The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (55 page)

First, look at Rosa’s state of mind that afternoon. She had run into the employer from whom she had stolen, a man she hoped never to see again. In a public street and in front of her employer’s child, he had accused her of being a thief and a liar and had threatened to denounce her to the police. She was humiliated and fearful not only of the police but of being summarily fired when the Mortaras found out what had happened. What would she do? She had nowhere to go if she were fired but into the street. When, crying and upset, she returned to the Mortara home, she saw Bolaffi go in to talk with the Mortaras. Indeed, she may even have overheard Bolaffi advise them to throw her out and report her to the police.

“To say that she had never before shown suicidal tendencies,” said the lawyer, “as if to say that she did not have sufficient reason for such a desperate decision, is meaningless.… These are ideas that are spoken of when they will not be acted on, and are most likely to be carried out when they are least discussed.”

Yet, admittedly, it wasn’t easy for Rosa to put her sudden suicidal resolve into practice. Looking four stories down into the tiny courtyard robbed her of her courage, so she got the fateful idea: she would cover her eyes so that she would not have to see the vertiginous sight. She even had something in her pocket that she could use, the handkerchief that the Mortaras had recently given her. But when she began to fold it in order to make the blindfold, Imelda happened by and, embarrassed and afraid that the girl might guess its purpose, the nervous Rosa tried to conceal what she was doing.

Then, said the lawyer, there is the issue that the prosecutors have made so much of: the evidence that Rosa’s lethal head injury could not have occurred on the courtyard pavement, that it had to have been inflicted before she hit the ground. I fully admit that in this the scientific evidence is clear. Yet, he asked, must this be taken to mean that the wound had been inflicted in the Mortaras’ apartment, as the prosecution, moved by its preconceptions, so stubbornly contends? The answer is no.

The courtyard itself measures just three meters by two meters. In fact, from the window from which Rosa fell to the opposite wall measures exactly 2.09 meters, barely more than six feet. And on each floor down, the wall juts out around the base of the windows. Yet with all the investigations undertaken by the single-minded investigators, did any of them take the trouble to examine these protuberances? Unfortunately, Mancini said, they did not.

And then there is another bit of evidence ignored by the prosecution: the account of the servant Margherita Rosati, who was sitting in the second-floor apartment near the courtyard window. She reported hearing two big thuds, one after the other. Why two?

The explanation is simple, and the investigators would have come to it quickly if not for their assumption that Rosa must have been killed in the
Mortaras’ apartment. In jumping, blindfolded, from the fourth-floor window, Rosa had inevitably gone forward as she plunged, and her body smashed off one of the ledges on the opposite wall as she picked up speed.

A whole set of her injuries made sense when understood in this way. Most important, it explained the deep, irregular gash on her forehead, caused by something blunt, and crushing the bone beneath, but also the other injuries on her left side: her smashed left knee and hand, and the peculiarities of her snapped lower cervical vertebra, produced when her head bounced back from the terrible impact of the blow to her forehead as she hurtled downward.

And then there is the final mystery. How was it that Rosa, on being discovered on the courtyard floor, had a white kerchief covering her wounded forehead? The prosecution theory, argued Momolo’s lawyer, was absurd. They would have it that in the less than fifteen minutes between Rosa’s arrival home and her fall, the bedridden Momolo was first told the whole story of Rosa’s encounter with her former employer, then he either called her in or went to find her, then inflicted the lethal wound, then someone found a handkerchief and prepared a bandage, and tied it around her forehead with a double knot, then Momolo came up with the idea that it would be better to throw her out the window, then he convinced everyone else to go along, then they dragged the heavy, semiconscious woman to the boys’ bedroom, and finally they hoisted her up and out.

There is something more, though, said Mancini. The prosecution is missing another important implication of the physical evidence they have presented. The medical examiners had concluded, based on her injuries, that Rosa must have hit the ground in a largely upright posture, feet first. Indeed, although the prosecution had not mentioned it, the fact that Rosa’s skirt and petticoats had been up to her face when she landed could be explained in no other way.

