Abstract

In 1928 a bitter controversy broke out between Arthur Day, an English Jesuit vicepresident of the Catholic Guild of Israel and author of many publications on the conversion of Jews, and the prominent English Jewish historian Cecil Roth. Their battle over forced baptisms and in particular over the famous 1858 affair of Edgardo Mortara, not too distant since at the time of the controversy Mortara was still alive, became public because it was entirely reported in the pages of "The Jewish Guardian". If one traces the polemical exchange between the Jesuit and the historian, it becomes clear how much the Mortara affair was not only still current and alive, but above all how much it affected the Jewish-Christian dialogue with its consequences. It also sheds light on the phenomenon, which was widespread at the time, of Christian Associations dedicated to prayer for the conversion of Jews, revealing above all their ambiguity: born “in favour of the Jewsµ, in reality they concealed conversionist obsession, underlying anti-Semitism and defence of the violent methods of the past. The Day-Roth controversy testifies how burning the subject of conversions, forced or not, was and how much its religious and juridical legitimisation by the Jesuit opened a gulf with Judaism that was difficult to bridge.