liturgical texts for the devotional use of the people that had parallel translations in the vernacular, and recommended the abolition of all monastic orders except that of St. Benedict, the rules of which were to be brought into harmony with modern ideas; nuns were to be forbidden to take vows before the age of 40. The last of the decrees proposed the convocation of a national council. Overall, the synod's measures incorporated demands made previously by the Jansenist party, opposing for example devotion to the Sacred Heart, though the synod cannot be said to have been Jansenist in essence. Some of its proposals had already been Church law for centuries, others were moderate pastoral measures, others concerned matters well beyond the authority of any diocesan body and others were in any case more in the nature of "fillers" to make up a heady and high-sounding revolutionary manifesto. The driving force was the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, as was evident to the clergy faced with the synod's draft proposals, who understandably took discretion to be the better part of valour. Bishop Ricci seized his moment, and seems to have adhered with enthusiasm to the event, but at the same time he had limited choice given the domination of the absolutist regime in Tuscany, a small state, but backed by the international power wielded by the Habsburg-Lorrainers. Assembly in Florence The synod's decrees were issued together with a pastoral letter of Bishop Ricci, and were warmly approved by the Grand Duke, at whose instance a "national" synod of the Tuscan bishops met at Florence on April 23, 1787. At this point, however, the plan stalled. The temper of this new assembly, like its composition, was wholly different. The bishops refused to allow a voice to any not of their own order, and in the end the decrees of Pistoia were supported by only three bishops. Notwithstanding, as a propaganda tool in an ideological war, the acts of the synod of Pistoia were published in Latin and Italian at Pavia in 1788. Pius VI commissioned four bishops, assisted by theologians of the secular clergy, to examine the Pistoia resolutions, and deputed a congregation of cardinals and bishops to pass judgment on them. These condemned the synod and declared eighty-five of its propositions to be erroneous and dangerous. The synod's teachings were finally condemned by the papal bull Auctorem fidei of August 28, 1794. De' Ricci,