The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, page 45
CHAPTER 10
1. ASV-Pio IX.
2. Letter from S. Scazzocchio to Don Enrico Sarra, Rome, September 29, 1858, ASCIR.
3. As one report put it, the baptism had been performed secretly “at the instigation of the fanatic Catholic grocer Lepori.” Alfredo Comandini, L’Italia nei cento anni del secolo XIX (1801–1900), 1850–60 (1907–18), p. 823.
4. These details come from ASG-SA.
5. ASV-SS, fasc. 1, Allegato E, Ripertorio Generale n. 5358.
6. ASV-Pio IX.
7. For a fuller history of infant abandonment in nineteenth-century Bologna, see Kertzer, Sacrificed for Honor.
8. ASV-Pio IX. Both the cover letter and all the notarized testimony from Bologna discussed below are found here.
9. A biography and an autobiography of Pasquale Saragoni, both in manuscript form, are to be found in AMRB.
CHAPTER 11
1. S. Bloch, “Rapt d’un enfant israéite,” L’univers Israélite 14 (July 1858):11.
2. Cahan, “L’Affaire Mortara,” p. 555.
3. Reprinted as lettera C in Brevi cenni, “Supplica diretta dai rabini di Germania a Sua Santità,” p. 113, ASV-Pio IX.
4. Letter to Sig. Alessandro Carpi, Bologna, August 25, 1858, ASCIR.
5. “Chronique du mois,” Archives Israélites 20 (January 1859):46.
6. Ibid., p. 61.
7. Momolo Mortara letter from Bologna addressed via Giacobbe Tagliacozzo, Rome, October 10, 1858, ASCIR.
8. Testimony of Momolo Mortara, February 6, 1860, trial of Father Feletti, Bologna, ASB-FV.
9. Letter from the Bishop of Alatri to Secretary of State Antonelli, October 16, 1858, ASV-SS, fasc. 1, n. 7.
10. Letter from Secretary of State Antonelli to the Bishop of Alatri, October 18, 1858, ASV-SS, fasc. 1, n. 9.
11. Letter from the Bishop of Alatri to Secretary of State Antonelli, October 19, 1858, ASV-SS, fasc. 1. n. 75.
12. Letter from Cardinal Cagiano, Frosinone, to Secretary of State Antonelli, October 18, 1858, ASV-SS. fasc. 1, n. 73.
13. Letter from Secretary of State Antonelli to Cardinal Cagiano, Frosinone, October 21, 1858, ASV-SS, fasc. 1, n. 77.
14. Letter addressed “Alle Università Israelitiche dello Stato,” dated Rome, October 20, 1858, ASCIR.
CHAPTER 12
1. Shema, the Hebrew word for “hear,” is the first word of the most important prayer in Judaism, an expression of God’s oneness.
2. “Ratto del fanciullo Mortara,” Il piccolo corriere d’Italia, November 8, 1858.
3. Transcript of trial of Father Feletti, Bologna, testimony of Marianna Padovani, February 20, 1860, Turin, ASB.
4. “Dans les plus recentes visites, …” draft of letter written in mid-November 1858, ASCIR.
5. L’univers, November 11, 1858, quoted in Delacouture, Le droit canon, p. 43.
6. “Edgardo Mortara,” Il vero amico, n. 49 (December 5, 1858).
7. “Il piccolo neofito, Edgardo Mortara.”
8. Letter from Momolo Mortara to Scazzocchio in Rome, sent from Florence, dated December 2, 1858, ASCIR.
CHAPTER 13
1. Giuseppe Massari, Diario dalle cento voci, vol. 1858–60 (1959), p. 97.
2. Letter from Count Minerva, Rome, to Count Cavour, Turin, October 9, 1858. Reprinted in appendix of Gian Ludovico Masetti Zannini, “Nuovi documenti sul caso Mortara,” Rivista storica della chiesa italiana 13 (1959):271–2.
