What has Pistoia to do with Rome? Why would those opposed to the Second Vatican Council or those who are skeptical about Pope Francis’ program of synodality evoke a diocesan synod held in a small Tuscan city almost 240 years ago? Needless to say, the Synod of Pistoia is not a household name—even among the most devout or historically inclined Catholics. As the author of only the second book in English on this obscure gathering, I am surprised but intrigued at how often references to this synod of 1786 have been popping up recently. I am used to intellectually curious folks—Catholic or otherwise—asking me about my study of Jansenism. But I am not, to put it mildly, used to people bringing up the Synod of Pistoia.
And yet, this renegade Jansenist synod has once again become relevant to Catholic discourse. The ghost of Pistoia is by now quite experienced at haunting Catholic memories. It managed to be an inspiration for radical reformers and a bugbear for conservatives through the Italian Risorgimento and during the proceedings of the First and Second Vatican Councils. The last 50 years have produced a number of in-depth studies of the synod by European scholars, especially Italians, and the English-speaking world is beginning to take more notice. On a number of occasions, for example, John McGreevy notes the importance of the Synod of Pistoia in his masterful new global history of the church.
The ghost of Pistoia is by now quite experienced at haunting Catholic memories.
But what concerns me here is renewed interest in the synod in ecclesial circles, and how the memory of Pistoia is once again being put to polemical and ideological use. Some of these evocations can be found in fairly mainstream outlets like the EWTN-owned National Catholic Register or the Catholic Herald in the United Kingdom. More significant, however, is the recent interest in the Synod of Pistoia by traditionalist leaders like Bishop Athanasius Schneider and Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, anti-Francis prelates who function as lodestars for many Catholics.
What is the historical context of the Synod of Pistoia? What happened there in September 1786? And why is the memory of this synod being evoked today?
What happened at the Synod of Pistoia
Italy, and the Catholic Church as a whole, for that matter, were radically different in the late 1700s from today. The peninsula was not one nation, but a complex patchwork of states; the pope reigned as temporal sovereign of one of the largest and most important of these states. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany, with its capital in Florence, was ruled by Peter Leopold (1747–92), the younger brother of Joseph II of the House of Habsburg (1740–90), who reigned in Vienna as Holy Roman Emperor (their younger sister was Marie Antoinette). The energetic and intelligent Peter Leopold had inherited Tuscany at the age of 18. By his early 30s, the pieces were in place to launch an ambitious reform agenda. The grand duke’s plan included not just the radical reform of the church, but improvements to the economy, the state and society as a whole. In 1780, Peter Leopold managed to get a passionate and well-connected man named Scipione de’ Ricci (1741–1810) appointed bishop of the combined diocese of Pistoia and Prato. Ricci became the chief lieutenant of the grand duke on all church matters—a good choice, if one’s goal was radical reform.
Scipione de’ Ricci came from an old and wealthy family, and his mother hailed from an even wealthier one (the Ricasolis). His great-uncle Lorenzo Ricci was the superior general of the Society of Jesus when Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Jesuits in 1773. (Lorenzo died in a papal prison two years later.) Ironically, given his Jesuit connections, Scipione de’ Ricci was an ardent Jansenist. (In France and elsewhere, Jesuits and Jansenists were ardent foes.) He had picked up this extreme Augustinianism as a teenager in Rome, where he sat at the feet of a group of intellectuals and priests who exposed him to Jansenist books and ideas.
These “Roman Jansenists” were protected by powerful cardinals and employed their connections and influence in support of Italians devoted to the thought of St. Augustine.
These “Roman Jansenists” were protected by powerful cardinals and employed their connections and influence in support of Italians devoted to the thought of St. Augustine. They imported and translated French Jansenist books and they backed the church of Utrecht in the Netherlands, a Jansenist hotbed that held a controversial synod in 1763. The enemies of this Roman Jansenist school were, of course, the Jesuits. Recent popes were blamed for allowing alleged Jesuit errors on divine grace (Molinism) and morality (lax casuistry) to spread—think Blaise Pascal’s marvelously searing satires,the Provincial Letters.
