awakening intelligence and artistic glories, when the greatest
enthusiasm was manifested for the revived literature and sculptured
marbles of classic Greece and Rome, that Savonarola appeared in
Florence as a reformer and preacher and statesman, near the close
of the fifteenth century, when Columbus was seeking a western
passage to India; when Michael Angelo was moulding the "Battle of
Hercules with the Centaurs;" when Ficino was teaching the
philosophy of Plato; when Alexander VI. was making princes of his
natural children; when Bramante was making plans for a new St.
Peter's; when Cardinal Bembo was writing Latin essays; when Lorenzo
de' Medici was the flattered patron of both scholars and artists,
and the city over which he ruled with so much magnificence was the
most attractive place in Europe, next to that other city on the
banks of the Tiber, whose wonders and glories have never been
exhausted, and will probably survive the revolutions of unknown
empires.
But Savonarola was not a native of Florence. He was born in the
year 1452 at Ferrara, belonged to a good family, and received an
expensive education, being destined to the profession of medicine.
He was a sad, solitary, pensive, but precocious young man, whose
youth was marked by an unfortunate attachment to a haughty
Florentine girl. He did not cherish her memory and dedicate to her
a life-labor, like Dante, but became very dejected and very pious.
His piety assumed, of course, the ascetic type, for there was
scarcely any other in that age, and he entered a Dominican convent,
as Luther, a few years later, entered an Augustinian. But he was
not an original genius, or a bold and independent thinker like
Luther, so he was not emancipated from the ideas of his age. How
few men can go counter to prevailing ideas! It takes a prodigious
genius, and a fearless, inquiring mind, to break away from their
bondage. Abraham could renounce the idolatries which surrounded
him, when called by a supernatural voice; Paul could give up the
Phariseeism which reigned in the Jewish schools and synagogues,
when stricken blind by the hand of God; Luther could break away
from monastic rules and papal denunciation, when taught by the
Bible the true ground of justification,--but Savonarola could not.
He pursued the path to heaven in the beaten track, after the
fashion of Jerome and Bernard and Thomas Aquinas, after the style
of the Middle Ages, and was sincere, devout, and lofty, like the
saints of the fifth century, and read his Bible as they did, and
essayed a high religious life; but he was stern, gloomy, and
austere, emaciated by fasts and self-denial. He had, however,
those passive virtues which Mediaeval piety ever enjoined,--yea,
which Christ himself preached upon the Mount, and which
Protestantism, in the arrogance of reason, is in danger of losing
sight of,--humility, submission, and contempt of material gains.
He won the admiration of his superiors for his attainments and his
piety, being equally versed in Aristotle and the Holy Scriptures.
He delighted most in the Old Testament heroes and prophets, and
caught their sternness and invective.
He was not so much interested in dogmas as he was in morals. He
had not, indeed, a turn of mind for theology, like Anselm and
Calvin; but he took a practical view of the evils of society. At
thirty years of age he began to preach in Ferrara and Florence, but
was not very successful. His sermons at first created but little
interest, and he sometimes preached to as few as twenty-five
people. Probably he was too rough and vehement to suit the
fastidious ears of the most refined city in Italy. People will not
ordinarily bear uncouthness from preachers, however gifted, until
they have earned a reputation; they prefer pretty and polished
young men with nothing but platitudes or extravagances to utter.
Savonarola seems to have been discouraged and humiliated at his
failure, and was sent to preach to the rustic villagers, amid the
mountains near Sienna. Among these people he probably felt more at
home; and he gave vent to the fire within him and electrified all
who heard him, winning even the admiration of the celebrated Prince
of Mirandola. From this time his fame spread rapidly, he was
recalled to Florence, 1490, and his great career commenced. In the
following year such crowds pressed to hear him that the church of
St. Mark, connected with the Dominican convent to which he was
attached, could not contain the people, and he repaired to the
cathedral. And even that spacious church was filled with eager
listeners,--more moved than delighted. So great was his
popularity, that his influence correspondingly increased and he was
chosen prior of his famous convent.
