While the title of Kenneth Stow’s book, Anna and Tranquillo (Yale University Press), may sound like the name of an Italian opera, it is actually the story of the Papal State’s 300-year effort to forcibly convert the Jews of Rome to Catholicism. The officially sanctioned campaign included kidnapping youngsters, harsh incarceration, and mind manipulation.
The book centers on the case of Anna del Monte. On May 6, 1749, Vatican police arrested the 17-year-old Jewish girl at her family home in Rome’s Jewish ghetto. She was placed in solitary confinement for 13 days inside the dreaded Casa dei Catecumeni, the House of Converts.
Anna was forced to listen to hours and hours of conversionary sermons, a tactic priests, including Cardinals, employed to compel physically and psychologically battered prisoners to affirm “the one true faith” at the baptismal fount.
The book centers on the case of Anna del Monte. On May 6, 1749, Vatican police arrested the 17-year-old Jewish girl at her family home in Rome’s Jewish ghetto. She was placed in solitary confinement for 13 days inside the dreaded Casa dei Catecumeni, the House of Converts.
Anna was forced to listen to hours and hours of conversionary sermons, a tactic priests, including Cardinals, employed to compel physically and psychologically battered prisoners to affirm “the one true faith” at the baptismal fount.
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