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Arrolandosi sotto le insegne di Gesù Cristo col prender l’acqua del santo battesimo nell’insigne cattedrale di Vicenza, il signor Marco Mortera ebreo che prende il nome di Arnaldo Niccolò Tornievo, sonetto presentato al nobile D. Bartolommeo Callini degli Olivetani, lettore di sacra teologia e zelantissimo catechista del neofito.

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A seemingly unrecorded sonnet celebrating the conversion from Judaism to Catholicism of one Marco Mortera of Vicenza, written by his catechist, the Olivetan monk and lecturer in theology Bartolommeo Callini.

Mortera, who in renouncing Judaism took the Christian name of Arnaldo Niccolò Tornievo, was led through his process of conversion and catechised by Callini before being baptised at Vicenza cathedral. Jewish conversions to Catholicism were not uncommon, although often the result of coercion or pressure by the surrounding Christian community, but any non-official or secular documents recording them are very rare.

We have been unable to locate another copy of this broadsheet, nor any further information about Mortera or Callini, although the former was perhaps a relative of the Rabbi Marco Mortara, doctor of Jewish theology and alumnus of the Rabbinical Institute of Padova, whose Dell’autenticità del Pentateuco was published there in 1843.

We find a copy of another poem, by Count Giacomo Tornieri, on the occasion of Mortera’s conversion (Al reverendissimo Monsignor Canonico Co. Giuseppe Squarzi nel solenne battesimo del Signor Marco Mortera ebreo), likewise published in Vicenza by Paroni in the same year, extant in a single copy, at the Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana in Vicenza.

We find no copies of the present work on OCLC, Library Hub, or ICCU.

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