The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara: Film tie-in

Now filmed by Steven Spielberg, starring Mark Rylance as the Pope. The extraordinary story of how the Vatican’s imprisonment of a six-year-old Jewish boy helped to bring about the collapse of the popes’ worldly power in Italy. Bologna: nightfall, June 1858. A knock sounds at the door of the Jewish merchant Momolo Mortara. Two officers of the Inquisition burst inside and seize Mortara’s six-year-old son, Edgardo. As the boy is wrenched from his father’s arms, his mother collapses. The reason for his abduction: the boy had been secretly `baptized’ by a family servant. According to papal law, the child is therefore a Catholic who can be taken from his family and delivered to a special monastery where his conversion will be completed. With this terrifying scene, prize-winning historian David I. Kertzer begins the true story of how one boy’s kidnapping became a pivotal event in the collapse of the Vatican as a secular power. The book evokes the anguish of a modest merchant’s family, the rhythms of daily life in a Jewish ghetto, and also explores, through the revolutionary campaigns of Mazzini and Garibaldi and outside leaders like Napoleon III, the emergence of Italy as a modern national state. Moving and informative, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara reads as both a thriller and an authoritative account of a moment that changed Europe forever.

About the Author :
David I. Kertzer is the Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science and professor of anthropology and Italian studies at Brown University, where he served as provost from 2006 to 2011. He is the author of twelve books, including The Pope and Mussolini, winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the American Historical Association prize for best book in Italian history; The Popes Against the Jews, which was a finalist for the Mark Lynton History Prize; and The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, a finalist for the National Book Award. His most recent book is The Pope Who Would be King. He has twice been awarded the Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies for the best work on Italian history and in 2005 was elected to membership in the American Association of Arts and Sciences. He and his wife, Susan, live in Providence.

Review :
A gripping, vivid and well-documented rendering. A highly readable work that is dramatic, moving and informative, as interesting to general readers as it will no doubt prove to historians. Thrilling . . . Kertzer's careful scholarship and fine narrative skill make a great drama. A spellbinding and intelligent book. The story itself is utterly compelling, but is entirely Kertzer's skill as a historian and a writer that allows him to maintain the suspense. David Kertzer tells a riveting take, with great mastery of the sources. I read the book, all of it, cover to cover, nonstop, gasping, amazed. What an important and spectacular work! (With the narrative pace of a gripping novel.) One of the most impressive reading nights of my life. A lucidly drawn, dramatic narrative. Kertzer's account reads like a courtroom drama. As shapely and surprising as fiction.