WEBVTT - The Pope's Kidnapped Child 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:04.560 Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm 0:00:04.600 --> 0:00:12.320 and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener discretion advised. The year 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:16.520 was eighteen fifty one, and in Bologna, a little boy 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:21.000 was sick. That's what his nurse said. Anyway. He was 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:24.880 a little Jewish boy, and she was a Catholic nurse 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:28.800 working for the family in violation of the law. But 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:33.239 she genuinely cared about the children. She cared about this 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:37.279 littlest boy at Garo, she swore she did, and it 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:41.000 broke her heart that he was sick. The nurse was 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:44.880 a young woman herself. The little boy's illness had gotten 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:48.960 so bad that she believed he would die. She confided 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:51.760 in a friend, who said it was the merciful thing 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:56.280 to baptize the little boy before he died. The parents 0:00:56.320 --> 0:01:00.640 would never have to know. Yes, the Catholic Church technically 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:05.240 forbade baptizing Jews, but it also believed in the sacrament 0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:09.000 that could save the innocent baby's soul when it went 0:01:09.120 --> 0:01:13.080 back to heaven. The nurse believed in that too. She 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:16.400 looked at the little child, so sickly in her arms, 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:21.360 so small, and she did a fateful thing. She filled 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:25.320 a glass with water, reached inside, wet her fingers, and 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:29.560 sprinkled the water across the boy's head. She didn't know 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:33.600 then that her action, performed in the privacy of an 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:37.400 empty room, would set off a chain reaction that would 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:41.920 lead to a scandal of international proportions. It would lead 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:45.959 to a state kidnapping, the heartbreak of a family, the 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:49.920 murder charge of a father, countless New York Times headlines, 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:55.280 and Napoleon the Third himself turning against the papal states 0:01:55.320 --> 0:02:00.200 in favor of the unification of Italy. Because this little boy, 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:05.480 Edgardo Mortara, did not die during infancy, he lived on 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:09.320 happy with his Jewish family, who loved him until the 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:13.480 age of six. That was when the carabinieri burst into 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:17.800 his family's home, claiming that the child had been baptized 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:21.639 and therefore was a Catholic, that the boy was the 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:25.320 rightful charge of the Catholic Church, and that he should 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:29.160 be protected not just by anyone in the church, but 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:33.600 by the Pope himself. The Mortara case is the story 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:38.000 of Jews under the Catholic papacy, of a long forgotten 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:43.520 event in Italy before and after unification of the Pope's 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:47.440 fidelity to the letter versus the spirit of Catholic doctrine. 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:54.160 Of an international scandal that supercharged liberal Europeans understanding of 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:59.040 religious freedom. And it's the story of one little Jewish 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:03.120 boy kidnapped by the papacy and a family that put 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:07.520 everything on the line to get him back. I'm Dana Schwartz, 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:15.600 and this is noble blood. In order to understand what 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:20.040 happened to edgaro Mortara, you need a quick crash course 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:23.920 in the history of the Jews under papal rule. In 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:27.840 eighteen fifty one, when Edgara was born, Italy was not 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:32.519 a unified nation. Bologna was part of the Papal States, 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:36.080 which meant that Vatican law was the law of the land. 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:40.160 Edgarda was born during the papacy of Pope Pious the 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:44.040 Ninth when the total population of the Papal States was 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:49.800 around three million, including fifteen thousand Jews, which made Jews 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:53.880 a tiny minority at zero point five percent of the population. 