The Mortara Affair According to Edgardo, Himself — Mortara, 1898
Father Edgardo Mortara recounts the events surrounding his baptism and Catholic education, noting the supernatural principles involved as well as touching briefly on the Jewish question
“To the rationalists who persist in treating Pius IX as a barbarian (as the event was expressed not long ago), I will respond that since 1858 until 1898, I have never been, following my baptism, neither prisoner, nor martyr. Pius IX had to make sacrifices and shed tears for my education.”
Editors’ Introduction
Jewish historian, David Kertzer, describes the event thusly, “Bologna, 1858: A police squad, acting on the orders of the Inquisitor, invades the home of a Jewish merchant, Momolo Mortara, wrenches his crying six-year-old son from his arms, and rushes him off in a carriage bound for Rome. His mother is so distraught that she collapses and has to be taken to a neighbor’s house, but her weeping can be heard across the city. With this terrifying scene—one that would haunt this family forever.”1
In the eyes of the world, particularly among Jews, this incident is among the blackest stains on the Catholic Church, right up there with the Galileo Affair, crusades and the inquisitions. Yet, unsurprisingly, the opposite is true, particularly for informed Catholics. It is rather the triumph of the rights of the Church, which are the rights of God, as Father Mortara will calmly explain. Who better to consult on this controversy than the very subject, himself? Internationally, the Mortara Affair generated widespread condemnation and severely damaged the reputation of the Church and Pope Pius IX, again in the eyes of the godless, liberal world. Politicians, intellectuals, and newspapers in Britain, France, the United States, and beyond denounced the “abduction” as a violation of civil liberties and religious freedom. As alluded to previously, the Jewish reaction was the most intense, and their already hostile attitude toward the Church only increased. Prominent rabbis, philanthropists and Jewish organizations attacked the Church and heaped all manner of insults and calamines on the Pope. This reaction was vigorously joined by the Masonic press, who were merely working at the behest of the former.
The Mortara Affair became a potent symbol of the clash between modern liberal and democratic values, with the temporal power of the Pope and supernatural principles. In the end, the Church held strong and young Edgardo would go on to become a Catholic priest. The event contributed to growing support for Italian unification and the eventual collapse of papal temporal power. Even figures like Napoleon III, who had supported the Pope militarily, pressured the Vatican to release the boy.
For a fuller treatment of the Mortara Affair, which can supplement the account of Fr. Mortara below, the curious reader is encouraged to read his official memoir, now translated into English for the first time. Not only does it present the relevant facts, but it is a testament to the piety of the Jewish convert, whose love for his people and family never waned. If anything, with the reception of baptism and his Catholic education, it only intensified. Regrettably, as we came to find out, the English translation of his memoir has been sanitized and now omits key passages that offend Jewish sensibilities. It still is worthwhile to read, however, since the substance of the account remains largely unchanged. That said, if you can locate the account in the original Spanish, it would certainly be preferable.
Now, without further ado, The Journal of American Reform is pleased to present this short letter from Father Mortara, published in a prominent French newspaper in 1898.
A LETTER FROM FATHER MORTARA
The day our collaborator, M. Tavernier, held a conference on the Mortara affair at the Catholic Circle of Luxembourg, the religious one that brought this celebrated name to Paris, France. The account of this conference passed under the eyes of Father Mortara, who would soon return to us to express his satisfaction. He then addressed us the following letter. It will sound with a lively interest:
Paris, Notre-Dame de Sion, May 15
Monsieur [Louis Veuillot] the editor,
You would like me to express my feelings on the famous Mortara affair, which is linked to the very exciting Jewish question of the day, during my visit to Paris.
Although I do not consider myself qualified to write in your esteemed journal, readers will nevertheless not find it entirely inappropriate that the “little Mortara” of 40 years ago should have his say in l’Univers that valiantly supported the Catholic cause regarding my baptism.
The ideas formulated by Mr. Tavernier in his lecture in Luxembourg are in perfect harmony with the principles that I develop in a work intended to be published in due course.
I belong to the Order of Canons Regular of Saint Augustine, to which Pius IX entrusted me. My teachers instilled in me a love of Saint Thomas and scholastic studies, accustoming me to distinguishing, in order to speak with precision and clarity. I therefore distinguish: 1° baptism; 2° its corollaries; 3° the two rights.