3. Lettera particolare, Count Minerva, Rome, to Count Cavour, Turin, October 9, 1858. Reprinted in ibid., p. 273.
4. Letters from Count Minerva, Rome, to Count Cavour, Turin, October 25 and November 23, 1858. Reprinted in ibid., pp. 273, 274.
5. Letter from O. Terquem, Paris, December 10, 1858, in Archives Israélites 14 (December 10, 1858):233–5.
6. Letter (#143) from the Marquis of Villamarina, Paris, to Count Cavour, Turin, November 21, 1858. In Cavour, Il carteggio Cavour-Nigra, vol. 1, pp. 206–7.
7. Letter (#149) from Count Cavour, Turin, to the Marquis of Villamarina, Paris, November 25, 1858. In ibid., pp. 213–14.
8. Carlo Sacconi, apostolic nuncio in France, letter to Cardinal Antonelli (#1171), dated January 7, 1859, Paris. Reprinted in Mariano Gabriele, ed., Il carteggio Antonelli-Sacconi, (1858–1860) (1962), vol. 1, p. 12.
9. Letter from the apostolic nuncio to Madrid to Cardinal Antonelli, dated Madrid, December 1, 1858, ASV-SS, fasc. 3.
10. Letter from Conte Du Chastel, Rome, to Cardinal Antonelli, November 8, 1858, ASV-SS, fasc. 2, n. 93.
11. Letter from Cardinal Antonelli to the Ministro Residente di S.M. il re de’ Paesi Bassi, November 27, 1858, ASV-SS, fasc. 2, n. 95. For the reaction to the Mortara case in Belgium, see G. Braive, “Un choc psycologique avant la guerre d’Italie: L’affaire Mortara,” Risorgimento 8 (1965):49–82.
12. Quoted in Bertram W. Korn, The American Reaction to the Mortara Case (1957), p. 24.
13. Quoted in ibid., p. 42.
14. Ibid., p. 48.
15. Ibid., p. 70.
16. Ibid., p. 95.
17. Ibid., p. 63.
18. Fair Play, “The Alleged ‘Mortara’ Kidnapping Case in Bologna, Italy” (1858).
CHAPTER 14
1. Stuart Woolf, A History of Italy 1700–1860 (1979), p. 235. See this work more generally for its account of the evolution of relations between the Church and the European rulers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
2. Journal de Bruxelles. September 18, 1858. Reprinted in Archives Israélites 19 (October 1858):558–9.
3. A brief history of L’armonia della religione colla civiltà and an analysis of its writings on the Mortara case can be found in Floriana Naldi, Il caso Mortara: Il processo nel 1860 e le reazioni della stampa ecclesiastica ed ebraica, tesi di laurea, Università de Bologna, 1993, pp. 61–87. For an analysis of the writings of the Italian press, see Grazia Parisi, Il caso Mortara: Il processo del 1860 e le reazioni della stampa italiana, tesi di laurea, Università di Bologna, 1993.
4. “Notizie del giovanetto cristiano Mortara,” L’armonia della religione colla civiltà, October 17, 1860.
5. Momolo Mortara’s testimony at the trial of Feletti, Bologna, February 6, 1858.
6. “Il piccolo neofito, Edgardo Mortara,” p. 406. For a widely circulated pamphlet, in both French and Italian editions, polemicizing with the Civiltà Cattolica article, see Roma e la opinione pubblica d’Europa nel fatto Mortara (Turin, 1859).
7. “Il piccolo neofito, Edgardo Mortara,” p. 400.
8. Ibid., p. 391. L’armonia (October 31, 1858, p. 2) took up this theme, blaming the clamor created by the Mortara case on the fact that “the major part of the influential newspapers are in the hands of the Jews.”
9. These letters, on Civiltà Cattolica stationery, are found in ASCIR.
10. “Al Journal des Débats, Parigi,” L’osservatore bolognese, 29 October 1858.
11. “Edgardo Mortara,” Il vero amico, December 5, 1858. For background on this and other of Bologna’s newspapers of this period, see Isabella Zanni Rosiello, “Aspetti del giornalismo bolognese,” in Il 1859–60 a Bologna (1961).
