The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (30 page)

The French couple had by this time already sought help from the French embassy in Rome, pleading that Roman officials had no right to take their child because they were French subjects. The French representative to the Holy See, Count de Rayneval, “argued this point strenuously with Pope Gregory XVI but was able to obtain nothing for the Jewish parents, for the Pontiff’s Sacred Duty would not allow it.” The Pope had a higher obligation, for he was bound by God to care for “the eternal welfare of that soul which had been regenerated by divine grace.” The French chargé d’affaires, however, “assured the Holy See, with an official act in the name of His Royal Government, that, were the Montel-Cremieux girl to be entrusted to his Government, of which she was a subject, the government would pledge to raise her in the Catholic religion and become responsible before God for doing so. Thus, under these express conditions, the Holy Father ordered the baptized girl given to the same Signor Representative and never returned to her Jewish parents.” The proper lesson to be drawn from the handling of the Montel affair, according to
Brevi cenni,
was quite the opposite of what the Jews had argued. The case provided “new proof to conclude that the Holy See has never tolerated that the children of Jews, once baptized, remain in their parents’ power.”
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Was it true that the Montels never got to see their daughter again? Although the
Brevi cenni
account was never contested by the Mortaras or their supporters in Rome, it turns out that in some crucial respects it was misleading. Fortunately, the diplomatic correspondence between Count Alphonse de Rayneval, the young French chargé d’affaires to the Holy See, and Louis-Adolphe Thiers, president of the Council of Ministers in Paris, has been preserved. It offers a very different view of the case.

As
Brevi cenni
reported, in early June the Montels had disembarked at Fiumicino, where Miette soon gave birth to a daughter. A few days later they went to Rome. There, on the evening of June 17, a police officer, with a group of carabinieri in tow, appeared at their door and ordered Montel to hand over his daughter, “on the pretext that she had been baptized and, as a result, she could not remain in the hands of persons who were not of the Catholic religion.”
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Montel, horrified, insisted that his daughter had never been baptized and at last persuaded the police not to take the infant without first verifying their report. The officer left, but—and here images of the police visit to the Mortara home eighteen years later are hard to avoid—two carabinieri were left behind to make sure that the parents did not try to flee with their baby.

Montel rushed immediately to the French embassy, where he was received by Count de Rayneval. Alarmed at what he heard, the Count turned to his old friend Monsignor Capaccini, formerly a papal nuncio to various European countries but now based in Rome. Capaccini, whom Rayneval knew to be a levelheaded and sophisticated man, looked into the matter and reported back that a Vatican investigation into the alleged baptism was under way. “If it turns out that the sacrament was administered correctly,” he informed the French diplomat, “it would be impossible, following canon laws, to allow a Christian child to remain with its Jewish parents.”
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Having learned this much, Rayneval wrote to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Lambruschini, pleading the Montels’ case. The Count’s main argument was not likely to have been to the reactionary Cardinal’s liking. For the French government, Rayneval wrote, all citizens were equal before the law, regardless of their religion; consequently, he could only view Montel “as a French citizen whose most sacred rights were being injured.”

The Cardinal, in his reply, expressed regret over the Count’s discomfort and reported that he had discussed the matter with the Pope himself. He assured the Count that a thorough inquiry would be made and that the woman who baptized the baby would be arrested and punished, unless she could produce a convincing reason to justify what she had done. She would also be interrogated as to just how she had performed the rite. A report of the interrogation would be sent to the Holy Office, which would then decide if the baptism was valid. Should the Holy Office find that it had not been properly performed, the child would be free to remain with her parents. However, should they determine that the woman had administered a valid baptism, the Cardinal reported, “the child will be raised, until she reaches the age of reason, far from her parents in Rome.”
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Rayneval told Minister Thiers in his report to Paris that he had tried everything to persuade the Cardinal to change his mind but could not get him to budge. Meanwhile, Montel had gone to consult with the chief rabbi in Rome, but the rabbi’s words were discouraging. The situation looked bleak, and the French chargé d’affaires sought guidance from Paris.