By the time Scipione de’ Ricci was appointed bishop back in his native Tuscany, he had powerful friends around Catholic Europe who shared his reform agenda—from German prince-bishops to French theologians to statesmen in Bourbon Spain and Naples. Jansenism had somehow survived over a century of persecution by the papacy and the French Crown, and was even enjoying something of a renaissance, spreading around Europe and eventually reaching South America and even the Middle East. The power of the papacy was at a low ebb, and the Catholic princes, especially the Bourbons and the Habsburgs, were flexing their muscles.
What crystallized was a phenomenon that historians call “Reform Catholicism.” With the Jesuits out of the picture because they had been suppressed, Reform Catholics targeted ultramontanism as the chief enemy. (Ultramontanism, in this period, was a pope-centered view of the Catholic faith that had political, devotional and theological components.)
A test run for synodal reform
After six years of aggressive reforms by the grand duke and Bishop Ricci, they convened a diocesan synod in Pistoia for Sept. 18–28, 1786. Around 250 priests reported to the Church of San Benedetto. Ricci presided, with the collaboration of Pietro Tamburini, the most prominent Italian Jansenist theologian and a professor at the University of Pavia in Lombardy (also Habsburg territory). This small synod was intended as a test run for a grandiose project of synodal reform. The hope was that every Tuscan diocese would soon emulate Pistoia’s example, eventually followed by “all the churches” (the entire Catholic world). Ricci received some pushback from some of his priests, but recent research has shown that many of them were at least somewhat supportive of the Jansenist agenda. The bishop also had a small handpicked team of sympathetic theologians. Though exclusively Italian in composition, the synod was by no means parochial in importance; the Pistoians’ many supporters and enemies around Europe were watching closely.
The proceedings opened with a fiery speech from a Pistoian priest named Guglielmo Bartoli. This passionate address laid out a Jansenist view of history, trying to explain why the church was in such a predicament. Bartoli painted a bleak picture. The state of the laity was, by and large, very poor. They knew and cared more about their favorite saints or Marian devotions than about Jesus; they chased after apparitions and indulgences. The common people were largely ignorant of the Bible and the true spirit of the liturgy. But the greater fault lay with the clergy. Zealous apostolic leadership had devolved into pompous, corrupt prelates, power-hungry and excessively political popes, and superstitious and lazy friars. In addition to skewering the Society of Jesus (despite having been suppressed for over a decade, the Jesuits couldn’t catch a break!), this narrative of church history saw ultramontanism as the root of the problem.
Jansenists and many other “Reform Catholics” believed that the papacy, full of spiritual hubris and grasping at earthly power, had usurped the original constitution of the church. Popes who had made (usually unrealized) claims to absolutist authority like Gregory VII (pope from 1073 to 1085) and Boniface VIII (1294–1303) were the chief culprits. On the other hand, the church in France, with its “Gallican” or conciliar form of church governance, had courageously preserved the original biblical and patristic model of the “Christian republic.”
Jansenists and many other “Reform Catholics” believed that the papacy, full of spiritual hubris and grasping at earthly power, had usurped the original constitution of the church.
Since bishops received their authority directly from Christ and not through the pope, instantiating this synodal model was the right and duty of every local church (that is, every diocese). While the papacy had been instituted by Jesus, Christ had intended the office as one of servant leadership, not dominion and monarchy. Thus, the pope should intervene in other dioceses only in an emergency, and he must always proceed by established custom and according to canon law. His teaching was not infallible unless “the consent of the church” was present, proving that a papal articulation of doctrine was universally held. The papacy’s exchange of the keys of a humble fisherman for the tiara of an emperor had been a grievous sin and had directly led to such evils as the crusades, the Inquisition and the Reformation.
