The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (31 page)

Louis Veuillot, publisher of the Catholic newspaper
L’Univers,
painted a
similar picture of the heroic, embattled pope. On February 23, 1859, during his visit to Rome, Veuillot met with the Pope, who wanted to talk about the dangers that the Church faced. “He said that he felt calm and had no fear, but that all he could see were all the blows being aimed at him, from England, Italy, Germany, and even Russia.” Pius IX told the French journalist that he would risk his life to defend the papacy’s temporal rule, “because temporal power is necessary for the Church’s full freedom, and the full freedom of the Church is necessary for all Catholic society and for all humankind.” Painfully aware of the superior political strength of the forces lining up against him, the Pope ruminated: “Undoubtedly, order will one day be restored. But after how much time? and at the cost of what catastrophes!”

It was then that the subject of Edgardo Mortara came up. The Pontiff, Veuillot reported, recalled “that during all the hubbub raised on that occasion by the freethinkers, the disciples of Rousseau and Malthus, we steadfastly sustained the cause and the right of the Church.” He went on about the deplorable ignorance that was revealed among many Christians, “who seemed no longer to know the character, obligations, and divine privileges that came with baptism.… Many lies were propagated, many mistaken facts and erroneous doctrines. The ministers of various powers were hardly any better than the journalists. They stated a number of useless propositions which simply betrayed the ignorance of those who advanced them.”

Rather than seeing Edgardo’s capture and the decision to hold on to him as demonstrating the Church’s continued ability to bring the powers of coercion to bear in the substantial lands under its control, the Pope drew the opposite conclusion. The case showed the triumph of spiritual principle over those who held the power of arms. He used a parable to explain his thinking: “If a very powerful sovereign came and told the Pope, ‘Pay me millions!’ the Pope, to avoid greater misfortunes, would go along, asking God not to demand later too severe a reckoning for the plunderer. But when someone tells the Pope, ‘Give me a soul!’ all the force in the world could not make him consent. There is no danger so great that it would make him give in, because the Vicar of Jesus Christ has nothing more precious than the souls who belong to Jesus Christ.” What was being demanded, in Pius IX’s eyes, was the soul of a little Jewish boy from Bologna. He would not give in, though the costs, he knew, would be high.
²⁹

Each year, shortly after New Year’s, it was the Pope’s custom to receive a delegation from the Roman Jewish community, the officers of the Università Israelitica. It was a tradition that went back centuries, with roots in the annual homage paid by the Jews to the emperor of Rome. The first recorded meeting between Rome’s Jews and a pope dates from 1119, but the practice had long been in abeyance before Pope Leo XII resuscitated it in 1827.
³⁰

The Jews who went to see Pius IX each year had learned that the nature of their encounter depended entirely on the Pope’s mood. The delegation that came to see him on February 2, 1859, no doubt did so with some trepidation, for in the wake of the international storm of protest over the Mortara case, Pius IX was not likely to be kindly disposed. If that was their expectation, it proved to be only too accurate.

Sabatino Scazzocchio, the young secretary of the Università Israelitica, felt it his duty, in the brief opening report that was customary on these occasions, to make a plea on behalf of the Mortaras, couching it in the accustomed phrases of reverence, respect, and appreciation for the good Pope. But at once Pius IX flared up in anger: “Oh, certainly, certainly, you have given a wonderful display of your loyalty this past year, stirring up a storm all over Europe about this Mortara case!” Scazzocchio tried to defend himself, denying that Rome’s Jews had had a hand in the attacks against the Pope, but Pius IX was not to be placated so easily: “You, yes, you have thrown oil on the fire, you have stoked the conflagration.… But this doesn’t surprise me,” he continued. “You lack the experience, you don’t yet have the gray hair that these gentlemen here do,” and here he pointed to the secretary’s older colleagues. “You are crazy, crazy, not to say a scoundrel. You bragged that the Mortara couple would not be able to see me without you! Crazy! Who are you? What power do you have? What authority do you have that would feed such boastfulness?”

