Pistoia, Diocese of

PISTOIA, Diocese of. - City and diocese, capital of a province in Tuscany. The diocese, which already existed in the 5th century, was declared by Martin V in 1420 a suffragan of Florence. The territory of the diocese embraces part of the Arno valley, the valleys of the Ombrone and the Bisenzio, of Nievole and of Pescia, as well as part of the upper Reno valley; it is to a notable extent broken and mountainous, bordering on the dioceses of Modena and Bologna and, further downstream, on those of Prato, Florence, Pescia, S. Miniato, and Lucca. In the 18th century Pistoia ceded the parish of Massarella to Pescia; but in 1784, through the work of Pietro Leopoldo, while he reduced the urban parishes to only 11 and the monasteries of the city to 3, it had the plebanates of Treppio and Sambuca aggregated to it, dismembered from Bologna; in 1814 it received the county of Vernio.

The extent of the diocesan territory (including the diocese of Prato [v.]) is 1,083 sq. km. and its population (including the diocese of Prato) is 262,403 inhabitants. The parishes number 169 and the rural vicariates 25. Priests: 250. The diocese possesses 7 male religious houses and 50 female ones. From as early as 1446, by concession of Eugene IV, it had a college of clerics, with the rules and privileges already granted to the famous Collegio Eugeniano of Florence. In 1690 the bishop Leone Strozzi founded the Seminary, which was enlarged by the bishop Colombino Bassi, until the bishop Scipione de' Ricci transferred it to the suppressed monastery of S. Chiara. The patron of the diocese is St. James the Apostle.

I. CIVIL HISTORY

Pistorium arose on the Via Cassia, in the valley of the Ombrone, at the foot of the Apennine spurs, perhaps in the 1st century B.C. It was already a city under the Roman Republic: in the year 690 of Rome, Catiline's army was broken in its territory by the arms of Antony. Pliny the Naturalist lists P., which belonged to the Vebina tribe, among the cities forming the Tuscia annonaria. Very scanty is the information about P. in the first four centuries A.D. It seems that during the rule of Theodoric it enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity. It was subject to the Ostrogoths and the Byzantines; around 590 it fell under the lordship of the Lombards, it is uncertain whether peacefully or subdued by force. Under Liutprand it struck coin. Meanwhile there arose in the heart of the city the tower of the watchman, from which an armed guard kept watch over the city itself: the supreme magistrate was the gastald. In the Carolingian era it was governed by a count. It was then under Matilda of Canossa; thereafter ruled by the elders, by the podestà and by the captain of the people. Subsequently it too was divided into factions, now the Guelphs prevailing, now the Ghibellines, the one represented by the Cancellieri family, the other by the Panciatichi. They struggled among themselves with varying fortune, undergoing the fates that the Guelphs and Ghibellines had in nearby Florence. And in the division of the Guelphs in that city, the Cancellieri sided with the Blacks, the Panciatichi with the Whites. Hemmed in between Lucca and Florence, it experienced the assaults now of the one, now of the other. In 1301 the Blacks were expelled from it (s. P. in pria dei Negri si dimagra: Dante, Inf., XXIV, v. 143). Then Castruccio Castracani, lord of Lucca, reduced it to his obedience: subsequently it was under the political hegemony of Florence. Near P., at Gavinana, in 1530 Ferrucci met his death, defending Florentine liberty against the imperial arms. Once the duchy and the grand duchy were constituted, P. too was under the sovereignty of the Medici, then under the Lorraine; it experienced the French occupation and, after the alternating political vicissitudes that preceded the end of the grand duchy, it became, like the rest of Tuscany, part of the Kingdom of Italy.

