SAVONAROLA.
The Attitude of Savonarola toward the Renaissance--His Parentage, Birth,
and Childhood at Ferrara--His Poem on the Ruin of the World--Joins the
Dominicans at Bologna--Letter to his Father--Poem on the Ruin of the
Church--Begins to preach in 1482--First Visit to Florence--San
Gemignano--His Prophecy--Brescia in 1486--Personal Appearance and Style
of Oratory--Effect on his audience--The three Conclusions--His
Visions--Savonarola's Shortcomings as a patriotic Statesman--His sincere
Belief in his prophetic Calling--Friendship with Pico della
Mirandola--Settles in Florence, 1490--Convent of San Marco--Savonarola's
Relation to Lorenzo de' Medici--The death of Lorenzo--Sermons of 1493
and 1494--the Constitution of 1495--Theocracy in Florence--Piagnoni,
Bigi, and Arrabbiati--War between Savonarola and Alexander VI.--The
Signory suspends him from preaching in the Duomo in 1498--Attempts to
call a Council--The Ordeal by Fire--San Marco stormed by the Mob--Trial
and Execution of Savonarola.
Nothing is more characteristic of the sharp contrasts of the Italian
Renaissance than the emergence not only from the same society, but also
from the bosom of the same Church, of two men so diverse as the Pope
Alexander VI. and the Prophet Girolamo Savonarola. Savonarola has been
claimed as a precursor of the Lutheran Reformers, and as an inspired
exponent of the spirit of the fifteenth century. In reality he neither
shared the revolutionary genius of Luther, which gave a new vitality to
the faiths of Christendom, nor did he sympathize with that free
movement of the modern mind which found its first expression in the arts
and humanistic studies of Renaissance Italy. Both toward Renaissance and
Reform he preserved the attitude of a monk, showing on the one hand an
austere mistrust of pagan culture, and on the other no desire to alter
either the creeds or the traditions of the Romish Church. Yet the
history of Savonarola is not to be dissociated from that of the Italian
Renaissance. He more clearly than any other man discerned the moral and
political situation of his country. When all the states of Italy seemed
sunk in peace and cradled in prosperity, he predicted war, and felt the
imminence of overwhelming calamity. The purification of customs which he
preached was demanded by the flagrant vices of the Popes and by the
wickedness of the tyrants. The scourge which he prophesied did in fact
descend upon Italy. In addition to this clairvoyance by right of which
we call him prophet, the hold he took on Florence at a critical moment
of Italian history is alone enough to entitle him to more than merely
passing notice.
Girolamo Savonarola was born at Ferrara in 1452.[1] His grandfather
Michele, a Paduan of noble family, had removed to the capital of the
Este princes at the beginning of the fifteenth century. There he held
the office of court physician; and Girolamo was intended for the same
profession. But early in his boyhood the future prophet showed signs of
disinclination for a worldly life, and an invincible dislike of the
court. Under the House of Este, Ferrara was famous throughout Italy for
its gayety and splendor. No city enjoyed more brilliant and more
frequent public shows. Nowhere did the aristocracy maintain so much of
feudal magnificence and chivalrous enjoyment. The square castle of red
brick, which still stands in the middle of the town, was thronged with
poets, players, fools who enjoyed an almost European reputation, court
flatterers, knights, pages, scholars and fair ladies. But beneath its
cube of solid masonry, on a level with the moat, shut out from daylight
by a sevenfold series of iron bars, lay dungeons in which the objects of
the Duke's displeasure clanked chains and sighed their lives away.[2]
Within the precincts of this palace the young Savonarola learned to hate
alike the worldly vices and the despotic cruelty against which in
after-life he prophesied and fought unto the death.
[1] In this chapter on Savonarola I have made use of Villari's
_Life_ (translated by Leonard Horner, Longmans, 1863, 2 vols.),
Michelet's _Histoire de France_, vol. vii., Milman's article on
Savonarola (John Murray, 1870), Nardi's _Istoria Fiorentina_,
book ii., and the _Memoirs_ of De Comines.
[2] See p. 424.
Of his boyhood we know but little. His biographers only tell us that he
was grave and solitary, frequenting churches, praying with passionate
persistence, obstinately refusing, though otherwise docile, to join his
father in his visits to the court. Aristotle and S. Thomas Aquinas seem
to have been the favorite masters of his study. In fact he refused the
new lights of the humanists, and adhered to the ecclesiastical training
of the schoolmen. Already at the age of twenty we find him composing a
poem in Italian on the Ruin of the World, in which he cries: 'The whole
world is in confusion: all virtue is extinguished, and all good manners;
I find no living light abroad, nor one who blushes for his vices.' His
point of departure had been taken, and the keynote of his life had been
struck. The sense of intolerable sin that came upon him in Ferrara
haunted him through manhood, set his hand against the Popes and despots
of Italy, and gave peculiar tone to his prophetic utterances.
The attractions of the cloister, as a refuge from the storms of the
world, and as a rest from the torments of the sins of others, now began
to sway his mind.[1] But he communicated his desire to no one. It would
have grieved his father and his mother to find that their son, who was,
they hoped, to be a shining light at the court of Ferrara, had
determined to assume the cowl. At length, however, came the time at
which he felt that leave the world he must. 'It was on the 23d of April
1475,' says Villari; 'he was sitting with his lute and playing a sad
melody; his mother, as if moved by a spirit of divination, turned
suddenly round to him, and exclaimed mournfully, My son, that is a sign
we are soon to part. He roused himself, and continued, but with a
trembling hand, to touch the strings of the lute, without raising his
eyes from the ground.' This would make a picture: spring twilight in
the quaint Italian room, with perhaps a branch of fig-tree or of bay
across the open window; the mother looking up with anxious face from her
needlework; the youth, with those terrible eyes and tense lips and
dilated nostrils of the future prophet, not yet worn by years of care,
but strongly marked and unmistakable, bending over the melancholy chords
of the lute, dressed almost for the last time in secular attire.
[1] Often in later life Savonarola cried that he had sought the
cloister to find rest, but that God had chosen, instead of
bringing him into calm waters, to cast him on a tempest-swollen
sea. See the Sermon quoted by Villari, vol. i. p. 298.
On the very next day Girolamo left Ferrara in secret and journeyed to
Bologna. There he entered the order of S. Dominic, the order of the
Preachers, the order of his master S. Thomas, the order too, let us
remember, of inquisitorial crusades. The letter written to his father
after taking this step is memorable. In it he says: 'The motives by
which I have been led to enter into a religious life are these: the
great misery of the world; the iniquities of men, their rapes,
adulteries, robberies, their pride, idolatry, and fearful blasphemies:
so that things have come to such a pass that no one can be found acting
righteously. Many times a day have I repeated with tears the verse:
Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge littus avarum!
I could not endure the enormous wickedness of the blinded people of
Italy; and the more so because I saw everywhere virtue despised and vice
honored.' We see clearly that Savonarola's vocation took its origin in a
deep sense of the wickedness of the world. It was the same spirit as
that which drove the early Christians of Alexandria into the Thebaid.