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:58.240 As you might imagine, the role of Jews under papal 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:02.360 rule had been contested for centuries. By the time Edgardo 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:07.160 came along in Bologna, the nine hundred person Jewish population 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:11.920 had been expelled in the sixteenth century. By the time 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:15.920 Edgaro's family lived there, there were only about two hundred 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:19.680 Jews in all of Bologna. In Rome, the Papacy had 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:24.239 confined Jews to the Roman Ghetto since fifteen fifty five. 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:28.359 Shortly after Pope Pious the Ninth was elected in eighteen 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:32.120 forty six, he actually tore down the ghetto's gates, but 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:35.400 he restored them shortly after, and they would remain up 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:40.599 until Italian unification in eighteen seventy. If it sounds like 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:44.040 Pope Pious was pretty uncertain where he stood when it 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:49.200 came to Jews, well he was. Although Catholic doctrine held 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:53.679 that baptism could save a person's soul, Catholics were barred 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:58.039 from baptizing Jews. Then again, things got a little dicey 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:00.720 with the law if the Jewish person would a child, 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:03.880 much less a baby, and if that innocent was about 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:07.640 to die, And then dicey again if a Catholic did 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:12.200 baptize a Jew, that was a holy and irrevocable sacrament. 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:17.400 So the Jewish person illegally baptized was holy Catholic, and 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:21.360 it was illegal for a Catholic child to be raised 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:26.920 by a Jewish household. You might be able to see 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:30.440 where this is going for poor Edgaro and his family, 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:33.640 but there's one more thing you need to know before 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:37.560 we can return to Edgaro's story. At the time when 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:41.919 Edgara was born, Catholics were legally prohibited from working for 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:46.240 Jewish families, but many young Catholic girls in need of 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:51.440 money took jobs as maids anyway, and many claiming that 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:54.600 their young charges were on the brink of death, which 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:56.760 may have been true in at least some of the 0:05:56.800 --> 0:06:02.719 cases wound up baptizing the family children. Anywhere from months 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:06.159 to years later, the Carabinieri would show up at a 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:09.840 family's door with news that their child was a Catholic 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:13.280 and they would take the child away. It got so 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:17.720 bad that before a Catholic maid left the job, Jewish 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:21.800 families took to getting her sign an affidavit attesting that 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:25.960 she had never baptized their child, Which brings us to 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:30.520 Anna Maurici. She was fourteen years old by some accounts, 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:34.240 eighteen by others when she took a job caring for 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:38.320 the Mortara household. The heads of the household, Momelo and 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:44.120 Marianna Mortara, were devoted parents to their nine children, including 0:06:44.240 --> 0:06:47.960 twin girls, one boy who died in infancy, and of 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:52.320 course their middle little child, at Garo, and they were 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:57.080 also unusually devoted to Anna Maurici. The girl had been 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:00.520 with the family for three years when she fell pregnant. 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:04.600 It was eighteen fifty five and Edgaro was about four 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:09.200 years old. Papal law was no kinder to unwed Catholic 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:12.760 mothers than it was to Jews. In Anna Maurici's situation, 0:07:13.280 --> 0:07:15.840 she would be required to give the baby up to 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:20.680 a foundling house. Many families in the Mortars situation would 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:24.520 have cast Anna Maurici out. She had shamed herself and 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:28.040 the family. Getting rid of her would have been the accepted, 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:32.560 even the expected thing to do. But Momolo and Marianna 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:36.680 were unusually compassionate. They paid for her to stay with 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:40.840 a midwife during her last trimester, covered the cost of 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:45.280 the supervised delivery of her child, and then they brought 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:48.640 her back to their home. They had no idea what 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:52.800 she had already done to their family, what was in 0:07:52.880 --> 0:07:56.680 the works behind the scenes. They didn't see the irony 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:01.400 that history now sees. Anna Maurice forced