Talk:Mortara case

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Mortara case/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Tim riley (talk · contribs) 15:00, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Initial comment

It isn't clear to me what this article is doing at GAN. In my view it belongs at FAC, but be that as it may, I am reviewing it against the GA criteria for now, though I expect (and hope) to see it at FAC in due course. I ought perhaps to put on record here that I am long familiar with Cliftonian's work and that both of us have reviewed several of the other's articles in the past.

I have corrected a handful of typos (which please check), apart from which I have precisely two queries:

• There is a duplicate link to dowry
• I was surprised at the spelling of "cruelest" in the Spectator quote, though of course am quite prepared to be told it is a correct transcription (or perhaps that I can't spell).

As a personal stylistic point I wonder about "captivated" in the first sentence. To me, "captivate" means to please extravagantly, to enrapture. Riveting the imagination of a critical public is not how I would use the verb. Perhaps just "captured the attention of" might do?

None of which amounts to a row of beans, and I have much pleasure in promoting the article to GA.

Overall summary

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   Well referenced.

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   Well referenced.

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   Well illustrated.

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

   Well illustrated.

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

I learned much from this article, and am very glad to have had the pleasure of reviewing it. I found it fascinating. Tim riley talk 15:00, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Spoken Wikipedia

Hello editors. My wife frequently suffers from insomnia, and one thing we've discovered is that reading from Wikipedia is an effective way of . . . boring her to sleep. To that end, I have been reading Wikipedia articles to her when she needs it and I've got a computer handy. Just after I finished reading List of common misconceptions, I had the idea that I could help out the community by recording the reading of the article, and contributing to the WP:SPEAK project. I plan on recording this article, soon (probably the next time she needs some help sleeping and I've got a computer). Don't expect an amazing reading, but it'll be something. I'm working under the assumption that something is better than nothing. McKay (talk) 04:00, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks McKay, looking forward to hearing it. Hope it helps your wife. Cheers —  Cliftonian (talk)  07:08, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Done! McKay (talk) 00:44, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi Mckaysalisbury, really good work, but do you have the second half somewhere? This file seems to end halfway through Feletti's trial. Cheers —  Cliftonian (talk)  21:41, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

24 hr time

Would it be reasonable to either change the 24 hr. time standard used in the article to 12hr. time. I realize some English speaking countries use 24 hr. so maybe it would be better to include both as a courtesy to American readers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eman320 (talk • contribs) 16:18, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Bad lede?

Despite the GA rating, I think the lede to this article is poor- in addition to the summary, it repeats and expands of=n most of the same facts in the next few paragraphs which are then again expanded in the main body. Any objections to my heavily editing the lede? Wkharrisjr (talk) 23:52, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

This article is an FA, not a GA. Please explain exactly what you'd like to see changed in the lead as I don't see any major problem with it, and nor did the reviewers at FAC. Cheers —  Cliftonian (talk)  05:46, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Objection to use of Kertzer

Please note the message below was originally posted within the long-finished GA review here—I have simply moved it here. —  Cliftonian (talk)  14:11, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

NO! This is not well referenced. Almost all of the information in the article references works by Kertzer. If you review Kertzer's works you will find that he seems to write almost exclusively rather sensationalistic denunciations of the Papacy. His most recent work attempts to pretend that Pius XI was a good buddy of Mussolini. What we have here is more baloney scholarship, in my humble opinion. I reviewed some of Kertzers other books, and we find that he has one about the summer he spent with the Italian Communists, which further calls his credibility into play. "Comrades and Christians" I am loathe to trust someone who seems favorably disposed towards Italian Communism, who keeps writing books that offer a sensationalistic account of the supposed secret crimes of the Papacy. His book about Mussolini has been challenged for getting things wrong. http://www.crisismagazine.com/2015/painting-catholicism-with-the-fascist-brush He did get a Pulitzer prize for the book, but these days those are handed out on a political basis, not a basis of truth. What we have is another "Hitler's Pope" type work, which we know told the exact opposite of truth, and an author that likes to shade and "interpret" facts for us to make someone look bad. He does not give us facts and let us make up our own minds, he gives us facts and tells us what to think. 184.97.166.58 (talk) 19:10, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Furthermore, in another of his works America Magazine, generally considered on the left, but by American Jesuits, had this to say:

