Notes from Limmud 2011

The Mortara Affair

Jonathan Wolfson

[Standard disclaimer: All views not in square brackets are those of the speaker, not myself. Accuracy of transcription is not guaranteed. This post is formatted for LiveJournal; if you are reading it on Facebook click on "View original post" for optimal layout.]

This affair appeared out of the blue, commencing on the 23rd of June 1858, there was a knock on the door of a prosperous house in the Bologna [lacuna, sc. Jewish quarter?].

Papal soldiers were outside the door; they said, "We believe you are harbouring a Catholic child." The mother fainted because she understood the implications. One of her sons escaped out of the window and went for help. They were about to take away a young child, but they managed to persuade the soldiers to have a stay of execution overnight. So the soldiers stayed overnight while the matter was dealt with at a higher level in the Church.

Nevertheless, the Church authorities ruled the child was a Christian, and he was taken away. The mother's screams could be heard for hundreds of yards, and the father fainted; even the soldiers cried.

The child, Edgardo Mortara, when two, had been taken fairly seriously ill. His illiterate, poor Catholic maid took pity on him, thinking he was going to die unbaptised, and secretly baptised him with water from a vase. After six years she told it to a friend, who told it to another friend, who told it to a priest. According to Papal rules, no baptised child should be allowed to remain under the tutelage of the Jewish people.

The reason this happened was because the Holy Inquisition still existed. The Roman Inquisition started in 1588 as a anti-Protestant movement, but increasingly had become anti-Jewish.

In Bologna it was led by the Dominican priest Fr Viletti. More and more the Inquisition was becoming scared people were getting lax; and they were making sure all the rules towards the Jews had to be maintained scrupulously: The Jews were denied all access to education, to all public charity/welfare, and they had to pay their own taxes, more heavily than the general populace.

There had in the past been special sermons designed to convert the Jews; one third of the community were forced to turn up. They were nearly always delivered by baptised Jews, who would later become friars and priests. One time, though, the guards found the Jews were all sitting there with wax in their ears, and they were punished for it.

There was a steady rate of conversion down through the centuries in the Papal States; this was, however, mostly for economic reasons, rather than people being convinced by anything they'd listened to in these sermons.

Any Jewish child who had been suspected of being baptised could no longer remain with his Jewish family. In four[???] years the Papal police entered at night and carried off, in Rome, seventeen married women, three fiancées, and twenty-seven young children.

No one was immune to this; it happened in 1604 to the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Joseph Asuth. He was given the opportunity of being reunited with his four children by converting; but he refused, and never saw them again.

In 1783[?] a similar story occurred: Papal police imprisoned sixty Jewish children as collateral for smuggling the two accused children away. When the head of police found out about this, he was furious and imprisoned sixty men.

Madelina Pacifiqui [lacuna specifying the nature of her relationship with] a lady with a young baby called Rosa. She felt so sorry for her, she couldn't bear the anguish of knowing she would be tormented after death, and baptised her with water fom a dirty puddle. Years later, she told someone else and the child was taken away and never saw thr[lacuna]

Such children would be taken to the House of Catechumens, a house for Jewish converts. The child would be put under intense pressure to convert; almost no child ever was able to overcome it. Children were kept there for forty days—whilst their the upkeep was paid for by the Jews from their own taxes.

Anna del Monte, who was taken there as an adult, described her life there as follows:

In the final evening, at 9 at night, I saw the father preacher come in. He said "My daughter, you see how many times I have come in to visit you. I had to go to the Cardinal If my own efforts are not enough, the Cardinal will come in person to give you the baptismal water." I said I would die as I had been born. He became enraged, and [ellipsis, may indicate lacuna] sprinkled her [sic] with water anyway, and left a crucifix in my bed. "So my daughter, don't disappoint me." After three hours, he finally left, leaving me more dead than alive.

She was one of the very few who did survive the pressure.

But Edgardo Mortara was only eight.

No Jew was allowed anywhere near this house, not even to look at it. A Jewish peddlar got lost in 1864, and was found near it, and was flogged so severely he was never able to walk again.

Pope Pius IX, the second-longest serving pope, became intensely anti-Jewish, though he wasn't at first; at the beginning he tried to ameliorate the restrictive laws for the Jews and improve relations with the Jewish community.