to give up 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:04.880 her baby by the unforgiving laws of the papal state 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:09.160 had already set in motion the loss of someone else's 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:16.920 baby to those same laws. The knock on the door 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.960 came on June twenty third, eighteen fifty eight. The light 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:25.480 was dispersing, the air was warm, the smells of dinner 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:29.960 were wafting through the homes on the Martara's street. Edgara 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:34.079 was sleeping soundly. His two older brothers, one younger brother, 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:38.120 and infant's sister were sleeping too. His older two twin 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:42.360 sisters were chatting idly with their mother, Marianna, sewing at 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:45.800 the table. Edgardo's oldest brother was out on a walk 0:08:45.880 --> 0:08:50.400 with their father. Momolo, and Marianna opened the door. The 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:55.120 carabinieri were standing outside. They were firm in their orders 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.960 that they were to come in. Perhaps in the edges 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:02.600 of their gaze there was some sense of shame of 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.480 what they were about to do, but they were firm 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:10.760 when they asked to see her children. Marianna panicked. Momolo 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:14.800 came home, and the policeman addressed him directly. They were 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:19.280 here to take Edgaro. He had been baptized and therefore 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:23.120 did not belong to his Jewish parents any more. He 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:27.800 was in the legal custody of the state. Marianna screamed. 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:31.880 She ran to six year old Edgaro, threw herself on 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:35.679 top of him. She held him to her chest, fingers 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:38.920 digging into her skin. If you want him, she said, 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:43.680 you'll have to kill me first. The scene was disastrous, 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:49.200 according to historian David Kurtzer, a Mortara neighbor reported, I 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:53.439 saw a distraught mother bathed in tears and a father 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:56.360 who was tearing out his hair, while the children were 0:09:56.440 --> 0:10:00.640 down on their knees begging the policeman for mercy. It 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:05.000 was a scene so moving I can't begin to describe it. Indeed, 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:07.920 I even heard the police marshal by the name of 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:11.320 Lucidi say that he would rather have been ordered to 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:15.240 arrest a hundred criminals than to take the boy away 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:20.320 one more day. The family begged the inquisitor, father Pieto 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:25.640 Gaetano Filetti, just twenty four more hours with our precious boy, please. 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:30.200 Father Filetti granted the twenty four hours, but no more. 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:35.320 He was just following orders after all. In the meantime, Momolo, 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:39.480 their Jewish neighbors, and Marianna's family set off to find 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:42.720 a way to keep at Garo. They went to the cardinal, 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:46.120 the archbishop, the inquisitor, trying to get an audience with 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:50.600 anyone in government who might intercede. But twenty four hours 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:54.440 was too few. They were trapped. They were Jews in 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:57.000 a place where there was no safe place to be 0:10:57.160 --> 0:11:01.200 a Jew. Jews had lived in Italy for thousands of years, 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:05.040 back to the Roman period, before Christians lived there. It 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:10.000 didn't matter to the Mortara case now. When the twenty 0:11:10.000 --> 0:11:14.119 four hour grace period was up, Marianna's sister took Edgardo's 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:18.240 brother and sisters to her house. Marianna would not let 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:21.480 go of her son, kissing him and clutching him, and 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.280 everyone feared what would happen if the police had to 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:28.360 forcibly rip her son away from him. Would she attack them? 0:11:28.640 --> 0:11:31.160 Would she have a heart attack and die right there? 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:34.439 She hadn't fed her infant daughter in too long, as 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:37.800 it stood, what would happen to her? So the men 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:42.040 of the family forcibly separated Marianna from the boy and 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:46.320 carried her outside into a waiting carriage. Even through the 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:50.400 covered carriage, her wails were so loud and terrible that 0:11:50.520 --> 0:11:54.839 neighbors came running to see what was happening. Momola stayed home, 0:11:55.240 --> 0:11:58.400 packed a few clothes for his son, and then held 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:01.600 at Gardo on his lap until his little boy was 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:05.320 taken away. The two policemen cried when they took the 0:12:05.360 --> 0:12:09.240 boy away, but they didn't stop. They were just following orders. 