1° My baptism. It was valid and truly valid, because I was still a child of eleven months. Then, because it had been conferred in a case of imminent death. The good servant, Anna Molisi, omitted nothing essential, neither in matter nor in form. She affirmed it under oath before the ecclesiastical judges during the trial that took place in 1859, before the Reverend Father Feletti, O.P., as well as before the civil court. These authorities had nothing to object to the fact of the baptism. Therefore, the baptism existed; and from that moment on, its consequences were imposed.
2° The rights of my baptism. The divine Redeemer who instituted it also defined it. He said to Nicodemus that “one must be born of water and the Holy Spirit to enter the kingdom of heaven” (Saint John). All of history and the tradition of nearly nineteen centuries echo these words. Baptism is a new birth. Now, everything that is born must develop. That is the law of nature. For rational beings, everything that is born must be raised. The education of the soul regenerated by baptism is thus its first, inescapable consequence.
Now, it is above all the father who must be responsible for the education of children.
Born into the arms of the Church, my Mother, I was by that fact devolved to the spiritual Father of souls, to the representative of God, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the Pope, in short, to whom I can say with David: In te projectus sum ex utero (I was cast upon you from the womb).
The Pope had to think about my Christian education. As a result of this duty, he had the right to choose the means. The only means, the only possible one, was to provide me this education under his immediate protection. Any other attempt would have failed, and resistance, calculated, stubborn, and invincible, from others regarding the child, was to be expected. Pius IX entrusted me to the director of the neophytes, then to the canons regular, sons of Saint Augustine.
Pius IX was sure of his action. He never doubted the justice of his cause, despite the accusations and insults from the European press, incited and paid by the enemies of the papacy. Being at his feet, on April 12, 1867, in the basilica of Saint Agnes, I heard Pius IX sum up in two words the terrible outcry of the protesters: “See,” he said, “this child. Well, great and small wanted to take his soul from me, but I replied: — I cannot, I must not, I do not want to. — I demanded for the child a Christian education; for I am the father of his regenerated soul. If it were necessary, I would do again what I did then.”
One objects to natural law. I respond to the objection; and this is my third point.
3° The two rights. Forgive me for this expression. Strictly speaking, it is only true in a certain sense. Absolutely speaking, there is only one right, just as there is only one God and one single truth, with diverse manifestations, one natural, the other supernatural. So let us be clear: we must reject any idea of dualism or antagonism. On this subject, I must recall the sublime words of the great Pontiff Leo XIII, true light of science and virtue: “God is one, and He is the author and the source of right.”
First of all, I declare with all the energy possible that I have been, and that I will always be, the very devoted and very affectionate son of my parents and the brother of my brothers and sisters. I loved them and will always love them, and I am ready to make every sacrifice for them, especially to save their dear souls. The tears of my beloved mother touch me deeply in my heart. Her memory lives and will live in me, even beyond the grave. Alas! It has been three years since I lost her.
In the shade of the cypresses and inside the urns, comforted by tears.
— Ugo Foscolo, Dei Sepolcri
The tears of my mother touch me far more than they touched the free-thinking journalists who insulted Pius IX. But for me, as for all Christians, before the fourth commandment, there are three that relate to God.
Let us come to the point, and let me be spared from applying what I leave to the reader to understand; for I could not do so without wounding, at least indirectly, the most sensitive fibers of my heart as a son and brother.
Man has no absolute right in relation to God. He only has duties. One does not have rights for the end but for the means, in view of attaining the end. This is the teaching of Saint Thomas. Furthermore, with respect to education, parents have a duty even more than a right, to raise or to have their children raised in the one true religion: Catholic, Apostolic, Roman. If the contrary happens, and it will certainly happen, it is not by virtue of a right, but because one must respect the personal freedom of the parents, which God Himself respected. Cum magna reverentia dispositis – (Wis. VI, 6).
