1829.) 
Memoirs of Scipio de Ricci, Edited by 
T. Roscoe, Esq, 2 vols., 8vo. ; 1829.— 
These are memoirs merely pour servir— 
chaos of notes and documents relative t 
Leopold of Tuscany—the Jesuits—the Ro- 
man See—and Scipio de Ricci, a Tuscan 
bishop. To be readable, they must first be 
reduced to something like order. Nothing 
can exceed the confusion, the absolute and 
intolerable contempt of method, in the whole 
book. The narrative—even when the reader 
has succeeded in picking it out—is incom- 
plete to a vexatious degree, and is suspended 
and broken by matters which no way con- 
cern the bishop. 
A great fuss has been made about these 
memoirs on the continent, but a glance has 
convinced us they will attract very little at- 
tention here. Ricci was no reformer, in 
the English popular and comprehensive 
Sense, politically or ecclesiastically—a dis- 
ciplinarian merely episcopal. He was a 
very honest, right-minded man to the ex- 
tent of his intelligence, but as superstitious 
and prejudiced, as a good Catholic must 
necessarily be. But as to questioning the 
doctrines of the Church of Rome, or the 
foundations of its authority, he never so 
much as dreamt of such a thing. He got 
into wrangles with the Court of Rome, and 
was stiff in maintaining his opinions, but 
not because he deemed the papacy usurpa~ 
tion, but its ministers careless and corrupt. 
In his diocese he found abuses, and he re- 
solyed to reform them, and, certainly in 
what came specifically under his jurisdic- 
tion, he was not of a character to flinch 
from what he considered his duty. The 
measures he adopted were of the thorough- 
going kind; but a doubt may well cross 
our minds, in looking over these documents, 
whether he was not, like many other men, 
who are eager to sweep clean, at once the 
dupe and tool of others. The abuses were, 
generally, relative to nuns and friars—nei- 
ther nuns nor friars were without enemies— 
the Grand Duke had an eye to their en- 
dowments—courtiers were thirsting—the 
bishop was capacious of belief—every story 
was welcomed. He was taught to believe 
> friars were salt as monkeys, and nuns, 
_ universally, their victims or their lemans— 
music, dancing, plays and farces, drunken- 
_ hess and gluttony by day and by night— 
men and women /assati non satiati. Some 
communications from nuns of different con- 
vents are quoted, and bear on the face of 
them the marks of malice and mortification. 
They charge universal profligacy, and in 
the same breath speak of mancuvres and 
cunning contrivances to accomplish secret 
urposes. 
Though himself, in principle, a Jansenist, 
_ and of course opposed to the Jesuits, he 
i had been educated at their institutions, and 
_ Was even connected by family relationship 
_ with the /as¢ general of the order—though 
he did not, according to the heading of one 
of the chapters, inherit his wealth—for the 
M.M. New Series.—Vou, VU. No.38. 
Domestic and Foreign. 
201 
poor general, it seems, had nothing to leaves 
and had eyen lost the two and twenty thou- 
sand masses, to which, as general of the 
Jesuits, he was officially entitled on his 
death. The property inherited by Ricci 
was that of a brother of the general’s, a 
canon of Florence. Ofa staid and serious 
cast, unambitious and withdrawing, Ricci, 
for a long time, refused the preferments 
family interest could have insured him ; but, 
in 1780, then nearly forty years of age, he 
was prevailed upon to accept the Bishopric 
of Prato and Pistoia. At this period Leo- 
pold was zealously pushing his reforms. 
The views of the prince and the bishop, 
though in no respect ultimately the same, 
occasionally concurred in the measures em- 
ployed to effect them.  Leopold’s object 
was, doubtless, to be his own Pope, and the 
distruction of convents and monasteries was 
a favourite point with him. The bishop, 
on discovering, or being assured of the 
existence of unbounded profligacy in these 
institutions, was ready to repress, or even 
suppress ; and thus, first in this respect, and, 
by degrees, in others, the bishop, in appear- 
ance, became the great agent, and most ef- 
fective instrument of the prince. 
But to break up the foundations of the 
Roman authority was never in his thoughts. 
In spite of himself, however, and surely to 
his own amazement, he was involved in fre- 
quent dispute with the Court of Rome, not 
only by acts, of which he was the real au- 
thor and adviser, but those into which he 
was precipitated by the rashness or cunning 
of others. Two powerful orders he almost 
immediately made his implacable foes—the. 
Jesuits and Dominicans. The first, by re- 
sisting the new worship of the Sacred Heart 
—a contrivance of the Jesuits to keep them 
together by a common bond; and the se- 
cond, by exposing the corruptions of the 
friars of that order, and especially by ex- 
cluding them from confessing the nuns. In 
Leopold’s plans for promoting a more gene- 
ral education in all classes, he was the zea- 
lous agent and seconder, without probably - 
seeing the tendency of his labours. For 
general education seems something very like 
general unsettling. We have no notion 
education—such as deserves the name—can 
be forced. The effects, everywhere visible, 
produced by forcing, are such as no sane 
man would wish to Sanction—misplaced am- 
bition—relaxation of manners and morals— 
insolence — insubordination —disunion in 
families, &c. 
The nuns were as restive as the friars— 
some of them avowed the principles of 
atheism, and justified the indulgence of 
their passions—while others insisted on 
their old confessions. The good bishop com- 
plained to the Pope, and avowed his sus- 
picions, that the monks alone were the 
cause of so much obstinacy on the part of 
the nuns.—“ Can you doubt it ?”’ said Pius 
VI., giving utterance at the same time to 
violent invectives against the general of the 
2D 
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