the necessity of a general reformation than the monk of St. Mark; but it
was a reform in morals, not of doctrine. He saw the evils of the
day--yea, of the Church itself--with perfect clearness, and demanded
redress. He is as sad in view of these acknowledged evils as Jeremiah
was in view of the apostasy of the Jews; he is as austere in his own
life as Elijah or John the Baptist was. He would not abolish monastic
institutions, but he would reform the lives of the monks,--cure them of
gluttony and sensuality, not shut up their monasteries. He would not
rebel against the authority of the Pope, for even Savonarola supposed
that prelate to be the successor of Saint Peter; but he would prevent
the Pope's nepotism and luxury and worldly spirit,--make him once more a
true "servant of the servants of God," even when clothed with the
insignia of universal authority. He would not give up auricular
confession, or masses for the dead, or prayers to the Virgin Mary, for
these were indorsed by venerated ages; but he would rebuke a priest if
found in unseemly places. Whatever was a sin, when measured by the laws
of immutable morality, he would denounce, whoever was guilty of it;
whatever would elevate the public morals he would advocate, whoever
opposed. His morality was measured by the declaration of Christ and the
Apostles, not by the standard of a corrupt age. He revered the
Scriptures, and incessantly pondered them, and exalted their authority,
holding them to be the ultimate rule of holy living, the everlasting
handbook of travellers to the heavenly Jerusalem. In all respects he was
a good man,--a beautiful type of Christian piety, with fewer faults than
Luther or Calvin had, and as great an enemy as they to corruptions in
State and Church, which he denounced even more fiercely and
passionately. Not even Erasmus pointed out the vices of the day with
more freedom or earnestness. He covered up nothing; he shut his eyes
to nothing.
The difference between Savonarola and Luther was that the Saxon reformer
attacked the root of the corruption; not merely outward and tangible and
patent sins which everybody knew, but also and more earnestly those
false principles of theology and morals which sustained them, and which
logically pushed out would necessarily have produced them. For
instance, he not merely attacked indulgences, then a crying evil, as
peddled by Tetzel and others like him, and all to get money to support
the temporal power of the popes or build St. Peter's church; but he
would show that penance, on which indulgences are based, is antagonistic
to the doctrine which Paul so forcibly expounded respecting the
forgiveness of sins and the grounds of justification. And Luther saw
that all the evils which good men lamented would continue so long as the
false principles from which they logically sprung were the creed of the
Church. So he directed his giant energies to reform doctrines rather
than morals. His great idea of justification could be defended only by
an appeal to the Scriptures, not to the authority of councils and
learned men. So he made the Scriptures the sole source of theological
doctrine. Savonarola also accepted the Scriptures, but Luther would put
them in the hands of everybody, of peasants even,--and thus instituted
private judgment, which is the basal pillar of Protestantism. The
Catholic theologians never recognized this right in the sense that
Luther understood it, and to which he was pushed by inexorable logic.
The Church was to remain the interpreter of the doctrinal and disputed
points of the Scriptures.
Savonarola was a churchman. He was not a fearless theological doctor,
going wherever logic and the Bible carried him. Hence, he did not
stimulate thought and inquiry as Luther did, nor inaugurate a great
revolutionary movement, which would gradually undermine papal authority
and many institutions which the Catholic Church indorsed. Had he been a
great genius, with his progressive proclivities, he might have headed a
rebellion against papal authority, which upheld doctrines that logically
supported the very evils he denounced. But he was contented to lop off
branches; he did not dig up the roots. Luther went to the roots, as
Calvin did; as Saint Augustine would have done had there been a
necessity in his day, for the theology of Saint Augustine and Calvin is
essentially the same. It was from Saint Augustine that Calvin drew his
inspiration next after Saint Paul. But Savonarola cared very little for
the discussion of doctrines; he probably hated all theological
speculations, all metaphysical divinity. Yet there is a closer
resemblance between doctrines and morals than most people are aware of.
As a man thinketh, so is he. Hence, the reforms of Savonarola were
temporary, and were not widely extended; for he did not kindle the
intelligence of the age, as did Luther and those associated with him.