Lawler, author of many books and editor of several journals, intimately familiar with the ways of the publishing world, examines several of Hochhuth’s heirs, focusing mostly but not exclusively on David Kertzer’s "The Popes against the Jews (2001)". Kertzer argues that several modern Popes—culminating with Pius XI and Pius XII—were anti-Semites who paved “the road to the Holocaust.” Lawler, initially beguiled by Kertzer’s argument, became suspicious, re-examined Kertzer’s supporting evidence and discovered “a flood of errors,” “rhetorical subterfuge,” “slanted paraphrase,” “a potpourri of mistranslations…juggled chronology, and… out-and-out falsehoods.” Before he had ever seen the Vatican archives, Kertzer had already made up his mind about the popes, as he made clear in a New York Times op-ed column: “The explanation of what made the Holocaust possible is to be found in no small part in the files of the Inquisition…. “

Lawler repeatedly demonstrates that Kertzer’s accusatory examples—ranging from Vatican support for the myth of Jewish ritual murder or of anti-Semitism based on a form letter sent in receipt for a book expressing anti-Semitism—are demonstrably false or illogical.

Contrary to what gullible cynics might expect, Lawler’s book is no whitewash of the church hierarchy. Kertzer, however, creates a fiction of “aggressive papal support of the hatred that led to the Holocaust” and insists that “a whole-cloth conspiracy against Jews [was] perpetrated by the elders of the Vatican.”

http://www.americamagazine.org/issue/culture/tortured-history

Kertzer is unreliable, and this entry relies entirely on his work for its tale. 20:36, 20 March 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.97.166.58 (talk)

Four reliable sources are cited in the article supporting the assertion that Kertzer's The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara is the standard reference work for this subject. Kertzer did not write this Wikipedia article, I did (with the invaluable assistance of others). I went to great lengths to be neutral and indeed was complimented on this by reviewers of the article. I see you criticise various other Kertzer books above, but do you have any reliable sources attesting that the book The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara is an unreliable source? Cheers —  Cliftonian (talk)  14:17, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

“The year of his conversion”?

The article contains the following: “the Lourdes apparitions of 1858 having occurred in the same year as his own conversion to Christianity.” This is surely difficult to support, in light of the fact that the crux of the matter is whether or not he was baptized as an infant ( a “cradle Catholic”). Identifying 1858 as the year of his “conversion” to Christianity suggests that he was baptized in that year, which would negate the story of earlier baptism; if he was baptized as a baby, he would be deemed to be a Christian in the eyes of the Church from that moment onwards, which is why the whole incident started. Might it not be better to say that in 1858 he became a practising Catholic? Jock123 (talk) 13:29, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Over-reliance on Kertzer

As the article stands the content and references for this article are based almost exclusively on the views of David Kertzer, who is extremely partisan in cheerleading the Jewish ultra-nationalist line on this affair. Another of Kertzer's partisan books in this field, The Popes Against the Jews, has been strongly criticised for deliberately misquoting and cherrypicking of information, so his reliability as a neutral source in this case must also be questioned. He should be used, because his name is now prominently attached to this case, but the article shouldn't just be a podium for his views and essentially a cut and paste of his book from start to finish. The categories "Antisemitic attacks and incidents" and "Antisemitism in Italy" are also dubious.... pretty sure Mortara was a Semite and Pius IX didn't hate him at all, let alone for his ethnicity. Claíomh Solais (talk) 01:04, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

"strongly criticised for deliberately misquoting and cherrypicking of information". Could you please be specific and give sources so we can look at this? NPalgan2 (talk) 01:30, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

An entire book has been authored by Justus George Lawler on Kertzer's works, entitled Were the Popes Against the Jews? Tracking the Myths, Confronting the Ideologues. In particular, Kertzer has been caught out lying about Pius IX calling Jews "dogs", calling Jews "Synagogue of Satan" (which was actually used in a criticism of Freemasonry, not Jews) and even fabricated false information about Papal lack of willingness to help clear Menahem Mendel Beilis (who was falsely accused of ritual murder in Russia). All of these tidbits originate from Kertzer's starting point of partisan ultra-nationalism and desire to paint his target (the Catholic Church) in a negative light, to the exclusion of any other information which contradicts this bias. Claíomh Solais (talk) 01:41, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Mmm, on Wikipedia it's better to give page numbers (and better still, google books links) rather than just pointing to a 405 page book. I looked at the first point you raised, on p.82 https://books.google.com/books?id=jgwNtwtMnzsC&pg=PA82 Lawler discusses how on p.130 of The Pope against the Jews Kertzer quotes Pius as saying "We have today in Rome unfortunately too many of these dogs, and we hear them barking in all the streets, and going around molesting people everywhere." This is "lying" because Kertzer does not explicitly note that Pius was speaking in the context of Jesus's well-known words to the Canaanite woman - which presumably makes any dog-related insult O.K.? Hypothetically, would you be O.K. with being called a mangy cur by someone with different theological views? Do you have any suggestions for changes to the Mortara article? NPalgan2 (talk) 02:44, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Timing of payments