He now wielded power as well as influence, and became the most
marked man of the city. He was not only the most eloquent preacher
in Italy, probably in the world, but his eloquence was marked by
boldness, earnestness, almost fierceness. Like an ancient prophet,
he was terrible in his denunciation of vices. He spared no one,
and he feared no one. He resembled Chrysostom at Constantinople,
when he denounced the vanity of Eudoxia and the venality of
Eutropius. Lorenzo de' Medici, the absolute lord of Florence, sent
for him, and expostulated and remonstrated with the unsparing
preacher,--all to no effect. And when the usurper of his country's
liberties was dying, the preacher was again sent for, this time to
grant an absolution. But Savonarola would grant no absolution
unless Lorenzo would restore the liberties which he and his family
had taken away. The dying tyrant was not prepared to accede to so
haughty a demand, and, collecting his strength, rolled over on his
bed without saying a word, and the austere monk wended his way back
to his convent, unmolested and determined.
The premature death of this magnificent prince made a great
sensation throughout Italy, and produced a change in the politics
of Florence, for the people began to see their political
degradation. The popular discontents were increased when his
successor, Pietro, proved himself incapable and tyrannical,
abandoned himself to orgies, and insulted the leading citizens by
an overwhelming pride. Savonarola took the side of the people, and
fanned the discontents. He became the recognized leader of
opposition to the Medici, and virtually ruled the city.
The Prior of St. Mark now appeared in a double light,--as a
political leader and as a popular preacher. Let us first consider
him in his secular aspect, as a revolutionist and statesman,--for
the admirable constitution he had a principal hand in framing
entitles him to the dignity of statesman rather than politician.
If his cause had not been good, and if he had not appealed to both
enlightened and patriotic sentiments, he would have been a
demagogue; for a demagogue and a mere politician are synonymous,
and a clerical demagogue is hideous.
Savonarola began his political career with terrible denunciations,
from his cathedral pulpit, of the political evils of his day, not
merely in Florence but throughout Italy. He detested tyrants and
usurpers, and sought to conserve such liberties as the Florentines
had once enjoyed. He was not only the preacher, he was also the
patriot. Things temporal were mixed up with things spiritual in
his discourses. In his detestation of the tyranny of the Medici,
and his zeal to recover for the Florentines their lost liberties,
he even hailed the French armies of Charles VIII. as deliverers,
although they had crossed the Alps to invade and conquer Italy. If
the gates of Florence were open to them, they would expel the
Medici. So he stimulated the people to league with foreign enemies
in order to recover their liberties. This would have been high
treason in Richelieu's time,--as when the Huguenots encouraged the
invasion of the English on the soil of France. Savonarola was a
zealot, and carried the same spirit into politics that he did into
religion,--such as when he made a bonfire of what he called
vanities. He had an end to carry: he would use any means. There
is apt to be a spirit of expediency in men consumed with zeal,
determined on success. To the eye of the Florentine reformer, the
expulsion of the Medici seemed the supremest necessity; and if it
could be done in no other way than by opening the gates of his city
to the French invaders, he would open the gates. Whatever he
commanded from the pulpit was done by the people, for he seemed to
have supreme control over them, gained by his eloquence as a
preacher. But he did not abuse his power. When the Medici were
expelled, he prevented violence; blood did not flow in the streets;
order and law were preserved. The people looked up to him as their
leader, temporal as well as spiritual. So he assembled them in the
great hall of the city, where they formally held a parlemento, and
reinstated the ancient magistrates. But these were men without
experience. They had no capacity to govern, and they were selected
without wisdom on the part of the people. The people, in fact, had
not the ability to select their best and wisest men for rulers.
