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Concept
Synod of Pistoia
Summary
The Synod of Pistoia was a 1786 diocesan synod in the Catholic diocese of Pistoia, then part of the territory of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. It was summoned by its bishop Scipione de' Ricci under the patronage and active support of the Habsburg-Lorraine Grand Duke Leopold. The synod adopted a series of decrees of Febronian or Gallican tendency, against the background of Enlightenment thinking. Leopold hoped the synod's resolutions would be taken up by a "national" council and increase state autocratic control over the Church in Tuscany. However, in 1787 the ensuing synod of bishops rejected the Pistoia decrees, and in 1794 Pope Pius VI condemned 85 of them, leading Ricci to recant.
On January 26, 1786 the Grand Duke issued a circular letter to the bishops of Tuscany, suggesting certain "reforms", especially in the matter of the revival of the holding of diocesan synods, the purging of the missals and breviaries of legends, the assertion of episcopal as against papal authority, the curtailing of the privileges of the monastic orders, and improved education for the clergy.
In spite of the hostile attitude of the great majority of the Tuscan bishops, on July 31, 1786 Bishop de Ricci issued a summons to a diocesan synod, which was solemnly opened on the September 18. In convoking the synod, he invoked the authority of Pius VI, who had previously recommended a synod as the normal means of diocesan renewal. It was attended by 233 beneficed secular priests and 13 regulars and decided with practical unanimity on a series of decrees which, had it been possible to carry them into effect, would have involved drastic changes in the Tuscan Church on the lines advocated by Febronius.
The first decree (Decretum de fide et ecclesia) declared that the Catholic Church had no right to introduce new dogmas, but only to preserve in its original purity the faith once delivered by Christ to His apostles, and was infallible only so far as it conforms to Holy Scripture and true tradition; the Church, moreover was a purely spiritual body and had no authority in things secular.
Official source
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