In 1871, Salomone Mortara was undoubtedly the most famous Italian Jew in the world, though for reasons that had brought him nothing but heartbreak. Thirteen years earlier, Salomone and his wife Marianna had been living with their eight children in the City of Bologna, which at the time was under the authority of the Papal States. On June 23, 1858, the Jewish couple’s six-year-old son Edgardo was seized by the papal police and taken directly to the Vatican, where he was subsequently adopted by Pope Pius IX.
It seems that about five years earlier a fourteen-year-old Christian domestic servant in the Mortara home, fearing that Edgardo might die from a childhood illness, had sprinkled a bit of water on the boy’s brow while he slept, whispering “I baptize you in the name of the father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” This act, it turns out, was sufficient under Canon law to constitute a baptism Unbeknownst to him or his parents, the sleeping Edgardo was instantly transformed into a Catholic.