II. RELIGIOUS HISTORY

Reliable data are lacking to define the era and the circumstances in which Christianity was introduced into the territory of P. It is certain, however, that by the close of the 5th century the bishopric in P. was already established, if Pope Gelasius I (492-96) complains that a bishop of P. had paid homage to King Theodoric before venerating the limina Apostolorum. In 556 Pelagius I excommunicated a bishop of P., whose name is unknown, because in the divine service he omitted the name of the Pontiff. In 716 a bitter controversy over jurisdictional matters arose between the bishop of P. and that of Lucca, the judge of which was an envoy of King Liutprand. The 8th century, in which the name of a bishop John is known, as elected by the clergy and people, was fruitful for the diocese in monastic foundations. Even earlier a hermit, Baronto, later venerated as a saint, had lived in penance on the Pistoian mountain: later the hermit Peter became known. Meanwhile famous abbeys arose, of which the diocese came to possess fourteen. Mention is made of the abbey of S. Baronto di Montalbano (11th century) and that of Montepiano (11th century); the abbey of S. Bartolomeo (8th century) and of S. Michele in Forcole (8th century); of S. Salvatore di Vaiano and of S. Maria di Grignano. Of Bishop Lamprando it is known that in 826 he took part in a council under Eugenius II; in 844 Gansprando, bishop, assisted in Rome at the coronation of Louis, king of Italy: Oschisio in 870 is legate of the Emperor in Calabria: John in 963 takes part in a Roman Synod convened by Otto I. Other names of bishops of this era: Asterius, Hubert, Rambald, Anthony.

It is certain that in the period before the year 1000 and shortly after, the bishops of P. enjoyed great authority and exercised feudal jurisdiction over castles and lands of the diocese, among which were Quarrata and Lamporecchio: although the rising Commune opposed them. But even earlier, their pre-eminence was attested by the annual homage of a pellia cervina on the part of certain populations of the Maremma. In the 11th century the episcopate of the Vallombrosan Peter dei conti Guidi was distinguished, whom Countess Matilda wished to be the successor of Bishop Leo, who died in 1085. Nor less illustrious on the chair of P. was the other Vallombrosan Atto, venerated as a saint, who greatly contributed to spreading in P. the cult of St. James. It was then that the cathedral, originally dedicated to St. Martin, and in the 8th century rebuilt and consecrated to St. Zeno, venerated by the Lombards, was rebuilt ex novo: there was the "sacristy of the beautiful furnishings," of which Vanni Fucci was a thief (Dante, Inf., XXIV, v. 138). It later underwent other adaptations and restorations in 1443, through the work of Bishop Donato dei Medici: and still others in 1600. The bishops also zealously promoted the discipline of the clergy and the people by legislating in numerous synods. The first was that of Bishop Hermann in 1308; to 1406 dates the Synod of Bishop Diamanti. After the Council of Trent came that of Bishop Lattanzio Lattanzi, which was followed by others in the 17th and 18th centuries down to that of Colombino Bassi, held in 1721. Then came the episcopate of Scipione de' Ricci, whose Synod held in 1786 with regalist and Jansenist tendencies, and with the work also of elements extraneous to the Pistoian clergy, was never by the latter either liked or well received: just as the innovations he attempted in worship encountered popular hostility. So much so that Ricci had to renounce the chair, which Francesco Folchi ascended and annulled the Synod itself. Pius VII condemned Ricci's doctrines with the bull Auctorem fidei. Among the other bishops, Marcello Mazzanti is to be remembered, whose Synod took place in 1892.

III. ILLUSTRIOUS FIGURES

Worthy of mention are: Canon Sozomen, a humanist, who took part in the Council of Constance; the Jesuit Father Zaccaria, a man of letters and a most erudite writer; Cardinal Carlo Agostino Fabbroni, who had a large part in the constitution Unigenitus against the errors of Quesnel; Alessandro de' Medici, who passed from the bishopric of Pistoia to the archbishopric of Florence, and was then pontiff under the name of Leo XI; Cardinal Giulio Rospigliosi, who held very high offices in the Roman Curia and, on being elected pontiff, took the name of Clement IX; Bishop Colombino Bassi, who left in the diocese a reputation for distinguished virtues; Canon Antonio Longinelli, who died in 1800, a hostage in France; Monsignor Enrico Bindi, an erudite commentator on the classics and then promoted from the chair of Pistoia to the archbishopric of Siena.

dell'anno 1786, Pistoia 1788; F. Tolomei, Guida di P., ibid. 1821; E. Repetti, Dizionario geografico fisico storico della Toscana, IV, Florence 1841, p. 401 ff.; Cappelletti, XVII, p. 73 ff.; V. Capponi, Bibliografia pistoiese, Pistoia 1878; G. Arcangeli, Brevi notizie sul Seminario collegio vescovile di P., Pistoia 1891; G. Besni, La cattedrale di P., ibid. 1904; P. Kehr, Italia pontificia, III, Berlin 1908, pp. 117-43; G. Besni, La Chiesa pistoiese, Pistoia 1912; N. Rodolico, Gli amici e i tempi di Scipione de' Ricci, Florence 1920; Maya, P. artistica, Pistoia 1927; L. Chiappelli, Storia di P. nell'alto medioevo, ibid. 1932; R. Matteucci, Scipione dei Ricci, Brescia 1941.

