SYNOD of PISTOIA (1786). [Texts cited in condemnation, Auctorem Fidei] The synod met under the presidency of Scipione de’ Ricci, Bishop of Pistoia-Prato, to give support to the policy of Leopold I, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1765–90), who was strongly in favour of a reform of the Church along the lines pursued by Gallicanism in France and Josephinism in Austria-Hungary.

Not unnaturally the proposals aroused popular opposition as well as official displeasure. In 1791 Ricci resigned his see; but on the issue of the bull ‘Auctorem Fidei’, condemning 85 of the Pistoian articles, he recanted.

The acts of the synod were pub. in 1786 in Lat. and Ital. at Florence, and in Fr. at Pistoia; 2nd edn. of the Lat. and Ital., Florence, 1788, and of the Fr., Pistoia and Paris, 1789. The 1788 edn. is repr., with introd. and other docs., ed. P. Stella (2 vols., Florence, 1986). Mansi (cont. by J. B. Martin and L. Petit, AA), 38 (Paris, 1907), cols. 989–1282. Much primary information in de’ Ricci’s Memorie and in his letters. M. Rosa, ‘Italian Jansenism and the Synod of Pistoia’, Concilium, 2, pt. 7 (Sept. 1966), pp. 19–26, with refs. C. Lamioni (ed.), Il Sinodo di Pistoia del 1786: Atti del Convegno internazionale per il secondo centenario Pistoia Prato, 25–27 settembre 1986 (Rome, 1991). In Eng., C. A. Bolton, Church Reform in 18th Century Italy (The Synod of Pistoia, 1786) (Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées, 29; The Hague, 1969), esp. pp. 55–114. J. Carreyre in DTC 12 (pt. 2; 1935), cols. 2134–230, s.v. ‘Pistoie (Synode de)’; B. Matteucci and M. Gres-Gayer in NCE (2nd edn.), 11 (2003), pp. 362–5, s.v

Emperor Joseph’s brother Leopold was Grand Duke of Tuscany, and he too aspired to dominate the Church in his own territories. His theological adviser was Scipio de Ricci, whom he made bishop of Pistoia and Prato in 1780. Ricci was earnest and devout. He was the great-nephew of the Jesuit General unjustly imprisoned by Clement XIV, and so he did not love ^[p.197] the popes.Yet, though he had been educated by them, he also detested the Jesuits, for he was a Jansenist, in touch with excommunicated Jansenists in France and Holland, disapproving much that was most characteristic of Baroque Catholicism, determined to reform it. He was an extremist, a man with poor judgment and no antennae for popular religious feeling. His dining-room was decorated with a painting of the Emperor Joseph II ripping up a pious picture of the Sacred Heart. Ricci liked to talk of Rome as Babylon, the rule of Pope and Curia as outmoded tyranny.

In September 1786 Ricci held a DIOCESAN SYNOD at PISTOIA, to an agenda supplied by Leopold, and with many of its decrees drafted in advance by a radical Jansenist professor from the Imperial University at Pavia, Pietro Tamburini. The acts of the Synod denounced

the cult of the Sacred Heart,

the Stations of the Cross,

the abuse of indulgences

and excessive Marian devotion.

They recommended that statues be replaced in churches by paintings of biblical scenes,

and they ordered tighter control of the cult of relics.

Ricci wanted Mass in Italian, and many of the clergy agreed.The Synod thought this would be too far too fast, but ordered that the silent parts of the Mass, especially the central consecration prayer, the ‘canon’, should be recited in a loud clear voice, and that Italian translations of the missal should be provided for the laity to read. The people were to be encouraged to receive communion at every Mass.

Bible reading was to be encouraged for all,

feast days reduced,

a new breviary produced which was purged of legendary material and with more scripture.

All monasteries were placed under the direct jurisdiction of the local bishop, regardless of any papal privileges or exemptions,

and all the religious orders were to be merged into one.

Monasteries for men (maximum of one per town) should be outside the city, convents for women inside.

Permanent vows were to be abolished for men, who would instead take vows for only one year at a time.

Women might take permanent vows when past the age of childbearing.

The Synod adopted the anti-papal teaching of the Four Gallican Articles.

Ricci received strong support from the clergy at the Synod, but the laity were outraged at the attack on ancient pieties. Reformed service-books were torn up, crowds rallied defiantly in defence of banished images.

