Papal police seize Edgardo Mortara in Bologna

Background. In late 1857, Bologna's inquisitor, the Dominican friar Pier Gaetano Feletti, heard rumours that a Catholic servant had secretly baptized one of the city's Jewish children. Anna Morisi, who had worked in the Mortara house for six years, was said to have baptized Edgardo when she thought he was about to die as a baby. Jews, mostly merchants like Edgardo's father, had begun settling in Bologna again during the 1790s, and by 1858 the city had a Jewish community of about 200.

The Seizure. Papal carabinieri arrived at the Mortara apartment in Bologna shortly after sunset on 23 June 1858. Led by Marshal Pietro Lucidi and Brigadier Giuseppe Agostini, they took custody of Edgardo the following evening. The action was based on the inquisitor's order, stemming from the alleged secret baptism by the former servant Anna Morisi.

Reaction and Controversy. After the child's father visited him during August and September 1858, two starkly different narratives emerged: one of a boy who wanted to return to his family and the faith of his ancestors, the other of a child who had learned the catechism perfectly and wanted his parents to become Catholics. From July 1858 it was reported across Europe that Edgardo's mother had practically, if not actually, gone insane from grief and might even die. A special British committee on Mortara relayed reports from Piedmont to British newspapers and Catholic clergymen from August to December 1858, noting support from British Protestants, particularly the Evangelical Alliance led by Sir Culling Eardley. Kertzer argues that the refusal to return Edgardo contributed to a growing sense that the Pope's role as temporal ruler, with his own police force, was an anachronism that could no longer be maintained.

Aftermath. After pontifical rule in Bologna ended in 1859, Feletti was prosecuted for his role in Mortara's kidnapping but acquitted when the court decided he had not acted on his own initiative. Kertzer suggests the affair may have motivated the French to change their stance on Italian unification in 1859–1861. Edgardo's cause also partly motivated the formation in May 1860 of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a Paris-based organisation dedicated to advancing Jewish civil rights across the world.