Emilio Sanesi

IV. SYNOD OF PISTOIA

It was held in the church of the seminary and of the ecclesiastical Academy of St. Leopold, from the morning of 18 to the afternoon of 28 September 1786, under the direction of the Jansenist bishop Scipione de' Ricci (v.) and the protection of Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, from whom, rather than from the Pope, it was said in the inaugural oration that there had come "permission for so many valiant theologians to assist at it, in the firm confidence that the grace of the Lord would dispel the spirit of darkness and of division."

French and Dutch Jansenists collaborated in it, and the best-known Italian Jansenists prepared it, being present at least morally; it cannot therefore be considered a provincial or regional episode, but almost the epilogue of the Jansenist trajectory from Louvain to Port-Royal and to Utrecht, and a point of confluence of the errors of the Jansenist movement with other related or extraneous errors such as Gallicanism, Richterism and the like.

There were seven sessions and ten congregations that prepared them, of which three were extraordinary and seven ordinary. There took part in it, driven by the bishop's high-handedness and by often violent means, 250 priests; from the diocese of Pistoia, the parish priests, the curate chaplains and the canons by right, and these were called "fathers of the Council"; the secular and regular priests expressly invited, and these were called "co-priests"; among them Vincenzo Palmieri and Pietro Tamburini (v.), to whom, and especially to the latter, who was its promoter, is owed the drafting of the individual decrees. De' Ricci was its president, and Giuseppe Paribeni vice-president and legate of the Grand Duke. From a nearby villa Leopold followed its proceedings. The Synod, soon dubbed the "Pistoian comedy," unfolded amid the fear of the parish priests and of the Pistoian priests, for the most part unaware of the violence exercised to obtain their signatures, which nevertheless was unanimous only in appearance; and amid the exultation of the not few Jansenists or Gallicans from outside the diocese who were present and who thus believed they were securing a definitive success of the heresy. The acts were published in full, and the condemnatory propositions of the bull Auctorem Fidei of 28 August 1794 mark its deviations. Of the 85 principal propositions extracted from the synodal constitutions, set out under 44 titles according to the different subjects, 7 were condemned as heretical and the others proscribed with different censures, often under the multiple senses they could present (false, temerarious, scandalous, close to heresy, etc.). Also stigmatized is the praise attributed to the Gallican articles of 1682 maliciously inserted into the decree on faith, and the judgment already pronounced against them by Innocent XI and by Alexander VIII was renewed. Such a condemnation became necessary because of the dissemination given to the acts of the Synod throughout Europe. In a Latin codex of the Vatican Library one reads: "a printer of Livorno has ordered 18,000 copies of it to send to Spain and to France," and from Spain Cardinal Lorenzana and the nuncio warned that they could no longer prevent the reprinting of the acts in Spanish without a prior formal condemnation. French, Austrian, German, Dutch and Polish ecclesiastics and laymen adhered to the Synod. The schismatic Church of Utrecht, the archbishop of Salzburg von Colloredo, French abbots such as Bellegarde, Maultrot, Clement, by letters; the Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, the Gazette universelle, the Gazette d'Europe and the Gazette française among the periodicals exalted the Pistoian conventicle, whose decrees immediately appeared in a triple edition, Italian, Latin and French. The complement of the Synod, as had been hoped, was to be a national Council "in Florence to put an end to all the talk and machinations that the court of Rome and its adherents might attempt." An attempt that the Tuscan bishops rendered vain (v. GIANSENIO E GIANSENISMO; DE' RICCI, SCIPIONE); and the schismatic design, like the Jansenist heresy, may be considered historically concluded in the bull of condemnation.

Benvenuto Matteucci

V. ART

With the Romanesque period Pistoia had its first artistic manifestations. The present-day appearance of the city depends in fact, to a great extent, on buildings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The only remnant of Roman monuments, apart from the plan of the city, which can for the most part be reconstructed, consists of a private dwelling of the 3rd century A.D. with valuable mosaic floors.