On July 8, the Minister sent his reply: “The conduct of the Holy See toward Monsieur Montel wounds the principles of international law no less than those of freedom of conscience.” The Pope, the letter continued, was ignoring “the inviolable laws of nature and of equality, the sacred rights of man and the rights of a father.… Monsieur Montel is not, strictly speaking, a Jew for us, but a French citizen who should be treated in the Papal States as the equal of his fellow citizens.” Therefore, the Minister concluded, France could not accept the rationale provided to the Count by the Secretary of State. Rayneval was directed to make immediate arrangements to have the Montels
and their daughter sent directly back to France and to address a letter to the pontifical government demanding that the child be allowed to return to the
patrie.
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On July 17, Count de Rayneval wrote back to Minister Thiers, letting him know that the Holy Office had, indeed, declared the baptism of the Montel girl to be valid. All his pleas had been rebuffed, and the Count had begun to despair of persuading the Holy See to change its mind. However, he reported, by redoubling his efforts, and with the considerable assistance of the enlightened Monsignor Capaccini, he was able to make the Secretary of State realize how much political damage would be caused by keeping the French child, and a way out of the impasse had been devised.

“The Cardinal Secretary of State has informed me that the Holy Father could not in good conscience return a child who had become Christian to her infidel parents.” Yet the Pope recognized the strength of French feelings on the matter. “Wishing to give the King’s government proof of its confidence,” the Count reported, the Pope “will put the child at my disposition as long as I give a vow that she will be raised in the Catholic religion, thus discharging the duties of his conscience.” Rayneval informed the French minister that because this solution would allow him to send the child and her parents wherever he pleased, he had accepted the Cardinal’s offer.

That the Holy See must have known what would happen to the child, should she be permitted to return to France, was evident to the Count, who wrote that he had on many occasions told them that “the King’s government does not have the power to make a Frenchman raise a child in a religion different from his own.” The assurances he had to give would merely allow the Church to observe proper form, for “it was clear that the Holy See was looking for a way to protect its conscience behind words. I thus agreed to respond as they asked me to.”

Before he could get the ministry’s reactions, Rayneval had to act. Receiving the July 18 letter from Cardinal Lambruschini setting out the Church’s terms for the agreement, the young Count, on July 21, sent his carefully worded reply: “I have no doubt that the King’s government will take care that it will be thus, and I am persuaded that it will employ, toward that end, all possible means. I dare to hope that, as a result, you will soon go ahead with the conciliatory intentions that you expressed to me and which the King’s government will certainly view as new testimony of the sentiments of His Holiness.”
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Count de Rayneval was uncomfortable about what he had done, for it seemed to go against the instructions he had received and might be perceived by his superiors in Paris as not properly upholding the honor of the French government. He thus concluded his letter somewhat defensively: “I believe
that this solution, given the ideas that they have that it is an absolute obligation for the Holy See to ensure a Catholic education for the child, is the best that one could reasonably hope for, and I ardently hope that it receives Your Excellency’s approval.”
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On July 27, the Count wrote his last report to the French ministry on the case. The pontifical government had released the infant to him, and he had immediately returned her to her mother. On the twenty-fourth, mother and baby boarded a boat for Malta, where Montel was waiting for them.