This article says:

He received a personal letter from the Pope to mark the occasion and a lifetime trust fund of 7,000 lire to support him.

Does this mean a one-time payment whose interest would support him as long as he lived, or 7000 lire annually, or what? If it's annual, it should say so. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:35, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Michael Hardy: I took a look at the source/reference and that wording is exactly what the book said "lifetime trust fund". That wording was footnoted within Kertzer's work as being from Edgardo's autobiographical notes written in 1878 and reprinted in an appendix to Gian Ludovico Massetti Zannini's 1959 article "Nuovi documenti sul 'caso mortara" [New documents in the Mortara case] in the magazine Rivista storica della Chiesa Italiana ("The History of the Church in Italy "). If the 7000 lire was an annual payment to be paid out every year of Edgardo's life I think the source material would have said so. So far as I can tell - using the very general conversions at https://www.historicalstatistics.org/Currencyconverter.html (of 1880 Italian lire to 2015 US dollars relative worth/purchasing power) - 7000 Italian lire in 1880 would have taken a worker about 3 years to earn, looking at how much gold could have been purchased in 1880 and comparing it to gold bought today that 7000 lire would be worth a little over $70000.00[US]. Shearonink (talk) 18:02, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

One source issues

The article relies almost exclusively on a single source. Other sources that should be used include:

• Mortara, Elèna (2015). Writing for Justice: Victor Sèjour, the Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, and the Age of Transatlantic Emancipations. Dartmouth College Press. ISBN 978-1-61168-791-0.
• Momigliano, Anna (24 January 2018). "Why Some Catholics Are Defending the Kidnapping of a Jewish Boy". The Atlantic. Retrieved 24 April 2020.
• "'First Things' Publishes Defense of Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, Controversy Ensues". Tablet Magazine. 17 January 2018. Retrieved 24 April 2020.
• Kertzer, David (9 April 2019). "The Enduring Controversy over the Mortara Case". Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations. 14 (1). doi:10.6017/scjr.v14i1.11000.
• Kertzer, David I. (15 April 2018). "The Doctored 'Memoir' of a Jewish Boy Kidnapped by the Vatican". The Atlantic. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
• Winfield, Nicole (20 April 2018). "Memoir of secretly baptized Jewish boy under new scrutiny". AP News. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
• Hess, Jonathan M. (3 March 2018). "The Mortara Case and the Literary Imagination: Jewish Melodrama and the Pleasures of Victimhood". Jewish Quarterly Review. 108 (1): 60–84. doi:10.1353/jqr.2018.0002. ISSN 1553-0604.
• Tapie, Matthew A. (2018). "Spiritualis Uterus: The Question of Forced Baptism and Thomas Aquinas's Defense of Jewish Parental Rights". Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law. 35 (1): 289–329. doi:10.1353/bmc.2018.0006.
• Tapie, Matthew (6 August 2019). "The Mortara Affair and the Question of Thomas Aquinas's Teaching Against Forced Baptism". Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations. 14 (1). ISSN 1930-3777.
• Verhoeven, Timothy (2010). "Catholicism, Slavery, and the Family—The Mortara Affair". Transatlantic Anti-Catholicism: France and the United States in the Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan US. pp. 57–73. ISBN 978-0-230-10912-4.

In addition, there should be a discussion of the recent controversy between Catholic integralists and more liberal or centrist types over the case. A lot of sources on that controversy can be listed in the notes for the first few pages of this paper.