That is an evil inherent in all popular governments. Does San
Francisco or New York send its greatest men to Congress? Do not
our cities elect such rulers as the demagogues point out? Do not
the few rule, even in a Congregational church? If some commanding
genius, unscrupulous or wise or eloquent or full of tricks,
controls elections with us, much more easily could such a man as
Savonarola rule in Florence, where there were no political
organizations, no caucuses, no wirepullers, no other man of
commanding ability. The only opinion-maker was this preacher, who
indicated the general policy to be pursued. He left elections to
the people; and when these proved a failure, a new constitution
became a necessity. But where were the men capable of framing a
constitution for the republic? Two generations of political
slavery had destroyed political experience. The citizens were as
incapable of framing a new constitution as the legislators of
France after they had decimated the nobility, confiscated the
Church lands, and cut off the head of the king. The lawyers
disputed in the town hall, but accomplished nothing.
Their science amounted only to an analysis of human passion. All
wanted a government entirely free from tyranny; all expected
impossibilities. Some were in favor of a Venetian aristocracy, and
others of a pure democracy; yet none would yield to compromise,
without which no permanent political institution can ever be
framed. How could the inexperienced citizens of Florence
comprehend the complicated relations of governments? To make a
constitution that the world respects requires the highest maturity
of human wisdom. It is the supremest labor of great men. It took
the ablest man ever born among the Jews to give to them a national
polity. The Roman constitution was the fruit of five hundred
years' experience. Our constitution was made by the wisest, most
dignified, most enlightened body of statesmen that this country has
yet seen, and even they could not have made it without great mutual
concessions. No ONE man could have made a constitution, however
great his talents and experience,--not even a Jefferson or a
Hamilton,--which the nation would have accepted. It would have
been as full of defects as the legislation of Solon or Lycurgus or
the Abbe Sieyes. But one man gave a constitution to the
Florentines, which they not only accepted, but which has been
generally admired for its wisdom; and that man was our Dominican
monk. The hand he had in shaping that constitution not only proved
him to have been a man of great wisdom, but entitled him to the
gratitude of his countrymen as a benefactor. He saw the vanity of
political science as it then existed, the incapacity of popular
leaders, and the sadness of a people drifting into anarchy and
confusion; and, strong in his own will and his sense of right, he
rose superior to himself, and directed the stormy elements of
passion and fear. And this he did by his sermons from the pulpit,--
for he did not descend, in person, into the stormy arena of
contending passions and interests. He did not himself attend the
deliberations in the town hall; he was too wise and dignified a man
for that. But he preached those principles and measures which he
wished to see adopted; and so great was the reverence for him that
the people listened to his instructions, and afterward deliberated
and acted among themselves. He did not write out a code, but he
told the people what they should put into it. He was the animating
genius of the city; his voice was obeyed. He unfolded the theory
that the government of one man, in their circumstances, would
become tyrannical; and he taught the doctrine, then new, that the
people were the only source of power,--that they alone had the
right to elect their magistrates. He therefore recommended a
general government, which should include all citizens who had
intelligence, experience, and position,--not all the people, but
such as had been magistrates, or their fathers before them.
Accordingly, a grand council was formed of three thousand citizens,
out of a population of ninety thousand who had reached the age of
twenty-nine. These three thousand citizens were divided into three
equal bodies, each of which should constitute a council for six
months and no meeting was legal unless two-thirds of the members
were present. This grand council appointed the magistrates. But
another council was also recommended and adopted, of only eighty
citizens not under forty years of age,--picked men, to be changed
every six months, whom the magistrates were bound to consult
weekly, and to whom was confided the appointment of some of the
higher officers of the State, like ambassadors to neighboring
States. All laws proposed by the magistrates, or seigniory, had to
be ratified by this higher and selecter council. The higher
council was a sort of Senate, the lower council were more like
Representatives. But there was no universal suffrage. The
clerical legislator knew well enough that only the better and more
intelligent part of the people were fit to vote, even in the
election of magistrates. He seems to have foreseen the fatal rock
on which all popular institutions are in danger of being wrecked,--
that no government is safe and respected when the people who make
it are ignorant and lawless. So the constitution which Savonarola
gave was neither aristocratic nor democratic. It resembled that of
Venice more than that of Athens, that of England more than that of
the United States. Strictly universal suffrage is a Utopian dream
wherever a majority of the people are wicked and degraded. Sooner
or later it threatens to plunge any nation, as nations now are,
into a whirlpool of dangers, even if Divine Providence may not
permit a nation to be stranded and wrecked altogether. In the
politics of Savonarola we see great wisdom, and yet great sympathy
for freedom. He would give the people all that they were fit for.
