith, singing the praises of the Lord Jesus Christ, and traveling throughout Europe, going where he was most needed. As a preacher he was in great demand, not least because of the inspirational way he was able to weave the remarkable story of his own childhood into his sermons. As he recounted it, his saga was the stuff of faith and hope: a story of how God chose a simple, illiterate servant girl to invest a small child with the miraculous powers of divine grace, and in so doing rescued him from his Jewish family—good people but, as Jews, on a God-forsaken path. He might still have been lost, had it not been for the courageous actions of a saintly pope, who braved cruel threats from the ungodly and allowed Edgardo to devote his life to spreading the word of Christ’s saving power.
In 1878, Marianna Mortara, now widowed and with all of her nine children grown, heard that Edgardo was preaching in Perpignan, in southwestern France. Accompanied by a family friend, she went to see him. It had been twenty years since she had last laid eyes on her son. It was a poignant reunion, for Edgardo felt great affection for his mother. But try as he might to turn her onto the path of eternal blessing and happiness, he could not get her to agree to enter the Catechumens and convert.
From that moment, Edgardo remained in touch with his family and, as he aged, sought out family members when he found himself in Italy. But while his mother made peace with him, not all of his siblings were so kindly disposed.
In 1890, when Marianna Mortara died, French newspapers reported the dramatic news of her deathbed conversion by her proselytizing son. It seemed that after all those years of holding out, she had finally succumbed to her son’s pleas. But in a letter to the paper Le Temps, dated April 18, 1890, Father Pio Edgardo denied the report: “I have always ardently desired that my mother embrace the Catholic faith, and I tried many times to get her to do so. However, that never happened, and although I stood beside her during her last illness, along with my brothers and sisters, she never showed any sign of converting.”2
The following year, to much public curiosity and, in some quarters, enthusiasm, Father Pio Edgardo visited his mother’s natal city, Modena, to preach at the Church of San Carlo. A sympathetic local newspaper offered a description of Edgardo a month short of his fortieth birthday: “Of medium height, he is a man with a most pleasing appearance, with a gentle and courteous manner, and an entirely Christian kindness about him.” The correspondent told of shaking the friar’s hand just before he got up to preach: “His modesty, his simplicity moved us, knowing that his learning and his fame are known throughout the world.”
When Edgardo rose to speak, not only were a sister and a number of his brothers in the pews, but the large audience contained, according to the newspaper’s account, “not a few Jews, eager to hear the illustrious speaker.” Father Pio Edgardo told of his joy upon first returning to Italy after a twenty-year absence, and of his thanks to God for letting him see his beloved land once again. He then spoke of his emotion in returning to Modena, his mother’s homeland, of the way his heartbeat quickened at the thought of her, and of the emotion he felt in seeing his sister and brothers sitting before him.
Edgardo then launched into his sermon, expanding on the theme of what a great and wonderful adventure it was to be a Catholic, because as a Catholic a person possesses the truth. What he most fervently desired, he said, was that others come to understand these truths, that others come to share the happiness he had gained by taking them into his heart.
The journalist described the crowd’s delight in hearing the friar’s inspiring sermon, concluding: “We were extremely pleased to have heard him. We blessed God, who, in the inscrutable ways of his providence, permitted the acquisition to Catholicism of such a powerful champion of the faith.” They had all left the church convinced, the correspondent wrote, “that God would, without doubt, concede him great triumphs and the comfort of seeing others embrace that Holiest Religion, of which Father Mortara is a most learned and convinced apologist.”3
By this time both Cardinal Antonelli and Pope Pius IX were long gone. The Secretary of State, whose merits were more appreciated by the Church’s diplomatic enemies than by its own cardinals, died in 1876. It is said that even Antonelli’s longtime protector, the Pope, on first being told of his Secretary of State’s death, responded: “Let’s not talk about him anymore!”4
Two years later, the two principal antagonists in the unification battle, King Victor Emmanuel II and Pope Pius IX, died within a month of each other. Indeed, one of the Pope’s final acts was to authorize the giving of the last rites to the monarch whom he had excommunicated. The King’s body, visited by fifty thousand mourners a day, lay in state in the Quirinal Palace, which had for three centuries served as the official residence of the popes before being taken over by the royal family in 1870. An imposing funeral followed at the Pantheon, a building dating to Roman times and now merging imperial and Christian functions, the church of the royal family.