With this highly theological narrative of history as a foundation, the Synod of Pistoia set out to right these perceived wrongs and call the church back to her “original splendor.” Approving of the mostly pre-prepared texts by overwhelming votes, over the next 10 days the synod fathers promulgated a slew of theological teachings and disciplinary reforms. The Pistoian decrees favored vernacular liturgy and the reading of the Bible and the Missal in Italian. Mass was “an action common to the priest and the people,” who were called to active participation. All people, even “enemies,” “heretics” and “infidels” have a right to participate in public worship: “There is no one who can be excluded from it, because no one can be excluded from love, which is the soul of every Prayer.” The violent coercion of “heretics” was an unhappy innovation and incompatible with the gospel (the grand duke had recently expelled the Inquisition). “The heart is not reformed by prison and fire,” argued the Pistoians.
The person and work of Jesus Christ was the life-giving center of all Catholic life. Christocentric reflections on prayer yielded some beautiful passages: “to pray in the name of Jesus Christ is, properly speaking, nothing other than relying solely on His love and on His merits, recognizing from Him the spirit that groans and prays in us, asking everything according to His will.” Bishops should remember their “original rights” as successors of the apostles. They were not branch managers of the head office in Rome, but properly judges of doctrine in their own right. Protestants were referred to as “brethren led astray” (fratelli traviati) and “separated brethren” (fratelli separati)—shocking language for the 18th century. This positive agenda will surely sound curiously familiar to any fan (or opponent) of the reforms of Vatican II.
On a number of matters, the Synod of Pistoia strikingly anticipated Vatican II: religious liberty, liturgical reform, the promotion of Bible reading.
But this was only part of the picture. The Pistoians antagonized the pope by flagrantly and directly challenging him. They persecuted the religious orders, setting draconian new regulations and trying to amalgamate them all into one super-order governed on Benedictine lines. They recommended that people read books repeatedly censured by the pope and the French crown. While seeking the intercession of Mary and the saints was commended, the synod de-emphasized or even banned any devotion, image or title they felt obscured the centrality of Christ. Though admirably intended, this went too far and confused and alienated the people of Pistoia and Prato, whose cherished traditions and forms of devotions were changed overnight.
To modern, post conciliar eyes, this agenda appears as a heterogeneous mix of the boldly progressive and the extremely conservative. On a number of matters, the Synod of Pistoia strikingly anticipated Vatican II: religious liberty, liturgical reform (including use of the vernacular), the promotion of Bible reading, an incipient ecumenical sense, the role of the laity, and the office of bishop. On many other questions, however, modern Catholicism has completely left behind the perspectives of these staunch Jansenists; for example, concerning strict Augustinian predestination, rigorous penitential practice, suppression and amalgamation of religious orders, and a lopsidedly negative view of non-Christian religions.
Taken together, the Synod of Pistoia advanced the most startling Catholic challenge to the ecclesial status quo between the Council of Trent (1545–63) and the French Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790). By the time Pope Pius VI felt confident enough to solemnly condemn the Synod in the 1794 bull “Auctorem fidei,” the world had been dramatically altered by the French Revolution. On the local level, Ricci’s reforms had literally gone up in flames—his books and decrees were tossed on a bonfire by an angry mob in front of the Prato Cathedral, along with his episcopal chair.
The legacy of a renegade synod
The story of the reception of the Synod of Pistoia and the multifarious evocations of its memory is fascinating and has been explored in detail by historians. I sketched the outlines of this history in my bookThe Synod of Pistoia and Vatican II. Suffice it to say that “Auctorem fidei,” the papal bull condemning the synod, came to function as a kind of ideological Swiss army knife, employed by popes and ultramontane apologists to combat all manner of “errors,” be they doctrinal, disciplinary or even political. The bull was invoked, for example, by Gregory XVI against anti-ultramontane Lebanese Catholics, German liberals and Bible societies; by Pius IX against a wayward Peruvian politician (seven of the Syllabus of Errors’censures cite this condemnation); by Leo XIII against “Americanism”; by Pius X against “Modernism”; and by Pius XII against liturgical reform that degenerated into “senseless antiquarianism.”