This all changed in 1848, the year of the revolutions across the conservative empires of Europe. By mid-1849 every revolution had been put down, and either the status quo ante was restored, or it was made even more restrictive. In the Papal States, the Pope blamed the revolution on the Jews—the first time this had happened. Now, as far as he was concerned, the Jews were the prime enemy.

He was the first to have the idea of Papal infallibility, and much of what he did was difficult for moderate Catholics to accept. There were protests [to, I think, the Mortara abduction] at first: The local authorities tried to intervene with the local priest [who escalated their complaint to their] bishop [then] cardinals [who] sent emissaries to Rome to intercede with the Pope.

The Catholics said it should not have happened, but once it had[, it could not be revoked].

[Mortara's sympathisers] then sent emissaries around the world, and within a few weeks, the whole world knew, and got the Jewish side of the story first. Every newspaper reported on it, and reported sympathetically.

The Rothschilds put a lot of pressure on the Vatican, as it was their money that was propping up the Papal States, but the Pope didn't give in.

The family camped outside the house (and managed to get away with not being flogged), and after four months were finally allowed to see their son, who said he wanted to go home. His mother said he was born a Jew and should always remain one. He said, "Si, mi cara mama; I will always remember to say the Shema."

But the Pope took him on as a protégé. He lavished particular and special affection on him, and took much interest in his whereabouts. The family tried to investigate what happened, and discovered three things:

The baby was never as ill as everyone had thought. There was never a chance of him dying. This had religious implications over whether it had been an emergency baptism.

The girl who baptised him, it turned out, had had a seedy past. She'd had multiple lovers, and didn't have the education and the personality to be carrying out baptisms. It wasn't in line with how baptisms should be performed, and she'd done it incorrectly.

It was later discovered she might never indeed have been with the child: she was never left alone with the child. The whole story might have been a fiction.

The Jewish authorities therefore went to the Pope with this information. He got furious, called them dogs, said "How dare you tell me what a proper baptism is! I know, and it's a proper baptism."

The Papal states were probably the worst place in the world to be a Jew in terms of the onerous nature of all the burdens [laid upon them]. The Pope was hated by all the inhabitants; he had to flee during the 1848 revolution, and was restored by French troops and with Austrian support. This is important because at the time of the Damascus affair there had been a similar case when the Pope had had enough pressure put on him to get the child restored to his parents.

In 1858 the Pope was still in possession of the Papal States, but was dependent on the good will of France; this was during the early stages of the Risorgimento.

Montefiore gets involved in this as well. He was riding high at the time on the back of the triumph of the Damascus affair. He's the obvious man to plead with the Pope.

He should have recognised the difficulty of the mission, because he sent an opinion piece from the Times to a large number of Catholic clergymen asking them to intercede, but received only one positive response, and a lot of hate mail.

So he went to Rome and failed miserably. He got one meeting with a cardinal, who spent the whole time asking if he was going to try and bribe him the way he bribed the Sultan.

Cremieux was completely right and said he should have gone as part of an international Jewish delegation rater than as a British Jew, particularly as the French had much more standing with the Pope.

They both went, but neither of them got anywhere.

During this period, some children went missing, and were discovered some miles away. Then another one went missing, and the shamash found him drugged hidden underneath a seat [lacuna]

In Italy it was a cause célebre of the reactionary nature of Papal rule; it was talked about everywhere. French protests were particularly fierce; this was important as (a) French was a Catholic nation, (b) France was propping up the Papal States.

In Britain almost every single newspaper wrote editorials denouncing the affair. Even after Catholic emancipation, there was a strong undercurrent of distrust of Catholics. [The following, however, appears to be of American Jewish origin.]

We hear with astonishment and deep sorrow, that the most odious act that ever emanated from the Prince of Darkness was recently perpetrated in the dominions of Pio Nono, the Pope of Rome... This abominable outrage not only affects the Jew, but it equally concerns the Christian who is not of the Catholic creed, as what they (the Inquisition) dared in defiance of every principle of moral justice, inflict one day on the Jew, they may and will repeat on a future day to the detriment of the Protestants residing within the limits of their unprincipled power. The history of these incarnate fiends, written in the blood of millions of victims, fully justifies such conclusion.