Austere and haggard, consumed with the zeal of the Lord, he had moved
long enough among the Ferrarese holiday-makers. Those elegant young men
in tight hose and particolored jackets, with oaths upon their lips and
deeds of violence and lust within their hearts, were no associates for
him. It is touching, however, to note that no text of Ezekiel or
Jeremiah, but Virgil's musical hexameter, sounded through his soul the
warning to depart.
In this year Savonarola composed another poem, this time on the Ruin of
the Church. In his boyhood he had witnessed the pompous shows which
greeted Æneas Sylvius, more like a Roman general than a new-made Pope,
on his entrance into Ferrara. Since then he had seen the monster Sixtus
mount the Papal throne. No wonder if he, who had fled from the world to
the Church for purity and peace, should need to vent his passion in a
song. 'Where,' he cries, 'are the doctors of old times, the saints, the
learning, charity, chastity of the past?' The Church answers by
displaying her rent raiment and wounded body, and by pointing to the
cavern in which she has to make her home. 'Who,' exclaims the poet, 'has
wrought this wrong?' _Una fallace, superba meretrice_--Rome! Then indeed
the passion of the novice breaks in fire:--
Deh! per Dio, donna,
Se romper si potria quelle grandi ale!
The Church replies:--
Tu píangi e taci: e questo meglio parmi.
No other answer could be given to Savonarola's impatient yearnings even
by his own hot heart, while he yet remained a young and unknown monk in
Bologna. Nor, strive as he might strive through all his life, was it
granted to him to break those outspread wings of arrogant Rome.
The career of Savonarola as a preacher began in 1482, when he was sent
first to Ferrara and then to Florence on missions by his superiors. But
at neither place did he find acceptance. A prophet has no honor in his
own country; and for pagan-hearted Florence, though destined to be the
theater of his life-drama, Savonarola had as yet no thundrous burden of
invective to utter. Besides, his voice was sharp and thin; his face and
person were not prepossessing. The style of his discourse was adapted to
cloisteral disputations, and overloaded with scholastic distinctions.
The great orator had not yet arisen in him. The friar, with all his
dryness and severity, was but too apparent. With what strange feelings
must the youth have trodden the streets of Florence! In after-days he
used to say that he foreknew those streets and squares were destined to
be the scene of his labors. But then, voiceless, powerless, without
control of his own genius, without the consciousness of his prophetic
mission, he brooded alone and out of harmony with the beautiful and
mundane city. The charm of the hills and gardens of Valdarno, the
loveliness of Giotto's tower, the amplitude of Brunelleschi's
dome--these may have sunk deep into his soul. And the subtle temper of
the Florentine intellect must have attracted his own keen spirit by a
secret sympathy. For Florence erelong became the city of his love, the
first-born of his yearnings.
In the cloisters of San Marco, enriched with splendid libraries by the
liberality of the Medicean princes, he was at peace. The walls of that
convent had recently been decorated with frescoes by Fra Angelico, even
as a man might crowd the leaves of a missal with illuminations. Among
these Savonarola meditated and was happy. But in the pulpit and in
contact with the holiday folk of Florence he was ill at ease. Lorenzo
de' Medici overshadowed the whole city. Lorenzo, in whom the pagan
spirit of the Renaissance, the spirit of free culture, found a proper
incarnation, was the very opposite of Savonarola, who had already judged
the classical revival by its fruits, and had conceived a spiritual
resurrection for his country. At Florence a passionate love of art and
learning--the enthusiasm which prompted men to spend their fortunes upon
MSS. and statues, the sensibility to beauty which produced the
masterworks of Donatello and Ghiberti, the thirst for knowledge which
burned in Pico and Poliziano and Ficino--existed side by side with
impudent immorality, religious deadness, cold contempt for truth, and
cynical admiration of successful villainy. Both the good and the evil
which flourished on this fertile soil so luxuriantly were combined in
the versatile genius of the merchant prince, whose policy it was to
stifle freedom by caressing the follies, vices, and intellectual tastes
of his people.
The young Savonarola was as yet no match for Lorenzo. And whither could
he look for help? The reform of morals he so ardently desired was not to
be expected from the Church. Florence well knew that Sixtus had plotted
to murder the Medici before the altar at the moment of the elevation of
the Host. Excommunicated for a deed of justice after the failure of this
Popish plot, the city had long been at war with the pontiff. If anywhere
it was in the cells of the philosophers, in that retreat where Ficino
burned his lamp to Plato, in that hall where the Academy crowned their
master's bust with laurels, that the more sober-minded citizens found
ghostly comfort and advice. But from this philosophy the fervent soul of
Savonarola turned with no less loathing, and with more contempt, than
from the Canti Carnascialeschi and Aristophanic pageants of Lorenzo,
which made Florence at Carnival time affect the fashions of Athens
during the Dionysia. It is true that Italy owed much to the elevated
theism developed by Platonic students. While the humanists were exalting
pagan license, and while the Church was teaching the worst kinds of
immorality, the philosophers kept alive in cultivated minds a sense of
God.
But the monk, nourished on the Bible and S. Thomas, valued this
confusion of spirits and creeds in a chaos of indiscriminate erudition,
at a small price. He had the courage in the fifteenth century at
Florence to proclaim that the philosophers were in hell, and that an old
woman knew more of saving faith than Plato. Savonarola and Lorenzo were
opposed as champions of two hostile principles alike emergent from the
very life of the Renaissance: paganism reborn in the one, the spirit of
the gospel in the other. Both were essentially modern; for it was the
function of the Renaissance to restore to the soul of man its double
heritage of the classic past and Christian liberty, freeing it from the
fetters which the Middle Ages had forged. Not yet, however, were Lorenzo
and Savonarola destined to clash. The obscure friar at this time was
preaching to an audience of some thirty persons in San Lorenzo, while
Poliziano and all the fashion of the town crowded to the sermons of Fra
Mariano da Genezzano in Santo Spirito. This man flattered the taste of
the moment by composing orations on the model of Ficino's addresses to
the Academy, and by complimenting Christianity upon its similarity to
Platonism. Who could then have guessed that beneath the cowl of the
harsh-voiced Dominican, his rival, burned thoughts that in a few years
would inflame Florence with a conflagration powerful enough to destroy
the fabric of the Medicean despotism?
From Florence, where he had met with no success, Savonarola was sent to
San Gemignano, a little town on the top of a high hill between Florence
and Siena. We now visit San Gemignano in order to study some fading
frescoes of Gozzoli and Ghirlandajo, or else for the sake of its strange
feudal towers, tall pillars of brown stone, crowded together within the
narrow circle of the town walls. Very beautiful is the prospect from
these ramparts on a spring morning, when the song of nightingales and
the scent of acacia flowers ascend together from the groves upon the
slopes beneath. The gray Tuscan landscape for scores and scores of miles
all round melts into blueness, like the blueness of the sky, flecked
here and there with wandering cloud-shadows. Let those who pace the
grass-grown streets of the hushed city remember that here the first
flash of authentic genius kindled in Savonarola's soul. Here for the
first time he prophesied: 'The church will be scourged, then
regenerated, and this quickly.' These are the celebrated three
conclusions, the three points to which Savonarola in all his prophetic
utterances adhered.
