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Vicini put it in his 154-page analysis of the case, the central issue was “whether the baptism of a member of a Jewish family dissolves the ties of kin and of blood that he has with the members of his family who remain Jews.” Vicini’s opinion was that they did not, and that consequently the Jewish brothers should be allowed to inherit. 12
    Bologna’s legal profession, or at least that part of it identified with the government, was scandalized by Vicini’s claims. The city’s most distinguished expert in civil law, Vincenzo Berni degli Antonj, a professor at the University of Bologna, prepared a denunciatory reply, published that same year. Following the time-honored Church credo on the Jews, he denied, first of all, that Jews had any rights of citizenship. He dismissed Judaism as a vicious religion,and Jews as a people condemned by God to wander homeless across the land, an object of scorn among God-fearing peoples.
    The professor went on to enunciate the following basic legal principles:
     
That Jews in the Papal States are simply slaves to be tolerated.
That they have no right to share along with Christians in the intestate inheritance of a Christian relative.
That the Jews themselves, in order to fulfill the nefarious requirements set down by a religion marked by an implacable hatred of Christians, are called upon to treat them with all manner of trickery, of treachery, and of torture, and to work tirelessly to reduce Christians to perpetual slavery.
That the restrictions under which Christians permit Jews residence are entirely necessary in order to avoid the deadly effects of their religion. 13
    The Inquisition in Bologna, only recently back in business at the Dominican monastery after being abolished during the period of French occupation, took a dim view of Vicini’s heresy. Both he and the printer who published his defense of the Jews were found guilty and condemned to spend eight days confined in a convent to reflect on their sin. 14 Three years after this sentence, Vicini had the satisfaction—albeit short-lived—of pronouncing the end of papal rule in Bologna.
    The Austrian soldiers who retook Bologna remained in the city for another half-dozen years to ensure that there would be no further challenge to the rule of the Cardinal Legate. But barely a decade after their departure, Bologna once again rose in revolt, this time along with much of the rest of the peninsula.
    The Italian revolts of 1848–49 followed insurrections elsewhere in Europe in that fateful year. In February, an uprising in Paris spawned a new Republic; the next month a revolution in Berlin led to the granting of a constitution and the installation of a liberal government in Prussia. Most important of all for Italy—most of which came under Austrian influence in one way or another—a revolt in Vienna in March brought about the fall of the redoubtable Prince Metternich and the formation of a liberal government there as well.
    In Italy itself, the Sicilians were in revolt for their freedom from the inept Bourbon rulers of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. When the revolt spread to the capital, Naples, King Ferdinando II was forced to grant a constitution, and his example was followed by the other rulers on the peninsula, unnerved by the prospect of popular revolt: Carl Albert, King of Sardinia, with his capital in Turin; Leopold II of Tuscany; and the Pope himself, Pius IX, who had ascended St. Peter’s throne just two years before.
    The Viennese uprising in March prompted a revolt against Austrianrule in Milan, center of the Austrian territory of Lombardy-Veneto, which stretched across the northeast of what would become the new Italian state. Those who dreamed of a unified Italy, free of foreign tyrants, called on the Savoyard king of Sardinia to help them throw out the Austrians and their lackeys. The creation of an Italian nation ruled only by Italians seemed to be within reach. In Milan, people threw up barricades and began to