The support, though, wasn't completely pro-Jewish; there was a meeting where the Christian campaigner Sir Culling Eardley referred to the Papacy as "the grand impediment to the conversion of the Jews."

In the USA there were twenty editorials about the affair in the New York Times. Even in Catholic Spain there was huge concern.

You can see a lot of the same terminology used in the Damascus affair: "civilisation", "humanity", "barbarous practices"... but where there it was Jewish practice against a Christian child, now it was turned around completely.

The Pope did have support from the Jesuits and many Catholic spokesmen, who put together five arguments to support him:

He had the right under Papal law to do this, and the obligation under Divine law.
Under Papal Law no Jew was allowed to have a Catholic servant—honoured more in the breach than the observance—hence it was their own fault.
You [the parents[ have lots of other children anyway (five); why make such a fuss about this child? Therefore they could only be raising a fuss in order to embarrass the Pope.
Who are you Protestants to criticise us? You take Catholic children away. And you Americans, you still have slavery!
Baby Mortara miraculously wanted to be Catholic, as soon as he was taken. Therefore we are doing the divine justice, because that is what he wants to happen.

This last argument was widespread in the Catholic press, which said that he wept as soon as he saw a representation of the Virgin Mary; he had learned his catechism, and he wanted to convert his family.

The second time his father was able to visit him, [lacuna, sc. he reminded him of the commandment of] כִּיבּוּד אָב וָאֵם [honour your father and mother] but [Edgardo] said, "The Pope knows the law better than you".

[My notes don't attribute the following:] "How can you tear this child away from the Pope he loves?"

The Catholic defence spent less time on religious matters and more on racial matters; this is the beginning of nineteenth-century racial antisemitism, which became very important in a generation or two with the Dreyfuss affair.

The Pope said he couldn't care less what the world thought, and if he had to, he would do this all over again.

Edgardo's father used all his money trying to get his son back, and very soon became completely dependent on Jewish charity, and was propped up by the Rothschilds for the rest of his life.

After a couple of years, by 1860, all the Pope had left was a strip of land around Rome; the rest has been unified into the Kingdom of Italy. Bologna was now taken over. The Piedmontese couldn't take the [remaining] lands so long as the French army was there. The French, however, were furious because of the Mortara affair.

Unification was a two-stage process. The Piedmontese created a Kingdom of Northern Italy; there was a similar case in southern Italy and then the two were merged.

Cavour used the Mortara affair to huge effect. Almost every speech he gave mentioned the Mortara affair as an example of Papal inflexibility. He did genuinely care, though, too. After 1860, he had plans to get Mortara out, but died in 1860 at the height of his fame, at the age of fifty, which was a huge setback for the Mortara case.

In southern Italy, Garibaldi was also furious about the case. He came up with some audacious plans to rescue Mortara and spirit him away in the middle of night in a suitcase, or have a horse to recognise him. Hence the two key leaders were both personally involved but also both using it for political reasons.

Napoleon III, emperor of France, too, was not just interested in the Mortara affair but took it personally.

On 21 July 1858, the week after the first article about the Mortara affair in France, due to Napoleon III, there was a secret meeting between Napoleon III and Cavour. Cavour wanted to know whether if Piedmont would fight Austria, France would get involved on the Austrians' side. Napoleon said no, they would help. Mortara's name was mentioned six times in this meeting.

If Napoleon had not backed the Piedmontese, Italian unification might never have happened. Hence the Mortara affair had a big impact.

So, why did the Pope not give way, given that Napoleon asked him to?

The British Ambassador in Paris, describes the Pope's side:

[The Pope] sympathised painfully with the suffering of the parents, every day he was further saddened by the attacks on religion for which this unfortunate incident was cause or pretext; he understood all that was painful and contrary to nature in this hidden baptism and its harsh consequences; The law of the church condemned it, religion forbade it and those guilty of it were liable to excommunication ... but ... in his eyes, in his soul, in his conscience, the child which he had examined was sufficiently mature to know what he wanted, and his voice could not be misunderstood. ... It was impossible for the head of this Church, as representative of Jesus Christ on earth, to refuse this child the benefit of Our Saviour's blood, shed for his redemption, which he pleased for with an almost supernatural faith... His resolution was unshakable. The child would remain Christian.