But at Vatican II a shift occurred. The church moved away from a defensive “chain of errors” narrative of church history, in which episodes like the Synod of Pistoia and documents like “Auctorem fidei” figured so prominently. This shift was at times subtle and at times more explicit. But such a shift was inevitable in light of the council and the papacy’s embrace of ressourcement theology in general and ecumenism in particular.
The papal bull condemning the Synod of Pistoia came to function as a kind of ideological Swiss army knife, employed by popes to combat all manner of “errors.”
Certainly not all Catholics followed this new path. Traditionalist leaders, angry about Vatican II ecclesiology and promotion of religious liberty but most visibly about the liturgical reform,have always pointed out the similarities between Vatican II and the Synod of Pistoia. They have preached loudly and with great conviction, but usually to a small choir. The followers of Society of St. Pius X or of the cottage industry of liturgical polemicist might have heard reference to the Synod of Pistoia as the source of the theological “time bombs” in Vatican II or as the dress rehearsal for the post-conciliar liturgical carnage. However, anything beyond surface-level knowledge of the Pistoian synod was generally reserved to specialists in liturgical scholarship and to historians of Jansenism or early modern Catholicism.
During the pontificate of Francis, however, references to the Synod of Pistoia have reached much larger audiences. Some of these references have come from Catholics who oppose or have concerns about Pope Francis’ program of synodality, without any negative reference to Vatican II. For example, in an article on synodality published by the Catholic News Agency in 2018, the theologian Jessica Murdoch of Villanova University called the Pistoian synod “perhaps the most egregious example” of synodality gone wrong. The reporter, Ed Condon, commented: “The Pistoian synod was, Murdoch explained, a clear historical warning about what can happen when bishops wrongly apply the concept of synodality and overstep their true authority.”
In a story published one day later at the National Catholic Register, the veteran Vatican commentator Edward Pentin reiterated this warning. He also used Pistoia as the go-to inhouse Catholic example of a vision of synodality that drives the “perception of synods being geared towards undermining Catholic doctrine and morals.” Pentin cited critics who believe Pope Francis is “using synodality” to both “liberalize” and “Protestantize” the Catholic Church.
Some of these critics have been willing to go much further, and imply that Pope Francis is a heretic. For example, the English priest Alexander Lucie-Smith penned a curious article, purportedly on the Synod of Pistoia, titled “The Synod Dominated by Heretics and Eccentrics with Bad Ideas” (Catholic Herald, 5/29/17). Father Lucie-Smith removed any doubt that he had Pope Francis and not just the Synod on the Family (October 2015) in mind when he tweeted out his article with the comment: “As Pistoia is, so Amoris [Laetitia] will be.” One hopes we are meant to place the pope under the heading of “eccentric” rather than “heretic”—though that might be an excessively generous reading.
Critics of Pope Francis are following a well-worn rhetorical and polemical path, a trail blazed primarily by popes and papal apologists from 1794 to 1958.
The Synod on the Amazon also drew evocations of Pistoia from critics. In October 2019, Edward Pentin published an essay on his blog titled “Pan Amazon or Pistoia Synod?” The author, the traditionalist Chilean scholar José Antonio Ureta, concluded that the synodality proposed by the Amazon Synod’s final document “can only be theologically founded on the [ecclesiological] doctrine formulated by the so-called Synod of Pistoia” and condemned in Article Three of “Auctorem fidei.” Ureta, a member of the reactionary Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira Institute, oddly linked Pistoian ecclesiology to the liberation theology of Leonardo Boff.
It is no wonder the old ghost of Pistoia would be re-awakened in such moments of tension in the church. By evoking the memory of these internal Jansenist rebels, one can also simultaneously evoke the dangers posed by Protestantism and liberalism (or modernism) for the church. In this sense, such critics of Pope Francis are following a well-worn rhetorical and polemical path, a trail blazed primarily by popes and papal apologists from 1794 to 1958. This is a rather ironic state of affairs, since it is now a pope who is in the crosshairs.
