Scipione de' Ricci

As bishop, he acted with energy in his government of the diocese and cited the measures of Pius VI in favour of pastoral renewal.

[3] The absolutist monarchy of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany was in the hands of the Habsburg dynasty, which in Austria had already made its own the ecclesiastical policies expounded by the German Febronius, of fundamentally Gallican tendency.

With the support of Leopold I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, or perhaps at the latter's instigation, Ricci summoned the 1786 Synod of Pistoia, whose members, drawn from the local clergy, voted with the encouragement of the bishop and the absolutist regime for a heady list of propositions of mixed provenance.

Among the measures voted were some that simply dealt with public order issues connected with saints' festivals, some repeated regulations that had been part of Church law for centuries.

The synod's decrees, promulgated by means of a pastoral letter of the bishop, met naturally with warm approval from the Grand Duke.

Portions of his memoirs were selectively published as an anti-Roman Catholic tract, edited in 1829 by Thomas Roscoe (with translation by De Potter) under the title of Female Convents: Secrets of Nunneries Disclosed.