[Illustration: SAVONAROLA
By Fra Bartolomeo]
REBELS AND
REFORMERS
BIOGRAPHIES FOR
YOUNG PEOPLE
BY
ARTHUR & DOROTHEA PONSONBY
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1919
_To_
_Elizabeth_
_and_
_Matthew_
INTRODUCTION
This book is intended for young people who are beginning to take an
interest in historical subjects, and it may also be acceptable to those
who are too busy with their daily work to find much time or opportunity
for continuing, as they would like a full course of study. Many people
have not the leisure to read a three-volume biography, and so they miss
knowing anything at all about some of the great figures in history.
We have tried here to tell quite simply the story of the lives of a
dozen great men, some of whom may not be very familiar.
There are many books about men of action—soldiers, sailors, and
explorers—but it is not so easy to find any simple account of men who
have used their minds and their pens, rather than the sword, in the
work for the betterment of their country to which they have devoted
their lives.
We have chosen men who are not actually connected with one another in
any way. But although they lived in different lands and in different
centuries, they are linked by the same qualities; the same strain runs
through them all of fearlessness, moral courage, and independence of
character. Most of them were accounted rebels in their day, but the
rebel of one century is often the hero of the next. Though there may
be a strong resemblance in the aims of these men, their personalities
are different. For instance, there could not be two men more unlike one
another than Voltaire and Tolstoy, yet they both devoted their energy
and their genius to fighting superstition and shams. Most of our heroes
recognized no authority but that of their own conscience, and each of
them helped in his way the advance of progress in his country and in
the mind of humanity.
The twelve men chosen are not all perhaps the most famous, or what is
commonly called the “greatest,” that might have been selected. But that
is one of the reasons we have written about them. While every one knows
the story of Galileo, but few may have read about Tycho Brahe; Luther
is a familiar figure and Savonarola, perhaps, only a name; many lives
have been written of President Lincoln, but some have never read of
William Lloyd Garrison; Garibaldi is renowned, but Mazzini’s work for
Italy has not often been described.
We have done no more than just mention the political, scientific, or
literary accomplishments of these men or their philosophy and religious
thoughts, because we have wanted only to tell the story of their lives.
Struggles, difficulties, and dangers which have to be encountered,
ideas, ambitions, and even personal habits and peculiarities, all make
the true story of a man’s life inspiring and attractive. Ideas are
the mainspring of action. The original thoughts of great minds and the
unflinching resolve of courageous souls have done far more for the
advancement of mankind than any deeds of physical prowess, violence,
or force. Those of the younger generation to whom will fall the task
of correcting some of the many faults and errors of their predecessors
should remember in their work that they must rely on the wonderful
power of thought, on knowledge of the lessons of the past, and on a
clear vision of the future.
Maybe some of our readers will find these lives sufficiently
interesting to induce them to read more of these men in the great books
which have been written about them. If so, we shall feel that we have
succeeded in our object.
A. P.
D. P.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION vii
I. SAVONAROLA (1452–1498) 3
II. WILLIAM THE SILENT (1533–1584) 27
III. TYCHO BRAHE (1546–1601) 59
IV. CERVANTES (1547–1616) 79
V. GIORDANO BRUNO (1548–1600) 99
VI. GROTIUS (1583–1645) 121
VII. VOLTAIRE (1694–1778) 147
VIII. HANS ANDERSEN (1805–1875) 173
IX. MAZZINI (1805–1872) 201
X. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON (1805–1879) 223
XI. THOREAU (1817–1862) 245
XII. TOLSTOY (1828–1910) 269
BIBLIOGRAPHY 311
ILLUSTRATIONS
Savonarola _Frontispiece_
_By Fra Bartolomeo_
FACING PAGE
William the Silent 28
Tycho Brahe 60
Cervantes 80
Giordano Bruno 100
Grotius 122
Voltaire 148
Hans Christian Andersen 174
Mazzini 202
_From portrait by Felix Moscheles_
William Lloyd Garrison 224
Thoreau 246
Tolstoy 270
_From Aylmer Maude’s “Life of Tolstoy.” Constable, London_
REBELS AND REFORMERS
I
SAVONAROLA
1452–1498
Should the whole army of my enemies be arrayed against me, my heart
will not quake: for Thou art my refuge and wilt lead me to my latter
end.
Most of us are very easily persuaded to do what every one else does,
because it is so much less trouble. It is disagreeable to be sneered
at or abused. Now and again we may do something because we know it to
be right at the risk of causing displeasure, but it is very hard to
keep on through a lifetime fighting against popular opinion or opposing
those who are considered our superiors and whom all the world look up
to as set in authority over us. The orders of those in command, those
who govern, those who set the fashion, and those who have riches with
all the laws and traditions behind them, are what is called authority.