There can be no great and lasting reform without an appeal to reason,
without the assistance of logic, without conviction. The house that had
been swept and garnished was re-entered by devils, and the last state
was worse than the first. To have effected a radical and lasting reform,
Savonarola should have gone deeper. He should have exposed the
foundations on which the superstructure of sin was built; he should have
undermined them, and appealed to the reason of the world. He did no such
thing. He simply rebuked the evils, which must needs be, so long as the
root of them is left untouched. And so long as his influence remained,
so long as his voice was listened to, he was mighty in the reforms at
which he aimed,--a reformation of the morals of those to whom he
preached. But when his voice was hushed, the evils he detested returned,
since he had not created those convictions which bind men together in
association; he had not fanned that spirit of inquiry which is hostile
to ecclesiastical despotism, and which, logically projected, would
subvert the papal throne. The reformation of Luther was a grand protest
against spiritual tyranny. It not only aimed at a purer life, but it
opposed the bondage of the Middle Ages, and all the superstitions and
puerilities and fables which were born and nurtured in that dark and
gloomy period and to which the clergy clung as a means of power or
wealth. Luther called out the intellect of Germany, exalted liberty of
conscience, and appealed to the dignity of reason. He showed the
necessity of learning, in order to unravel and explain the truths of
revelation. He made piety more exalted by giving it an intelligent
stimulus. He looked to the future rather than the past. He would make
use, in his interpretation of the Bible, of all that literature,
science, and art could contribute. Hence his writings had a wider
influence than could be produced by the fascination of personal
eloquence, on which Savonarola relied, but which Luther made only
accessory.
Again, the sermons of the Florentine reformer do not impress us as they
did those to whom they were addressed. They are not logical, nor
doctrinal, nor learned,--not rich in thought, like the sermons of those
divines whom the Reformation produced. They are vehement denunciations
of sin; are eloquent appeals to the heart, to religious fears and hopes.
He would indeed create faith in the world, not by the dissertations of
Paul, but by the agonies of the dying Christ. He does not instruct; he
does not reason. He is dogmatic and practical. He is too earnest to be
metaphysical, or even theological. He takes it for granted that his
hearers know all the truths necessary for salvation. He enforces the
truths with which they are familiar, not those to be developed by reason
and learning. He appeals, he urges, he threatens; he even prophesies; he
dwells on divine wrath and judgment. He is an Isaiah foretelling what
will happen, rather than a Peter at the Day of Pentecost.
Savonarola was transcendent in his oratorical gifts, the like of which
has never before nor since been witnessed in Italy. He was a born
orator; as vehement as Demosthenes, as passionate as Chrysostom, as
electrical as Bernard. Nothing could withstand him; he was a torrent
that bore everything before him. His voice was musical, his attitude
commanding, his gestures superb. He was all alive with his subject. He
was terribly in earnest, as if he believed everything he said, and that
what he said were most momentous truths. He fastened his burning eyes
upon his hearers, who listened with breathless attention, and inspired
them with his sentiments; he made them feel that they were in the very
jaws of destruction, and that there was no hope but in immediate
repentance. His whole frame quivered with emotion, and he sat down
utterly exhausted. His language was intense, not clothing new thoughts,
but riveting old ideas,--the ideas of the Middle Ages; the fear of hell,
the judgments of Almighty God. Who could resist such fiery earnestness,
such a convulsed frame, such quivering tones, such burning eyes, such
dreadful threatenings, such awful appeals? He was not artistic in the
use of words and phrases like Bourdaloue, but he reached the conscience
and the heart like Whitefield. He never sought to amuse; he would not
stoop to any trifling. He told no stories; he made no witticisms; he
used no tricks. He fell back on truths, no matter whether his hearers
relished them or not; no matter whether they were amused or not. He was
the messenger of God urging men to flee as for their lives, like Lot
when he escaped from Sodom.
Savonarola's manner was as effective as his matter. He was a kind of
Peter the Hermit, preaching a crusade, arousing emotions and passions,
and making everybody feel as he felt. It was life more than thought
which marked his eloquence,--his voice as well as his ideas, his
wonderful electricity, which every preacher must have, or he preaches to
stones. It was himself, even more than his truths, which made people
listen, admire, and quake. All real orators impress themselves--their
own individuality--on their auditors. They are not actors, who represent
other people, and whom we admire in proportion to their artistic skill
in producing deception. These artists excite admiration, make us forget
where we are and what we are, but kindle no permanent emotions, and
teach no abiding lessons. The eloquent preacher of momentous truths and
interests makes us realize them, in proportion as he feels them himself.
They would fall dead upon us, if ever so grand, unless intensified by
passion, fervor, sincerity, earnestness. Even a voice has power, when
electrical, musical, impassioned, although it may utter platitudes. But
when the impassioned voice rings with trumpet notes through a vast
audience, appealing to what is dearest to the human soul, lifting the
mind to the contemplation of the sublimest truths and most momentous
interests, then there is _real_ eloquence, such as is never heard in the
theatre, interested as spectators may be in the triumphs of
dramatic art.
But I have dwelt too long on the characteristics of that eloquence which
produced such a great effect on the people of Florence in the latter
part of the fifteenth century. That ardent, intense, and lofty monk,
world-deep like Dante, not world-wide like Shakspeare, Who filled the
cathedral church with eager listeners, was not destined to uninterrupted
triumphs. His career was short; he could not even retain his influence.