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:13.440 Momolo followed the police outside as they carried his son 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:16.840 to the carriage, watching his boy so small in the 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.080 arms of these strangers. He couldn't stay on his feet. 0:12:20.480 --> 0:12:24.080 He swayed for a moment, and then he fainted. There 0:12:24.240 --> 0:12:26.640 was one light at the end of the tunnel. He 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:30.320 was told the boy's new surrogate father was not going 0:12:30.400 --> 0:12:34.559 to be just anyone. He would be the pope himself. 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:40.840 After that, Marianna fell apart, but Momolo fought. The first 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:43.840 thing to do was to find out if the Carabinieria's 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:48.480 justification for kidnapping Edgardo was even true in the first place. 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:51.480 Who would have baptized the boy and how had that 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.719 news come out? The only reasonable culprit would have been 0:12:55.840 --> 0:13:00.880 the family's old servant, Anna Maurici, with mo Lmolo's blessing. 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:04.520 Marianna's brother and brother in law found her when she 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:09.000 saw them she collapsed in tears. Yes, she said, when 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:12.560 Edgardo was very sick as a child, she had done 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:16.160 the fateful thing. She had baptized him, but she had 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.360 regretted it soon after he recovered and told no one. 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:23.640 When later another Mortara's son did get so sick that 0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:26.960 he died in infancy, she had refused to do the 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:30.600 same thing again. She had learned her lesson, she told 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:34.079 her friend, so when asked if she had baptized that 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:38.520 boy before he died, all the Mortara representatives could hear 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:42.840 was that last part she had told her friend. But 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:46.040 there was reason for hope in her story. It wasn't 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:49.760 clear that she knew how to properly perform a baptism. 0:13:50.200 --> 0:13:53.280 She had been so young at the time fourteen by 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:57.040 her own account, that her judgment was faulty. They asked 0:13:57.080 --> 0:13:59.800 if she would be willing to record her testimony with 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:04.720 a notary. She agreed. She seemed genuinely distressed to have 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:08.720 caused the separation of another mother from her child, But 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:11.920 by the time the group came back with a notary, 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:17.600 Anna Maurici had disappeared. Momolo did not give up. Anna 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:21.000 Maurici had done what turned out to be a terrible thing. 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:23.640 But she was only a young girl who couldn't read, 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:27.720 who was just following what seemed like good advice. She 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:32.200 hadn't meant to hurt the Mortaro family. Surely some justice 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:36.240 would be served. Momolo learned that Edgaro had been taken 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:39.400 all the way to Rome. He wrote to the inquisitor, 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:43.160 the secretary of State, to the Pope himself. He traveled 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:46.239 all the way to Rome, where he was allowed visitation 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:50.000 with Edgaro, but at the end of his visits he 0:14:50.120 --> 0:14:56.280 was not allowed to take his son back home. The 0:14:56.360 --> 0:15:00.240 sympathies of the world were not with the pope. While 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:04.080 a handful of Catholic publications supported the removal of a 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:07.560 baptized child from a Jewish home, this was the mid 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:12.400 nineteenth century, not the sixteenth century anymore. The ideals of 0:15:12.480 --> 0:15:17.040 civil liberties and religious freedom were spreading all over the globe. 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:21.880 Already in eighteen forty eight, ten years before Edgaro's kidnapping, 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:26.280 the Kingdom of Piedmont Sardinia, had given its minority Jewish 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:32.360 and Protestant populations their religious freedoms. Massimo Dzeglio, prime Minister 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:36.200 of Piedmont, had written a pamphlet called Quote on the 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:41.720 civil Emancipation of the Israelites. So the European and American 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:46.520 presses both covered the Mortara kidnapping as a scandal. The 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:50.280 New York Times ran twenty articles about it in December 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:55.680 eighteen fifty eight alone, nearly one per day. Outraged, popular 0:15:55.760 --> 0:16:00.000 demonstrations broke out on both sides of the Atlantic advocated 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:02.960 for the Pope to give Edgaro back to his family. 