{"product_id":"david-i-kertzer-the-kidnapping-of-edgardo-mortara-9780679768173","title":"The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara","description":"Soon to be a major motion picture from Steven Spielberg. A National Book Award Finalist The extraordinary story of how the vatican's imprisonment of a six-year-old Jewish boy in 1858 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 bust 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 such personages as Napoleon III, the emergence of Italy as a modern national state. Moving and informative, the Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara reads as both a historical thriller and an authoritative analysis of how a single human tragedy changed the course of history.","brand":"Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53914342654294,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/www.momoxbooks.com\/products\/david-i-kertzer-the-kidnapping-of-edgardo-mortara-9780679768173","provider":"momoxbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}