Now let us return, said the lawyer, to the prosecution’s scenario. As the frantic Momolo and his confederates were desperately hoisting the weighty servant up to the windowsill, were they lifting her feetfirst or by her trunk? The answer is clear. They would have done what was natural and hoisted her up by her trunk, followed by her legs. She would have plunged headfirst into the courtyard.

Rosa’s bare private parts, when the two women first found her, helped to explain the mystery of the kerchief-covered wound. The force of the air had put upward pressure on her kerchief, just as it had on her skirt. When Rosa’s head snapped back from the blow to her forehead as she fell, the position of her head allowed a burst of air to get under her hastily prepared blindfold, lifting the front of it up a few inches. By the time she landed, it had reached her forehead, the knot still firmly in place at the base of her skull.

What of all the evidence that Momolo was lying about his incapacity, or
that the Mortaras were trying to cover something up? asked Mancini. Perhaps Momolo was seen in the kitchen. He said himself he got up to go to the lavatory, and so passed right next to the kitchen. The one witness to claim that Momolo was really ambulatory was the neighbor who swore that he saw him spryly leave the building that evening with his son. But he was looking out his third-floor window on a night in which there was no moonlight and only the dimmest of gaslight. What he saw was a product of his fantasy. The man he really saw leave that evening, after hearing the footsteps coming down from the fourth floor, was Flaminio Bolaffi, and the boy he heard and saw was not Aristide Mortara but Bolaffi’s son, Emilio. In fact, Bolaffi testified that he had returned to the Mortara home earlier that evening with his son to find out what had gone on in the hours since his visit to the police station. Apparently, to the neighbor, one Jew looked much like another.

And what of that damning bit of evidence, that no one would open the door to the police officer summoned by Bolaffi after Rosa’s fall? The prosecution charges that this shows that the family was busy cleaning up blood and concocting an alibi. But, in fact, even before that officer came, the first policeman on the scene, called from the street by a neighbor, had arrived. He had already gone up to the Mortara apartment and been admitted right away. He had gone to the window from which Rosa fell, and found nothing. If the Mortaras were trying to cover something up, why admit the first policeman and not the second? The reason there was initially no response to the second policeman, the lawyer argued, was because of the sad state in which those in the apartment found themselves. Both mother and daughters had practically fainted away, Momolo himself had fallen and was being helped back into bed, and the room in which they were all to be found was itself far from the front door.

As for any material proof that, even were a murder committed—and there was no murder—it was Momolo who committed it, all we have is imagination. “It is worth considering the kind of arguments that were judged sufficient to yank a citizen from his bed while he was afflicted with a painful illness and take him to jail and keep him there for several months,” said Momolo’s lawyer. “Indeed, we believe that because we are dealing with the
Jew Mortara,
it is all the more important that we employ some common sense.”

Even the briefest consideration revealed that Momolo would have had no motive for murdering Rosa. “The interest that an employer might have in discovering that his servant had stolen in a previous job is that of firing her, not killing her.… You would have to be dealing with a maniac, and if this is what you thought, the police should have taken him to Bonifazio [insane asylum], not to Murate [prison].”

This gets to the second point, the claim that Momolo Mortara is a violent,
hot-tempered person. “Those of us who have the honor of knowing the Mortaras are well able to testify that what hurts Momolo and his family even more than his being in jail and more than suffering this trial is to see him accused of having little love for his family, for he is a man who shows the greatest tenderness toward his wife and children.”

The lawyer then returned to the reason for Momolo’s renown, as well as for his misery.

From the time that the papal guards took Edgardo, his favorite child, from him, he was beset by a tremendous anguish! Everyone knows about this scandalous case, and all can imagine how it might change someone’s character to see his treasured son torn from his breast and his religion, without warning, in the thick of the night, without pity, amidst the boy’s, the mother’s, and his brothers’ and sisters’ screams. From the moment of that agonizing scene … he became, it’s true, a bit brooding and apt to grumble. But his nature was so gentle and good that, deep down, he has always stayed the same. For him, the old saying is apt: “The dog that barks doesn’t bite.”

The defense lawyer concluded with an appeal to the judges to rise above the popular prejudices against the Jews, and above the hatred aimed at Momolo in particular, a man viewed by many as having caused the Church much misery. The long-suffering father should be allowed to return to his family, a family that had already suffered enough. With this, the defense rested.

