Free The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara by David I. Kertzer

matter “having lost its primitive virginity, a large part of the hoped-for effect of having the paternal pain on display has already been lost.”
    At the bottom of his letter, Scazzocchio added a worried postscript, reflecting a development that had been taking on increasing importance in recent days. Defenders of the Church were beginning to spread their own account of what had happened. In their version, the boy had left his parents without protest and had gone happily with his police escort to Rome. Scazzocchio’s postscript reads: “Write me immediately, today, a detailed account of the abduction.” He wanted to know the exact words the boy had uttered as he was being taken away.
    The question had become so urgent, in fact, that the impatient Scazzocchio also sent Padovani a telegram, despite his concern about the prying eyes of the papal police. Both sides took care to do what they could to disguise the subject of their communication. Padovani’s reply arrived in Rome by return telegram the same day: “Individual speechless, crying convulsively, frightened. Torn away, wanted parental company.”
    The major development in Bologna, meanwhile, as Momolo tried to get his business affairs in order for what threatened to be a long stay in Rome, was the discovery, thanks to Anna Morisi’s confession, of what lay behind the Inquisitor’s order to seize Edgardo. Right after Momolo’s brothers-in-law returned from their encounter with her, Angelo Padovani wrote to Rome to recount her story. Padovani chose to write to a relative of his in Rome, Jacob Alatri, rather than directly to Scazzocchio, in part because he was not entirely happy with the way Scazzocchio was handling the affair. The tone of his July 30 letter reflects the family’s mounting frustration.
    Padovani complained that neither he nor his Bologna brethren could understand why Scazzocchio refused to send new pleas to the papal authorities, as they had asked. As for all the material on Church law that Scazzocchio had been sending them, it was practically useless, since none of them knew Latin and they had been unable to find any lawyer in Bologna to help them. Although they had located two experts on relevant canon law, one, Padovani wrote, was mired in “exaggerated superstition,” and the other was a friend of the Inquisitor.
    He then came to Anna Morisi’s tearful testimony, which his nephew had written down and which he enclosed:
There is no need to comment on the woman’s deposition. You see that, when she was just fourteen or fifteen, she threw some well water, taken from a bucket, on a child 12 or 14 months old, who was sick with the kind of infection children get but not in any danger of dying (we attach the doctor’s statement). She had no idea of the importance of what she was doing, which, consequently, might not have had the characteristics demanded by the Church. She acted as a result of the suggestion, very possibly made in jest, of the grocer Lepori.
    Recognizing that the authenticity of Morisi’s account might be questioned, for it was neither notarized nor signed, Padovani suggested that efforts be made to have the young woman sent to Rome to testify. He relished the prospect of such a confrontation and what he took to be its likely result: “a Decree of Nullification, and the return of the son to his father, and, in addition, for the glory of the Church, in the interest of Public Morality, and for the tranquillity of all, a law that would call for the censuring and punishment of anyone who, by such underhanded means, tries to steal children from their parents.” He concluded by voicing the hope that the first to be brought to justice under the new law would be “the instigator,” Cesare Lepori.
    By the time Momolo left Bologna for Rome, on July 31, relations between the Jews of Bologna and the leaders of the Roman ghetto had become tense. The last letter received from Scazzocchio had begun with the remark: “I was hoping to be