But not yet had he fully entered on his vocation. His voice was weak;
his style uncertain; his soul, we may believe, still wavering between
strange dread and awful joy, as he beheld, through many a backward
rolling mist of doubt, the mantle of the prophets descend upon him.
Already he had abandoned the schoolmen for the Bible. Already he had
learned by heart each verse of the Old and New Testaments. Pondering on
their texts, he had discovered four separate interpretations for every
suggestion of Sacred Writ. For some of the pregnant utterances of the
prophets he found hundreds, pouring forth metaphor and illustration in
wild and dazzling profusion of audacious, uncouth imagery. The flame
which began to smoulder in him at San Gemignano burst forth into a blaze
at Brescia, in 1486. Savonarola was now aged thirty-four. 'Midway upon
the path of life' he opened the Book of Revelation: he figured to the
people of Brescia the four-and-twenty elders rising to denounce the sins
of Italy, and to declare the calamities that must ensue. He pictured to
them their city flowing with blood. His voice, which now became the
interpreter of his soul, in its resonance and earnestness and piercing
shrillness, thrilled his hearers with strange terror. Already they
believed his prophecy; and twenty-six years later, when the soldiers of
Gaston de Foix slaughtered six thousand souls in the streets of Brescia,
her citizens recalled the Apocalyptic warnings of the Dominican monk.
As Savonarola is now launched upon his vocation of prophecy, this is the
right moment to describe his personal appearance and his style of
preaching. We have abundant material for judging what his features were,
and how they flashed beneath the storm of inspiration.[1] Fra
Bartolommeo, one of his followers, painted a profile of him in the
character of S. Peter Martyr. This shows all the benignity and grace of
expression which his stern lineaments could assume. It is a picture of
the sweet and gentle nature latent within the fiery arraigner of his
nation at the bar of God. In contemporary medals the face appears hard,
keen, uncompromising, beneath its heavy cowl. But the noblest portrait
is an intaglio engraved by Giovanni della Corniole, now to be seen in
the Uffizzi at Florence. Of this work Michael Angelo, himself a disciple
of Savonarola, said that art could go no further. We are therefore
justified in assuming that the engraver has not only represented
faithfully the outline of Savonarola's face, but has also indicated his
peculiar expression. A thick hood covers the whole head and shoulders.
Beneath it can be traced the curve of a long and somewhat flat skull,
rounded into extraordinary fullness at the base and side. From a deeply
sunken eye-socket emerges, scarcely seen, but powerfully felt, the eye
that blazed with lightning. The nose is strong, prominent, and aquiline,
with wide nostrils, capable of terrible dilation under the stress of
vehement emotion. The mouth has full, compressed, projecting lips. It is
large, as if made for a torrent of eloquence: it is supplied with
massive muscles, as if to move with energy and calculated force and
utterance. The jawbone is hard and heavy; the cheekbone emergent:
between the two the flesh is hollowed, not so much with the emaciation
of monastic vigils as with the athletic exercise of wrestlings in the
throes of prophecy. The face, on the whole, is ugly, but not repellent;
and, in spite of its great strength, it shows signs of feminine
sensibility. Like the faces of Cicero and Demosthenes, it seems the fit
machine for oratory. But the furnaces hidden away behind that skull,
beneath that cowl, have made it haggard with a fire not to be found in
the serener features of the classic orators. Savonarola was a visionary
and a monk. The discipline of the cloister left its trace upon him. The
wings of dreams have winnowed and withered that cheek as they passed
over it. The spirit of prayer quivers upon those eager lips. The color
of Savonarola's flesh was brown: his nerves were exquisitely sensitive
yet strong; like a network of wrought steel, elastic, easily
overstrained, they recovered their tone and temper less by repose than
by the evolution of fresh electricity. With Savonarola fasts were
succeeded by trances, and trances by tempests of vehement improvization.
From the midst of such profound debility that he could scarcely crawl up
the pulpit steps, he would pass suddenly into the plenitude of power,
filling the Dome of Florence with denunciations, sustaining his
discourse by no mere trick of rhetoric that flows to waste upon the lips
of shallow preachers, but marshaling the phalanx of embattled arguments
and pointed illustrations, pouring his thought forth in columns of
continuous flame, mingling figures of sublimest imagery with reasonings
severest accuracy, at one time melting his audience tears, at another
freezing them with terror, again quickening their souls with prayers
and pleadings and blessings that had in them the sweetness of the very
spirit of Christ. His sermons began with scholastic exposition; as they
advanced, the ecstasy of inspiration fell upon the preacher, till the
sympathies of the whole people of Florence gathered round him,[2] met
and attained, as it were, to single consciousness in him. He then no
longer restrained the impulse of his oratory, but became the mouthpiece
of God, the interpreter to themselves of all that host. In a fiery
crescendo, never flagging, never losing firmness of grasp or lucidity of
vision, he ascended the altar steps of prophecy, and, standing like
Moses on the mount between the thunders of God and the tabernacles of
the plain, fulminated period after period of impassioned eloquence. The
walls of the church re-echoed with sobs and wailings dominated by one
ringing voice. The scribe to whom we owe the fragments of these sermons,
at times breaks off with these words: 'Here I was so overcome with
weeping that I could not go on.' Pico della Mirandola tells us that the
mere sound of Savonarola's voice, startling the stillness of the Duomo,
thronged through all its space with people, was like a clap of doom: a
cold shiver ran through the marrow of his bones, the hairs of his head
stood on end, as he listened. Another witness reports: 'These sermons
caused such terror, alarm, sobbing, and tears that every one passed
through the streets without speaking, more dead than alive.'
[1] Engravings of the several portraits may be seen in
Harford's _Life of Michael Angelo Buonarroti_ (Longmans, 1857
vol. i.), and also in Villari.
[2] Nardi, in his _Istorie di Firenze_ (lib. ii. cap. 16),
describes the crowd assembled in the Duomo to hear Savonarola
preach: 'Per la moltitudine degli uditori non essendo quasi
bastante la chiesa cattedrale di santa Maria del Fiore, ancora
che molto grande e capace sia, fu necessario edificar dentro
lungo i pareti di quella, dirempetto al pergamo, certi gradi di
legname rilevati con ordine di sederi, a guisa di teatro, e
così dalla parte di sopra all' entrata del coro e dalla parte
di sotto in verso le porte della detta chiesa.'