Even in 1865, after the loss of most of the Papal States, the Pope would write a letter:

You are very dear to me, my little son, for I acquired you for Jesus Christ at a very high price... Your case set off a worldwide storm against me and the apostolic See. Governments and peoples, the rulers of the world as well as the journalists—who are the truly powerful people of our times—declared war on me. Monarchs themselves entered the battle against me, and with their ambassadors they flooded me with diplomatic notes, and all this because of you... People lamnted the harm done to your parents because you were regenerated by the grace of holy baptism and brought up according to God's wishes. And in the meantime, no one showed any concern for me, father of all the faithful.

Edgardo had been taken to Rome, spirited out in the dead of night. His parents followed him there, but were not able to see him. He was only ever sighted once. At the annual meeting between the Pope and the Jewish community, he was seen being stroked by the Pope, aged eleven or so.

There was a long gap between 1860 and the fall of the Papal States, and 1870, when the Franco-Prussian War meant the withdrawal of the French troops, and the Pope became the Prisoner of the Vatican.

When bad things happened to the Jews, Jewish converts to Christianity were often responsible, examples including the burning of Talmuds in Paris, Pablo Christiani trying to arrange the burning of the Gemara, and the Disputation with the Ramban.

So people were worried at what point Edgardo Mortara might stop being this poor dear boy we're trying to get back, and at what point might he become an enemy of the Jews.

1861 a non-Jewish writer wrote:

The child will become not a Christian according to the Gospel, but a Jesuit, whose principles are in opposition to the true Christianity.

In 1870 Rome was captured. Mortara's protection was now gone; his family could go and get him back. The problem is that he is now nineteen, and the age of majority was eighteen. Because of this long gap, he was now able to decide himself what he wanted to do.

The family raced from the Ghetto to try and get him back. In his own words:

It was the fatherly pope who gave me the strength and the courage [lacuna, sc. to resist the] liberal authorities who wanted to make me, in violation of my religious vows, return to my family and expose myself not only to the danger of breaking my oaths, but, indeed, of becoming an apostate. [lacuna] but I held firm.

He was loath to meet his father.

The police want me to return to my family. So at ten at night, accompanied by one of the monks, we made my way through the convent garden, and to the train station, where I spotted my father. He prayed not to be noticed, and succeeded; and got onto the train and got away.

Edgardo did indeed become a priest. He entered the Augustinian order, adopted the name Pius, and became one of the most [lacuna] conversionists in the world. He spent a lot of time learning Hebrew.

In 1920 he wanted to go to New York to preach at the main Catholic church there, but the archbishop didn't allow him; it would be too embarrassing.

He wrote letters to his family trying to convince them to convert. Some of his siblings refused to speak to him. He visited his mother on her deathbed, and tried to convince her to convert, and was thrown out by one of his brothers, but he did go to her funeral.

When Pius IX died, Mortara was heavily in support of the beatification and canonisation of him.

Eventually Mortara died in the Abbey Bouhay in Liege in 1940, two months before the Nazi occupation of Belgium. It's interesting to wonder what would have happened had he lived another year. Answer: he would have been [lacuna, presumably: deported and murdered because to the Nazis there was no way to cease being a Jew; I think the question is more how it would have affected his personal convictions.]

In 2000, Pius IX was finally beatified; there was such a long gap because of the controversies associated with him. The ADL put out a statement saying ordinarily we wouldn't be bothered by this, but he shouldn't have been beatified, because of the Mortara affair.

Why is the case still so interesting today?

People don't like to talk about it too much, because neither side comes out of it very well. The Catholic Church does not; and from the Jewish perspective, it's embarrassing because of the way it turned out: After all the years of "poor little Edgardo", he turned out into an ungrateful wretch.

As far as Jewish history is concerned, it was an important turning point. In the wake of the Damascus affair, the Jewish world came together in terms of using the media and world opinion in their cause.

It's also important in terms of the astonishing Catholic hatred to the Jewish people. So many of the arguments and images they use (serpent, snakes) fed into a way of thinking about the Jews which would later become persistent across Europe.

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