The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (26 page)

In the article, sections of which were republished by Catholic papers throughout Europe, the journal assured its Catholic readers that the crucial question of whether the child had in fact ever been baptized had been thoroughly investigated. The Mortaras’ lawyers had understandably focused much attention on this, the crucial issue, and had produced sworn statements from various people to discredit the servant’s account. But, the journal reported, it took only a single witness to make a baptism valid, and that witness, Anna Morisi, had not changed her story. The widespread reports in the anticlerical press that there had been no baptism were preposterous: Isn’t it strange, asked the author, that the rumormongers in France and Germany should be considered better informed about what had happened than Church authorities in Bologna and Rome, where an official investigation had been conducted? The parents had produced a doctor’s statement that the child’s illness at the time had not ever threatened his life. But this claim—suspicious itself in the hazy recollections of a physician six years after the fact—meant little. Even if the child had not been in danger of dying, he was baptized, and therefore a Christian.

Once the investigations had verified that Edgardo had been baptized, the Church had no choice but to take the action that it had. Here lay the heart of the matter. “Although the Voltairian unbelievers and the Jews claim to be scandalized and dumbfounded by it, for the true Christian no shadow of doubt is permitted. For, given that this seven-year-old child has been baptized, the question of whether he should be left with a Jewish father becomes another: Should someone who has been baptized become a Christian or a Jew? for in the end, the man will become what his upbringing makes him.”
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Taking up another theme that was to be repeated in hundreds of Catholic articles on the Mortara case, the Jesuit journal asked whose fault it was that the Mortaras’ son had been taken from them. It was their own fault, the author responded, for none of this would have happened if they had obeyed the law of the land in which they lived, which, to avoid uncomfortable situations such as this, forbade Jews to employ Christian servants. As residents of the Papal States, Jews such as the Mortaras tacitly accepted the laws under which they lived. If they found these too onerous, “they were fully free to move somewhere else.” For the Jews to blame the Church for what had happened as a result of their flouting of the law was particularly galling. “If they and their fellow believers want to remain there, they show poor grace to pretend that the laws can be changed just to suit the Judaic people.”
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As for why the Mortara case had occasioned such a commotion in the press throughout Europe, why the Church had become the victim of such abuse, the
Civiltà Cattolica
had an explanation: it was the power of the Jews. Since the members of the family of Jacob, the journal explained, “are extremely rich in Europe today, indeed in possession of the most powerful libertine newspapers in Germany, Belgium, and France, it is hardly surprising that these same papers band together in their defense, especially when they can at the same time assault the Pontiff and his government.”
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Reports had reached Rome’s Università Israelitica that the
Civiltà Cattolica
was planning a major statement on the Mortara case, and as a result, Scazzocchio and Samuele Alatri, head of the Jewish community, sent a letter to Father Carlo Curci, the Jesuit founder and director of the journal, pleading for favorable consideration. On October 30, the same day that the fateful issue of the journal went to press, Father Curci replied in a brief note, stating that “we desire only the truth and justice” and enclosing a statement on the Mortara case. “If you and the distinguished Signor Alatri remain unchanged in your opinion on the matter,” Curci wrote, “that does not prevent me from expressing my sincere respect for both of you.”

No sooner had they received this letter than Scazzocchio prepared a new plea to the Jesuit editor, accompanying it with various supporting documents. Curci’s response, written on November 1, offers a glimpse into the mind of one of the Pope’s most influential defenders. “I thank you for your kindness
in sending me new clarifications on the noted affair,” he wrote, adding that they had not altered his views, which they would find in the article that was currently in press in his journal. “You and your brethren might find that article to be rather severe,” he continued, but he hoped that they would understand his situation. He was compelled to respond “to the wild invectives against the Catholic Church and its august head that so many newspapers in Europe have published on this affair.”
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In Bologna, meanwhile,
L’osservatore bolognese
had already run three articles on the Mortara case in the course of the month. The last of these, in late October, began by responding to a recent attack aimed at it by the Parisian
Journal des Débats.
The Bologna Catholic paper disputed the
Journal
’s report of a Church-induced climate of anti-Semitism in the city. The French paper had cited, among other episodes, a weekly puppet show in Bologna’s central piazza in which the marionettes were regularly made to mouth “words of hate against the Jews.”