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:07.320 Even in Catholic France, the Ambassador to the Holy See 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:10.800 met with the Vatican Secretary of State and the Pope 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:17.040 himself on Edgaro's behalf celebrated. French playwright Victor Sejour wrote 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:22.240 a play based on the kidnapping called The Fortune Teller. Licique, 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:27.600 France's most read newspaper, described the play as documenting Quote, 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:31.440 the hideous attack committed by the Holy See toward the 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:35.800 Mortara boy. The play drew one hundred thousand people to 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:40.120 the theater on opening night December twenty second, eighteen fifty nine. 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:45.080 Emperor Napoleon the Third and Empress Eugenie were prominently present 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:50.360 in the audience. Rumors swirled that Napoleon's private secretary had 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:53.560 actually worked with the playwright on the play. None of 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:56.480 it mattered. At the end of the day, Edgaro and 0:16:56.520 --> 0:17:01.040 the Mortaras were under papal authority, and the Hope wanted 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:06.320 the boy. Indeed, Pope Pious the Ninth spent substantial time 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:09.560 with Edgaro. With no son of his own, the Pope 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:13.920 viewed Edgaro as a kind of son. In eighteen sixty seven, 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:18.480 the Pope sent a shockingly self pitying note to Edgaro, 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:21.480 which said, quote, you are very dear to me, my 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:25.040 little son, for I acquired you for Jesus Christ at 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:29.560 a high price. Your case set a worldwide storm against me. 0:17:30.040 --> 0:17:32.840 The rulers of the world, as well as the journalists, 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:36.840 who are the truly powerful people of our times, declared 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:41.040 war on me. Monarchs themselves entered the battle against me, 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:45.160 and all this because of you. People lamented the harm 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:48.280 done to your parents, because you were regenerated by the 0:17:48.320 --> 0:17:52.360 grace of Holy Baptism. And in the meantime, no one 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:56.400 showed any concern for me, father of all the faithful, 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:00.679 and in a true tragedy for the mortal Para family, 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:05.400 Edgaro came to regard the Pope as a father. He 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:08.040 was only six years old when he was taken from 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:11.960 his Jewish family and re educated to believe that his 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:16.679 was a story of Catholic salvation and redemption for a 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:19.920 life that might otherwise have been lived in a kind 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:27.520 of spiritual darkness without the light of Catholic teachings. At thirteen, 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:31.040 the age of Barmitzvah, had he been allowed to remain 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:35.120 under the care of his parents, Edgardo re christened himself 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:39.560 with the name Pio, in honor of Pious the Ninth. Finally, 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:44.480 in eighteen seventy, when Edgardo was nineteen years old, his parents' 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:50.879 most ardent wish came true. Italian unification succeeded Rome was 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:54.960 captured for the new Kingdom of Italy. Their son, Edgaro 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:59.040 was no longer under the legal authority of the Pope. 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:03.040 He could come home now. Momolo had not seen his 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:06.800 son in twelve years, but he had never given up 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:09.800 on his love for him. Momolo made his way to 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:13.840 Rome to bring his son home. At last, his mother 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:18.119 would once again hold her son in her arms. But 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:23.320 Edgaro was Pio now. He only feared his father's return 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:28.280 to Rome. Pio refused to return for the rest of 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:33.040 Edgaro's life, he devoted himself to Catholicism, the religion of 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:37.600 his captors. At twenty one, too young for ordination, he 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:42.080 received a special dispensation to become a priest. The Pope 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:47.000 sent him a letter of congratulations. Edgardo read nine languages, 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:51.959 including Hebrew, and traveled all over Europe preaching the Catholic faith. 