Advertisement

Private Letters, Public Stories

From the De Joux Conversion(s) to the Mortara Affair
  • Ariella Lang
Chapter
  • 57 Downloads
Part of the Studies in European Culture and History book series (SECH)

Abstract

In November 1847, the Archbishop of Ferrara wrote the Holy Office of the Supreme Inquisition regarding a request he received to reprint an article that had appeared in a Roman newspaper, l’Artigianello. That the article had been printed at all scandalized the Ferrarese clergyman, and its title, “Jews Must Be Respected,” with its jab at the state’s anti Jewish edicts, suggests why. Indeed, despite its initial publication, the Ferrarese Archbishop wrote that the piece “contains doctrines that are not only extremely dangerous but completely erroneous,” and he recommended that the Inquisition Tribunal censor the story.1 The incendiary article hinges upon a (fictional) dialogue between three characters: Antonio, a shopkeeper; Andreuccio, a shoemaker; and a parish priest. The topic of discussion is Pius IX’s recent decision to open the Roman ghetto and to allow its inhabitants greater civil rights, including the freedom to live and work outside of the ghetto. About two and a half months after his first letter, on February 10, 1848, Ferrara’s archbishop addressed a second letter to the Inquisition Tribunal in which he revealed that Bresciani’s fears about the spread of the liberal press were not completely unfounded.

Keywords

Jewish Community Papal State Italian Peninsula Christian Community Letter Writer 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. 3.
    For further details, see Fabio Levi, “Gli ebrei nella vita economica italiana dell’Ottocento,” in Storia d’Italia. Gli ebrei in Italia, Dall’emancipazione a oggi, vol. 11.2, ed. Corrado Vivanti (Turin: Einaudi, 1997), 1171–1210.Google Scholar
  2. 7.
    Robert Weisberg, “Proclaiming Trials as Narratives: Premises and Pretenses,” Law’s Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law, ed. Peter Brooks and Paul Gewirtz (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1996), 76.Google Scholar
  3. 8.
    G. Baraldi, “Lettere sull’Italia considerata riguardo alla Religione del Signor Pietro de Joux,” Memorie di religione di morale e di letteratura 10 (1826): 251.Google Scholar
  4. 14.
    Gioacchino Ventura, Lettere ad un ministro protestante ed altri scritti minori (Naples, 1860), 12.Google Scholar
  5. 17.
    Padre Antonino Maria Di Jorio, Le Bellezze del Protestantismo proposte alle gioie degli italiani (Naples, 1876), 340–42.Google Scholar
  6. 23.
    Peter Brooks, “Storytelling Without Fear? Confession in Law and Literature,” Law’s Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law, ed. Peter Brooks and Paul Gewirtz (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1996), 119.Google Scholar
  7. 24.
    Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 35–36.Google Scholar
  8. 26.
    For further discussion, see Ian Machin, “British Catholics,” The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants, ed. Rainer Liedtke and Stephan Wendehorst (New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), 11–32.Google Scholar
  9. 31.
    For further discussion see Gian Paolo Romagnani, “Italian Protestants,” The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants, ed. Rainer Liedtke and Stephan Wendehorst (New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), 148–68.Google Scholar
  10. 41.
    For the most recent, and perhaps most thorough, treatment of the Mortara Affair, see David I. Kertzer, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (New York: Vintage 1998).Google Scholar
  11. 42.
    Giuseppe Garibaldi, I Mille (Torino: Camilla e Bertolero, 1873), 165.Google Scholar
  12. 44.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.1, 129–30.Google Scholar
  13. 45.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.1, 88.Google Scholar
  14. 46.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc. 2, 99–100.Google Scholar
  15. 47.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc. 2, 103.Google Scholar
  16. 48.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.2, 103.Google Scholar
  17. 49.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.2, 104.Google Scholar
  18. 50.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.2, 80.Google Scholar
  19. 51.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.1, 10.Google Scholar
  20. 52.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.1, 72.Google Scholar
  21. 54.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.2, 84.Google Scholar
  22. 55.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.2, 90.Google Scholar
  23. 56.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.2, 91.Google Scholar
  24. 57.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.2, 99 (emphasis in the original).Google Scholar
  25. 58.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.1, 19.Google Scholar
  26. 59.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.1, 214.Google Scholar
  27. 60.
    Like Edgardo, who was saved from his illness as a small child, the Pharaoh’s daughter saved Moses when he was an infant. ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.1, 210. This is an article; on its cover is scribbled “quest’articolo non fu mandato alla stampa.” The headline is: Il Battesimo conferito al fanciullo ebreo Edgardo Mortara in Bologna da una serva bolognese nell’atto che il med. Era in procinto di morte ha fatto. Google Scholar
  28. 61.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc. 1, 210.Google Scholar
  29. 63.
    Cited in Masetti Zannini, “Nuovi documenti sul caso Mortara,” Rivista storica della chiesa italiana 13.2 (1959): Appendice I, 265.Google Scholar
  30. 64.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc. 1, 79–80.Google Scholar
  31. 65.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc. 2, 85–6.Google Scholar
  32. 66.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.1, 65 (emphasis in the original.).Google Scholar
  33. 67.
    For further discussion of otherness in this context, see Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.Google Scholar
  34. 68.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.2, 87–88.Google Scholar
  35. 69.
    ASV, Segreteria di Stato, anno 1859, rubrica 66 (ebrei e scismatici), fasc.3, Camillo Tarquini, Osservazioni fatte sul medi da altra mano sul giovane Mortara. This citation is from an anonymous accompanying text, 35.Google Scholar
  36. 70.
    “L’ebreo di Bologna e le bombe di Giuseppe Mazzini,” L’Armonia della religione colla Civiltà, August 17, 1858: 755–56.Google Scholar
  37. 88.
    Farini had already expressed his criticism of the Tribunal in a letter to Gladstone in 1856. See Luigi Carlo Farini, La Diplomazia e la Quistione italiana: lettera di Luigi Carlo Farini al signor Guglielmo Gladstone (Turin, 1856), 33.Google Scholar
  38. 91.
    Francesco Jussi, Difesa del Padre Pier Gaetano Feletti. Imputato come inquisitore del santo uffizio del ratto del fanciullo Edgardo Mortara davanti al tribunale civile e criminale di prima istanza in Bologna (Bologna, 1860), 5.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Ariella Lang 2008

Authors and Affiliations

  • Ariella Lang

There are no affiliations available

Personalised recommendations

Cite chapter

Buy options