12. “L’unione e il popolo,” Il Cattolico, December 1, 1858, p. 1.
13. For an examination of a fifteenth-century charge of Jewish ritual murder, see R. Po-Chia Hsia, Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (1992).
14. “Orrendo assassino di un fanciullo,” Il Cattolico, January 26, 1859, front page.
15. S. Cahen, “Chronique du mois,” Archives Israélites, March 1859, pp. 180–1.
16. Vincenzo Manzini, L’omicidio rituale e i sacrifici umani, con particolare riguardo alle accuse contro gli ebrei (1925), pp. 143–5.
17. Civiltà Cattolica, ser. 15, vol. 5 (1893), p. 269.
18. Ibid., ser. 13, vol. 2 (1886), p. 437.
19. Ibid., ser. 15, vol. 2 (1892), p. 138.
20. “L’ebreo di Bologna e le bombe di Giuseppe Mazzini,” L’armonia della religione colla civiltà, August 17, 1858.
21. “I papi, gli ebrei, e i giornali italianissimi nel 1853 e nel 1858,” L’armonia della religione colla civiltà, October 3, 1858.
22. Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, vol. 3 (1975), P. 2035.
23. Delacouture, Le droit canon, p. 44.
24. Ibid.
25. Letter from Carlo Archbishop Sacconi, nunzio apostolico, Paris, to Cardinal Antonelli, December 19, 1859, ASV-SS, fasc. 3, n. 164.
26. Giovanni Battista Clara, Memorie per la storia de’nostri tempi, vol. 1 (1863), pp. 206–14.
27. Letter from Cardinal Antonelli, Rome, to the Monsignor Nunzio Apostolico, Paris, December 30, 1858, ASV-SS, fasc. 3, n. 166.
28. Letter from Carlo Sacconi, Paris, to Cardinal Antonelli, January 17, 1859. In Gabriele, Il carteggio Antonelli-Sacconi, letter N. 1179, p. 18.
CHAPTER 15
1. The Pro-memoria and the Syllabus are to be found in ASV-Pio IX. These documents were used as the basis of Sharon Stahl’s doctoral dissertation, The Mortara Affair, 1858 (St. Louis University, 1987), and I make use of her translations from the Latin portions of these texts.
2. “Brevi cenni e riflessioni sul Pro-memoria e sillabo, scritture umiliate alla Santità de Nostro Signore Papa Pio IX relative al battesimo conferito a Bologna al fanciullo Edgardo figlio degli Ebrei Salomone e Marianna Mortara.” ASV-SS, fasc. 1, n. 88. Addressed to the nuncios of Vienna, Munich, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Brussels, Naples, The Hague, and Florence; to the representatives to Lucerne and Turin; and to the apostolic delegates to Panama, Bogotá, and Mexico. The names of the Latin American representatives have all been crossed out in pencil, which may mean that the materials were not, in the end, sent to them.
3. See “Cronaca,” Il Cattolico, November 4, 1858, p. 1.
4. Brevi cenni, p. 8.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., p. 18.
7. Ibid., p. 12.
8. Ibid., p. 27.
9. Bajesi remains a mystery figure in the Mortara case. She never came to the attention of the magistrate who later investigated the matter in connection with the kidnapping trial of the Inquisitor. The parish records of San Gregorio reveal that she lived near the Mortaras when they first moved to Bologna but then shortly thereafter left the parish. Of course, it is possible that Bajesi heard of the matter not directly from Regina Bussolari but from a third party who had heard of the baptism from Bussolari.
10. Ibid. The capitalization is in the original.
11. Capitalization in original.
12. Ibid., pp. 30–31.
13. Dubbi critico-teologici sul battesimo che si pretende conferito in Padova alla Signora Regina Bianchini.… (1786), p. 5. A copy of this document is found in the Archiginnasio di Bologna.