The Pope was just warming up, his animus against Scazzocchio—who represented for him the height of gall, a Jew who would try to get the Pope to do his bidding—now exploding. “But that wasn’t enough for you. You went to the editors of the newspapers, you even went to the editorial office of
Civiltà Cattolica
to protest and to distort the facts. You even tried to play theologian [referring to the Pro-memoria and Syllabus Scazzocchio had submitted on the Mortaras’ behalf], but here someone must have helped you because certainly you know absolutely nothing about theology. The newspapers can write all they want. I couldn’t care less about what the world thinks!”

The Pope then turned to the rest of the Jewish delegation, and briefly made them, too, feel the weight of his wrath. “I suppose these are the thanks I get for all the benefits you have received from me! Take care, for I could have done you harm, a great deal of harm. I could have made you go back into your hole.” At this point, the Pope began to calm down, and he added: “But don’t worry, my goodness is so great, and so strong is the pity I have for you, that I pardon you, indeed, I must pardon you.”

It was the delegates’ turn to speak again. Giacobbe Tagliacozzo, a leader of the Università Israelitica who had been corresponding with Momolo Mortara over the previous few months, addressed the Pope: “We are very upset to see that Your Holiness seems to want to blame us for the polemics in the
newspapers. But in fact we had absolutely no part in it. On the contrary, we profoundly deplore the way the newspapers have exploited a case that we ourselves have spoken of without ever trespassing the limits of moderation that befit our humble devotion to you.” Tagliacozzo, carried away in his urgent attempt to placate the Pope, spoke in ever louder tones. The Pope interrupted him, saying, “Lower your voice. Do you forget before whom you are speaking?” Tagliacozzo quickly asked the Pope’s pardon, explaining, “It must be knowing our innocence that pushes me despite myself to go beyond the proper bounds.” He continued: “A clear proof of everything I have said is that not a single newspaper account of the Mortara case has ever reported its exact and true circumstances, while they would certainly have done so if they had had any help from us.” And he concluded, “Sanctity, let me repeat, we have never in this case strayed from the long and proven devotion that we have always maintained, even in those times when maintaining it was risky for us.” He added, lest the Pope miss his point, “I refer here to the period of the revolutionary upheavals.” In short, even when under pressure to join in the revolt against papal power in 1848, Rome’s Jews had remained loyal to the Pope.

But the Pope was not impressed by this argument, responding: “Oh, certainly, it was easy enough to predict that those uprisings would be brought to an end. We are not in Africa, where the cannibals can take control. Fortunately, we are in Europe.”

The conversation then returned to the Mortara case. With the Pope now more calm, Tagliacozzo ventured one last attempt to get him to change his mind, arguing that given Anna Morisi’s dubious morals, her account of having baptized the child should not be given too much credence. To this the Pope responded that although the woman might be of poor moral character, she had no reason to make the story up. Tagliacozzo countered by speculating that Morisi had acted out of spite, seeking revenge against the family who had fired her. The Pope replied: “In any case, it is the boy himself who wants to become Christian. Do you think I should have driven him away? I know that someone might say that he was influenced by his environment, but let me tell you that in fact he made his decision freely.” And he added: “If Mortara hadn’t taken a Catholic girl into his service, he would have nothing to complain about today.”

Scazzocchio had by now built up the nerve to speak again, and was eager to defend himself. Another demonstration, he told the Pope, that fomenting press campaigns against the Pontiff was totally alien to them was the following: Various foreigners had recently come to him as word had spread that, in response to the Mortara affair, the papal police were rounding up Christian servants and chasing them out of the ghetto. Although the journalists had
pressed him for confirmation, they had had to leave empty-handed, because the Jewish community of Rome wanted to avoid any clamor in the press. The Pope again was not impressed. Why, he asked, had they not told the journalists that the police were simply enforcing the law of the land, which prohibited Jews from having Christian servants?