If you defy authority from stupidity, obstinacy, or perversity, it is
merely foolish; but if you defy authority because you are convinced
that what you think is right, it is a very difficult thing to do; and
in doing it you are likely to make far more enemies than friends.
It is much easier to accept things as they are, to think of your own
enjoyment first and foremost, and let others do the wrangling while you
look on. But the mere spectators in life are no help to any one, not
even to themselves. Life is conflict. It is to the fighters who, with a
clear vision of better things, have bravely fought the evil around them
that we owe any changes for the better in the history of the world.
Savonarola, the Italian monk, was by no means a spectator; he was a
fighter of the most strenuous type. Historians may differ in their
accounts of his character and his work. But one thing is certain: few
men have lived a life of such vigorous activity or one that was so
filled with exciting incidents: few men have stood by their convictions
with such courage and persistence or suffered more cruelly for their
opinions. He spent the best part of his life fighting authority,
upsetting public opinion, and defying his superiors. He was defeated in
the end because those who were for the moment stronger than he killed
him. But perhaps his death, as in other cases that may occur to you,
was his greatest triumph. Men may kill the body of their victim, but
they cannot kill the spirit he has roused by his influence and example.
That lives on when all his persecutors are dead and forgotten.
Girolamo Savonarola was born in Ferrara, a town in Northern Italy,
in the year 1452. He was the third of five brothers and he had two
sisters. His grandfather was a physician and a man of learning, and
his father was a courtier of no great importance. Girolamo was devoted
to his mother, and he corresponded with her all through his eventful
life. As a boy he seems to have been very serious and reserved—one of
those boys whom other boys do not understand. He did not like playing
with other children, but preferred going out for long rambles by
himself. It was arranged by his family that he should be a doctor, like
his grandfather; but as he grew up and began to think deeply about
everything he saw around him, he became appalled at the cruelty and
wickedness and frivolity of the society in which he lived, and his
mind was filled with doubts and misgivings. Poets, players, fools,
court flatterers, knights, pages, scholars, and fair ladies were
entertained in the great red-brick castle of Ferrara, and below in the
dark dungeons lay, confined and chained, prisoners who had incurred the
Duke’s displeasure. It was in the precincts of this palace that young
Girolamo gained his first experience of life.
When he was nineteen he fell in love with a girl of the Strozzi family,
but he was rejected with disdain and told he was not sufficiently well
born to aspire to one of such noble birth. This added to the bitterness
of his heart, and his disgust for the world increased. For two years he
struggled with himself, uncertain whether he should obey his parents
or follow his own inclinations; and he prayed daily, “Lord, teach me
the way my soul should walk.” At last, in despair, he abandoned his
medical studies, left home, and fled secretly to a Dominican monastery
at Bologna, where he became a monk. Villari the historian describes the
touching scene on the very eve of his departure: “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, this 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.” The next day he was gone. He
wrote from Bologna to tell his father of his determination to renounce
the world, where virtue was despised and vice held in honor. In the
convent he began at once to wear himself to a shadow by acting as a
servant and humbling himself by a life of the severest simplicity and
discipline. In “The Ruin of the World,” a poem he wrote when he was
twenty, he says, “The 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.”
It was not Savonarola’s young imagination that made him think the world
so very wicked. He was particularly observant, and noted carefully all
that was passing not only in Ferrara but in the rest of Italy, and
specially in Rome. At that time, indeed, while there were many men of
learning, great princes, great artists, and great ladies, the people as
a whole despised religion and led frivolous lives, given up to every
sort of dissipation. Vice, corruption, and robbery were common both in
the Church and outside, and all classes were degraded by the low tone
of morals.
After six quiet years in the convent, during which he wrote several
poems showing his horror at the immorality of the world as he saw it,
he was sent on a mission back to Ferrara. But he attracted no attention
there, for “no man is a prophet in his own country.” Shortly afterwards
he was recalled and sent to the Dominican Convent of San Marco in
Florence. This building is still carefully preserved because of the
beautifully designed frescoes which were painted on the walls of the
refectory, sacristy, and chapter house, as well as in the cells on the
upper floor, by the artist-monk Fra Angelico, who died in 1455, not
many years before Fra Girolamo made San Marco his headquarters and home.
In appearance, Savonarola was a man of middle height, with gaunt
features, heavy black brows, a large mouth, heavy jaw, and a protruding
underlip. This may sound unattractive, but features alone do not make
a face. It was his expression by which those who came in contact with
him were fascinated. His rugged features were beautified by a look of
gentle sympathy and benevolence mixed with firm determination, and his
eyes flashed with the fire of a deep and passionate enthusiasm. The
portrait given here is by Fra Bartolomeo, a friend who came under the
influence of Savonarola and was deeply impressed by his life and death.