On June 30, 1871, having examined all the testimony, the medical evidence, and the briefs and arguments of the Prosecutor and the two defense lawyers, the three judges of Florence’s Royal Court of Appeal issued their decision. They rejected Mancini’s arguments and found “that the wound on Tognazzi’s head was inflicted by Momolo Mortara in his apartment, as a result of a sudden rage, and that Tognazzi was then thrown from the window to make it look like suicide.” The judges noted the medical evidence that Momolo could not have thrown her out of the window without help and concluded that “others must have assisted him in this barbarous deed.” At home at the time that the crime was committed, the judges found, were Momolo, his wife, his twin daughters, his son Ercole, his friend Flaminio Bolaffi, and three small children.

Here, however, the judges found themselves in a quandary: “Although there is no doubt that some of the above-listed individuals helped Momolo Mortara throw the unfortunate Tognazzi from the window … we have no special reason to conclude that any one rather than any other lent a hand to the wicked deed. We must, then, apply the rule that suggests that it is better to
abandon the accusation rather than have it weigh on both the innocent and the guilty together.” Clearly, the judges concluded, all of them were lying, trying to protect a husband, wife, parent, child, or friend. But the determination that they were lying did not justify finding them guilty of pushing Rosa from the window.

As a result, the judges decided “not to proceed, due to a lack of evidence, against Flaminio Bolaffi, Ercole Mortara, and Marianna Padovani Mortara.” They bound Momolo over to Tuscany’s highest court, the Court of Assizes, which was responsible for making the final ruling on all murder cases. Flaminio Bolaffi was released from jail, after spending almost three months locked up.

Momolo, in worsening health, remained in jail for another three and a half months while he awaited his fate, his condition steadily deteriorating. Finally, on Wednesday, October 18, Augusto Groppi, president of the Court of Assizes, called the final trial to order. A stricken Momolo sat in a special chair that had been prepared for him, next to his lawyer. After hearing opening arguments, the three-judge panel, on October 21, heard from the two medical examiners. The newspapers, reporting the trial, focused on their testimony that the mortal wound to Rosa Tognazzi’s forehead had not been caused by the knife found in her pocket. Rather, they testified, it had been caused either by a blunt instrument or by the fall.
¹

On Friday, October 27, following the closing arguments, the judges reached their verdict. Momolo Mortara was found not guilty. They ordered him released from the jail in which he had lived for almost seven months. A month later, he died.

EPILOGUE

W
HILE HIS FATHER
was in jail, accused of murder, and his mother was facing charges of sending a bleeding 23-year-old woman hurtling four stories to her death, Edgardo was living happily under an assumed name in a convent of the Canons Regular in Austria. The following year, he moved to a monastery in Poitiers, France, where he continued his theological studies. Pius IX, now an old man, had not forgotten his son. The Pope wrote regularly to the Bishop of Poitiers, asking how Edgardo was doing and expressing the hope that he would soon be ordained a priest. In 1873, having received a special dispensation—at 21, he was still shy of the minimum age for priesthood—Pio Edgardo Mortara was ordained. The Pope sent Edgardo a personal letter on this occasion, expressing his immense satisfaction and asking the young man to pray for him. According to Edgardo, the Pope also established a lifetime trust fund of seven thousand lire to ensure his support.
¹

Known as a scholarly man—reputed to preach in six languages, including the notoriously difficult language of the Basques, and to read three others, Hebrew among them—Father Mortara dedicated his life to spreading the faith, singing the praises of the Lord Jesus Christ, and traveling throughout Europe, going where he was most needed. As a preacher he was in great demand, not least because of the inspirational way he was able to weave the remarkable story of his own childhood into his sermons. As he recounted it, his saga was the stuff of faith and hope: a story of how God chose a simple, illiterate servant girl to invest a small child with the miraculous powers of divine grace, and in so doing rescued him from his Jewish family—good people but, as Jews, on a God-forsaken path. He might still have been lost, had
it not been for the courageous actions of a saintly pope, who braved cruel threats from the ungodly and allowed Edgardo to devote his life to spreading the word of Christ’s saving power.