60 Facts About Edgardo Mortara

Edgardo Mortara case was an Italian cause celebre that captured the attention of much of Europe and North America in the 1850s and 1860s.

Edgardo Mortara grew up as a Catholic under the protection of Pope Pius IX, who refused his parents' desperate pleas for his return; eventually Edgardo Mortara became a priest.

Edgardo Mortara spent most of his life outside Italy and died in Belgium in 1940, aged 88.

Edgardo Mortara regained some of his popularity during the 1850s, but the drive for Italian unification spearheaded by the Kingdom of Sardinia continued to unsettle him.

Edgardo Mortara had torn down the gates of the Roman Ghetto despite the objections of many Christians.

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Some Jews, mostly merchants like Edgardo Mortara's father, had started to settle in Bologna again during the 1790s, and by 1858 there was a Jewish community of about 200 in the city.

Edgardo Mortara had come to the city, following her three sisters, to work and save money towards a dowry so she could eventually marry.

Edgardo Mortara remained there until she was hired by another Bologna family in 1857; soon after that she married and moved back to San Giovanni in Persiceto.

Morisi averred that while she was employed by the Mortaras, their infant son Edgardo had fallen gravely sick while in her care, leading her to fear that he might die.

Edgardo Mortara said that she had performed an emergency baptism herself—sprinkling some water on the boy's head and saying: "I baptise you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost"—but had never revealed this to the child's family.

Edgardo Mortara was its official head but he only occasionally attended its meetings, and was not likely to be consulted about what the cardinals saw as routine matters.

Edgardo Mortara reported afterwards that he "would have a thousand times preferred to be exposed to much more serious dangers in performing my duties than to have to witness such a painful scene".

Edgardo Mortara declined to reveal why it was thought that Edgardo had been baptised, saying that this was confidential.

Edgardo Mortara gave Padovani a note to this effect to pass on to the marshal.

Edgardo Mortara's siblings were taken to visit relatives while Marianna reluctantly agreed to spend the evening with the wife of Giuseppe Vitta, a Jewish family friend.

The inquisitor repeated all he had said to Padovani and Moscato the previous night and told Momolo not to worry as Edgardo Mortara would be well cared for, under the protection of the Pope himself.

Edgardo Mortara warned that it would benefit no-one to make a scene when the carabinieri returned that evening.

In late July 1858 the Edgardo Mortara home was visited by Ginerva Scagliarini, a friend of Morisi's who had once worked for Marianna's brother-in-law Cesare De Angelis.

Edgardo Mortara said that a grocer named Cesare Lepori had suggested the baptism when she mentioned Edgardo's sickness, and shown her how to perform it.

Edgardo Mortara had not mentioned it to anyone, she went on, until soon after Edgardo's brother Aristide died at the age of one in 1857—when a neighbour's servant called Regina proposed that Morisi should have baptised Aristide, that she had done so to Edgardo "slipped out of my mouth".

Edgardo Mortara was visited by his father several times under the supervision of the rector of the Catechumens, Enrico Sarra, from mid-August to mid-September 1858.

Momolo's version of events, favoured by the Jewish community and other backers, was that a family had been destroyed by the government's religious fanaticism, that helpless Edgardo Mortara had spent the journey to Rome crying for his parents, and that the boy wanted nothing more than to return home.

The narrative favoured by the Church and its supporters, and propagated in the Catholic press throughout Europe, was one of divinely ordained, soul-stirring redemption, and a child endowed with spiritual strength far beyond his years—the neophyte Edgardo Mortara had faced a life of error followed by eternal damnation but now stood to share in Christian salvation, and was distraught that his parents would not convert with him.

From July 1858 onwards it was reported across Europe that as a result of her grief, Edgardo Mortara's mother had practically if not actually gone insane, and might even die.

The most influential pro-Church article on Edgardo Mortara was an account published in the Jesuit periodical La Civilta Cattolica in November 1858, and subsequently reprinted or quoted in Catholic papers across Europe.

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Edgardo Mortara left Scazzocchio to represent the family's cause in Rome.

Edgardo Mortara resolved to confront Cesare Lepori, the grocer who Morisi said had both suggested the baptism and shown her how to perform it.

Edgardo Mortara claimed that he did not himself know how to administer baptism, so had such a conversation occurred it could hardly have gone as Morisi described.

Scazzocchio forwarded an affidavit from the Mortara family doctor, Pasquale Saragoni, who acknowledged that Edgardo had fallen sick when he was about a year old, but stated that he had never been in danger of dying, and that in any case Morisi had been herself bedridden at the time she was supposed to have baptised the boy.