In his great humility he was not at first aware that he had any special
power over other men. While traveling one day he found himself among a
lot of rough boatmen and soldiers who were indulging in coarse language
and blasphemous oaths. What could a young monk do in the midst of such
a crew? Yet in half-an-hour Savonarola had eleven of them kneeling at
his feet and imploring forgiveness. Such incidents as this must have
revealed to him the extraordinary influence he could wield. Curiously
enough, his first sermon in the great Church of San Lorenzo in Florence
was an entire failure. With his awkward gestures and unimpressive
manner he could not even hold his congregation, which gradually
dwindled away and left the church.
For two years he continued to preach to a few listless people in the
empty aisles of San Gemignano. All the time, no doubt, he was aware
that the power was growing in him and he was awaiting his opportunity.
Suddenly the moment came, and one day at Brescia he burst out and
became as it were transformed. Awestruck crowds then flocked to hear
him, and his wonderful oratory and penetrating eloquence developed
quickly, and soon pierced into the very souls of his congregations.
It often happened that men climbed walls and swarmed on the pillars to
catch sight of his striking features and hear the deep tones of his
thrilling voice. He practised no tricks of rhetoric, but his whole
being was poured out in a vehement tempest of eloquence, at one moment
melting his audience to tears, at another freezing them with terror.
The scribe himself who wrote down many of the sermons breaks off at
times with the words, “Here I was so overcome with weeping that I could
not go on.”
The gift of oratory is a very powerful, but in some ways a very
dangerous gift. The influence of the written word or the moral example
is slow, but far more likely to be permanent. An orator or preacher
witnesses the immediate effect of his words on his hearers, yet he
often forgets that his influence may cease the moment his audience
withdraws from his presence. But power such as was possessed by this
strange Italian monk is very rare. Some people were almost mesmerized,
and stories of supernatural events began to be told about him: a halo
of light was seen round his head, and his face was said to shine so
as to illuminate the whole church. In addition to his gifts as a
passionate preacher, Savonarola’s pen was a considerable help to him,
and he published a collection of his writings. “The Triumph of the
Cross” was his principal work; but all he wrote was inspired by extreme
piety and by his ardent desire to bring mankind nearer to God. He also
showed wisdom and judgment in council in solving difficult theological
problems.
Pico di Mirandola, a great scholar and a nobleman, was so much struck
by his extraordinary qualities that he urged Lorenzo de Medici, who
was at the time Lord of Florence, to invite him to come and stay in
the Tuscan capital; this accordingly was done. But no one suspected
that the humble monk who trudged on foot through the gateway of the
city was one day to be the practical ruler of Florence. He was in his
thirty-ninth year when he was elected Prior of San Marco.
Lorenzo, known as the Magnificent, was perhaps the most eminent of the
Medici family, who for some years were practically rulers of Florence.
Although he had a council who nominally conducted the affairs of State,
he generally managed to have it filled by men who were favorable to his
policy and his aims, and so he gradually became complete master of the
city. He was cruel, unscrupulous, and ambitious, and under his rule
the people were deprived of much of their liberty. But as an Italian
historian says, “If Florence was to have a tyrant she could never have
found a better or a more pleasant one.” While on the one hand he was
oppressing the people and persecuting those whom he suspected to be his
enemies, on the other hand he encouraged festivities and reveling, song
and dance, and general merriment.
In the previous century a very great change had come over Europe.
The period is known as the Renaissance, which means re-birth. The
darkness of the Middle Ages had passed, and there was a great revival
of learning, a reawakening of art and science, and new ideas about
religion and philosophy began to be discussed. The art of printing,
which had only lately been invented, made it possible for copies of
the works of the great classical authors to be distributed and widely
read, and in Italy some of the most eminent writers, painters, and
sculptors had come to the front. Greek was taught at the universities,
and professors traveled about lecturing to crowded classes on the great
masterpieces of Greek literature and philosophy, which till then had
been left neglected and forgotten. In the sixteenth century, therefore,
the influence and results of the movement were very apparent.
By his wealth, by his splendor, and by his patronage of art and
literature, Lorenzo de Medici did much to make Florence the center of
the civilized world. He himself was the leading spirit among artists
and men of letters who assembled around him. He spoke fluently about
poetry, music, sculpture, and philosophy, and actually used to sing his
own carnival songs in the streets to an admiring throng.
It was to this brilliant and powerful man, who was the chief authority
in the State, that Savonarola from the first refused to show any
respect whatsoever. He declared that his election as Prior was due
to God, not to Lorenzo. He saw, moreover, that while Lorenzo was
interested in art and learning, the people of Florence were badly
governed and had no freedom or independence. Although the very Convent
of San Marco, of which he was the head, had been enriched by the bounty
of Lorenzo, the Prior declined to do homage to him, or even to visit
him, and whenever Lorenzo walked in the gardens of the monastery he
carefully avoided him, saying that his intercourse was with God, not
with man. Lorenzo, however, was anxious to add this remarkable monk
to the select society he had gathered about him, and to have him join
the interesting discussions on art, letters, and philosophy which took
place at his banquets and assemblies. But Savonarola regarded him as an
enemy of the people and of true religion; and even when Lorenzo came to
Mass at San Marco he paid no attention to him, and though he found a
number of gold coins in the alms-chest, obviously the gift of Lorenzo,
he would not take the money for the convent, but sent it away to be
distributed among the poor. Savonarola did not believe in the Church
being rich except in the spiritual sense; in fact, the greed of the
Church for actual riches was what he constantly denounced.