This is an even more serious point for me, since, as I have shown, I was baptized. God was visibly guiding the blessed hand of this good young girl who gave me the greatest of charities by regenerating my soul through the salutary waters. Now, God, who is the source of all right, cannot contradict himself. He therefore did not abrogate, did not break, did not suppress natural right; he only deferred it and suspended its application. My baptism emerged from the shadow that surrounded it, exactly at the hour when the first gleams of natural reason began to shine. In the order of his infinitely merciful Providence, God does not act by himself alone. Pius IX, his vicar, declared that in this case natural right was suspended (a right which, in the concrete state, was only relative, for, as we have said, there is no prescription in favor of a false religion) and he declared himself Father of my regenerated soul, obliged to provide for my spiritual education.
Moreover, Pius IX was then not only of right, as at the present hour, but also in fact, prince and temporal king. Alas! as Mr. Tavernier has pointed out, a law of the State, passed in favor of the Israelites, had been forgotten.2 Hence unfortunate consequences. Was it necessary, to avoid them, to compromise the eternal salvation of my soul? Pius IX did not believe so; and he was right.
In fact, in the case where the Pope would not have intervened, I would have been a degraded being, an apostate. I would have disowned Him whose precious blood had touched me. There would have been only Christian education that could have prevented this.
It suffices to recall a very well-known example of common law. When, for any reasons, parents are incapable of raising their children, it is then the civil authority that exercises this right. Moreover, this superior power would have the right to intervene in cases of physical or moral vexations. Is it that, in this case, the free-thinking press would call upon it, as it did formerly, from the decision of the supreme court, to the heart of all mothers? Is it that, in our days, Dreyfus being convicted of treason, would have the right to call upon judges who condemned him, to the tears of his wife, of his children and of his race?
For those who do not admit supernatural right and its corollaries, for those who recall the elementary principles of Christian doctrine, all this is incontestable, but unfortunately it happened, said Louis Veuillot, that “one fine day the modern Catholic world, awakening from its slumber, was astonished to have forgotten its catechism.”
To the rationalists who persist in treating Pius IX as a barbarian (as the event was expressed not long ago), I will respond that since 1858 until 1898, I have never been, following my baptism, neither prisoner, nor martyr. Pius IX had to make sacrifices and shed tears for my education.
The enemies of the Church, who are bent on declaring cruel an act of Pius IX, head of the Church and head of State, should blush at their inconsistency, they who have approved so many violations of paternal authority, in Ireland and in Poland. As for France, are not certain current laws considered as in opposition to the rights of parents? This is said uniquely to show the inconsistency of these men.
I pray to God every day to grant me the grace to remain faithful to him as well as to his Church and to his visible Vicar, and to sacrifice my weak forces and my life for his greater glory, even to shed all my blood if necessary.
With regard to the Jewish question and to antisemitism, I recognize no competence, if it is not that which gives me racial solidarity and a certain impartiality. I attribute this impartiality to the fact that my baptism having occurred only a few months after my birth, it neutralized the influence of hereditary Semitism.
I will recall first that in 1858 the Israelites were persecutors of the Pope and of Catholics. It was the Israelite community of Alexandria which, the first, threw down the gauntlet. It engaged all the other communities to protest against the act of Pius IX. Thus were determined subsequently the official intervention of governments, of diplomacy and of the press, the general outcry, the great uprising of shields.
Today the roles are changed. The Israelites see rising against them general irritation.
On the subject of antisemitism, I must distinguish two aspects: 1° the question of principle, of religion and of morals, the political and social preponderance; 2° racial antagonism and, consequently, reprisals, hatred and persecutions.
By supposing speculatively that antisemitism is only the struggle between Christianity with its rights and its legitimate preponderance and Judaism stripped of its beliefs, stripped of the morality founded on primitive revelation, this struggle is reasonable and even legitimate. It is no longer a question of what Jesus is, be it his denomination, nor the divinity of Jesus Christ, and, consequently, the supernatural in the gospel and Catholic morality. It is lost in the Talmud and in the Kabbalah, letting itself go to transactions with rationalist philosophy, or else finishing by engulfing itself in agnosticism. This is the foundation of its symbol. For twenty-five years, I have traveled as a missionary in both worlds, and everywhere I have observed these characteristic traits of modern Judaism.
For us, Catholics, there is a great danger that must be fought. And, as principles incarnate themselves in men, it is natural that in fact one fights Jews as partisans of a false and impious morality. This struggle will thus continue, all the more so since until the end of ages the Jew will be there, hardened like the core of ripe fruit, permanent witness to the realization of the prophecies announced in advance from Moses, until the Apocalypse, his hardening and his downfall.