The clerics and nuns then knelt and prayed for the conversion of the Mortara household, prompting Edgardo's parents to leave in terror.

Edgardo Mortara became a cause celebre not only for Jews but for Protestant Christians as well, particularly in the United States, where anti-Catholic sentiment abounded—The New York Times published more than 20 articles on the case in December 1858 alone.

Edgardo Mortara adopted the position, based on Postremo mense, that to return the baptised child to his non-Christian family would be incompatible with Church doctrine.

Edgardo Mortara's abduction was widely condemned in the French press and weakened support for the papacy.

From August to December 1858 he headed a special British committee on Edgardo Mortara that relayed reports from Piedmont to British newspapers and Catholic clergymen, and noted the support expressed by British Protestants, particularly the Evangelical Alliance led by Sir Culling Eardley.

Meanwhile, the Church quietly had Edgardo Mortara confirmed as a Catholic in a private chapel on 13 May 1859.

Edgardo Mortara was by this time no longer in the Catechumens but at San Pietro in Vincoli, a basilica elsewhere in Rome where Pope Pius had personally decided the boy would be educated.

Momolo Edgardo Mortara spent late 1859 and January 1860 in Paris and London, trying to rally support.

The news that Feletti had been arrested caused the press storm surrounding Edgardo Mortara, which had died down somewhat, to flare up again across Europe.

Feletti then recounted a version of the Church narrative of the case, stating that Edgardo Mortara had "always remained firm in his desire to remain a Christian" and was now studying successfully in Rome.

Edgardo Mortara predicted in conclusion that Edgardo would one day be the "support and pride" of the Mortara family.

Edgardo Mortara recounted having seen the Mortaras sitting sadly by Edgardo's crib and "reading from a book in Hebrew that the Jews read when one of them is about to die".

Edgardo Mortara repeated her account of giving Edgardo an emergency baptism at the instigation of the grocer Lepori and later telling the story to a neighbour's servant called Regina, adding that she had told her sisters about the baptism.

Edgardo Mortara said that she had only spoken with Morisi "once or twice, when she was going up to the storage room to get something", and never about anything to do with the Mortaras' children.

Edgardo Mortara quoted at length from Angelo Padovani's account of his meeting with Anna Morisi in July 1858, then cast doubt on the grocer Lepori's claim that he did not even know how to baptise a child—Jussi produced a police report in which Lepori was described as a close friend of a Jesuit priest.

Edgardo Mortara concluded that since Feletti had been inquisitor at the time, he had merely done what that office required him to do, and no crime had been committed.

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The interval between the priest's arrest and his trial, coupled with the swift progress being made towards Italian unification, meant that the Edgardo Mortara case had lost much of its prominence, so there was little protest against the decision.

Edgardo Mortara pulled these troops out in 1864 following the transport to the Catechumens of another Jewish child, nine-year-old Giuseppe Coen from the Roman Ghetto.

Edgardo Mortara wrote repeatedly to his family, he recalled, "dealing with religion and doing what I could to convince them of the truth of the Catholic faith", but received no reply until May 1867.

Momolo Edgardo Mortara followed the Italian Army into Rome hoping to finally reclaim his son.

Riccardo Edgardo Mortara fought his way to San Pietro in Vincoli and found his brother's convent room.

Edgardo Mortara found shelter in a convent of the Canons Regular in Austria, where he lived under an assumed name.

Father Edgardo Mortara spent most of the rest of his life outside Italy, travelling throughout Europe and preaching.

Edgardo Mortara had been found guilty of murdering her by the Florentine court of appeal, but then acquitted by the court of assizes.

Edgardo Mortara thereafter attempted to re-establish connections with his family, but not all of his relatives were as receptive to him as his mother.

Bouhay had a sanctuary to the Virgin of Lourdes, to which Father Edgardo Mortara felt a special connection, the Lourdes apparitions of 1858 having occurred in the same year as his own conversion to Christianity.

Edgardo Mortara case is given little attention in most Risorgimento histories, if it is mentioned at all.

When David Kertzer began studying the case he was surprised to find that many of his Italian colleagues were not familiar with it, while specialists in Jewish studies across the world invariably were—Edgardo Mortara had, as Kertzer put it, "[fallen] from the mainstream of Italian history into the ghetto of Jewish history".

Kertzer explored many sources not previously studied and eventually published The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, which has become the standard reference work for the affair.

Edgardo Mortara himself suggested in 1893 that his abduction had been, for a time, "more famous than that of the Sabine Women".

The Alliance Israelite Universelle, whose formation had been partly motivated by the Edgardo Mortara case, grew into one of the most prominent Jewish organisations in the world and endures into the 21st century.