Within the year, however, the Prince and the priest were destined to
meet, for Lorenzo on his deathbed sent for the Prior of San Marco. One
account tells how Savonarola came and, standing by the bedside, bade
Lorenzo repent of his sins and give up his wealth, but refused him
absolution because the dying man hesitated to restore their liberties
to the people of Florence. While some thought that the wise and great
prince was very prudent and lenient with the impossible, fanatical
monk, others were inclined to suspect that he was more probably afraid
of him.
Lorenzo’s son, Piero de Medici, succeeded his father, but he was too
weak and incompetent a man to count, and Savonarola, who continued with
increasing vehemence to denounce the guilt and corruption of mankind,
strengthened his own influence and control over the people. Piero
became alarmed and had him removed from Florence, so that for a time
he was obliged to preach outside at Prato and Bologna. But soon he
returned, journeying on foot over the Apennines, and he was welcomed
back with rapture at San Marco. He at once set about reforming the
convent, he opened schools, and he continued to preach and to prophesy.
He began to see visions and to hear mysterious voices, hallucinations
not unnatural to a man in a state of such intense spiritual exaltation
or mental excitement. He was a believer in dreams and revelations, and
the trances which followed his fasts were the cause of many of his
prophetic utterances. At the same time he perceived with astonishing
foresight the inevitable course of national events. He foretold the
coming of “the Sword of God,” which he declared he saw bent toward the
earth while the sky darkened, thunder pealed, lightning flashed, and
the whole world was devastated by famine, bloodshed, and pestilence.
Thus would the sons of guilty Italy be swept down and vanquished.
Shortly afterwards, it so happened that Charles VIII, King of France,
brought an army across the Alps, descended into Italy, and advanced on
Florence.
This brought on a crisis in the city. The panic-stricken Piero de
Medici, uncertain how to act, went out at last himself to meet the
French King, fell prostrate before him, and accepted at once the hard
terms he laid down. His cowardice was the signal for Florence to
rise up in fury. Piero was deposed, and other ambassadors, of whom
Savonarola was one, were commissioned to confer with Charles. The King
was much impressed by the Dominican preacher, but nevertheless he
entered the city and imperiously demanded the restoration of the Medici
as rulers. The Florentines boldly refused. “What,” asked Charles,
“if I sound my trumpets?” “Then,” answered Gino Capponi, one of the
magistrates, “Florence must toll her bells.” The idea of a general
insurrection startled the King, and after a further conference with
Savonarola he left the city.
The Medici had fallen for the moment, Charles VIII had withdrawn,
Florence was now free. It was not to the Medici family, to their
magistrates, or to their nobles that the people turned in their good
fortune, but to the Prior of San Marco, who, they considered, was
chiefly responsible for the favorable turn events had taken. After
seventy years of subjection to the Medici the people had forgotten the
art of self-government. Partly in gratitude, partly in confidence, and
partly in awe, they chose Savonarola as their ruler, and he became the
lawgiver of Florence. He began by exercising his power with discretion
and justice. His first thought was for the poor, for whom collections
were made. He proposed also to give more employment to the needy and
lighten the taxation that weighed too heavily upon them. His whole
scheme was inspired by his deep religious feeling. “Fear God,” was
his first command to the people whom he summoned to meet him in the
Cathedral. Then he exhorted them to prefer the republic to their
own selfish interests. He promised a general amnesty to political
offenders and the establishment of a General Council. He had studied
the principles of government and desired to set up a democratic system,
that is to say, to give the people the responsibility of governing
themselves instead of submitting to the aristocratic rule of a prince
and his nobles. With all his enthusiasm and apparent fanaticism, he
showed himself in many ways to be a practical man of affairs. His
preaching continued to be his chief method of exercising his influence.
The maintenance of the constitution, he told the people, depended on
God’s blessing: its head was Jesus Christ Himself. His aim was to
establish there and then practical Christianity such as Christ taught,
so that Florence might become the model city of the world. Men may
scoff and say this was the impossible dream of a madman. But it is
better to aim too high and fail than to accept, as many people do, a
low standard because it is too difficult and too much trouble to fight
against a vicious public opinion.