Such was the preacher: and such was the effect of his oratory. The theme
on which he loved to dwell was this. Repent! A judgment of God is at
hand. A sword is suspended over you. Italy is doomed for her
iniquity--for the sins of the Church, whose adulteries have filled the
world--for the sins of the tyrants, who encourage crime and trample upon
souls--for the sins of you people, you fathers and mothers, you young
men, you maidens, you children that lisp blasphemy! Nor did Savonarola
deal in generalities. He described in plain language every vice; he laid
bare every abuse; so that a mirror was held up to the souls of his
hearers, in which they saw their most secret faults appallingly
portrayed and ringed around with fire. He entered with particularity
into the details of the coming woes. One by one he enumerated the
bloodshed, the ruin of cities, the trampling down of provinces, the
passage of armies, the desolating wars that were about to fall on
Italy.[1] You may read pages of his sermons which seem like vivid
narratives of what afterwards took place in the sack of Prato, in the
storming of Brescia, in the battle of the Ronco, in the cavern-massacre
of Vicenza. No wonder that he stirred his audience to their center. The
hell within them was revealed. The coming doom above them was made
manifest. Ezekiel and Jeremiah were not more prophetic. John crying to a
generation of vipers, 'Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!'
was not more weighty with the mission of authentic inspiration.
[1] Savonarola's whole view of the situation and of the perils
of Italy was that of a prophet. He saw more clearly than other
people what was inevitable. But his disciples and the vulgar
believed implicitly in his prophetic gift in the narrower
sense, that is, in his power to predict events, such as the
deaths of Lorenzo and the King of Naples, the punishment of
Charles VIII, in the loss of the dauphin, etc. Pico says:
'Savonarola could read the future as clearly as one sees the
whole is greater than the part.' And there is no doubt that, as
time went on, Savonarola came to believe himself that he
possessed this faculty. After his trial and execution a very
uncomfortable sense of doubt remained upon the minds of those
who had been witnesses of his life-drama. Upon this topic
Guicciardini, _Stor. Fior., Op. Ined._ vol. iii. p. 179; Nardi,
_Stor. Fior._ lib. ii. caps. 16 and 36, may be read with
advantage.
'I began'--Savonarola writes himself with reference to a course of
sermons delivered in 1491--'I began publicly to expound the Revelation
in our Church of S. Mark. During the course of the year I continued to
develop to the Florentines these three propositions: That the Church
would be renewed in our time; that before that renovation God would
strike all Italy with a fearful chastisement; that these things would
happen shortly.' It is by right of the foresight of a new age contained
in these three famous so-called conclusions that Savonarola deserves to
be named the Prophet of the Renaissance. He was no apostle of reform: it
did not occur to him to reconstruct the creed, to dispute the
discipline, or to criticise the authority of the Church. He was no
founder of a new order: unlike his predecessors, Dominic and Francis, he
never attempted to organize a society of saints or preachers; unlike his
successors, Caraffa the Theatine and Loyola the Jesuit, he enrolled no
militia for the defense of the faith, constructed no machinery for
education. Starting with simple horror at the wickedness of the world,
he had recourse to the old prophets. He steeped himself in Bible
studies. He caught the language of Malachi and Jeremiah. He became
convinced that for the wickedness of Italy a judgment was imminent. From
that conclusion he rose upon the wings of faith to the belief that a new
age would dawn. The originality of his intuition consisted in this, that
while Italy was asleep, and no man trembled for the future, he alone
felt that the stillness of the air was fraught with thunder, that its
tranquillity was like that which precedes a tempest blown from the very
nostrils of the God of Hosts.
To the astonishment of his hearers, and perhaps also of himself, his
prophecies began to fulfill themselves. Within three years after his
first sermon in S. Mark's, Charles VIII. had entered Italy, Lorenzo de'
Medici was dead, and politicians no less than mystics felt that a new
chapter had been opened in the book of the world's history. The Reform
of the Church was also destined to follow. What Savonarola had foreseen,
here too happened; but not in the way he would have wished, nor by the
means he would have used. It is one thing to be a prophet in the sense
of discerning the catastrophe to which circumstances must inevitably
lead, another thing to trace beforehand the path which will be taken by
the hurricanes that change the face of the world. Remaining in his soul
a monk, attached by education and by natural sympathy to the past rather
than the future, he felt in spite of himself the spirit of the coming
age. Had he lived but one century earlier, we should not have called him
prophet. It was the Renaissance which set the seal of truth upon his
utterances. Yet in his vision of the world to be, he was like Balaam
prophesying blindly of a star.
Sixtus IV. had died and been succeeded by Innocent VIII. Innocent had
given place to Alexander. The very nadir of the abyss had been reached.
Then Savonarola saw a vision and heard a voice: _Ecce gladius Domini
super terram cito et velociter._ The sword turned earthward; the air was
darkened with fiery sleet and arrows; thunders rolled; the world was
filled with pestilences, wars, famines. At another time he dreamed and
looked toward Rome. From the Eternal City there rose a black cross,
reaching to heaven, and on it was inscribed _Crux iræ Dei._ Then too the
skies were troubled; clouds rushed through the air discharging darts and
fire and swords, and multitudes below were dying. These visions he
published in sermons and in print. Pictures were made from them. They
and the three conclusions went abroad through Italy. Again, Charles was
preparing for his expedition. Savonarola took the Ark of Noah for his
theme. The deluge was at hand; he bade his hearers enter the ship of
refuge before the terrible and mighty nation came: 'O Italy! O Rome! I
give you over to the hands of a people who will wipe you out from among
the nations! I see them descending like lions. Pestilence comes marching
hand in hand with war. The deaths will be so many that the buriers shall
go through the streets crying out: Who hath dead, who hath dead? and one
will bring his father, and another his son. O Rome! I cry again to you
to repent, Repent, Venice! Milan, repent!' 'The prophets a hundred years
ago proclaimed to you the flagellation of the Church. For five years I
have been announcing it: and now again I cry to you. The Lord is full of
wrath. The angels on their knees cry to Him: Strike, strike! The good
sob and groan: We can no more. The orphans, the widows say: We are
devoured, we cannot go on living. All the Church triumphant hath cried
to Christ: Thou diedst in vain. It is heaven which is in combat. The
saints of Italy, the angels, are leagued with the barbarians. Those who
called them in have put the saddles to the horses. Italy is in
confusion, saith the Lord; this time she shall be yours. And the Lord
cometh above his saints, above the blessed ones who march in
battle-array, who are drawn up in squadrons. Whither are they bound? S.
Peter is for Rome, crying: To Rome, to Rome! and S. Paul and S. Gregory
march, crying: To Rome! And behind them go the sword, the pestilence,
the famine. S. John cries: Up, up, to Florence! And the plague follows
him. S. Anthony cries: Ho for Lombardy! S. Mark cries: Haste we to the
city that is throned upon the waters! And all the angels of heaven,
sword in hand, and all the celestial consistory, march on unto this
war.'
Then he speaks of his own fate: 'What shall be the end of our war, you
ask? If this be a general question, I shall answer Victory! If you ask
it of myself in particular, I answer, Death, or to be hewn in pieces.
This is our faith, this is our guerdon, this is our reward! We ask for
no more than this. But when you see me dead, be not then troubled. All
those who have prophesied have suffered and been slain. To make my word
prevail, there is needed the blood of many.'
