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