The immediate effect of Savonarola’s teaching was that the citizens of
Florence began suddenly to lead lives of strict simplicity, renouncing
frivolity, feasting, and gambling, and even dressing with austere
plainness, discarding their jewels and ornaments. The carnival of 1497
was celebrated by “a bonfire of the vanities” in the great square of
the town. Priceless manuscripts and precious folios were hurled from
the windows into the street and collected in carts with other articles
by troops of boys dressed in white. A huge pyramid twenty feet high
was erected in the Piazza. At the bottom of it were stacked masks and
dresses and wigs; on the step above, mirrors, puffs, curling-tongs,
hair-pins, powder and paint. Still higher were lutes, mandolines,
cards, chessmen, balls, dice; then came drawings and priceless
pictures and statues in wood and colored wax of gods and heroes.
Towering higher than anything else, on the top a figure of Satan was
enthroned, a monstrous puppet, filled with gunpowder and sulphur,
with goat’s legs and a hairy skin. At nightfall a great procession
accompanied Savonarola to the spot. Four monks with torches set fire
to the pyramid, and as it crackled and blazed the people danced and
yelled and screamed round it, while drums and trumpets sounded and
bells pealed from the church towers. This was the very crude method by
which Savonarola sought to abolish the luxury and the vanity which he
considered were degrading the lives of the people.
While Savonarola was at the height of his power and fame, filling
the cathedral with dense crowds who flocked to hear him, his enemies
were already engaged in plotting his downfall. He had succeeded in
destroying the authority of the Medici in Florence itself, but there
was another and a stronger authority outside with whom he had still to
reckon, and this was the Pope.
It is difficult to believe now, when a venerable and respected
ecclesiastic, living in quiet retirement at Rome, represents the head
of the Roman Catholic Church, that at the end of the fifteenth century
a series of men held that office who were Italian princes, many of whom
had for their chief purpose the enrichment of themselves and their
families by means of treachery and violence. It happened that the very
worst of these, a member of the Borgia family, whose infamous career
of crime is notorious in history, was Pope at this time under the name
of Alexander VI. A conflict was inevitable between this unscrupulous
prince and the high-minded priest who desired to free the Church from
the corrupt state which money, intrigue, and worldliness had brought it.
Alexander VI tried first by bribery to silence the daring preacher.
He offered him the red hat of a cardinal, but Savonarola replied, “No
hat will I have but that of a martyr reddened with my own blood.” The
Pope was joined by the Duke of Milan in attempting to deprive the Prior
of his power. He invited Savonarola to Rome, at first courteously,
but when a refusal came he repeated his commands peremptorily and
at last accompanied by threats, but still Savonarola refused to
obey. As he continued to preach both in Florence and in other towns,
Alexander became alarmed lest the strength of his voice might shake
even the power of Rome. An unsuccessful attempt was made on his life.
The citizens of Florence were already beginning to grow weary of the
austere regulations imposed upon them. The city became sharply divided
into two political factions. The supporters of Savonarola are called
the Piagnoni, his enemies the Arrabbiati. Even the children joined in
and greeted each other with showers of pebbles. One day the Prior was
insulted in the cathedral, where an ass’s skin was spread over the
cushion of the pulpit and sharp nails were fixed in the board on which
he would strike his hand.
Then at last, with great ceremonial, an order from the Pope was read
excommunicating him, that is to say, expelling him from the Church.
But still Savonarola took no notice whatever, declaring that a man so
laden with crime and infamy as Alexander was no true Pope. He continued
to preach and even to celebrate Mass in the cathedral. At the next
carnival, amidst extraordinary excitement and reveling, he ordered a
second bonfire of vanities, in which many costly objects were again
destroyed. His sermons contained hostile references to the Pope, whose
life and career were openly described, and he went so far as to address
letters to the great sovereigns of Europe, including Henry VII of
England, bidding them call a council to depose Alexander VI. One of
these letters was intercepted and sent to Rome by the Duke of Milan.
After a brief period of comparative quiet, during which Florence was
visited by the plague, a conspiracy for the restoration of the Medici
was discovered. Five leading citizens were found to be mixed up in the
plot, one of them a much respected old man called Bernardo del Nero.
All five were seized and put to death. It was said that had Savonarola
raised his voice he might anyhow have obtained mercy for Bernardo. But
he remained silent, and so increased the number of his enemies and the
exasperation of Pope Alexander.
Meanwhile, in the city itself another dispute arose. A bitter feud had
long existed between the Order of the Franciscan monks and the Order
of the Dominicans. The Franciscans having heard that Savonarola would
go through fire to prove the truth of his prophetic gifts, he was
challenged from the pulpit of Santa Croce to put his miraculous powers
to the test. He dismissed the proposal with contempt, but one of his
over-zealous followers accepted, and a trial by fire was arranged.
