PISTOIA, SYNOD OF, a diocesan synod held in 1786 under the presidency of Scipione de' Ricci (1741-1810), bishop of Pistoia, and the patronage of Leopold, grand-duke of Tuscany, with a view to preparing the ground for a national council and a reform of the Tuscan Church. The synod was attended by 233 beneficed secular and 13 regular priests, and decided with prac tical unanimity on a series of decrees which, had it been pos sible to carry them into effect, would have involved a drastic re form of the Church on the lines advocated by "Febronius" (see FEBRONIANISM). The decrees were issued with a pastoral letter of Bishop de' Ricci (see SACRED HEART), and were warmly approved by the grand-duke, at whose instance a national synod of the Tuscan bishops met at Florence on the 23rd of April 1787. The temper of this assembly was, however, wholly different. The bishops refused to allow a voice to any not of their own order, and in the end the decrees of Pistoia were supported by a min ority of only three. They were finally condemned at Rome by
the bull Auctorem fidei of the 28th of August 1794• BIBLIOGRAPHY.-De' Ricci's own memoirs, Memorie di Scipione de' Ricci, vescovo di Prato e Pistoia, edited by Antonio Galli, were published at Florence in 2 vols. in i865. Besides this his letters to Antonio Marini were published by Cesare Guasti at Prato in 1857; these were promptly put on the Index. See also De Potter, Vie de Scipion de' Ricci (3 vols., Brussels, 1825), based on a ms. life and a ms. account of the synod placed on the Index in 1823. There are many documents in Zobi, Stories civile della Toscana, vols. ii. and (Florence, 1856). The acts of the synod of Pistoia were published in Italian and Latin at Pavia in 1788.