These are the prophecies with which Savonarola anticipated the coming of
a foreign conqueror. It is interesting to trace in his apostrophes the
double feeling of the prophet. Desire for the advent of Charles as a
Messiah, liberator, and purifier of the Church, contends with an
instinctive horror of the barbarian. Savonarola, like Dante, like all
Italian patriots, except only Machiavelli, who too late had been
lessoned by bitter experience to put no trust in foreign princes, could
not refrain from hoping even against hope that good might come from
beyond the Alps. Yet when the foreigners appeared, he trembled at the
violence they wrought upon the ancient liberties of Italy. Savonarola's
chief shortcoming as a patriot consisted in this, that he strengthened
the old folly of the Florentines in leaning upon strangers.[1] Had he
taught the Italians to work out their self-regeneration from within,
instead of preparing them to accept an alien's yoke, he would have won a
far more lasting meed of fame. As it was, together with the passion for
liberty which became a religion with his followers, he strove to revive
the obsolete tactics of an earlier age, and bequeathed to Florence the
weak policy of waiting upon France. This legacy bore bitter fruits in
the next century. If it was the memory of the Friar which nerved the
citizens of Florence to sustain the siege of 1528, the same memory bound
them to seek aid from inconsequent Francis, and to hope that at the last
moment a cohort of seraphim would defend their walls.[2]
[1] Segni, _Ist. Fior._ lib. i. p. 23, records a saying of
Savonarola's, _Gigli con gigli dover fiorire_, as one of the
causes of the obstinate French partiality of the Florentines in
1529.
[2] See Varchi, Segni, and Nardi, who agree on these points.
That Savonarola believed in his own prophecies there is no doubt. They
were in fact, as I have already tried to show, a view of the political
and moral situation of Italy, expressed with the force of profound
religious conviction and based upon a theory of the divine government of
the world. But now far he allowed himself to be guided by visions and by
words uttered to his soul in trance, is a somewhat different question.
It is just at this point that a man possessed of acute insight and
trusting to the truth of his instincts may be tempted under strong
devotional excitement to pass the border land which separates healthy
intuition from hallucination. If Savonarola's studies of the Hebrew
prophets inclined him to believe in dreams and revelations, yet on the
other hand the strong logic of his intellect, trained in scholastic
distinctions, taught him to mistrust the promptings of a power that
spoke to him when he was somewhat more or less than his prosaic self.
How could he be sure that the spirit came from God? We know for certain
that he struggled against the impulse of divination and refused at times
to obey it. But it overcame him. Like the Cassandra of Æschylus, he
panted in the grasp of one mightier than himself. 'An inward fire,' he
cried, 'consumes my bones and forces me to speak out' And again: 'I
have, O Lord, burnt my wings of contemplation, and I have launched into
a tempestuous sea, where I have found contrary winds in every quarter. I
wished to reach a harbor, but could not find the way thither; I wished
to lay me down, but could meet with no resting-place. I longed to be
silent and to utter not a word. But the word of the Lord is in my heart;
and if it does not come forth, it must consume the marrow of my bones.
Thus, O Lord, if it be Thy will that I should navigate in deep waters,
Thy will, be done.'
At another time he says: 'I remember well that upon one occasion, in
the year 1491, when I was preaching in the Duomo, having composed my
sermon entirely upon these visions, I determined to abstain from all
allusion to them, and in future to adhere to this resolution. God is my
witness that the whole of Saturday and the whole of the succeeding night
I lay awake, and could see no other course, no other doctrine. At
daybreak, worn out and depressed by the many hours I had lain awake,
while I was praying I heard a voice that said to me: "Fool that thou
art, dost thou not see that it is God's will that thou shouldst keep to
the same path?" The consequence of which was that on the same day I
preached a tremendous sermon.'
These passages leave upon the mind no doubt of Savonarola's sincerity.
If he deceived others, he was himself the first to be deceived, and that
too not before he had subjected himself to the most searching
examination, seeking in vain to escape from the force which compelled
him to play the part of prophet. Terrible, indeed, must have been the
wrestlings and questionings of this strong-fibered intellect, alone and
diffident, within the toils of ecstasy.
Returning to the details of Savonarola's biography, we find him still in
Lombardy in 1486. After leaving Brescia he moved to Reggio, where he
made the friendship of the famous Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. They
continued intimate till the death of the latter in 1494; it was his
nephew, Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola, who afterwards wrote
the Life of Savonarola. From Reggio the friar went to Genoa; and by this
time his fame as a prophet in the north of Lombardy was well
established. Now came the turning-point in his life. Fourteen hundred
and ninety is the date which determined his public action as a man of
power in Italy. Lorenzo de' Medici, strangely enough, was the instrument
of his recall in this year to Florence. Lorenzo, who, if he could have
foreseen the future of his own family in Florence, would rather have
stifled this monk's voice in his cowl, took pains to send for him and
bring him to S. Mark's, the convent upon which his father had lavished
so much wealth. He hoped to add luster to his capital by the preaching
of the most eloquent friar in Italy. Clear-sighted as he was, he could
not discern the flame of liberty which burned in Savonarola's soul.
Savonarola, the democratic party leader, was a force in politics as
incalculable beforehand as Ferrucci the hero. On August 1, 1490, the
monk ascended the pulpit of S. Mark's, and delivered a tremendous sermon
on a passage from the Apocalypse. On the eve of this commencement he is
reported to have said: 'Tomorrow I shall begin to preach, and I shall
preach for eight years.' The Florentines were greatly moved. Savonarola
had to remove from the Church of S. Mark to the Duomo; and thus began
the spiritual dictatorship which he exercised thenceforth without
intermission till his death.
Lorenzo soon began to resent the influence of this uncompromising monk,
who, not content with moral exhortations, confidently predicted the
coming of a foreign conqueror, the fall of the Magnificent, the peril of
the Pope, and the ruin of the King of Naples. Yet it was no longer easy
to suppress the preacher. Very early in his Florentine career Savonarola
had proved himself to be fully as great an administrator as an orator.
The Convent of San Marco dominated by his personal authority, had made
him Prior in 1491, and he was already engaged in a thorough reform of
all the Dominican monasteries of Tuscany. It was usual for the Priors
elect of S. Mark to pay a complimentary visit to the Medici, their
patrons. Savonarola, thinking this a worldly and unseemly custom,
omitted to observe it. Lorenzo, noticing the discourtesy, is reported to
have said, with a smile: 'See now! here is a stranger who has come into
_my house_, and will not deign to visit me.' He forgot that Savonarola
looked upon his convent as a house of God. At the same time the prince
made overtures of goodwill to the Prior, frequently attended his
services, and dropped gold into the alms-box of S. Mark's. Savonarola
took no notice of him, and handed his florins over to the poor of the
city. Then Lorenzo stirred up Fra Mariano da Genezzano, Savonarola's old
rival, against him; but the clever rhetorician was no longer a match for
the full-grown athlete of inspired eloquence. Da Genezzano was forced to
leave Florence in angry discomfiture. With such unbending haughtiness
did Savonarola already dare to brave the powers that be. He had
recognized the oppressor of liberty, the corrupter of morality, the
opponent of true religion, in Lorenzo. He hated him as a tyrant. He
would not give him the right hand of friendship or the salute of
civility. In the same spirit he afterwards denounced Alexander, scorned
his excommunication, and plotted with the kings of Christendom for the
convening of a Council. Lorenzo, however, was a man of supreme insight
into character, and knew how to value his antagonist. Therefore, when
the hour for dying came, and when, true child of the Renaissance that he
was, he felt the need of sacraments and absolution, he sent for
Savonarola, saying that he was the only honest friar he knew. The
magnanimity of the Medici was only equaled by the firmness of the monk.
