The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (42 page)

“But didn’t the Mortaras say that in the morning I was talking about they left the boy’s crib to go into the bedroom?”

“No, they didn’t. And it is hard to believe that, when they left the crib and went into a nearby room, you would have dared, practically under their eyes, to baptize Edgardo, at the risk of being surprised in the act that they without doubt would have abhorred, since it was contrary to their religion.”

“I dared do it because even if they had surprised me they would’ve just found me with a glass of water in my hand, and they probably wouldn’t have understood what I was doing, or what I meant to do.”

And what of the fact, the magistrate asked, that Cesare Lepori had, under oath, denied that he had ever spoken to her about baptizing Edgardo, much less instructed her how to do it?

“He may not remember,” Anna responded, “but it’s a fact.”

The final subject that Carboni wanted to explore with Anna involved the defendant, Father Feletti, more directly. If Anna had not told Regina Bussolari about the baptism, how had the Inquisitor heard about it? Might Anna not have invented the whole story of baptizing Edgardo in a fit of pique at the way the Jews had treated her? Might she have thought that this was just the kind of story the Dominicans—and especially the Inquisitor—would want to hear? And might she have thought that she could get a reward for telling such a story, allowing her, after so many years working away from home as a servant, to return to Persiceto, get married, and set up a household of her own?

After leaving the Mortaras in 1857, Carboni observed, Anna had gone to work for Elena Pignatti, whose home was near the San Domenico church. Where, he asked, had she gone to take confession while she was at Signora Pignatti’s house?

“I went to the Fathers of the Madonna on Galliera,” she replied.

“Tell the truth,” warned the magistrate. “Didn’t you once go to San Domenico to confess? The church is, after all, closer.”

Carboni must have been excited by Anna’s reply:

Since I was involved in negotiations to get married and they told me that Father Feletti had dowries to give out, I went to find him and told him what I wanted. He told me that I should return on a certain day and he’d give me a reply when I took confession. And so I did, but I didn’t actually confess. I kneeled at the confessional, and Father Feletti told me that the dowry didn’t depend on him but on the Brothers of the Annunciation. I wasn’t able to get any, though, and I had to get married without a dowry.

Did you know, Carboni asked, that your neighbor in the Mortaras’ building, Geltrude Laghi, testified that “she had gone to visit you during the last days you spent at Elena Pignatti’s house, when you were about to get married, and you confided in her that you had gone to confess at San Domenico?”

“Well, I might have told her what I just told you about the dowry that I asked Father Feletti for.”

“Tell the truth, because Geltrude Laghi has testified that, in confiding in her, you told her that after you took confession at San Domenico, the friars took you into another room, where you were seized by a great fear, and they put you through an interrogation. What were they asking you about?”

“Geltrude told you a lie. I never told her that.”

“I am warning you again to tell the truth,” said the Magistrate. He told Anna that he had also called in Regina Bussolari, and that she had denied that Anna ever told her anything about baptizing Edgardo. “Since you yourself claim that you never told anyone else about the baptism, I ask you how could Father Feletti have come to know about it, and have you called to the Holy Office to interrogate you?” He continued: “You have admitted implicitly that it was you yourself who told them and, from what you said to Laghi, you told them as part of the confession you made at San Domenico. What do you say to that?”

“I didn’t report anything to them, either in the confessional or anywhere else, because in the confessional I only spoke to Father Feletti about my dowry.”

“And your conversation about your dowry took place around the same time as you were called in to be interrogated by the Holy Office about Edgardo’s baptism?”

“It was three or four days after I was called to be interrogated when I heard that Father Feletti had dowries to give, and I went to ask him for one.”

“How many times did you have occasion to go to San Domenico, and to speak with Father Feletti?”

“There were three times. Once to ask for the dowry, another to hear his answer at the confessional, and the third to respond to the interrogation on Edgardo’s baptism.”

“Aha! You see that even the way you give the order of your visits to San Domenico shows that first you went to the confessional, and only later to the interrogation.”

In addition, the magistrate added, Elena Pignatti had testified that, being curious about the four or five messages sent to Anna from San Domenico, she had asked her what they were all about.

“You told her that the Father Inquisitor had promised you a dowry, and in your last visit you led her to believe that you had been made to give a solemn oath never again to live with Jews, and not to speak of it with Elena or anyone on pain of excommunication.”

“No, I had the interrogation first, and only then asked for the dowry. And I was called to San Domenico only once by that man, and not four or five times.”

“And how was it that, on your return to Persiceto, you told your sisters about the baptism you had given Edgardo?”

“It was when we happened to be talking about Jews, and I told them about what I’d done to Edgardo.”

Their conversation had taken place, she added, sometime before she first heard the news about Edgardo’s abduction.

“So having had a vow of silence imposed on you by the Holy Office, you talked about it with your sisters? How is it that you find it so easy to break your oath?”

“I told my sisters about it, but I was sure they would never tell anyone else.”

The magistrate had one final question to ask. Anna had earlier testified
that her only break in service to the Mortaras was when she left on her own initiative to work in another household. Hadn’t there been another time? Carboni asked.

“There was one other time I went away, about four months, to a midwife’s house, because at that time there was a boarder living at the Mortaras’ house, and I’d gotten in trouble.” Here, the transcript of Anna’s final testimony ends with the note: “She began to cry.”
¹³

CHAPTER 21
Defending the Inquisitor

T
HE POLICE RAID
on San Domenico and the arrest of the former inquisitor alarmed Bologna’s archbishop and others in the Church hierarchy. It was, for them, yet another clear sign of the new rulers’ intention of violating Church law, judging ecclesiastical activities by the secular laws of a godless government and humiliating the clergy. In the months since the new government had come to power in Bologna, it had fought a series of battles with the clergy, but never before had someone of Father Feletti’s rank been dealt with so brutally.