Along with two other French papers, the
Journal
was also denounced for its relentless hostility toward the Pope and his authority. According to
L’osservatore bolognese,
the “chorus masters of modern rationalism” were nothing but a bunch of hypocrites who ignored the facts in order to wage their “disloyal and implacable war against truth and against Catholicism.” The Mortaras were being used cynically: “Here we have the philanthropists, the humanitarians, who don’t hesitate to exploit the anxieties of a mother and an entire family in order to wound, once more, that Church of which they claim with such hypocrisy to be the devoted and reverent sons.”

For the Bologna Catholic paper, there was no room for debate or for criticism. It was a simple matter of facts and of knowing the divinely ordained laws of the Church, the laws of religion. The boy had been baptized, and “we hope that no one wants to deny the fact that baptism makes a person Christian.” Admittedly, taking her child away might have been distressing for the poor mother, but all possible care had been taken to make the move as painless as possible.
L’osservatore bolognese
went on to report the “moving details” the paper had received about the trip, recounting yet another version of the miraculous conversion along the way. The story concluded: “From letters from Rome, we learn that now, as always, the boy is extremely pleased by his situation, and that he shows a lively intelligence and the most obedient and gentle temperament.” Amidst this happiness, only one thought pained him, “the thought of seeing his parents and his siblings remain as Jews.” “But I will pray to the Lord,” the boy said, “that He shine His grace on them as well so that they too become Christians.”
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Meanwhile, the other Bologna weekly close to the Church,
Il vero amico,
reiterated the argument that Momolo and Marianna were angry about their son’s removal only because it meant seeing “one of their offspring
pass from Judaism to the true human Religion of Christ.” The paper also argued—taking up another
Civiltà Cattolica
theme—that if the journalists of France, Germany, and England were “raising their voices against the Pontiff, screaming injustice, kidnapping, and tyranny,” this was hardly surprising, “since currently the newspapers of Europe are in good part in the hands of the Jews.”
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An avalanche of articles in the Italian Catholic press defended the Pope and castigated the Church’s enemies, who were accused of ignorance—probably willful—of the teachings of Jesus and the duties of religion. These denunciations grew out of a religious vision of the Jews that made the attacks on the Holy See on behalf of the Jewish family seem especially noisome. The advantage to the boy of being Catholic, rather than remaining Jewish, seemed so obvious—and the desire of any Christian to want to return him to the Jews so preposterous—that words could hardly express their outrage.

A good example is provided by the Genoa daily
Il Cattolico,
whose articles were written primarily by priests committed to defending the Pope’s temporal power. Together with
L’armonia della religione colla civiltà, Il Cattolico
struggled mightily in the heart of the beast, for Genoa was part of the kingdom of Sardinia. From its first item on the Mortara case, in August 1858, through the end of that year,
Il Cattolico
devoted over a score of articles to the polemic.

Typical was a piece it published at the beginning of December. The correspondent pointed out that, by keeping Edgardo, the Pope was not only serving the boy’s spiritual interest but benefiting him materially as well. Once the child had completed his education—all paid for by the Church—he could aspire to any of the careers and honors available in the Papal States, from which, he noted, Edgardo would as a Jew have been excluded. The article continued:

Whoever among us gives a little serious thought to the matter, compares the condition of a Jew—without a true Church, without a King, and without a country, dispersed and always a foreigner wherever he lives on the face of the earth, and moreover, infamous for the ugly stain with which the killers of Christ are marked—[whoever] compares this reviled man with a Roman citizen, who has as his country the most civil nation in the world, Italy, and who can occupy the most splendid civil and ecclesiastical offices of the eternal city, will immediately understand how great is this temporal advantage that the Pope is obtaining for the Mortara boy.