14. My account of the Bianchini case is based on the above-cited source, an anonymous thirty-one-page booklet written by a man who describes himself as a “private,” responding to the great public interest in the case.
15. Brevi cenni, p. 22.
16. Ibid., pp. 22–3.
17. Commandant Weil, “Un précédent de l’affaire Mortara,” Revue historique 137. Reprinted as pamphlet (Paris, 1921), p. 3. This quote is from Count de Rayneval’s letter of June 26, 1840, to M. Thiers in Paris. Weil reproduces much of the relevant French diplomatic correspondence, and the texts of the correspondence I use here are drawn from this source.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., p. 5.
20. Ibid., pp. 7–8.
21. Ibid., p. 15. Letter from Count de Rayneval to Cardinal Lambruschini, July 21, 1840.
22. Ibid., pp. 9–10. Letter from Count de Rayneval to M. Thiers, July 17, 1840.
23. Ibid., p. 12. Letter from Cardinal Lambruschini, Quirinale palace, Rome, July 18, 1840, addressed to Monsieur le chargé d’affaires de S.M. le roi des Français.
24. Ibid., pp. 10–13. Letter from Count Rayneval to M. Thiers, July 27, 1840.
25. Massari, Diario, vol. 1858–60, p. 95.
26. Frank Coppa, Pope Pius IX: Crusader in a Secular Age (1979), p. 129.
27. Luigi Previti, “La circolare del gran maestro della Massoneria,” Civiltà Cattolica, ser. 13, vol. 12 (1888):391.
28. Dufault, Vie anecdotique, pp. 131–2.
29. Louis Veuillot, Le parfum de Rome. Oeuvres complètes, vol. 9 (1926), pp. 448–51.
30. Moroni Romano, “Ebrei,” p. 29; Di Porto, “Gli ebrei di Roma,” p. 30.
31. The account of this meeting is based primarily on Berliner, Storia degli ebrei, pp. 305–7. Also see Di Porto, “Gli ebrei di Roma,” p. 59.
32. Quoted in Martina, Pio IX, p. 34n53. Martina provides no date for this encounter.
CHAPTER 16
1. Letter from Momolo Mortara to S. Scazzocchio, December 3, 1858, ASCIR.
2. Letter from S. Scazzocchio to Momolo Mortara, December 7, 1858, ASCIR.
3. Israel Davis, “Moses Montefiore,” Jewish Encyclopedia (1901) vol. 8, pp. 668–70.
4. On the extended Rothschild family, see Egon Caesar Corti, The Reign of the House of Rothschild, trans. by Brian and Beatrix Lunn (1928); and Virginia Cowles, The Rothschilds: A Family of Fortune (1973).
5. This description of Montefiore’s Damascus mission is based principally on the account found in Myrtle Franklin with Michael Bor, Sir Moses Montefiore, 1784–1885 (1984), pp. 41–57.
6. Letter from Moses Montefiore to the Deputati dell’ Università Israelitica di Reggio, January 17, 5001 [year given according to Hebrew calendar], ASRE-AN, b. 28. The other documents sent by Montefiore are also found here.
7. Chaim Bermant, The Cousinhood: The Anglo-Jewish Gentry (1971), pp. 104–5.
8. L. Loewe, ed., Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore (1890), pp. 85–6.
9. The exchange of letters between Montefiore and Eardley was reprinted in The Jewish Chronicle and Hebrew Observer (London), December 31, 1858, p. 2.
10. Among those accompanying Montefiore was Gershom Kursheedt, a Jewish businessman from New Orleans who was living in London at the time. As noted by Korn, American Reaction, p. 157, Kursheedt went as the “unofficial representative of American Jewry,” and as such his trip constituted the first direct intervention of the American Jewish community on behalf of Jews abroad. This is a rather tenuous claim, however, as just what role he had in Rome is hard to see. Montefiore himself makes virtually no mention of him, and Kursheedt did not attend any of the crucial meetings there with Sir Moses.
