Scipione de 'Ricci

Scipione de 'Ricci.

Scipione de 'Ricci (* 1741 in Florence , † January 27, 1810 in Rignana ) was a Catholic Italian clergyman who was Bishop of Pistoia from 1780 to 1791 . He sympathized with Jansenist ideas.

Life

Scipione de 'Ricci came from an old noble family in Florence and was the third of four sons of Senator Pier Francesco de' Ricci, nephew of the well-known Jesuit general Lorenzo Ricci . He was a pupil of the Roman seminary and was only prevented from entering the Jesuit order by the will of his parents . In 1766 he became an auditor at the Florentine Nunciature in Rome , in 1775 Vicar General of Archbishop Incontri in Florence and on June 24, 1780 Bishop of Pistoia and Prato. As one of the main advisers of the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, later Emperor Leopold II , he advocated the reform of the Church in Tuscany, improved public education, reduced public holidays and processions, abolished the brotherhoods, tightened church discipline, abolished taxes levied by the Holy See in Tuscany and finally attacked the doctrine of indulgence .

Ricci was an opponent of papal autocracy in the church and a supporter of intellectual and religious enlightenment of the people, strongly supported the efforts of Grand Duke Leopold to better educate the clergy and to limit monasticism, in which he saw the willless instrument of papal omnipotence and which he therefore of Rome wanted to be detached and subordinate to the bishops. A Synod of Pistoia in 1786 supported the Gallican articles of 1682. Its sensational files were published in two volumes in 1788 at the expense of the Grand Duke. An episcopal synod convened by the Grand Duke in 1787 was supposed to set the church reformation in Tuscany in motion on the basis of the 57 articles drafted by Leopold himself.

Ricci's system, however, upset the people against him, a mutiny broke out in Prato in 1787, his palace was looted and his library robbed. Several writings appeared against him. Much indicated a schism in Tuscany. But when Leopold succeeded his brother Joseph II as German Emperor in 1790 , Ricci lost all support. After Leopold's departure from Tuscany, the people forced him to flee Pistoia (April 1790) and to renounce his bishopric (June 1791). Pope Pius VI set up a commission of inquiry and condemned despite the counter-efforts of Ferdinand III. the Synod of Pistoia on August 8, 1794 in the Bull Auctorem fidei because of Jansenism and Gallicanism .

In 1799 Ricci, as he had favored the French, was thrown into prison at the instigation of the Archbishop of Florence after they were removed from Tuscany, but shortly afterwards he was taken to the Dominican monastery at San Marco. Only when the French moved in for the second time released him. Recognizing his wrong position, Ricci decided after lengthy negotiations on April 24, 1804 to write a letter of justification to the new Pope Pius VII and on May 9, 1805 to accept the judgment of 1794. He now lived partly in Florence, partly in his Villa Rignana in seclusion until his death on January 27th, 1810. Inwardly he stuck to his opposition to the papacy.

His memoirs, which lasted until 1786, were edited by Potter ( Vie de Scipion de Ricci , 3 vols., Brussels 1825; 3rd edition, Brussels 1857; German life and memoirs of Scipio von Ricci , 4 vols., Stuttgart 1826) and by A. Gelli (2 vols., Florence 1865).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought , ed. Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 769-70
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Ricci, Scipione de ' , in Brockhaus' Konversations-Lexikon , 14th edition, 1892-96, vol. 13, p. 844
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Ricci, Scipione de ' . In: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon , 6th edition, 1902-08, Vol. 16, p. 895.
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Ricci, Scipio . In: Heinrich August Pierer (ed.): Universal-Lexikon der Gegenwart und Past , 4th edition, Vol. 14 (1862), p. 134.
5. ^ Catholic Encyclopedia : Synod of Pistoia