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Title: The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara by David I. Kertzer ISBN: 0679768173 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.9
Rating: 5
Summary: Insightful, Balanced Account of Event in Italian History
Comment: David Keretz is an American historian of Italy, who also happens to be Jewish and the son of an American army chaplain who helped liberate Italy during World War II. He presents one of the most sensationalistically portrayed events of the mid-19th century in Italy--the kidnapping of a 6-year-old Jewish boy from his parents by agents of the then temporal as well as spiritual leader of much of Italy, Pope Pius IX--an event which divided Catholics, Protestants, and Jews around the world as well traditionalists and nationalist-liberals in Italy. He recounts and analyzes the story in a remarkably balanced fashion, helping the reader appreciate each side of the controversy. Yet he also presents the Mortara family, whose suffering was not limited to the kidnapping and the failure to ever retrieve their son and sibling Edgardo from the Catholic Church, in a way that is evocative of the book of Job. The book uses the Mortara incident as a prism through which to view the Italian Risorgiomento, the ultra-conservative philosophy of Pius IX, and the emerging forces of liberalism in Western Europe. One of the author's central theses is that the Mortara kidnapping was a major factor in the demise of the Pope's political power and the unification of Italy. One of the many fascinating aspects of the book is how Italian anti-Semitism contrasted with that in France and Germany; the Italians seem to have preferred that the Jews convert and be assimilated, and had no belief in the racist and Volkisch ideologies that best the French and the Germans.
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful Research, Exciting Story, Horrifying Incident
Comment: David I. Kertzer has written a wonderful account of a pivotal event in Italian, Jewish and Catholic history. The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara tells the story of the 1858 kidnapping of a six year old Jewish boy secretly baptized while a baby by a Catholic servant in the home. From this horrifying personal incident for this Jewish family the panorama of the story grows very large indeed, taking into account the Pope, the governments of Europe, and the forces for the unification of Italy. The author does a superb job of making all of this understandable to the reader. He also never allows the epic scope of the book to overwhelm the family as the centre of all of this controversy. The Mortaras hold a special place in this tragedy as they deserve and the lives lived by Jewish families, such as theirs, in Italy is vividly presented. It is a shocking book, yet very illuminating and well written. Highly recommended.
Rating: 5
Summary: Balanced Account of Event in Italian History!
Comment: In March 1940, a month before Nazi troops entered Belgium, an 88-year-old monk died at the abbey in Bouhay. Born in Bologna as Edgardo Mortara, this monk, as a six-year-old Jewish child, had been kidnapped from his family after unsubstantiated reports of his baptism by a Christian servant surfaced. He was sent to Rome and raised and educated there under the special eye of Pope Pius IX. Although such kidnappings were not extraordinary in European Jewish communities, this case occurred against the backdrop of a changed and changing political climate. The case attracted the attention of the Rothschilds, Sir Moses Montifiore, Napoleon III, and even some Americans, and turned international public opinion against the Vatican. It came to symbolize the revolutionary campaigns of Mazzini and Garibaldi, and the attempt to terminate the political dominance of the Catholic Church and found a modern, secular Italian state. Kertzer tells this disturbing tale with great sensitivity and skill, as he locates it within its historical context. He has illuminated a very dark recess of Jewish-Catholic relations, and in so doing, has shed additional light on the troubled history of Jewish-Christian relations.
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Title: The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism by David I. Kertzer ISBN: 0375406239 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 18 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII by John Cornwell ISBN: 0140296271 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 03 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen ISBN: 0375414347 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 29 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II by Stuart E. Eizenstat, Elie Wiesel ISBN: 158648110X Publisher: PublicAffairs Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History by James Carroll ISBN: 0395779278 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 10 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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