So the article fails comprehensiveness and well-researched criteria and if not improved will need to be brought to FAR. buidhe 09:05, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

FA status is not helped by deviating from {{sfn}} reference style, and introducing unattributed POV and weasel-words in a new paragraph. Elizium23 (talk) 09:19, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

"The Mortara affair is shameful" is an opinion. "Many Catholics think that the Mortala affair is shameful" is either true or false, but either way it's not an opinion. There's no need for double attribution especially since the statement in the article is verifiable to multiple RS. As for the references, WP:SOFIXIT applies. buidhe 09:53, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Buidhe, either way it's a weasel phrase. Elizium23 (talk) 00:58, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

I'd like to know, exactly how many Catholics feel that way? Was a poll taken up? Exit survey at Mass one Sunday? Frankly, I'd like to know how many Catholics know Edgardo Mortara from Adam. If I asked 10 people in the pews next to me, I'd receive 9 or more quizzical looks and feelings of indifference. Outside of Italy, I doubt the memory of Mortara for rank-and-file Catholics is even on the radar. It's something brought up by Traditionalist and Liberal pundits as a wedge issue, nothing more. It's a statement not based in any actual fact, just Liberal rhetoric. Elizium23 (talk) 01:02, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

"50,000 Catholics think that the Mortara affair is shameful" is an assertion of fact. "Many Catholics think that the Mortara affair is shameful" has just shaded that fact with an opinion, the opinion that 50,000 is "many". Other suitably weasely terms could be "some", "a handful", "almost none", "almost all". Some of those would be more plausible than others, but they're all the author's opinion about the magnitiude of a sample size. And that doesn't begin to scratch the ugly little truth that nobody was sampled here, only Faggioli's fatuous opinion from his ivory tower. Elizium23 (talk) 01:07, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

When we write in Wikipedia's voice that "modern scholars agree that X" we need to cite a meta-source, one that has actually done the digging and surveyed modern scholars and affirmed that there is a consensus among them. There's no proof or even evidence that Faggioli's done this work. In fact he didn't even make the claim about "Catholics" he made it about "the Church" and I don't know if he intended to restrict that zeitgeist to the hierarchy of clergy only, or laity too, because that's what we think of when we refer to "Catholics..." in most contexts. Elizium23 (talk) 01:09, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

::::San Diego Law Review writes shameful. Reliable source. Very obvious kidnapping of six year old boy is shameful act.--KasiaNL (talk) 05:55, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

KasiaNL, I guarantee you that Catholics feel nothing about this case today. 99% of them have never heard of Mortara, let alone formed an opinion on it. Elizium23 (talk) 06:20, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

::::::So most are ignorant, OK, believe you. But of those who heard of this? You arguing they think it not shameful?--KasiaNL (talk) 06:40, 30 April 2020 (UTC) (banned sock puppet - [1]) GizzyCatBella🍁 19:46, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Page title

I propose page moved to Mortara kidnapping. More consistent with events, and sources: [2], [3], [4].--KasiaNL (talk) 07:57, 30 April 2020 (UTC) (banned sock puppet - [5]) GizzyCatBella🍁 19:44, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

• The current name comes across as euphemistic and the proposed name has the advantage of being more obvious in what the article is about. But I'm not convinced that it's the WP:COMMONNAME. Here are my google hits:
  • "Mortara case": 9,170 hits
  • "Mortara affair": 6,540
  • "Mortara kidnapping": 468
  • "Mortara abduction": 466
• There are other variants such as "kidnapping of Mortara" etc. but those don't get many hits. buidhe 08:05, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
• A google engrams search for "Mortara *_NOUN" yields this graph: no smoothing yes smoothing. GScholar has similar numbers for "mortara case" (352) and "mortara affair" (313); note that there is an overlap of 69 articles containing both terms. ("mortara kidnapping" yields 34 GScholar results, "mortara abduction" 25; many of these also refer to it as a "case" or "affair") Cheers, gnu57 13:02, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Napoleon III

I think the argument here that Napoleon III's Italian policy was determined by his/French outrage at the Mortara case is...overplayed here. The usual narrative is that the Orsini attempt in January 1858 provoked the shift, and by June 1858 Napoleon was well on his way to shifting his policy towards the Italian cause anyway. Could this be phrased in a more nuanced way? john k (talk) 01:06, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

link to other languages

Wikipedia claims this artical only availible in 6 other languages when in reality it`s in 21. The reason for this is that in 15 of them the name of the artical is Edgardo Mortara not Mortara case. גוי אחד בארץ (talk) 22:41, 3 June 2023 (UTC)