When the French officers next met the Jew, they asked him whether he
was pleased with his sworn guard. He dared not say that he had no
guard: the police had forbidden him to complain.
The Jews of Rome are the most unfortunate in the Papal States. The
vicinity of the Vatican is as fatal to them as to the Christians. Far
from the seat of government, beyond the Apennines, they are less poor,
less oppressed, and less despised. The Israelitish population of
Ancona is really a fine race.
It is not to be inferred from this that the agents of the Pope become
converts to tolerance by crossing the Apennines.
It is not a year since the Archbishop of Bologna confiscated the boy
Mortara for the good of the Convent of the Neophytes.
Only two years ago the Prefect of Ancona revived the old law, which
forbids Christians to converse publicly with Jews.
It is not ten years since a merchant of considerable fortune, named P.
Cadova, was deprived of his wife and children by means as remarkable
as those employed in the case of young Mortara, although the affair
created less sensation at the time.
M.P. Cadova lived at Cento, in the province of Ferrara. He had a
pretty wife, and two children. His wife was seduced by one of his
clerks, who was a Catholic. The intrigue being discovered, the clerk
was driven from the house. The faithless wife soon joined her lover at
Bologna, and took her children with her.
The Jew applied to the courts of law to assist him in taking the
children from the adulteress.
The answer he received to his application was, that his wife and
children had all three embraced Christianity, and had consequently
ceased to be his family.
The Courts further decreed that he should pay an annual income for
their support.
On this income the adulterous clerk also subsists.
Some months later Monsignore Oppiszoni, Archbishop of Bologna, himself
celebrated the marriage of M.P. Cadova's wife and M.P. Cadova's
ex-clerk.
Of course, you'll say, P. Cadova was dead. Not a bit of it. He was
alive, and as well as a broken-hearted man could be. The Church, then,
winked at a case of bigamy? Not so. In the States of the Church a
woman may be married at the same time to a Jew and a Catholic, without
being a bigamist, because in the States of the Church a Jew is not a
man.
CHAPTER XVI.
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.
All the world knows, and says over and over again, that education is
less advanced in the Papal States than in any country in Europe. It is
a source of universal regret that the nation which is, perhaps, of all
others the most intelligent by God's grace, should be the most
ignorant by the will of priests. This people has been compared to a
thorough-bred horse, reduced from racing to walking blindfolded, round
and round, grinding corn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account