Savonarola no doubt saw the folly of the whole proceeding. He dared
not refuse, but he hesitated, and was accused of showing cowardice. On
April 7, 1498, two piles were erected in the Piazza. They were forty
yards long and five feet high, and composed of faggots and broom that
would easily blaze up. The stacks were separated by a narrow path
of two feet, down which the two priests were to pass. Every window
was full; even the roofs were packed; and it seemed as if the whole
population of the city had crowded to the spot. The two factions were
assembled in an arcade called the Loggia dei Lanzi. Disputes arose
between them. The Dominicans insisted that their champion should carry
the Host with him into the flames. This the Franciscans declared was
sacrilege. The mob, who had come to witness the barbarous spectacle,
some of them hoping to see a miracle, were impatient and disappointed,
and when, after hours of waiting, a shower of rain came and finally put
an end to the farce, they became infuriated.
You may think that people were very superstitious in those days, to
believe that men could walk through fire or that a man could prophesy
and that his face could shine with light. They were indeed very
superstitious, especially about religious happenings. But I rather
think many people still suffer from this weakness, although it may
be in a different way. Superstition is the sign of a shallow and
uneducated mind, or a mind that is unbalanced, and it will be a long
time before there are no people of that sort in the world. It is not
surprising, therefore, that these Florentines should have been aroused
to fury by this ridiculous business. They probably thought they were
being made fools of, and were ashamed, too, that they had taken the
whole thing seriously. Anyhow, some one had to pay.
Savonarola and his followers hurried back to their convent and only
just managed to escape. Although from the pulpit of the church the
Prior attempted to give his explanation of the events, it was clear
that from that moment his power was at an end. The fickle Florentines,
ready for the next sensation and prepared to submit with light-hearted
indifference to whatever faction was the most powerful at the moment,
drew away from their prophet and lawgiver and deserted him. His enemies
had gained the upper hand, and the Council, completely hostile to him,
eventually decreed his banishment.
Meanwhile the mob collected outside St. Mark’s. They threw a volley
of stones at the windows of the church, which was filled with people.
There was a panic. The convent gates were closed and barred. Some of
the monks had secretly brought in arms, helmets, halberts, crossbows,
and a barrel of gunpowder.
Savonarola strongly disapproved of this, and as he passed through the
cloisters with the Sacrament he bade them lay down their arms. Some
of them obeyed him. By the evening the mob had set fire to the doors.
They succeeded in scaling the walls and getting into the cloisters
and chapel. Here Savonarola was found praying before the altar, and
one of his friends, Fra Domenico, stood by him armed with an enormous
candlestick to guard him from the blows of his assailants. In the midst
of the turmoil and confusion, a traitorous monk declared that the
shepherd should lay down his life for his flock. Immediately Savonarola
gave himself up to the armed party which had been sent to arrest
him. His two most faithful friends, Fra Domenico and Fra Silvestro,
accompanied him. As he went he called out: “My brethren, remember never
to doubt. The work of the Lord is ever progressive, and my death will
only hasten it.”
As he came out into the street the mob greeted him with a shout of
ferocious joy. It was night, and the faces of the threatening, yelling
men in the torchlight must indeed have been terrifying. So great was
their fury that the guards could with difficulty protect him as they
led him and his companions to the great palace known as the Palazzo
Vecchio, where they were cast into a dungeon.
The account of Savonarola’s torture is most tragic and terrible.
He found that he simply could not bear the agony. While his limbs
were stretched and twisted on the rack his courage and his senses
forsook him, and he acknowledged himself guilty of any crime laid to
his charge. The torture lasted for three days, and in the intervals
he withdrew all he had said. “My God,” he cried, “I denied Thee for
fear of pain.” Finally his judges, who were drawn from his bitterest
enemies, condemned him to death. The Pope Alexander, who on hearing
the news praised his well-beloved Florentines as true sons of the
Church, wanted his enemy to be brought to Rome that he might see him
suffer death before him. But the Arrabbiati were determined that his
end should come in Florence itself. His two fellow-monks received the
same treatment as he did. Fra Domenico showed great courage, and under
the most cruel torture no syllable could be extracted from him which
could hurt his master. Fra Silvestro, on the other hand, collapsed at
the very sight of the rack, and acquiesced in every accusation brought
against his master or himself.
On his last night in this world, though worn with weakness and racked
by torture, nevertheless Savonarola slept a peaceful sleep with his two
companions, and spoke a few touching words imploring the pardon of God
for any sins he might have committed. The scaffold was erected on the
Piazza and connected with the magistrates’ platform by a wooden bridge.
As the three unfortunate Dominicans stepped over the planks, cruel boys
thrust pointed sticks through the crevices to prick their bare feet.
The first ceremony was to degrade them and deprive them of their robes.