When rumours spread in May 1787 that he was about to destroy the relic of the Girdle of the Blessed Virgin venerated in the cathedral at Prato, rioting broke out, the Bishop’s chair was dragged into the piazza and burned, and his palace looted. ‘Superstitious’ statues which he had removed were brought in triumph out of cellars, and crowds knelt all night in a blaze of candle-light before the condemned altar of the Girdle. Duke Leopold had to send in the troops.

The Prato riots shattered hopes for an anti-papal reform in Tuscany. News of the disturbances reached Leopold and Ricci during a national synod of the Tuscan bishops which they had hoped would adopt the Pistoia reforms for the whole region. Many of the bishops had been worried at the anti-papal tone of many of the measures, considered that radical changes in worship were outside the authority of individual bishops, and were unwilling to deny the Pope’s prerogatives or to recommend condemned Jansenist works to priests and people. The riots confirmed their fears and frightened even the few radicals into caution. When Leopold succeeded to the Austrian throne in 1790 and left Tuscany, the reform movement collapsed. The Pistoian reforms and their doctrinal basis were solemnly condemned by the Pope in the Constitution Auctorem Fidel in 1794.

The Tuscan reform movement was inspired by theology. Many of its objectives, however pugnaciously and divisively asserted, were pastorally desirable, and would be realised two centuries later at the Second Vatican Council.

Elsewhere in Italy anti-papalism took cruder forms. From the mid-1770s the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had

discontinued its traditional feudal payments to the papacy,

and the government in Naples began to close down contacts with Rome, and with the international heads of the religious orders.

The Inquisition was suppressed,

the bishops were forbidden to use the sanction of excommunication,

and from 1784 all direct contact with the Pope was forbidden on pain of banishment.

Papal communications were made subject to state approval,

and the crown asserted its right to appoint to all bishoprics.

Nobody could plausibly present these measures, which the bishops disliked but dared not resist, as being for the good of the Church. The Pope responded by refusing to institute any of the bishops nominated by the crown. By 1787 forty bishoprics were vacant, but the papacy was powerless in the face of government determination. In 1792, with almost half the sees in southern Italy vacant, the papacy caved in and instituted all the nominated bishops, leaving the Neapolitan crown triumphant.

Pistoia, Synod of (1786). The synod met under the presidency of Scipione de’ Ricci, Bp. of Pistoia-Prato, to give support to the policy of Leopold I, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1765–90), who was strongly in favour of a reform of the Church along the lines pursued by Gallicanism in France and Josephinism in Austria-Hungary. The synod adopted the Four Gallican Articles of 1682, based the authority of the Church upon the consent of the body as a whole, and that of bishops upon the assent of their clergy in synod, and held that the jurisdiction of a diocesan bishop is independent of the Pope. It exalted the civil power, and also decreed alterations in religious practice, requiring that there should be one altar only in each church, and one Mass only each Sunday; it also condemned the use of Latin in services, and the cult of the Sacred Heart. Not unnaturally the proposals aroused popular opposition as well as official displeasure. In 1791 Ricci resigned his see; but on the issue of the bull ‘Auctorem Fidei’, condemning 85 of the Pistoian articles, he recanted.

The acts of the synod were pub. in 1786 in Lat. and Ital. at Florence, and in Fr. at Pistoia; 2nd edn. of the Lat. and Ital., Florence, 1788, and of the Fr., Pistoia and Paris, 1789. The 1788 edn. is repr., with introd. and other docs., ed. P. Stella (2 vols., Florence, 1986). Mansi (cont. by J. B. Martin and L. Petit, AA), 38 (Paris, 1907), cols. 989–1282. Much primary information in de’ Ricci’s Memorie and in his letters. M. Rosa, ‘Italian Jansenism and the Synod of Pistoia’, Concilium, 2, pt. 7 (Sept. 1966), pp. 19–26, with refs. C. Lamioni (ed.), Il Sinodo di Pistoia del 1786: Atti del Convegno internazionale per il secondo centenario Pistoia Prato, 25–27 settembre 1986 (Rome, 1991). In Eng., C. A. Bolton, Church Reform in 18th Century Italy (The Synod of Pistoia, 1786) (Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées, 29; The Hague, 1969), esp. pp. 55–114. J. Carreyre in DTC 12 (pt. 2; 1935), cols. 2134–230, s.v. ‘Pistoie (Synode de)’; B. Matteucci and M. Gres-Gayer in NCE (2nd edn.), 11 (2003), pp. 362–5, s.v. See also bibl. to ricci, s. de’ and auctorem fidei; also works on pius vi.^[1]

This Webpage was created for a workshop held at Saint Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo, California in 2002....x....  ’ “”.