That, for many antisemites, the struggle is not purely religious, but purely of race, we know it; and even from this point of view, we will not affirm that it is unjustifiable, however some reservations are necessary.
Struggle for preponderance. In this sense equally, antisemitism has its reason for being. Since Judaism rejected the envoy of God, it was rejected in its turn; and Esau had to cede his right of primogeniture to Jacob, his younger brother. Faithful to the true Messiah, the people of Israel would have resumed, with Christian thought and morality, the hegemony of peoples. Separated from Jesus-Christ, it was reproved, rejected; and the hegemony passed to the Gentiles, not only to make the Christian ideal triumph.3 Perhaps it is not even contrary to exegesis to interpret in this sense the cry of just anger that Saint Paul uttered while shaking the dust from his sandals: “Behold, we turn to the Gentiles.”
The rationalist Jew has thrown himself upon the clod of earth. He has adored the golden calf; he has made banking and money his everyday Messiah. It is through this that he aspires to hegemony, for everything obeys money. It is also, after all, on this terrain that he is disputed.
Now, on this point, antisemitism is purely and simply the spirit of caste, bringing with it its cortege of hatred and reprisals, we will say, according to the word of a zealous Jesuit, the leader of social Christians in the capital of Austria, that this antisemitism should sometimes be more Christian than it is. By saying that we are all brothers, our divine Redeemer has not excluded the Israelites; and it is for them above all that he prayed on the Cross. Rancor, envy, hatred are never justified. If the Jew is more adroit than you in his affairs, strive to surpass him, defend your interests, but do not hate him. A just and legitimate defense on the terrain of industry and commerce does not imply the right to track and harass one’s adversary.
What are the means of appeasing this struggle? a editor of 'l’Événement of Paris asked me in Budapest. I summarize what I responded to him:
1° First, listen to the voice of the Sovereign Pontiff. If he has not spoken in public on this subject, he has his reasons which we must respect. But he, the prince of science and of peace, has let slip the word of the divine Master: “Peace be with you!” and the word of the well-beloved disciple: “My little children, love one another.”
2° Proselytism. Let us work for the conversion of Jews, not so much through polemics as by showing them the beauty of the Catholic religion.
This proselytism must not however extend only to mixed marriages which might perhaps make some Christians and surely many more Jews. We know the result of mixed marriages between Protestants and Catholics.
3° And above all prayer. This is what we too often forget. This is what the Holy Father recommends. He approved a prayer composed by Rev. Father Ratisbonne, and enriched it with spiritual favors.
Here in Paris, at Notre-Dame de Sion, of which I am the last of the devoted children, there are angels of prayer, who intercede permanently for the conversion of our brothers, the Jews. May it please God that this beautiful antisemitic work have more echo and diffusion.
In concluding, I make mine the admirable words of the apostle of the Gentiles: There is continual sorrow in my heart, I groan over the blindness of my dear brothers the Israelites. Christian peoples do not forget that it is the Jewish people who transmitted to you the promises of heritage (From whom are the covenant and the fathers and Christ) and gave you Jesus the Blessed of nations and centuries. Remember this; and while fighting for your rights do not stop loving your brothers.
A last word for you, monsieur the editor. If I came to Paris only to have the honor of tracing some lines in this journal which, just forty years ago, took under its protection the little Mortara, I would consider myself happy. I profit from the circumstance to place on the tomb of the glorious champion of Christian right a modest testimony of my profound recognition. I do not believe I am exaggerating in saying that what I owe to Pius IX, from the point of view of my supernatural rehabilitation, I owe to Louis Veuillot from the point of view of the defense of the rights of my baptism. He affirmed these rights, energetically and valiantly as always, among the furious clamors of the free-thinking and masonic press.
Please believe, monsieur the editor, most intimately and forever, your entirely devoted servant and friend.
P. PIE-MARIE MORTARA, canon regular of Saint-Augustine, apostolic missionary.
END.
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It forbade Israelite families from having Christian domestics in their homes (N. D. L. R.).
Consult the work of my dear friends the Abbés Lemann, L'entrée des Israelites dans la société franÇaise et les états chretiens d'après des documents nouveaux.