This was done by the papal nuncio. Then Savonarola, after witnessing
the fate of his two friends, was taken himself and placed on the
center beam of the huge cross, from the arms of which his disciples’
bodies were already dangling. A shudder of horror seemed to seize the
multitude, and a voice was heard calling out, “Prophet, now is the time
to perform a miracle.” There was a silence as he neared the place. He
stood for a moment looking down on the crowd and his followers expected
him to speak. But he said no word. The halter was fastened round his
neck, light was set to the faggots, and in a few moments the great
preacher, the lawgiver of Florence, was burned alive, amidst jests and
taunts and curses, on the very spot where shortly before the vanities
had blazed. The last words that passed his lips as the flames reached
him were: “The Lord suffered as much for me.” His ashes were cast into
the river Arno so that no trace of him might remain. Not many years
after, with curious inconsistency, the Church wanted to canonize—that
is, to make a saint of the man whom she had burned. This, however, was
never done.
If we trust some of the accounts handed down to us, Savonarola can
be accused of having shown weakness in the face of torture; he can
be accused of having been too ambitious for political power and of
having, in the fear of losing his authority, allowed without protest
the execution of innocent men who were charged with conspiracy; he can
be accused of having traded on the reputation of being a prophet who
saw visions and to whom miraculous events occurred. He certainly placed
too much confidence in the permanent effect of his eloquent preaching,
and deluded himself in trusting in the loyalty of the people whom he
had apparently moved. He may, no doubt, be called a fanatic—that is
to say, a wild, odd man, who disregards every one and everything in
his zeal to pursue the object he has in view. Such people are not
frightened of making fools of themselves, and their peculiarities and
their strange behavior can be very easily ridiculed. But apart from
the contradictory accounts, and the incomplete records of history, we
have Savonarola’s actual sermons and writings, without which he might
indeed have been condemned as a charlatan. In them we can read in his
own stirring language of his noble intentions and lofty aspirations, of
his vigorous and single-minded pursuit of what he believed to be right,
and of his uncompromising hatred of worldliness, wickedness, and
crime. He was not immediately connected with the great movement known
as the Reformation, in which Luther a few years later was the principal
figure, when the Protestants broke off from the Roman Catholic Church.
But Luther declared Savonarola to have been the precursor of his
doctrine. And, indeed, his strong protest against the immorality
and corruption of the Papacy and his fervent desire to increase the
spiritual rather than the material authority of the Church—that
is to say, its influence over men’s minds rather than its worldly
power—helped to lay the foundations on which the great Reformers built.
At the same time it must not be supposed that he himself had any desire
to alter the creeds and traditions of the Roman Church.
A very fine description of Savonarola is introduced by one of our great
novelists, George Eliot, in the story of “Romola.” Referring to his
martyrdom, she says:
Power rose against him not because of his sins but because of his
greatness, not because he sought to deceive the world but because
he sought to make it noble. And through that greatness of his he
endured double agony: not only the reviling and the torture and the
death-throe, but the agony of sinking from the vision of glorious
achievement into that deep shadow where he could only say, “I count
as nothing: darkness encompasses me: yet the light I saw was the true
light.”
A. P.
II
WILLIAM THE SILENT
1533–1584
Je maintiendrai
William of Orange of Nassau, or William the Silent as he is known,
was an extraordinarily interesting man, if only from the fact that
everything about him, from his titles and his circumstances to his
character, was a contradiction. For one thing, the name “Silent” gives
quite a wrong impression of him. It sounds as though he might have
been taciturn, shy, or difficult to get on with, but he happened to
be particularly easy and sympathetic, delightful as a companion, and
eloquent in speech. How this misnomer came about will be related later.
William of Orange took his title from the smallest of his lands, a tiny
province in France, near Avignon, of which he was the sovereign prince.
He was a German count and a Flemish magnate; a Lutheran by birth,
he was educated as a Catholic, but died a Calvinist. His character
was just as varied and full of contrasts as his circumstances, so he
interests and appeals to a great number of people, and we are agreed
that he is one of the most lovable and heroic characters in history.
William was born in 1533 in the German castle of Dillenburg, the eldest
of twelve children. His mother, Juliana of Stolberg, was a woman of
great character—a wise woman and religious in the truest sense of the
word. To the end of her life she was the adviser of her sons and a
support and comfort to her many children. Several of them inherited
her character, and principally William of Orange himself, and another,
Louis. William’s father, also called William, was a good man who
had gone through hard times, and who had finally, slowly but surely
embraced the Protestant religion. He appears to us to be rather a
washed-out edition of his remarkable son.
Orange spent the first eleven years of his life at Dillenburg. The
great fortress rose from a rocky bend of a river, with towers and
battlements and gateways such as one sees in mediæval pictures, and
could hold a thousand people. Here all his mother’s children were born,
and she managed her huge household in such a way as to become quite
celebrated as the best mother and housewife in the country.