Romanesque architecture has its own particular characteristics in this city, where forms of a minute decorative style spread, of predominantly Pisan and also Florentine origin. The polychrome and ornamental effect often becomes overwhelming and prevents the architectural structures from standing out with those characteristics of organic unity that are typical of all Romanesque architecture. Belonging to this current are S. Giovanni fuorcivitas, the cathedral rebuilt in the 12th century, S. Paolo, S. Bartolomeo in Pantano and S. Andrea, with the unusual structure of its central nave, very high and narrow. A characteristic of Pistoian Romanesque churches is the absence of the transept. In 1166 Gruamonte, "magister bonus", together with his brother Adeodato and a master Enrico, worked on the architrave of the portal of S. Andrea, revealing himself a follower of that Guglielmo who had executed the pulpit for the cathedral of Pisa (now in the cathedral of Cagliari). It is probable that the same sculptor, and perhaps with the same collaborators, worked, in the following year, on the architrave of the portal of S. Bartolomeo in Pantano; and later, without assistance, on that of S. Giovanni fuorcivitas. The pulpit of S. Michele in Groppoli, in the surroundings of the city, dated 1194, reveals influences of the art of Guglielmo, probably learned by the anonymous master through Gruamonte. Guido Bigarelli da Como, who in 1246 had executed the baptismal font of Pisa, in 1250 was working with assistants on the pulpit of S. Bartolomeo in Pantano. Guido brought the Lombard tradition to Pistoia, at least in its characteristics of simplicity and of relief, sought through contrast with the hollow space, even if softened and smoothed. Influences of the manners of Guido da Como can be read in the anonymous master who carved the portal of the church of S. Pier Maggiore. Romanesque painting has no important developments at Pistoia; worth remembering, in the Duomo, is the great cross painted in 1274 by Coppo di Marcovaldo in collaboration with his son Salerno. In the 14th century Sienese and Florentine architectural forms spread. The Palazzo comunale, begun in 1294 and enlarged in 1345 by the Sienese Simone di Ser Memmo, presents plainly Sienese characteristics in its overall design, even if the loggia links it back to Lombard public palaces. The local architect Cellino di Nese (1337-59) executed the octagonal baptistery, perhaps adhering to a design by Andrea Pisano, and it is probable that he himself supplied, in 1367, the design of the Palazzo di Giustizia.

In the field of sculpture it was predominantly Pisan sculptors who worked at Pistoia in the 14th century. In 1270 the most faithful follower of Nicola Pisano, Fra' Guglielmo, executed the pulpit of S. Giovanni fuorcivitas. In 1273 Nicola was working on the altar of the church of S. Jacopo, now destroyed, and to the same year one might ascribe the holy-water font of S. Giovanni fuorcivitas, a work that reveals the hand of Giovanni Pisano still at his beginnings, in close relation to the plastic forms of Nicola. Between 1298 and 1301, Giovanni Pisano then executed the pulpit of the church of S. Andrea, his capital work, on commission from Arnoldo degli Arnoldi. The probable authors of the tomb of Cino da Pistoia (1337-59) were the Sienese Agostino di Giovanni and Agnolo di Ventura.

The modest Pistoian painting of the Trecento was, in the first half of the century, likewise dominated by the Florentine tradition. In the second half of the century, however, Emilian influences predominated, as can be seen in the frescoes of S. Domenico and in the paintings of the Chapter of S. Francesco, the work of Emilian artists and of Pistoian masters under their influence. The Bolognese Dalmazio de' Scannabecchi and his son Lippo settled for a long time at Pistoia, influencing local painting extensively.

In the Renaissance the importance of Pistoia in the history of art becomes very limited. Dominating the field were predominantly Florentine masters, both painters and sculptors. In 1477 Lorenzo di Credi painted for the Duomo the Madonna di Piazza. The Museo civico preserves works by Cosimo Rosselli, from the school of Botticelli, by Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio. In 1477 Verrocchio began for the Duomo the monument to Cardinal Niccolò Forteguerri, which was continued by followers and partly dismembered in the eighteenth century. In 1487 Antonio Rossellino executed the bas-relief portrait of Donato de' Medici, again in the Duomo, and his brother Bernardo, with his collaboration, executed the monument to Filippo Lazzi in S. Domenico. Andrea della Robbia, with assistants, in 1505 decorated with a terracotta relief the central door of the Cathedral, while to Giovanni della Robbia belongs the decoration of the Ospedale del Ceppo. - See pl. CXI.

Maurizio Calvesi