He would make all offices elective, but only by the suffrages of
the better part of the people.
But the Prior of St. Mark did not confine himself to constitutional
questions and issues alone. He would remove all political abuses;
he would tax property, and put an end to forced loans and arbitrary
imposts; he would bring about a general pacification, and grant a
general amnesty for political offences; he would guard against the
extortions of the rich, and the usury of the Jews, who lent money
at thirty-three per cent, with compound interest; he secured the
establishment of a bank for charitable loans; he sought to make the
people good citizens, and to advance their temporal as well as
spiritual interests. All his reforms, political or social, were
advocated, however, from the pulpit; so that he was doubtless a
political priest. We, in this country and in these times, have no
very great liking to this union of spiritual and temporal
authority: we would separate and divide this authority.
Protestants would make the functions of the ruler and the priest
forever distinct. But at that time the popes themselves were
secular rulers, as well as spiritual dignitaries. All bishops and
abbots had the charge of political interests. Courts of law were
presided over by priests. Priests were ambassadors to foreign
powers; they were ministers of kings; they had the control of
innumerable secular affairs, now intrusted to laymen. So their
interference with politics did not shock the people of Florence, or
the opinions of the age. It was indeed imperatively called for,
since the clergy were the most learned and influential men of those
times, even in affairs of state. I doubt if the Catholic Church
has ever abrogated or ignored her old right to meddle in the
politics of a state or nation. I do not know, nor do I believe,
that the Catholic clergy in this our country take it upon
themselves to instruct the people in their political duties. No
enlightened Protestant congregation would endure such interference.
No Protestant minister dares ever to discuss direct political
issues from the pulpit, except perhaps on Thanksgiving Day, or in
some rare exigency in public morality. Still less would he venture
to tell his parishioners how they should vote in town-meetings. In
imitation of ancient saints and apostles, he is wisely constrained
from interference in secular and political affairs. But in the
Middle Ages, and the Catholic Church, the priest could be political
in his preaching, since many of his duties were secular.
Savonarola usurped no prerogatives. He refrained from meeting men
in secular vocations. Even in his politics he confined himself to
his sphere in the pulpit. He did not attend the public debates; he
simply preached. He ruled by wisdom, eloquence, and sanctity; and
as he was an oracle, his utterances became a law.
But while he instructed the people in political duties, he paid far
more attention to public morals. He would break up luxury,
extravagance, ostentatious living, unseemly dresses in the house of
God. He was the foe of all levities, all frivolities, all
insidious pleasures. Bad men found no favor in his eyes, and he
exposed their hypocrisies and crimes. He denounced sin, in high
places and low. He did not confine himself to the sins of his own
people alone, but censured those of princes and of other cities.
