The Ghost of Pistoia

Abstract This chapter shows that the Synod of Pistoia was a “ghost” on the council floor; that is, a key moment in the Church’s collective memory that influenced the drafting of texts and the subsequent debate over them. The first section briefly traces the legacy of Auctorem fidei and the Pistorienses from the death of Ricci (1810) to the eve of Vatican II. In the increasingly ultramontane nineteenth-century, the memory of the infamous Pistoians was evoked in a range of ecclesial documents. Auctorem fidei was firmly established as a bulwark of ultramontane thought. The second section surveys the many contexts in which Auctorem fidei was cited in Vatican II draft documents. The third section thoroughly analyses six evocations of Auctorem fidei during the debate on episcopal collegiality. These evocations constitute the most detailed discussion of an eighteenth-century doctrinal document at the Council, and prove that Pistoia was a “ghost” in the Aula.