As the English people wearied of the yoke of a Puritan Protector, and
hankered for their old pleasures, so the Florentines remembered the
sports and spectacles and _fêtes_ of the old Medicean rule. Savonarola
had arrayed against himself the enemies of popular liberty, the patrons
of demoralizing excitements, the partisans of the banished Medici, and
even the friends and counsellors of the Pope. The dreadful denunciation
of sin in high places was as offensive to the Pope as the exposure of a
tyrannical usurpation was to the family of the old lords of Florence;
and his enemies took counsel together, and schemed for his overthrow. If
the irritating questions and mockeries of Socrates could not be endured
at Athens, how could the bitter invectives and denunciations of
Savonarola find favor at Florence? The fate of prophets is to be stoned.
Martyrdom and persecution, in some form or other, are as inevitable to
the man who sails against the stream, as a broken constitution and a
diseased body are to a sensualist, a glutton, or a drunkard. Impatience
under rebuke is as certain as the operation of natural law.
The bitterest and most powerful enemy of the Prior of St. Mark was the
Pope himself,--Alexander VI., of the infamous family of the
Borgias,--since his private vices were exposed, and by one whose order
had been especially devoted to the papal empire. In the eyes of the
wicked Pope, the Florentine reformer was a traitor and conspirator,
disloyal and dangerous. At first he wished to silence him by soft and
deceitful letters and tempting bribes, offering to him a cardinal's hat,
and inviting him to Rome. But Savonarola refused alike the bribe and the
invitation. His Lenten sermons became more violent and daring. "If I
have preached and written anything heretical," said this intrepid monk,
"I am willing to make a public recantation. I have always shown
obedience to my church; but it is my duty to obey God rather than man."
This sounds like Luther at the Diet of Worms; but he was more
defenceless than Luther, since the Saxon reformer was protected by
powerful princes, and was backed by the enthusiasm of Northern Germans.
Yet the Florentine preacher boldly continued his attacks on all
hypocritical religion, and on the vices of Rome, not as incidental to
the system, but extraneous,--the faults of a man or age. The Pope became
furious, to be thus balked by a Dominican monk, and in one of the cities
of Italy,--a city that had not rebelled against his authority. He
complained bitterly to the Florentine ambassador, of the haughty friar
who rebuked and defied him. He summoned a consistory of fourteen eminent
Dominican theologians, to inquire into his conduct and opinions, and
issued a brief forbidding him to preach, under penalty of
excommunication. Yet Savonarola continued to preach, and more violently
than ever. He renewed his charges against Rome. He even called her a
harlot Church, against whom heaven and earth, angels and devils, equally
brought charges. The Pope then seized the old thunderbolts of the
Gregories and the Clements, and excommunicated the daring monk and
preacher, and threatened the like punishment on all who should befriend
him. And yet Savonarola continued to preach. All Rome and Italy talked
of the audacity of the man. And it was not until Florence itself was
threatened with an interdict for shielding such a man, that the
magistrates of the city were compelled to forbid his preaching.
The great orator mounted his pulpit March 18, 1498, now four hundred
years ago, and took an affectionate farewell of the people whom he had
led, and appealed to Christ himself as the head of the Church. It was
not till the preacher was silenced by the magistrates of his own city,
that he seems to have rebelled against the papal authority; and then not
so much against the authority of Rome as against the wicked shepherd
himself, who had usurped the fold. He now writes letters to all the
prominent kings and princes of Europe, to assemble a general council;
for the general council of Constance had passed a resolution that the
Pope must call a general council every ten years, and that, should he
neglect to assemble it, the sovereign powers of the various states and
empires were themselves empowered to collect the scattered members of
the universal Church, to deliberate on its affairs. In his letters to
the kings of France, England, Spain, and Hungary, and the Emperor of
Germany, he denounced the Pope as simoniacal, as guilty of all the
vices, as a disgrace to the station which he held. These letters seem to
have been directed against the man, not against the system. He aimed at
the Pope's ejectment from office, rather than at the subversion of the
office itself,--another mark of the difference between Savonarola and
Luther, since the latter waged an uncompromising war against Rome
herself, against the whole _régime_ and government and institutions and
dogmas of the Catholic Church; and that is the reason why Catholics
hate Luther so bitterly, and deny to him either virtues or graces, and
represent even his deathbed as a scene of torment and despair,--an
instance of that pursuing hatred which goes beyond the grave; like that
of the zealots of the Revolution in France, who dug up the bones of the
ancient kings from those vaults where they had reposed for centuries,
and scattered their ashes to the winds.