He embraced all Italy in his glance. He invoked the Lord to take
the Church out of the hands of the Devil, to pour out his wrath on
guilty cities. He throws down a gauntlet of defiance to all
corrupt potentates; he predicts the near approach of calamities; he
foretells the certainty of divine judgment upon all sin; he clothes
himself with the thunders of the Jewish prophets; he seems to
invoke woe, desolation, and destruction. He ascribes the very
invasion of the French to the justice of retribution. "Thy crimes,
O Florence! thy crimes, O Rome! thy crimes, O Italy! are the causes
of these chastisements." And so terrible are his denunciations
that the whole city quakes with fear. Mirandola relates that as
Savonarola's voice sounded like a clap of thunder in the cathedral,
packed to its utmost capacity with the trembling people, a cold
shiver ran through all his bones and the hairs of his head stood on
end. "O Rome!" exclaimed the preacher, "thou shalt be put to the
sword, since thou wilt not be converted. O Italy! confusion upon
confusion shall overtake thee; the confusion of war shall follow
thy sins, and famine and pestilence shall follow after war." Then
he denounces Rome: "O harlot Church! thou hast made thy deformity
apparent to all the world; thou hast multiplied thy fornications in
Italy, in France, in Spain, in every country. Behold, saith the
Lord, I will stretch forth my hand upon thee; I will deliver thee
into the hands of those that hate thee." The burden of his soul is
sin,--sin everywhere, even in the bosom of the Church,--and the
necessity of repentance, of turning to the Lord. He is more than
an Elijah,--he is a John the Baptist. His sermons are chiefly
drawn from the Old Testament, especially from the prophets in their
denunciation of woes; like them, he is stern, awful, sublime. He
does not attack the polity or the constitution of the Church, but
its corruptions. He does not call the Pope a usurper, a fraud, an
impostor; he does not attack the office; but if the Pope is a bad
man he denounces his crimes. He is still the Dominican monk,
owning his allegiance, but demanding the reformation of the head of
the Church, to whom God has given the keys of Saint Peter. Neither
does he meddle with the doctrines of the Church; he does not take
much interest in dogmas. He is not a theologian, but he would
change the habits and manners of the people of Florence. He would
urge throughout Italy a reformation of morals. He sees only the
degeneracy in life; he threatens eternal penalties if sin be
persisted in. He alarms the fears of the people, so that women
part with their ornaments, dress with more simplicity, and walk
more demurely; licentious young men become modest and devout;
instead of the songs of the carnival, religious hymns are sung;
tradesmen forsake their shops for the churches; alms are more
freely given; great scholars become monks; even children bring
their offerings to the Church; a pyramid of "vanities" is burned on
the public square.
And no wonder. A man had appeared at a great crisis in wickedness,
and yet while the people were still susceptible of grand
sentiments; and this man--venerated, austere, impassioned, like an
ancient prophet, like one risen from the dead--denounces woes with
such awful tones, such majestic fervor, such terrible emphasis, as
to break through all apathy, all delusions, and fill the people
with remorse, astonish them by his revelations, and make them
really feel that the supernal powers, armed with the terrors of
Omnipotence, would hurl them into hell unless they repented.
No man in Europe at the time had a more lively and impressive sense
of the necessity of a general reformation than the monk of St.
Mark; but it was a reform in morals, not of doctrine. He saw the
evils of the day--yea, of the Church itself--with perfect
clearness, and demanded redress. He is as sad in view of these
acknowledged evils as Jeremiah was in view of the apostasy of the
Jews; he is as austere in his own life as Elijah or John the
Baptist was. He would not abolish monastic institutions, but he
would reform the lives of the monks,--cure them of gluttony and
sensuality, not shut up their monasteries. He would not rebel
against the authority of the Pope, for even Savonarola believed
that prelate to be the successor of Saint Peter; but he would
prevent the Pope's nepotism and luxury and worldly spirit,--make
him once more a true "servant of the servants of God," even when
clothed with the insignia of universal authority. He would not
give up auricular confession, or masses for the dead, or prayers to
the Virgin Mary, for these were indorsed by venerated ages; but he
would rebuke a priest if found in unseemly places. Whatever was a
sin, when measured by the laws of immutable morality, he would
denounce, whoever was guilty of it; whatever would elevate the
public morals he would advocate, whoever opposed. His morality was
measured by the declaration of Christ and the Apostles, not by the
standard of a corrupt age. He revered the Scriptures, and
incessantly pondered them, and exalted their authority, holding
them to be the ultimate rule of holy living, the everlasting
handbook of travellers to the heavenly Jerusalem. In all respects
he was a good man,--a beautiful type of Christian piety, with fewer
faults than Luther or Calvin had, and as great an enemy as they to
corruptions in State and Church, which he denounced even more
fiercely and passionately. Not even Erasmus pointed out the vices
of the day with more freedom or earnestness. He covered up
nothing; he shut his eyes to nothing.