A five-year-old Jewish girl in Ferrara is…

A five-year-old Jewish girl in Ferrara is forcibly taken from her family, with church approval, on the grounds that her Christian nurse had privately baptized her as an infant. The Jewish community here sends a delegation to Rome to plead for the girls' return, but no action is taken.

Ferrara's Jews, now fearful of their servants' actions, begin to require them, upon leaving service, to sign with an "X" a document stating that they had never baptized a child of the family. This innovation soon spreads to other ghettos in the Papal States.