This was the last straw for the wobbly Scazzocchio, and, to his embarrassment, he began to cry. Yes, he sobbed, perhaps he was a maniac from an insane asylum as the Pope seemed to think, but he had never done anything to deserve such a bad reputation. It was true that he had gone to the editorial office of
Civiltà Cattolica,
but only because he had heard that the journal was interested in the Mortara case, and he had merely wanted to make sure that they knew what the facts were. He had felt that it was his responsibility, as secretary of the Jewish community and as someone well informed on the case, to do what he could to defend the unfortunate Mortara family. As for the charge that he had bragged that the Mortara couple would never be able to get to the Pope’s throne without him, the lachrymose secretary continued, this was absolutely false. Not only had he never made such a boast; such a thought had never even crossed his mind.

Somewhat mollified, the Pope observed that he had heard that Momolo himself had denounced the harsh criticisms of the Church carried in the newspapers, thinking that they served only to damage his cause, and, the Pope added, “he was not mistaken.” To this, the Jewish secretary replied, “Holiness, we too were displeased along with him about the poisonous polemics, which we viewed as purely the product of political passion.”

The Jews were ushered out. The whole roller-coaster session had lasted less than half an hour. Scazzocchio was so humiliated by the tongue-lashing he had received that, it is said, he suffered a nervous breakdown. Apparently Pius IX heard about this and in later years, at the annual meeting with the Roman Jewish delegation, the Pope went out of his way to be kind to him.
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As the polemics over the case continued, the Pope drew comfort from his regular visits with Edgardo, viewing the boy’s evident attachment to the Church as a sign of God’s blessing of the Pope’s work and the righteousness of his cause. At one of their meetings, he told the boy, “My son … you have cost me dearly, and I have suffered a great deal because of you.” And, turning to the others present, he added, “Both the powerful and the powerless tried to steal this boy from me, and accused me of being barbarous and pitiless. They cried for his parents, but they failed to recognize that I, too, am his father.”
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CHAPTER 16
Sir Moses Goes to Rome

O
N HIS ARRIVAL
in Bologna early in December, following the harrowing trip back from Rome, Momolo remained in an oddly optimistic mood. On December 3, he wrote to Scazzocchio to assure him “of our most happy arrival here, although only at four in the morning … after a most tiring journey. Nonetheless, Marianna’s health is quite good and I am just fine, as are my children here.” He ended by asking the Roman Jewish secretary to send him “some news of my dear one there.”
¹

Scazzocchio’s reply is revealing: “As for Edgardo, I repeat what Signor S. Alatri [president of the Università Israelitica of Rome] and all of us have said a thousand times: that is, that the indiscreet chatter of so many newspapers, which take advantage of whatever event excites the political passions that they represent, has poisoned the matter. If they had only left it up to us to take care of our own affairs, the policy of legal conduct that we have always had as our motto might have allowed us to obtain our most desired goal, given the benign and charitable nature of the one who sits on high.” Only the lack of capitalization in the last phrase makes it clear that the Jewish secretary is referring here not to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob but to Pope Pius IX.

“It is certainly not in these recriminations against journalism that you can find comfort from your immense pain,” the Roman Jewish secretary wrote, “but can I not express the words that weigh on my soul, making it drink of bitterness and anger?”
²
This is indeed a remarkable letter. The bitterness and anger of Scazzocchio, and perhaps that of the other leaders of the Roman Jewish community as well, were directed not against the Pope or his secretary of state but at the liberal press that had championed the Mortara cause. Those who so loudly criticized the Church for taking Edgardo were denounced as
self-seeking opportunists, more interested in making their own political points than in winning the child’s release and the family’s happiness. While these critics cast their stones at the Vatican from a safe distance, Rome’s Jews were left to bear the consequences of an irate pontiff and his seething supporters.

At the time Scazzocchio was writing to Momolo, a new development was attracting the attention of the Jews throughout Europe who were following the Mortara case. Word reached Rome, and Bologna, that one of the most famous Jews of all, the renowned Sir Moses Montefiore—a British Jew who had been knighted, no less—was planning a trip to the Vatican to appeal to the Pope for Edgardo’s release.