Standing by the bedside of the dying man, who had confessed his sins,
Savonarola said: 'Three things are required of you: to have a full and
lively faith in God's mercy; to restore what you have unjustly gained;
to give back liberty to Florence.' Lorenzo assented readily to the two
first requisitions. At the third he turned his face in silence to the
wall. He must indeed have felt that to demand and promise this was
easier than to carry it into effect. Savonarola left him without
absolution. Lorenzo died.[1]
[1] It is just to observe that great doubt has been thrown on
the facts above related concerning Lorenzo's death. Poliziano,
who was with Lorenzo during his last illness, does not mention
them in his letter to Jacobus Antiquarius (xv. Kal. Jun. 1492).
But Burlmacchi, Pico, Barsanti, Razzi, and others of the
Frate's party, agree in the story. What Poliziano wrote was
that Savonarola confessed Lorenzo and retired without
volunteering the blessing. Razzi says the interview between
Savonarola and Lorenzo took place without witnesses; Pico and
Burlamacchi relate the event as they heard of it from the lips
of Savonarola. We have therefore to judge between the testimony
of Poliziano, who held no communication with the friar, and the
veracity of several narrators, biassed indeed by hostility
toward the Medici, but in direct intercourse with the only man
who could tell the exact truth of what passed--the confessor,
Savonarola, who had been alone with Lorenzo. Villari, after
sifting the evidence, arrives at the conclusion that we may
believe Burlamacchi. The Baron Reumont, in his recent _Life of
Lorenzo_, vol. ii. p. 590, gives some solid reasons for
accepting this conclusion with caution, and Gino Capponi
expresses a distinct disbelief in Burlamacchi's narration.
The third point insisted upon by the friar, Restore liberty to Florence,
not only broke the peace of the dying prince, but it also afterwards for
ever ruled the conduct of Savonarola. From this time his life is that of
a statesman no less than of a preacher. What Lorenzo refused, or was
indeed upon his deathbed quite unable to perform, the monk determined to
achieve. Henceforth he became the champion of popular liberty in the
pulpit. Feeling that in the people alone lay any hope of regeneration
for Italy, he made it the work of his whole life to give the strength
and sanction of religion to republican freedom. This work he sealed with
martyrdom. The spirit of the creed which he bequeathed to his partisans
in Florence was political no less than pious. Whether Savonarola was
right to embark upon the perilous sea of statecraft cannot now be
questioned. What prophet of Israel from Samuel to Isaiah was not the
maker and destroyer of kings and constitutions? When we call him by
their title, we mean to say that he, like them, controlled by spiritual
force the fortunes of his people. Whether he sought it or not, this
rôle of politician was thrust upon him by the course of events: nor was
the history of Italian cities deficient in precedents of similar
functions assumed by preaching friars.[1]
[1] It is enough to allude to Arnold of Brescia in Rome, to Fra
Bussolari in Pavia, ami to John of Vicenza. Sec Appendix iv.
To Lorenzo succeeded the incompetent Piero de' Medici, who surrendered
the fortresses of Tuscany to the French army. While Savonarola was
prophesying a sword, a scourge, a deluge, Charles VIII. rode at the head
of his knighthood into Florence. The city was leaderless, unused to
liberty. Who but the monk who had predicted the invasion should now
attempt to control it? Who but he whose voice alone had power to
assemble and to sway the Florentines should now direct them? His
administrative faculty in a narrow sphere had been proved by his reform
of the Dominican Convents. His divine mission was authenticated by the
arrival of the French. The Lord had raised him up to act as well as to
utter. He felt this: the people felt it. He was not the man to refuse
responsibility.
During the years of 1493 and 1494, when Florence together with Italy was
in imminent peril, the voice of Savonarola never ceased to ring. His
sermons on the psalm 'Quam bonus' and on the Ark of Noah are among the
most stupendous triumphs of his eloquence. From his pulpit beneath the
somber dome of Brunelleschi he kept pouring forth words of power to
resuscitate the free spirit of his Florentines. In 1495, when the
Medici had been expelled and the French army had gone upon its way to
Naples, Savonarola was called upon to reconstitute the state. He bade
the people abandon their old system of Parlamenti and Balia, and
establish a Grand Council after the Venetian type.[1] This institution,
which seemed to the Florentines the best they had ever adopted, might be
regarded by the historian as only one among their many experiments in
constitution-making, if Savonarola had not stamped it with his peculiar
genius by announcing that Christ was to be considered the Head of the
State.[2] This step at once gave a theocratic bias to the government,
which determined all the acts of the monk's administration. Not content
with political organization, too impatient to await the growth of good
manners from sound institutions, he set about a moral and religious
reformation. Pomps, vanities, and vices were to be abandoned.
Immediately the women and the young men threw aside their silks and fine
attire. The Carnival songs ceased. Hymns and processions took the place
of obscene choruses and pagan triumphs. The laws were remodeled in the
same severe and abrupt spirit. Usury was abolished. Whatever Savonarola
ordained, Florence executed. By the magic of his influence the city for
a moment assumed a new aspect. It seemed as though the old austerity
which Dante and Villani praised were about to return without the
factious hate and pride that ruined medæival Tuscany. In everything done
by Savonarola at this epoch there was a strange combination of political
sagacity with monastic zeal. Neither Guicciardini nor Machiavelli,
writing years afterwards, when Savonarola had fallen and Florence was
again enslaved, could propose anything wiser than his Consiglio Grande.
Yet the fierce revivalism advocated by the friar--the bonfire of Lorenzo
di Credi's and Fra Bartolommeo's pictures, of MSS, of Boccaccio and
classic poets, and of all those fineries which a Venetian Jew is said to
have valued in one heap at 22,000 florins--the recitation of such
Bacchanalian songs as this--
Never was there so sweet a gladness,
Joy of so pure and strong a fashion,
As with zeal and love and passion
Thus to embrace Christ's holy madness!
Cry with me, cry as I now cry,
Madness, madness, holy madness!
