ITALIAN, ROMAN CATHOLIC AND ITALIAN-JEWISH HISTORY

David I. Kertzer, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (New York: Knopf, 1997) (From the bookjacket: "Bologna, 1858: A police posse, acting on the orders of a Catholic inquisitor, invades the home of a Jewish merchant, Momolo Mortara, wrenches his crying six-year-old son form his arms, and rushes him off in a carriage bound for Rome. His mother is so distraught that she collapse and has to be taken to a neighbor's house, but her weeping can be heard across the city. With this treeing sense--one that would aunt this family forever--David I. Kertzer begins his fascinating investigation of the dramatic kidnapping, and show how the deep-rooted antisemitism of the Catholic Church would eventually contribute to the collapse of its temporal power in Italy." "As Edgardo's parents desperately search for a way to get their son back, they learn why he--out of all their eight children--was taken. Years earlier, the family's Catholic serving girl, fearful that the infant might die of an illness, had secretly baptized him (or so when claimed). Edgardo recovered, but when the story reached the Bologna Inquisitor, the result was his order for Edgardo to be seized and sent to a special monastery where Jews were converted into good Catholics, His justification in Church teachings: No Christian child could be raised by Jewish parents." From the "Epilogue": "While his father was in jail, accused of murder, and his mother was facing charges of sending a bleeding 23-year-old man 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, [] In 1873, having received a special dispensation--at 21, he was still shy of the minimum age for priesthood--Pio Edgardo Mortara was ordained. . . ."  Id. at 295.).