Later History
The last notable action of the Roman Inquisition occurred in 1858, in Bologna, when Inquisition agents legally removed a 6-year-old Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, from his family. The local inquisitor had learned that the boy was secretly baptised by his nursemaid. Pope Pius IX raised the boy as a Catholic in Rome. The boy's father, Momolo Mortara, spent years seeking help in all quarters, including internationally, to try to reclaim his son. The case received international attention and fueled the anti-papal sentiments that helped the Italian nationalism movement and culminated in the 1870 Capture of Rome.
Read more about this topic: Roman Inquisition
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)