--the procession of boys and girls through the streets, shaming their
elders into hypocritical piety, and breeding in their own hearts the
intolerable priggishness of premature pietism--could not bring forth
excellent and solid fruits. The change was far too violent. The temper
of the race was not prepared for it. It clashed too rudely with
Renaissance culture. It outraged the sense of propriety in the more
moderate citizens, and roused to vindictive fury the worst passions of
the self-indulgent and the worldly. A reaction was inevitable.[3]
[1] This change was certainly wrought out by the influence of
the friar and approved by him. Segni, lib. i. p. 15, speaks
clearly on the point, and says that the friar for this service
to the city 'debbe esser messo tra buoni datori di leggi, e
debbe essere amato e onorato da' Fiorentini non altrimenti che
Numa dai Romani e Solone dagli Ateniesi e Licurgo da'
Lacedemoni.' The evil of the old system was that the
Parlamento, which consisted of the citizens assembled in the
Piazza, was exposed to intimidation, and had no proper
initiative, while the Balia, or select body, to whom they then
intrusted plenipotentiary authority, was always the faction for
the moment uppermost. For the mode of working the Parlamento
and Balia, see Segni, p. 199; Nardi, lib. vi. cap. 4; Varchi,
vol. ii. p. 372. Savonarola inscribed this octave stanza on the
wall of the Consiglio Grande:
'Se questo popolar consiglio e certo
Governo, popol, de la tua cittate
Conservi, che da Dio t'e stato offerto,
In pace starai sempre e libertate:
Tien dunque l'occhio della mente aperto,
Chè molte insidie ognor ti fien parate;
E sappi che chi vuol far parlamento
Vuol tórti dalle mani il reggimento.'
[2] See Varchi, vol. i. p. 169. Niccolo Capponi, in 1527,
returning to the policy of Savonarola, caused the Florentines
to elect Christ for their king, and inscribed upon the door of
the Palazzo Pubblico:--
Y.H.S. CHRISTUS REX FLORENTINI
POPULI S.P. DECRETO ELECTUS.
[3] The position of the Puritan leaders in England was somewhat
similar to Savonarola's. But they had at the end of a long war,
the majority of the nation with them. Besides, the English
temperament was more adapted to Puritanism than the Italian,
nor were the manifestations of piety prescribed by Parliament
so extravagant. And yet even in England a reaction took place
under the Restoration.
Meanwhile the strong wine of prophecy intoxicated Savonarola. His fiery
temperament, strained to the utmost by the dead weight of Florentine
affairs that pressed upon him, became more irritable day by day. Vision
succeeded vision; trance followed upon trance; agonies of dejection were
suddenly transformed into outbursts of magnificent and soul-sustaining
enthusiasm. It was no wonder if, passing as he had done from the
discipline of the cloister to the dictatorship of a republic, he should
make extravagant mistakes. The tension of this abnormal situation in the
city grew to be excessive, and cool thinkers predicted that Savonarola's
position would become untenable. Parties began to form and gather to a
head. The followers of the monk, by far the largest section of the
people, received the name of Piagnoni or Frateschi. The friends of the
Medici, few at first and cautious, were called Bigi. The opponents of
Savonarola and of the Medici, who hated his theocracy, but desired to
see an oligarchy and not a tyranny in Florence, were known as the
Arrabbiati.
The discontent which germinated in Florence displayed itself in Rome.
Alexander found it intolerable to be assailed as Antichrist by a monk
who had made himself master of the chief Italian republic. At first he
used his arts of blandishment and honeyed words in order to lure
Savonarola to Rome. The friar refused to quit Florence. Then Alexander
suspended him from preaching. Savonarola obeyed, but wrote at the same
time to Charles VIII. denouncing his indolence and calling upon him to
reform the Church. At the request of the Florentine Republic, though
still suffering from the Pope's interdict, he then resumed his
preaching. Alexander sought next to corrupt the man he could not
intimidate. To the suggestion that a Cardinal's hat might be offered
him, Savonarola replied that he preferred the red crown of martyrdom.
Ascending the pulpit of the Duomo in 1496, he preached the most fiery of
all his Lenten courses. Of this series of orations Milman writes: 'His
triumphal career began with the Advent of 1494 on Haggai and the Psalms.
But it is in the Carême of 1496 on Amos and Zechariah that the preacher
girds himself to his full strength, when he had attained his full
authority, and could not but be conscious that there was a deep and
dangerous rebellion brooding in the hearts of the hostile factions at
Florence, and when already ominous rumors began to be heard from Rome.
He that would know the power, the daring, the oratory of Savonarola,
must study this volume.'[1]
[1] These sermons were printed from the notes taken by Lorenzo
Violi in one volume at Venice, 1534.
Very terrific indeed are the denunciations contained in these
discourses--denunciations fulminated without disguise against the Pope
and priests of Rome, against the Medici, against the Florentines
themselves, in whom the traces of rebellion were beginning to appear.
Mingled with these vehement invectives, couched in Savonarola's most
impassioned style and heightened by his most impressive imagery, are
political harangues and polemical arguments against the Pope. The
position assumed by the friar in his war with Rome was not a strong one,
and the reasoning by which he supported it was marked by curious
self-deception mingled with apparent efforts to deceive his audience. He
had not the audacious originality of Luther. He never went to the length
of braving Alexander by burning his bulls and by denying the authority
of popes in general. Not daring to break all connection with the Holy
See, he was driven to quibble about the distinction between the office
and the man, assuming a hazardous attitude of obedience to the Church
whose head and chief he daily outraged. At the same time he took no
pains to enlist the sympathies of the Italian princes, many of whom
might presumably have been hostile to the Pope, on his side of the
quarrel. All the tyrants came in for a share of his prophetic
indignation. Lodovico Sforza, the lord of Mirandola, and Piero de'
Medici felt themselves specially aggrieved, and kept urging Alexander to
extinguish this source of scandal to established governments. Against so
great and powerful a host one man could not stand alone. Savonarola's
position became daily more dangerous in Florence. The merchants,
excommunicated by the Pope and thus exposed to pillage in foreign
markets, grumbled at the friar who spoiled their trade. The ban of
interdiction lay upon the city, where the sacraments could no longer be
administered or the dead be buried with the rites of Christians.
Meanwhile a band of high-spirited and profligate young men, called
Compagnacci, used every occasion to insult and interrupt him. At last in
March 1498 his staunch friends, the Signory, or supreme executive of
Florence, suspended him from preaching in the Duomo. Even the populace
were weary of the protracted quarrel with the Holy See: nor could any
but his own fanatical adherents anticipate the wars which threatened the
state, with equanimity.
Savonarola himself felt that the supreme hour was come. One more
resource was left; to that he would now betake himself: he could
afterwards but die. This last step was the convening of a general
council.[1] Accordingly he addressed letters to all the European
potentates. One of these, inscribed to Charles VIII., was dispatched,
intercepted, and conveyed to Alexander. He wrote also to the Pope and
warned him of his purpose. The termination of that epistle is
noteworthy: 'I can thus have no longer any hope in your Holiness, but
must turn to Christ alone, who chooses the weak of this world to
confound the strong lions among the perverse generations. He will assist
me to prove and sustain, in the face of the world, the holiness of the
work for the sake of which I so greatly suffer: and He will inflict a
just punishment on those who persecute me and would impede its progress.