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:55.760 It would be another one hundred years before the term 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:59.720 Stockholm syndrome was coined to describe the bond between a 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:04.879 king captive and their captor. As for the Mortara's, yet 0:20:05.080 --> 0:20:10.119 more tragedy befell them in eighteen seventy one, their new servant, 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:14.360 Rosa Tugnazi, tragically died after a fall that was almost 0:20:14.480 --> 0:20:19.280 certainly a suicide. Nonetheless, suspicion fell on the man, who 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:24.119 was called the Jew Mortara throughout his trial. Even the 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:27.840 prosecutors called the fifty five year old Momolo by that 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:33.080 anti Semitic epithet, rather than the customary term the defendant Mortara. 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:38.880 The trial was almost certainly motivated by anti Jewish hostility. 0:20:39.520 --> 0:20:43.720 Momolo was ultimately found not guilty, but he had spent 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:48.120 seven months in prison in ill health, and one month 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:53.160 after his release. He died seven years later. In eighteen 0:20:53.280 --> 0:20:57.800 seventy eight, Marianna, widowed, now found out that Edgaro was 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:01.600 scheduled to preach in France. She went to where he 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:05.680 would be for the first time in twenty years. Mother 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:11.440 and son embraced from then until her death twelve years later. 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:16.560 Edgaro remained close with his mother, but neither ever warmed 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:20.760 to the other's desire that they change religions. Edgardo's that 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:25.160 his mother converted to Catholicism, Mariana's that her son return 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:30.560 to Judaism. Edgaro lived a long life, preaching the whole time. 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:34.400 On March eleventh, nineteen forty, he died at the age 0:21:34.440 --> 0:21:38.399 of eighty eight in Belgium. His story has been forgotten 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:42.280 compared to the more famous nineteenth century European case of 0:21:42.280 --> 0:21:47.040 anti Semitism, the Dreyfus affair, but he prefigured it. Some 0:21:47.280 --> 0:21:52.280 historians actually believe that the Edgardo Mortara kidnapping played a 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:56.720 major role in turning Napoleon the Third towards the side 0:21:56.760 --> 0:22:02.240 of Italian unification. Indeed, nap Jolian was secretly party to 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:05.639 the agreement in support of unifying much of the papal 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:09.960 states under the authority of Sardinia. Only one month after 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:15.320 Atgaro's kidnapping. Two months after Edgaro died in Belgium, the 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:19.440 Nazis invaded the country. If he had lived, he might 0:22:19.480 --> 0:22:23.480 have been among those stolen once again, this time by 0:22:23.640 --> 0:22:28.080 different policemen working for a different state, for the crime 0:22:28.240 --> 0:22:32.800 of being born under a hostile regime into a Jewish home. 0:22:35.720 --> 0:22:39.440 That's the story of Edgaro Mortara, the Jewish child kidnapped 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:42.800 by the papal state, but stick around after a brief 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:46.640 sponsor break to hear about Edgaro's legacy in the Mortara 0:22:46.760 --> 0:22:58.639 family today. As for the Mortara family, the story of 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:03.160 Edgaro still had a long life. One of Agaro's twin sisters, 0:23:03.240 --> 0:23:07.399 on her deathbed seventy years after the abduction, cried out 0:23:07.600 --> 0:23:12.080 not to take her children. The great granddaughter of that sister, 0:23:12.520 --> 0:23:16.040 a scholar named Elena Mortara, is now a scholar who 0:23:16.119 --> 0:23:20.919 published a twenty fifteen book with Dartmouth University Press about 0:23:20.920 --> 0:23:25.080 the affair. She spoke out on her family's behalf against 0:23:25.160 --> 0:23:29.480 the benification of Pope Pious. The ninth quote, a man 0:23:29.560 --> 0:23:34.159 who has so unjustly violated family rights, an enemy of 0:23:34.240 --> 0:23:38.119 freedom of religion, the last pope to keep the Jews 0:23:38.119 --> 0:23:41.440 of Rome by law in the ghetto. Pope Pious the 0:23:41.560 --> 0:23:45.840 Ninth was betified in the year two thousand. The Mortara 0:23:46.000 --> 0:23:49.800 family of the twenty first century opposed it. What would 0:23:49.960 --> 0:23:54.199 Edgardo himself have thought? We can't know. What we do 0:23:54.359 --> 0:23:57.800 know is that he remained a devout Catholic priest until 0:23:57.800 --> 0:24:01.840 the end of his life. Countless times Edgara more Tara 0:24:02.040 --> 0:24:06.240 must have wetted his hands as his nursemate did decades before, 0:24:06.760 --> 0:24:19.280 and sprinkled holy water over a young infant's head. Noble 0:24:19.320 --> 0:24:22.840 Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grim and 0:24:22.920 --> 0:24:26.480 Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me 0:24:26.760 --> 0:24:31.920 Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, 0:24:32.080 --> 0:24:36.240 Courtney Sender, Amy Hit and Julia Milani. The show is 0:24:36.400 --> 0:24:41.359 edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima 0:24:41.520 --> 0:24:46.000 il Kaali and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Trevor Young, and 0:24:46.080 --> 0:24:51.639 Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:24:51.880 --> 0:24:57.320 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,