Shortly after the Inquisitor’s arrest, Cardinal Viale-Prelà sent a protest to the Governor, Luigi Carlo Farini, delivered personally by the Archbishop’s assistant, demanding the friar’s immediate release. Farini agreed to speak with the emissary and, according to the latter’s report, suggested that Father Feletti would be freed if he could prove that he had simply acted on higher orders. The Archbishop was unsure of what, in the terrible uncertainty of the new, chaotic situation, it was proper for the Inquisitor to say—indeed, whether it was permissible for him to say anything. He knew that Father Feletti was refusing to answer any questions about the workings of the Holy Office. Seeking instructions, the Archbishop wrote to Cardinal Giacinto De Ferrari, the Dominican who served as the Commissioner of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Rome.

Cardinal De Ferrari was well informed about the Mortara case, for it was to him that Father Feletti had written, on October 26, 1857, to report the first rumors that a Jewish boy had been baptized in Bologna. Feletti had requested authorization to proceed with an inquiry, and it was De Ferrari who, on November 9, writing from the central office of the Inquisition
in the Vatican, had sent the Bologna inquisitor the fateful instructions to proceed. Of all this, the Bologna court and the magistrate, Carboni, knew nothing.
¹

Now, little more than two years later, Father Feletti was languishing in prison. On February 11, the Commissioner of the Holy Office responded to Cardinal Viale-Prelà’s letter:

I have been asked whether the prisoner may respond that he was carrying out
Superior Orders from Rome,
etc. The immediate answer is that there is no difficulty in giving this answer, although he should add what Saint Peter said:
Obbedire oportet Deo magis quam hominibus
[Obey God before man]. Now fearing that that letter [authorizing Father Feletti to have Edgardo taken] has been lost, we thought it most prudent to refer the matter to Your Most Reverend Eminence to do the best you can.

Ten days later, the Archbishop wrote again to the Commissioner with word of a disturbing new development. It no longer looked as though getting the friar out of jail would be as simple as they had thought:

I had sent my Pro-Vicar to Signor Farini to speak on behalf of Father Feletti, and he responded that to free him nothing more would be necessary than affirming, as I said, that he had merely carried out
superior orders.
But now, it seems, they no longer consider such a declaration to be sufficient. We have written Signor Farini to remind him of his assurances and to bring the matter to a close, and I await his reply. I will not fail to do everything possible for the prisoner.
²

After his second interview with Anna Morisi, Magistrate Carboni was almost ready to prepare his brief for the prosecution. But before doing so, he wanted to make one last attempt to get the Inquisitor to talk. On March 6, Carboni entered the Torrone prison and was escorted to Father Feletti’s cell.

The friar seemed happy to have the company but began on a peevish note, for there was something he had been mulling over. If they were so concerned with illegal acts committed in connection with the case before them, why, he wondered, had they not gone after “the Jew Momolo Mortara, who broke the laws promulgated by the Church forbidding him from keeping any Christian in his service, laws designed to prevent just such a situation as this.” But the friar’s irritation soon subsided, and he returned to higher ground, recalling the Holy Office instructions he had received via the Archbishop: “The judgments of the Church should certainly not be subject to any other
authority that is inferior to it, for Catholic doctrine teaches me that the Faith of Peter cannot be subject to the judgment of any other. It is not right for anyone to sit in judgment over the decisions that emanate from the Apostolic Faith in matters of Faith and conduct.”

It was now time for the magistrate to begin his final interrogation. Carboni realized that his best chance of getting a conviction was proving that the former inquisitor had broken the laws that were in effect at the time of Edgardo’s abduction. If Father Feletti proved able to demonstrate that, in ordering the boy seized, he was simply following higher orders that were legally formulated, he could be found guilty only by the retroactive application of the new law of the land, and there were many both in the courts and in the government who would not want to set such a precedent.

“Do you persist even today,” Carboni began, “in maintaining that, in ordering Lieutenant Colonel De Dominicis to seize the Mortara child, you were executing an order received from the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office?”

“Yes, sir. I was only the loyal executor of the orders received from the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome.”

Yet, the magistrate responded, neither Marshal Caroli, the carabiniere officer who processed the order that the Inquisitor had sent the police, nor Brigadier Agostini, who had been shown the letter by De Dominicis, recalled its saying anything about his acting on orders received from Rome. Unless you show me the letter you received from Rome or other such proof, warned Carboni, I will have to conclude that the abduction was your idea.

In sending an order to the police, responded Father Feletti, there was no need to cite any authority higher than his own. As for the proof that he had acted on orders from Rome, it was sufficient to note that “the boy was received by the Rector of the Catechumens in Rome, and that the Holy Father was kind enough to want to see this boy himself, bless him, and act as his father in all senses of the term.” For Father Feletti, the suggestion that he would have acted on his own in such a matter, without instructions from the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Rome, was insulting: “It is a mortification that I accept from the hand of God, and it comforts me that no one who knows me would think so poorly of me.”

Why, then, asked Carboni, would he not show them the order he claims he received from Rome?

In all those things I could discuss without breaking my oath to the Holy Office, responded the friar, I have. “But when it involves things that I am not allowed to talk about, I don’t believe I am remaining silent to be discourteous, for on the contrary, it would be in my own interest to speak. But my conscience absolutely forbids me to give you any response.”

But, the magistrate asked Father Feletti, why, if he was simply following
orders he received from the Holy Office, had he given Agostini four scudi as a special reward for his services?