On 23rd June 1858, a police posse and a Catholic inquisitor invaded the house of a Jewish merchant, Soloman Mortara, in Bologna, and seized his six-year-old son, Edgardo. With this scene, David Kertzer begins his investigation of the kidnapping that would eventually lead to the end of the church's governing power in Italy. It transpired that Edgardo has been secretly baptised years earlier by a Catholic servant and the law held that no Christian child could be brought up in a Jewish household. What followed made international history - although such kidnappings had been common this struggle came to symbolize the entire revolutionary campaign of Mazzini and Garibaldi to shake off the dominance of the Catholic church and establish a modern, secular state.
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