11. Loewe, Diaries of Sir Moses Montefiore, p. 103.
12. “Return of Sir Moses Montefiore,” The Jewish Chronicle and Hebrew Observer, May 27, 1859, p. 4.
13. Isidore Cahen, “Chronique du mois,” Archives Israélites, July 1859, pp. 423–4.
14. Ibid.
15. Volli, “Il caso Mortara nell’ opinione pubblica,” p. 1117.
16. The handwritten account by Enrico Sarra, Rector of the Catechumens, that includes this information is found in ACC #184, entry n. 317, pp. 95–6.
17. Letter from Scazzocchio to Angelo Padovani, Bologna, February 1, 1859, ASCIR.
18. The source for this account is Edgardo himself, from the autobiographical notes he wrote in 1878, which were republished in the appendix of Masetti Zannini, “Nuovi documenti,” pp. 264–5. We have no direct verification from papal records.
19. This is the account given in Moroni Romano, in his entry for “Chiese di Roma—S. Pietro in Vinculis,” in his Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastico, vol. 13 (1843), P. 6.
20. This passage of Veuillot is reproduced in Dufault, Vie anecdotique, pp. 125–9.
CHAPTER 17
1. Giambattista Casoni, Cinquant’anni di giornalismo 1846–1900 (1908), vol. 2, p. 21.
2. Cited in “Spoglio dei giornali,” Gazzetta del popolo (Bologna), January 11, 1860, p. 3.
3. Arturo Carlo Jemolo, Chiesa e stato in Italia dal Risorgimento ad oggi (1955), pp. 49–50.
4. Martina, Pio IX, p. 34. Recall that according to Pius IX’s eminent French biographer Roger Aubert (Il pontificato, p. 145), it was the Pope’s actions in the Mortara case that led Napoleon III to drop his last hesitations before agreeing to the dismantling of the Pope’s earthly empire. Or, in the words of the British historian J. Derek Holmes (in The Triumph, p. 126), it was the Mortara case that “once again raised the question of temporal power and ecclesiastical autocracy” and “prepared French opinion for a shift in Napoleon’s foreign policy.”
5. Bottrigari, Cronaca, vol. 2, p. 446.
6. “Cronaca contemporanea—Notificazione dell’Em. Legato di Bologna,” Civiltà Cattolica, ser. 4, vol. 3, p. 103.
7. My description of the events surrounding the departure of the Austrian troops from Bologna is based primarily on Bottrigari, Cronaca, vol. 2, pp. 460–4.
8. Alberto Dallolio, “Bologna nel 1859,” in Bologna nella storia d’Italia (1933), p. 163.
9. Fantini, “Un arcivescovo bolognese,” p. 220; also see Fantini, “Il clero bolognese nella crisi del 1859–60,” Bollettino del Museo del Risorgimento di Bologna 3(1958):109–61.
10. Letter from Odo Russell to Lord J.R., July 22, 1859, no. 94, in Blakiston, The Roman Question, pp. 26–7.
11. This description is based on Bottrigari, Cronaca, vol. 2, pp. 479–82, including the story from Bologna’s Monitore, which he reprints.
12. “Popoli della campagna,” Gazzetta del popolo, August 17, 1859.
13. The text of Farini’s declaration can be found as appendix E in Francesco Jussi, Studi e ricordi di Foro Criminale per l’avvocato Francesco Jussi (1884).
14. “Notificazione Ecclesiastica,” signed M. Card. Viale-Prelà, Arciv., dated Palazzo Arcivescovile di Bologna, August 29, 1859, AAB-N.
15. “Notificazione Ecclesiastica,” signed M. Card. Viale-Prelà, Arciv., dated Palazzo Arcivescovile di Bologna, December 8, 1859, AAB-N.
16. Bottrigari, Cronaca, vol. 2, p. 509.
17. On the political uses of ritual, see David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (1988).
18. On the rituals of the French Revolution, see Mona Ozouf, La fěte révolutionnaire (1976).
19. Dallolio, “Bologna nel 1859,” pp. 193–5.
