The most influential of these were grouped around Civiltà cattolica, a journal created in 1849 at the behest of the pope, as a response to the events of 1848.67 These Thomists (of whom Gioachino Pecci, bishop of Perugia, later Leo XIII, was a leading figure) were implacably opposed to developments in modern thought. Modern ideas should be rejected, they insisted, ‘without exception’.