It was clear to
Il Cattolico
that all the hand-wringing about the injustice done to the boy was but a smokescreen for what truly motivated the protests. How could the rabble-rousers be taken seriously when it was the wretched
Jews whom they were championing? “The libertines are making the devil of a noise, and have said, and keep repeating, with apparent seriousness, that all of the European Powers are sending strong letters of protest to the Pope to get him to give the Mortara boy back to his parents.” This must be a joke: “Imagine, people! The European Powers taking so much trouble for a Jew, who doesn’t matter one whit to them! This is a tale to tell children some winter night by the fire! Yet many of these rags have tried to pass it off as the absolute truth.”
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Jews were beyond the pale of civilization, because civilization was based on Christianity. As outsiders, they were dangerous, for they did not feel bound to the laws of morality that governed Christians. They felt no obligations to anyone other than their fellow Jews, and they showed no pity for their Christian victims.

Charges of ritual murder in some ways epitomized the Catholic view of the Jews. Under the heading “The Horrendous Murder of a Child,”
Il Cattolico
in January 1859 made no bones about the link between the commotion caused by the Mortara protests and their decision to run a breathless report of a new, terrifying example of Jewish villainy. “In the month of August,” the Genoan paper began its report,

while the libertine press was creating such an uproar against the Pope because of the case of the Mortara boy, the most horrendous assassination of a Christian boy was being committed by a Jew in Folkchany, a Moldo-Wallachian city [now in Romania]. So goes the world. The Pope arranges for a Jewish boy who had become a Christian to be brought up, with every possible care, in a Catholic boarding school, and they raise the roof. A Jew kills a Christian boy in the most horrible way, and the liberals, we are certain, will not have a single word to say about it.

One day in early August, according to the story, a woman from Folkchany set out on a trip with her 4-year-old son. As she was about to cross the nearby border into Moldavia, she saw that the child was tired and told him to go home, while she continued on her journey. When she returned, after dark, her little boy was nowhere to be found. Nervous and fearful, she told her husband, and the two of them searched without success, finally notifying the police. For five days they found no sign of the child.

Near the border crossing where the mother had last seen her son was a tavern run by a Jew. They suspected that it was he who had taken the child, eager to use the little Christian’s blood to make matzah, the unleavened bread baked by Jews for Passover. (The belief that Jews used Christian blood to make their matzah was a centuries-old theme, linked to the recurring accusation
that Judaism required the ritual murder of Christians.
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In the case in question here, quite aside from the monstrous absurdity of the charge in general, the fact that Passover occurs in early spring, not August, apparently made no impression on the Jews’ accusers.) The man denied ever having seen the boy, and initially they could find no proof that he had. But finally the police found the evidence they were looking for. Search dogs began scratching the ground not far from the tavern and soon uncovered the child’s blood-soaked cadaver. He had been horribly mutilated. “They counted more than 120 wounds on the little body of the poor martyr, and they saw that thorns had been driven into his head and reeds thrust under his fingernails.” Since the blood was still fresh, they realized that he had been tortured for five days. The signs were clear: “The type of torture was too much like that of Our Lord for them to be fooled about the intentions of the murderer or murderers.”

When word of what had happened spread, the irate population of Folkchany rose up, and an angry crowd marched on the homes of the city’s Jews to rid themselves once and for all of the evil in their midst. “From fifteen to twenty Jews were killed in this uprising, and it was only by the energetic intervention of the authorities that things didn’t get further out of hand.” The police arrested the Jews who looked most suspicious, and they began their investigations. But the Jews made sure that there would be no evidence against them: “All the Jews took the part of their coreligionists. In a few days they had raised 600,000 francs to be used to buy witnesses and to squelch suspicions. The Judaic gold produced its intended effect: it was declared that there was no sufficient proof.” The imprisoned Jews were freed.
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