Two prelates with huge audiences
The most interesting and certainly the most significant evocations of the Synod of Pistoia in intra-Catholic discourse have come from two disgruntled prelates with huge audiences: Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former apostolic nuncio to the United States, and the roving Bishop Athanasius Schneider. Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan, is one of the most outspoken critics of Pope Francis and his project of synodality. A popular author and preacher, he is well known and well traveled in traditionalist Catholic circles in the United States and globally. While not as absolute in his rhetoric against Vatican II, Schneider sees a deep rot in contemporary Catholicism. This rot, he explains, is due not just to faulty receptions of Vatican II. It can be traced in some way to the text and the event itself.
Bishop Schneider’s talking points are in line with a classic narrative of church history that focuses on decline, tracing a “chain of errors” that started with Protestantism, continued through Jansenism and the Enlightenment, and culminated in secular liberal modernity outside the church and the virus of “Modernism” within it. While Schneider stops short of some of the more extreme claims made by Viganò, he does blame Vatican II for lowering the drawbridge of the fortress of the church. Pope Francis’ “mess”—synodality in particular—are but the logical consequences of a long chain of errors that include Catholic blunders like Pistoia and, to a lesser extent, Vatican II.
After Archbishop Viganò broke bad, a number of old traditionalist talking points began to reach a much wider Catholic audience.
Schneider’s language is explicitly political: “rather than a monarchical hierarchy established by Our Lord Jesus Christ,” Francis’ synodality resembles “a democratic or egalitarian parliament.” Schneider’s comments are helpful insofar as he puts his finger on the real issue, which is divergent ecclesiologies. This is the central problem or tension afflicting contemporary Catholicism: not questions of gender and sexuality, pastoral practice, modern technology, or even evangelization, pivotal as those are.
What fascinates me as a historical theologian is the use that Bishop Schneider makes of the Synod of Pistoia in support of his narrative about past and present woes. Recently, on EWTN’s “The World Over,” with Raymond Arroyo (10/20/22), Schneider brought them all together: Vatican II and the modern papacy, Francis and synodality, and the pivotal place of the Synod of Pistoia in the chain of errors narrative. Commenting on the upcoming Synod on Synodality, Schneider said:
And we had another fake Synod attempt in the 18th century, the so-called Synod of Pistoia, in Italy, where the Bishop of Pistoia, and the clergy, attempted to change the doctrine of the church, and the discipline of the church, the liturgy, in a Protestant-styled manner. And some of these decisions of the so-called Synod of Pistoia appeared again during the Second Vatican Council, and after, and now in our days. And the pope in those times, Pope Pius VI, condemned solemnly the propositions of this so-called Synod of Pistoia, in saying that a synod is not for the aim to confuse doctrine, but the glory of a synod in the Catholic Church is to defend and to proclaim with the greatest clarity the unchanging doctrine of the faith. These are the words of Pius VI in the document Auctorem fideiand these words are valid today also.
Followers of Schneider would recognize the evocation. Something similar appeared in the bishop’s popular 2019 book Christus Vincit: Christ’s Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age.
After Archbishop Viganò broke bad—in, it must be admitted, explosive style—a number of old traditionalist talking points began to reach a much wider Catholic audience. But when the former nuncio ingratiated himself with the Trump administration and became an active participant in the 2020 re-election campaign, his audience mushroomed. In the eyes of many on the right—and buttressed by the all-important Trump endorsement—Viganò became a paladin in the fight against both the “deep state” and the “deep church.” That is, Viganò was not only allied with the right people; he had the right enemies: Joe Biden, the left, and “the globalists,” but also the possibly heretical and suspiciously socialistic Pope Francis.
Broadcasting to the masses
The upshot of all this for debates over Vatican II and synodality is that Viganò’s thesis about the rotten Pistoian roots of many contemporary Catholic reforms was broadcasted to the masses on the internet (see, for example,here,here and here). “Re-reading the acts of that Synod [of Pistoia] leaves us amazed at the literal formulation of the same errors that we find later, in increased form, in the Council presided over by John XXIII and Paul VI,” Viganò wrote on June 9, 2020. His message was not just disseminated by the usual suspects in fringe-right Catholic media. Viganò’s theories were promoted to vast audiences by Donald Trump (on Twitter, now called X) and EWTN (on Raymond Arroyo’s The World Over), and published in book form in 2021 (A Voice in the Wilderness, edited by Brian McCall of the Catholic Family News).