To this report Rayneval appended the text of Cardinal Lambruschini’s letter of July 18, in which the findings of the Holy Office investigation into the baptism and the agreement reached with the French representative were set out. The Holy Office had decided that the child should be removed from her parents and placed in the House of the Catechumens. However, because the case involved subjects of the French king, the Pope, “wanting to demonstrate to His Majesty and to the royal Minister his full confidence in the loyalty of the French government, is disposed to release this girl, now baptized, to Your Lordship, provided that in the name of your government you will assure the Holy See that the said government commits itself to raising her in the Catholic religion.” The Secretary of State’s letter went on to emphasize that “the matter is of such great importance to the Holy Father’s conscience that, without this condition, he would not be able to allow the release of this child.”
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In taking stock of the whole affair, Rayneval recalled that he had had two goals: “to return the child to her parents, and to avoid creating any serious conflict between the two governments.” It had not been easy. The French chargé d’affaires, a member of a diplomatic and aristocratic family—his father had been French ambassador to Spain—was only 27 years old. Cardinal Lambruschini, famous for his intransigent faith, held out against any compromise. It had taken ten long meetings between Monsignor Capaccini and the Secretary of State, in addition to the Count’s own meetings, to convince the Cardinal. The Secretary of State was concerned about the precedent that might be set; for him the Church’s right and indeed obligation to keep baptized Jewish children away from their parents was absolute. “I have to observe, apropos of this affair,” the Count concluded, “that the hatred and contempt for the Jewish race, even on the part of the most enlightened souls here, remain in full force.”
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The actual outcome of the Montel case was, then, the reunification of a baptized baby with her Jewish parents. But even if those who prepared the brief for Rome’s Università Israelitica in 1858 had known all the details, it would have done them little good. If the child had been returned to her parents, the Vatican could rightly argue, it had been despite the Holy See’s explicit instructions to the contrary. If there had been any slippage, it was the fault not of the Church but of the untrustworthy French.

Those who met with Pius IX to discuss the Mortara case were struck by how animated he became when the subject came up, and reported his lament that in the matter he was being vilified for doing what was right, for doing his sacred duty. One of the stories that raced through political circles in Rome following the Duke de Gramont’s stormy audience with the Pope on the Mortara affair, described a pained pope pointing to the image of Jesus on a crucifix on the wall behind him and saying, “That one there will defend me.”
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And to the ambassador from the kingdom of the Two Sicilies—an unlikely Mortara protester, since the kingdom had banished Jews entirely three centuries before—Pius IX is said to have replied, “I know what my duty is in the matter, and God willing, I will let them cut off my hand rather than be found wanting.”
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The Pope was not above a conspiratorial view of the forces lined up against him. No organized opposition to papal rule was permitted in the Papal States, and so he had some grounds to worry about conspiracies, which from the time the Restoration began had plagued the papacy. Those opposed to the temporal power of the pope were not only branded agents of the devil but cast together in one large, godless cabal run by the Freemasons. A
Civiltà Cattolica
article illustrates the Pope’s thinking. The minister of a great power, the journal reported, had come to plead for Edgardo Mortara’s return to his parents “in the name of the needs of modern society.” “What you call modern society,” the Pope replied, “is simply Freemasonry.”
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In this struggle between good and evil, Pius IX’s principled stand in opposing Edgardo’s release fed the adulatory cult that developed around him, a cult that would continue to grow despite—or perhaps because of—the many political reverses that the Pope and the Church suffered in the years ahead. A typical hagiographical biography, written by a Frenchman a decade after the Mortara affair, depicts an embattled leader, unbending in his commitment to the eternal truths of the Catholic faith, waging war against the devil’s forces. The Mortara case is cited in this context as one of the triumphal examples of the Pope’s commitment to principle over expediency: “To the strongest outbursts of evil against him, Pius IX never stopped showing an unshakable confidence in the promises of the divine Founder of the Church. One day he told Monsieur de Gramont, the French ambassador, pointing to the ivory crucifix on his work table, ‘I rely only on the One there.’ ” And the biographer continued: “During the affair of the young Mortara, he told a French priest: ‘Many men with good intentions but with little faith have written to console me. They tell me that I must be really frightened and terribly unhappy.’ Then, he adds, with a sweet smile [referring to himself in the third person]:
Ipse vero dormiebat
(Yet he slept well).” And his biographer concluded: “The Pope understood how his divine Master had been able to go peacefully to sleep in the middle of the storm that tossed the boat of the apostles.”
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