Marco Mortara was born in Viadana on May 7th 1815. He attended high school in Mantua and then entered the boarding school of the Rabbinic College of Padua. After obtaining his degree in 1836, he began his office in Mantua. Born in the year of the Restoration, he enthusiastically welcomed the adhesion of Mantua to the Kingdom of Italy, which occurred following the third war of independence and celebrated with a solemn ceremony in the main temple, composing for the occasion a liturgical poem entitled “Hymn to God” for Vittorio Emanuele. The essential element of Mortara's thinking was that the emancipation acknowledged to Jews in the Kingdom of Italy involved a transition of Judaism from the original national-religious connotation to an exclusively religious one, with the consequent ability to integrate into Italian national life.