As for myself, I seek no earthly glory, but long eagerly for death. May
your Holiness no longer delay but look to your salvation.'
[1] This scheme was by no means utterly unpractical. The Borgia
had only just escaped deposition in 1495 by the gift of a
Cardinal's hat to the Bishop of S. Malo. He was hated no less
than feared through the length and breadth of Italy. But
Savonarola had allowed the favorable moment to pass by.
But while girding on his armor for this singlehanded combat with the
Primate of Christendom and the Princes of Italy, the martyrdom to which
Savonarola now looked forward fell upon him. Growing yearly more
confident in his visions and more willing to admit his supernatural
powers, he had imperceptibly prepared the pit which finally ingulfed
him. Often had he professed his readiness to prove his vocation by fire.
Now came the moment when this defiance to an ordeal was answered.[1] A
Franciscan of Apulia offered to meet him in the flames and see whether
he were of God or not. Fra Domenico, Savonarola's devoted friend, took
up the gauntlet and proposed himself as champion. The furnace was
prepared: both monks stood ready to enter it: all Florence was assembled
in the Piazza to witness what should happen. Various obstacles, however,
arose; and after waiting a whole day for the friar's triumph, the people
had to retire to their homes under a pelting shower of rain,
unsatisfied, and with a dreary sense that after all their prophet was
but a mere man. The Compagnacci got the upper hand. S. Mark's convent
was besieged. Savonarola was led to prison, never to issue till the day
of his execution by the rope and faggot. We may draw a veil over those
last weeks. Little indeed is known about them, except that in his cell
the Friar composed his meditations on the the 31st and 51st Psalms, the
latter of which was published in Germany with a preface by Luther in
1573. Of the rest we hear only of prolonged torture before stupid and
malignant judges, of falsified evidence and of contradictory
confessions. What he really said and chose to stand by, what he
retracted, what he shrieked out in the delirium of the rack, and what
was falsely imputed to him, no one now can settle.[2] Though the spirit
was strong, the flesh was weak; he had the will but not the nerve to be
a martyr. At ten o'clock on the 23d of May 1498 he was led forth
together with brother Salvestro, the confidant of his visions, and
brother Domenico, his champion in the affair of the ordeal, to a stage
prepared in the Piazza.[3] These two men were hanged first. Savonarola
was left till the last. As the hangman tied the rope round his neck, a
voice from the crowd shouted: 'Prophet, now is the time to perform a
miracle!' The Bishop of Vasona, who conducted the execution, stripped
his friar's frock from him, and said, 'I separate thee from the Church
militant and triumphant.' Savonarola, firm and combative even at the
point of death, replied, 'Militant yes: triumphant, no: _that_ is not
yours.' The last words he uttered were, 'The Lord has suffered as much
for me.' Then the noose was tightened round his neck. The fire beneath
was lighted. The flames did not reach his body while life was in it; but
those who gazed intently thought they saw the right hand give the sign
of benediction. A little child afterwards saw his heart still whole
among the ashes cast into the Arno; and almost to this day flowers have
been placed every morning of the 23d of May upon the slab of the Piazza
where his body fell.
[1] There seems to be no doubt that this Ordeal by Fire was
finally got up by the Compagnacci with the sanction of the
Signory, who were anxious to relieve themselves by any means of
Savonarola. The Franciscan chosen to enter the flames together
with Fra Domenico was a certain Giuliano Rondinelli. Nardi
calls him Andrea Rondinelli.
[2] Nardi, lib. ii. vol. i. p. 128, treats the whole matter of
Savonarola's confessions under torture with good sense. He
says: 'Avendo domandato il frate quello che diceva e affermava
delle sue esamine fatte infino a quel di, rispose, che ciò ch'
egli aveva ne' tempi passati detto e predetto era la pura
verita, e che quello di che s'era ridetto e aveva ritratto, era
tutto falso e era seguito per il dolor grande e per la paura
che egli aveva de' tormenti, e che di nuovo si ridirebbe e
ritratterebbe tante volte, quante ci fusse di nuovo tormentato,
perciò che si conosceva molto debole e inconstante nel
sopportare i supplicii.' Burchard, in his Diary, reports the
childish, foul, malignant gossip current in Rome. This may be
read in the 'Preuves et Observations' appended to the _Memoirs_
of De Comines, vol. v. p. 512. See the Marchese Gino Capponi's
_Storia della Firenze_ (tom. ii. pp. 248-51) for a critical
analysis of the depositions falsely ascribed to Savonarola.
[3] There is a curious old picture in the Pinacoteca of Perugia
which represents the burning of the three friars. The whole
Piazza della Signoria is shown, with the houses of the
fifteenth century, and without the statues which afterwards
adorned it. The spectator fronts the Palazzo, and has to his
extreme right the Loggia de' Lanzi. The center of the square is
occupied by a great circular pile of billets and fagots, to
which a wooden bridge of scaffolding leads from the left angle
of the Polazzo. From the middle of the pile rises a pole, to
which the bodies of the friars in their white clothes are
suspended. Sta Maria del Fiore, the Badia tower, and the
distant hills above Fiesole complete a scene which is no doubt
accurate in detail.
Thus died Savonarola: and immediately he became a saint. His sermons and
other works were universally distributed. Medals in his honor were
struck. Raphael painted him among the Doctors of the Church in the
Camera della Segnatura of the Vatican. The Church, with strange
inconsistency, proposed to canonize the man whom she had burned as a
contumacious heretic and a corrupter of the people. This canonization
never took place: but many Dominican Churches used a special office
with his name and in his honor.[1] A legend similar to that of S.
Francis in its wealth of mythical details embalmed the memory of even
the smallest details of his life. But, above all, he lived in the hearts
of the Florentines. For many years to come his name was the watchword of
their freedom; his prophecies sustained their spirit during the siege of
1528;[2] and it was only by returning to his policy that Niccolo Capponi
and Francesco Carducci ruled the people through those troublous times.
The political action of Savonarola forms but a short episode in the
history of Florence. His moral revival belongs to the history of popular
enthusiasm. His philosophical and theological writings are chiefly
interesting to the student of post-medæival scholasticism. His attitude
as a monastic leader of the populace, attempting to play the old game
whereby the factious warfare of a previous age had been suspended by
appeals to piety, and politicians had looked for aid outside the nation,
was anachronistic. But his prophecy, his insight into the coming of a
new era for the Church and for Italy, is a main fact in the psychology
of the Renaissance.
[1] _Officio del Savonarola_, with preface by Cesare Guasti.
Firenze, 1863.
[2] Guicciardini, in his _Ricordt_, No. i., refers the
incredible obstinacy of the Florentines at this period in
hoping against all hope and reason to Savonarola: 'questa
ostinazione ha causata in gran parte a fede di non potere
perire, secondo le predicazioni di Fra Jeronirno da Ferrara.'