The Mortara Case and Thomas Aquinas’s Defense of Jewish Parental Authority

The Mortara case refers to Pope Pius IX’s 1858 removal of a six-year-old Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, from his parents in Bologna, Italy. Six years after the child was born, it was reported that the family’s Christian housekeeper had baptized him after he had fallen ill as an infant and was allegedly in danger of death.Since canon law and civil law stipulated that a baptized child must be raised Catholic, Pius IX used his power as head of the Papal States to remove Edgardo from his family so he could receive a Christian education.

Scholars on both sides of the contemporary debate over Pius IX’s decision to remove the child frequently appeal to the teaching of Thomas Aquinas to make their arguments. However, the discussion has overlooked an important fact: the question of how Aquinas’s teaching applied to the case was at the center of the dispute between the Mortara family and Pius IX in 1858. Indeed, the Mortara family and the Roman Jewish community submitted to the Vatican a two-part document, Pro-memoria and Syllabus, that appealed to Aquinas to argue for the return of the child. However, the Vatican’s reply, Brevi cenni, denied the request and cited Aquinas’s teaching to argue that Edgardo’s baptism was valid and that he therefore belonged to the Church. Who had the correct interpretation of Aquinas’s thought? And how does this answer impact Catholic theology and Catholic-Jewish relations today?

The Mortara Case and Thomas Aquinas's Defense of Jewish Parental Authority assesses the claims of both sides of the contemporary debate through an analysis of Aquinas’s teaching as it is interpreted in the original Italian and Latin documents from the 1858 case, which are housed in the Vatican Apostolic Archives. The complete text of these documents are reproduced here, with facing English translations, for the first time. Tapie demonstrates that, for Aquinas, Jewish parental authority is an order of the natural law, which Aquinas likened to a spiritualis uterus (spiritual womb). Since Jewish parental authority is an order of the natural law, it cannot be opposed to God’s grace. The Mortara Case and Thomas Aquinas's Defense of Jewish Parental Authority is the first book-length study to examine Aquinas’s teaching against baptism of Jewish children invitis parentibus (against the will of parents) in its thirteenth-century context. The book also treats the reception history of Aquinas’s thought among his Dominican defenders who advanced his position from the late thirteenth century into the middle of the sixteenth century. Tapie’s study concludes by examining the current Code of Canon Law on infant baptism for children of non-Catholic parents, as well as its relation to the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on religious freedom and the Jewish people.