[Illustration: WILLIAM THE SILENT]
When William was eleven years old he inherited, through the death of
a cousin, great lands in the Netherlands, and the little province of
Orange. Thus he became, in spite of his tender years, a very important
person, and through the wish of the Emperor Charles V, King of Spain
and the Netherlands, who had a great regard for the Nassau family,
he was sent to Brussels to be educated as a Catholic. Also at the
Emperor’s request he became a page at his court, and by the time he
was fifteen the Emperor had made an intimate friend of him, taking him
into his complete confidence, and allowing him to be present at the
gravest and most secret conclaves. He would ask William’s advice about
important matters of State and go by his judgments. This might have
been enough to turn the head of any one more than double the boy’s age,
but it did not appear to spoil William. He seemed only to profit and to
put to the best possible use all the knowledge he got of human nature
and of public affairs by being, so to speak, behind the scenes in this
very confidential and important position. Charles, who took pride in
discovering great men, showed in the case of Orange a great deal of
insight into character.
When he was eighteen the Emperor gave him a wife, a young girl of noble
family, Anne of Egmont. She lived six years and they had two children.
Judging by Orange’s letters to his wife he must have been a faithful
and loving husband, but he could not have seen much of her, as he was
nearly always away from home fighting for his master. Charles had made
him, at the age of twenty-one, General-in-Chief of his army on the
frontier of France, with which country Charles was at war.
It was on young William’s shoulder that the Emperor leant on the
celebrated occasion of his abdication, when, worn out with illness, old
before his time—for he was only fifty-five—sick of life and of his own
schemes and wars, he gave up his crown and titles to his son, Philip,
himself retiring into a monastery in the depths of Spain.
The superstition was still held at that period of history (and, in
fact, up to more recent days) that a king is a king by divine right,
and that he can therefore do no wrong. Charles’s record in crime is
no mean one, though it does not perhaps equal that of his son Philip
II. He was a despot, and a cruel despot, though he liked to regard
himself, as many kings have before and since him, as merely fatherly.
But he had behind his actions some sort of principle, while his son
appeared to have none whatever. Charles had never let the system of
Inquisition die down in the Netherlands, and on his accession he had
immediately made efforts to bring the people to submission, visiting
one of its principal towns with an army and taking away by force all
its privileges, and imposing heavy fines upon its inhabitants. He
passed edicts against the Protestantism of Luther, “to exterminate the
root and ground of this pest,” and it is said burnt in his lifetime at
the least fifty thousand people. How Charles could have been of service
to the Netherlands it is difficult to see, for he only committed crimes
against the people, crushing their independence wherever he could, and
using their great industry as revenue for his endless wars in other
parts of the world. Yet, as some of his admiring biographers tell us,
no man could have gone to church more regularly. He attended Mass
constantly, and listened to a sermon every Sunday.
On this occasion of giving up his crown he stood before the people of
the Netherlands, in the great hall of his palace at Brussels, clothed
in black Imperial robes, with a pale face and tears streaming down
his cheeks. He had a great sense of dramatic effect, and it was an
impressive spectacle. He had persuaded himself that he had nothing on
his conscience, and by so doing he persuaded his subjects too. He told
them in a choking voice that he had been nothing but a benefactor, and
that he had acted as he had done only for their good and because he
cared for them. He told them how he regretted leaving the Netherlands
and his reasons for going. A greater contrast could hardly be imagined
than this worn-out man and the young and noble-looking being on whose
shoulder he leant. But the Emperor, with a real regard for Orange,
which was a bright spot in his character, passed him on with words of
advice to Philip: for, believing as he did in young William’s great
powers of statesmanship, he wished that his own son might defer to him
and regard him as an adviser in time to come.
Philip at once set Orange to bring about peace between Spain and
France, and this he accomplished with brilliant success, securing
excellent terms for his master. Philip saw how great were Orange’s
persuasive powers as a diplomatist, and realized how valuable he could
be in his schemes.
Philip II was twenty-eight when he became king. He had not the pleasant
manner of his father, and he was not nearly so cultivated or so
diplomatic. Unlike Charles, he knew no language but Spanish. He was a
small and wretched-looking creature in appearance, with thin legs and
a narrow chest. His lower jaw protruded most horribly, and he had a
heavy hanging lip and enormous mouth, inherited from his father. He was
fair, with a yellow beard, and had a habit of always looking on the
ground when he spoke, as if he had some crime to hide or as though he
were suffering. This, it is said, came from pains in his stomach, the
result of too great a love of pastry. It had been thought politic that
he should marry Mary Tudor of England; and when Philip became king she
had been his wife two years. They ought certainly to have been very
happy together, having the same tastes—a hatred of Protestants and a
delight in burning and massacring—but in spite of this they did not get
on. Mary was older than Philip and very unattractive, so he neglected
her completely and left her to herself in England, where she shortly
afterwards died.
Philip’s ambition on his accession was to make peace with Europe in
order to be able to devote himself to putting down what he called
heresy. Orange was meanwhile chosen as a hostage by the King of France
while the treaty between the two countries was being completed, and it
was during his stay in France that Orange made the discovery which was
to influence his whole life.