Retour au Syllabus. Pie IX et les erreurs de la société moderne: réexamen de la genèse d’un texte

This paper proposes a novel interpretation of a key document in the contemporary history of the Church, the Syllabus complectens praecipuos nostrae aetatis errores by Pius IX. Historians usually place the genesis of the Syllabus, condemning the errors of modern society, into the post-revolutionary context of the 1850s and 1860s, or link it with the struggle for Italian unification. Nobody, however, has investi- gated the ambiguous and very strange form of this text. In fact, the list of modern errors was a rather haphazard collection of propositions com- piled by the Barnabite Luigi Bilio; these propositions were extrapolated from official texts authored by the pope himself, while at the same time being manipulated by Bilio. Thus, in condemning the errors of modern society, Pope Pius IX chose to define those errors by using his own words,not those of his enemies. How can this decision be explained? The answer can be found in two main causes: first, the last contro- versial composition in 1864 under the eyes of Holy Office; furthermore, the reappraisal of Mastai Ferretti’s first years of pontificate, when he was first considered by public opinion as a ‘reformer’ and a ‘liberal’ sovereign, and than condemned as a betrayer. By adopting this double perspective, then, it becomes possible to find the deeper sources of the Syllabus in Church’s reaction to the struggles of Pius’ pontificate, and in his ambiguous relationship with modern society.