When the Pope died, the following month, his body lay for a week in St. Peter’s basilica as thousands of mourners came to pay their respects. As part of the ceremonies, his coffin was taken in solemn procession out from the Vatican through the nearby city streets. When the procession of carriages, white-tunicked clergy, purple-robed cardinals, mournful bishops, and papal guards reached the bridge over the Tiber, they were met by an unruly mob of anticlerical protesters, who waved the tricolor, chanted patriotic songs, and shouted antipapal slogans. Just as it looked as though they would succeed in removing the Pope’s coffin from its carriage and heaving it into the river, a detachment of police arrived to save the day.5
Edgardo lived many more years. By the end of the First World War, he had moved into the abbey of the Canons Regular in Bouhay, Belgium. Although he visited Italy occasionally—including a nostalgic visit to Rome’s House of the Catechumens in 1919—he preferred to remain in Bouhay, dedicated to contemplation, study, prayer, and devotion to the Virgin Mary, for whom he had a special fondness.6 Bouhay was renowned for its sanctuary to the Virgin of Lourdes, second in fame only to that found in the Pyrenean town itself, and Pio Edgardo felt a special, spiritual link to the miracle at Lourdes.7 The Virgin had chosen to reveal herself to the faithful in 1858, and so two miracles took place in the same year, one in a French town, the other in Italy, when the Virgin appeared to a little boy just plucked from his Jewish home, a boy who, in a few days’ time, went from the obscurity of life as the sixth child of a modest merchant’s family to the heights of celebrity, his welfare of concern to a pope, a secretary of state, ambassadors, a prime minister, and even, fleetingly, to an emperor.
On March 11, 1940, the 88-year-old monk died at the Belgian abbey in which he had lived for many years. Two months later, German soldiers flooded into Belgium, soon to begin rounding up all those tainted with Jewish blood.
AFTERWORD
WHY HAS the Mortara case attracted so little attention from historians? It represents one of the significant episodes in the unification of Italy, and yet it has been largely ignored, even though a huge amount of historical work has focused on the Risorgimento.
The case of the Jewish child seized from his family, and of the Pope who braved popular denunciation and fierce diplomatic pressure to hold on to him, has all the elements of melodrama, as was recognized by the several nineteenth-century playwrights who rushed to write plays based on the case. From a historian’s perspective, the Mortara case is loaded with ties to epochal developments, providing a window into many of the major forces at work at one of the turning points in Italian history. There could scarcely be a better demonstration of the worldview that lay behind the Holy See’s commitment to temporal rule, or of the manner in which it came into conflict with the new liberal, secular ideology that spread throughout Europe in the nineteenth century. Also, the involvement in the Mortara case of many of the principal protagonists of the unification struggle offers a valuable vantage point for understanding the mind-set of such crucial figures as Pope Pius IX, Secretary of State Giacomo Antonelli, Count Camillo Cavour, and the French emperor Napoleon III.
So how can we explain the fact that until now the only book-length scholarly study of the Mortara case was one published in 1957 by an American, Bertram Korn, dedicated entirely to the American reaction to the affair, a book by an author who apparently read neither Italian nor French? It should not be surprising that the account of the actual facts of the case given in the opening chapter of Korn’s book—before he turns to his main topic, what happened in the United States—is filled with inaccuracies. Unfortunately, insofar as non-Italian scholars around the world (mainly in Jewish studies) have learned about the case, it is through Korn’s flawed and, in any case, limited account.
The major historical work to date on the Mortara case was undertaken by Gemma Volli and published in a series of articles around the hundredth anniversary of the boy’s seizure. These made a major contribution to Jewish history but were published in places where few people other than Italian Jewish studies scholars ever saw them. For the rest, the Mortara case is known to historians through passing mention in various works of nineteenth-century Church history: no serious biography of Pius IX or Cardinal Antonelli is complete without a discussion of the case, but in these the focus and perspective are understandably limited.
When I first learned about the story, it struck me as so dramatic and so bound up with the major personages and events of the Risorgimento that I assumed that it must be widely known among educated Italians. I was amazed to discover how mistaken I was. Very few had ever heard of it. Even many modern Italian historians, at least those who were not specialists in the Risorgimento, were unfamiliar with the case. Yet, whenever I spoke with specialists in Jewish studies anywhere in the world, from the United States to Israel, Canada to Britain and France, they invariably knew in detail (albeit not always accurately) the story of the little Jewish boy taken at the Inquisitor’s order from his home. People who did not know the difference between Mazzini and Cavour knew all about Edgardo and the illiterate Catholic servant who claimed to have baptized him.
The Mortara story, in short, fell from the mainstream of Italian history into the ghetto of Jewish history. It became something of interest to Jews. If it took on a special importance in this arena, it was because the case was not simply one more illustration of the persecution suffered by the Jewish people at the hands of the Christian Church, but was itself an influential chapter in modern Jewish history. What was striking about the case was not the forced baptism and the taking of the Jewish child from his family, but the fact that, after centuries in which such events happened regularly, the larger world finally took an interest, finally rose in protest. But, most significantly, the Mortara affair marked a turning point in helping to catalyze the creation of national and international Jewish self-defense organizations in both Europe and the United States.
