Meeting of the Israelites of Charleston to Protest the Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
AUCTION 24 |
Tuesday, June 29th,
2004 at 1:00
Fine Judaica: Printed Books, Manuscripts, Ceremonial Art and Holy Land Maps Including Ceremonial Art from the Collection of Daniel M. Friedenberg
Lot 12
(AMERICAN JUDAICA).
Meeting of the Israelites of Charleston to Protest the Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
Charleston, South Carolina: Carew Co. 1858
Est: $1,000 - $1,500
PRICE REALIZED $1,000
The abduction of six-year old Edgardo Mortara from his home in Bologna, Italy and his subsequent forced conversion to Catholicism, with the connivance of Papal authority, appalled the Jewish world.
The American Jewish community joined the outrage expresssed by world Jewry demanding the return of the child to his parents. The child was never returned. “Pius” Mortara died in a Belgian abbey in 1940, aged 88 years.
On September 3rd, 2000, Pope John Paul II beatified Pope Pius IX, the pope responsible for the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara. In the Catholic Church, beatification is the last step before the declaration of Sainthood.
See Bertram W. Korn, The American Reaction to the Mortara Case: 1858-1859 (Cincinnati, 1957); David Kertzer, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (New York, 1997), pp. 124-127