Viganò evokes the Synod of Pistoia not just to comment about the past, or to explain what went wrong at Vatican II. He also believes that Pistoia’s condemnation provides a blueprint for a future (and longed-for) downfall of the “parallel church” created by Vatican II. His thinking goes that just as Pope Pius VI condemned the Synod of Pistoia in the bull “Auctorem fidei,” so a future pope could somehow “annul” Vatican II. But are these cases analogous in any meaningful sense?
Pistoia teaches us a lesson about well-meaning reformers who become blinded by their own vision to the extent that they refuse collaboration.
The Synod of Pistoia was a diocesan synod, and an exclusively Italian gathering of about 250 priests headed by one bishop. Vatican II was (by far) the largest and most geographically representative ecumenical council in Christian history. The late John O’Malley, S.J., made the case that Vatican II was the largest meeting in the history of the world. The Pistoian Synod was condemned by the reigning pope, resisted by a great mass of the laity in Pistoia-Prato and rejected by 13 of Tuscany’s 17 bishops. In contrast, Vatican II was an ecumenical council of about 2,500 voting bishops from around the globe. It has set the course for global Catholicism for the last 60 years and will continue to do so. Vatican II was presided over by two popes, both of whom are now canonized saints. It has been emphatically defended and confirmed by every pope since.
The staggering dissimilarities between these two cases do not seem to give the former nuncio much pause, but then again, Viganò did not balk at christening Donald Trump the leader of the “children of light.” Of course, many opponents of Vatican II are not as radical as Viganò. But that obvious fact does not lessen his importance to those resisting Pope Francis or his influence over a certain political-ideological audience on the American right.
What can we learn?
Yet again, the legacy of the Synod of Pistoia is being invoked in intra-Catholic debates about true and false reform in the church and what it means to be faithful to the Gospel. As an academic, I am fascinated that the memory of a small synod held in a single Tuscan diocese in 1786 lives on in Catholic discourse today.
As a believer, let me close with a brief plea. Pistoia teaches us a lesson about well-meaning reformers who become blinded by their own vision to the extent that they refuse collaboration with anyone who does not share their views entirely. Such people also usually reject the correction of those cautioning moderation and prudence.
The church historian Samuel J. Miller made a similar observation. Miller bemoaned the fact that Scipione de’ Ricci and the Pistoians were unable to find a path to compromise with moderate reform-minded Catholics. These potential allies included the archbishops of Florence and Bologna, good men who were not at all blind to the problems in the church. Had Ricci set aside his pride and misguided zeal, the Holy Spirit might have used him to stimulate a movement of true reform, something desperately needed on the eve of the French Revolution. The Catholic Church might then have been able to develop “a style of reform that would have avoided the exaggerated Ultramontanism of the nineteenth century or the frequently manic practices that grew out of a misreading of the work of Vatican Council II.”
I think a second critical thing that the clash between the Pistoians and their opponents teaches us is that we should be very cautious about uncritically lionizing or demonizing any particular faction or perspective in the church. Temperatures are very high right now in the Catholic Church in the United States, and it is tempting to write off one’s opponents as hopeless or even evil. But when I look back over two centuries at the warring factions in the church on the eve of 1789, I don’t see one “side” as obviously good or right. We should expect future Catholics might feel the same about us!
Vatican II reform and modern Catholicism in general features a blend of some of the best of the Jansenist-Reform Catholic vision and the Jesuit-ultramontane vision. This should give us pause. No matter how much one might disagree with or dislike Latin-Mass-going traditionalists, left-wing liberationists, boomer conservatives or progressives who cheer all things Pope Francis, Christ is using all of them in the building up of his mystical body. Thanks be to God, we all have some part to play in the sin- and grace-filled journey of the pilgrim church.