Savonarola hoped the Christian world would come to his rescue; but his
letters were intercepted, and reached the eye of Alexander VI., who now
bent the whole force of the papal empire to destroy that bold reformer
who had assailed his throne. And it seems that a change took place in
Florence itself in popular sentiment. The Medicean party obtained the
ascendency in the government. The people--the fickle people--began to
desert Savonarola; and especially when he refused to undergo the ordeal
of fire,--one of the relics of Mediaeval superstition,--the people felt
that they had been cheated out of their amusement, for they had waited
impatiently the whole day in the public square to see the spectacle. He
finally consented to undergo the ordeal, provided he might carry the
crucifix. To this his enemies would not consent. He then laid aside the
crucifix, but insisted on entering the fire with the sacrament in his
hand. His persecutors would not allow this either, and the ordeal did
not take place.
At last his martyrdom approaches: he is led to prison. The magistrates
of the city send to Rome for absolution for having allowed the Prior to
preach. His enemies busy themselves in collecting evidence against
him,--for what I know not, except that he had denounced corruption and
sin, and had predicted woe. His two friends are imprisoned and
interrogated with him, Fra Domenico da Pescia and Fra Silvestro Maruffi,
who are willing to die for him. He and they are now subjected to most
cruel tortures. As the result of bodily agony his mind begins to waver.
His answers are incoherent; he implores his tormentors to end his
agonies; he cries out, with a voice enough to melt a heart of stone,
"Take, oh, take my life!" Yet he confessed nothing to criminate himself.
What they wished him especially to confess was that he had pretended to
be a prophet, since he had predicted calamities. But all men are
prophets, in one sense, when they declare the certain penalties of sin,
from which no one can escape, though he take the wings of the morning
and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea.
Savonarola thus far had remained firm, but renewed examinations and
fresh tortures took place. For a whole month his torments were
continuous. In one day he was drawn up by a rope fourteen times, and
then suddenly dropped, until all his muscles quivered with anguish. Had
he been surrounded by loving disciples, like Latimer at the burning
pile, he might have summoned more strength; but alone, in a dark
inquisitorial prison, subjected to increasing torture among bitter foes,
he did not fully defend his visions and prophecies; and then his
extorted confessions were diabolically altered. But that was all they
could get out of him,--that he had prophesied. In all matters of faith
he was sound. The inquisitors were obliged to bring their examination to
an end. They could find no fault with him, and yet they were determined
on his death. The Government of Florence consented to it and hastened
it, for a Medici again held the highest office of the State.
Nothing remained to the imprisoned and tortured friar but to prepare for
his execution. In his supreme trial he turned to the God in whom he
believed. In the words of the dying Xavier, on the Island of Sancian, he
exclaimed, _In te domine speravi, non confundar in eternum_. "O Lord,"
he prays, "a thousand times hast thou wiped out my iniquity. I do not
rely on my own justification, but on thy mercy." His few remaining days
in prison were passed in holy meditation.
At last the officers of the papal commission arrive. The tortures are
renewed, and also the examinations, with the same result. No fault could
be found with his doctrines. "But a dead enemy," said they, "fights no
more." He is condemned to execution. The messengers of death arrive at
his cell, and find him on his knees. He is overpowered by his sufferings
and vigils, and can with difficulty be kept from sleep. But he arouses
himself, and passes the night in prayer, and administers the elements of
redemption to his doomed companions, and closes with this prayer: "Lord,
I know thou art that perfect Trinity,--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; I
know that thou art the eternal Word; that thou didst descend from heaven
into the bosom of Mary; that thou didst ascend upon the cross to shed
thy blood for our sins. I pray thee that by that blood I may have
remission for my sins." The simple faith of Paul, of Augustine, of
Pascal! He then partook of the communion, and descended to the public
square, while the crowd gazed silently and with trepidation, and was led
with his companions to the first tribunal, where he was disrobed of his
ecclesiastical dress. Then they were led to another tribunal, and
delivered to the secular arm; then to another, where sentence of death
was read; and then to the place of execution,--not a burning funeral
pyre, but a scaffold, which mounting, composed, calm, absorbed,
Savonarola submitted his neck to the hangman, in the forty-fifth year of
his life: a martyr to the cause of Christ, not for an attack on the
Church, or its doctrines, or its institutions, but for having denounced
the corruption and vices of those who ruled it,--for having preached
against sin.
Thus died one of the greatest and best men of his age, one of the truest
and purest whom the Catholic Church has produced in any age. He was
stern, uncompromising, austere, but a reformer and a saint; a man who
was merciful and generous in the possession of power; an enlightened
statesman, a sound theologian, and a fearless preacher of that
righteousness which exalteth a nation. He had no vices, no striking
defects. He lived according to the rules of the convent he governed with
the same wisdom that he governed a city, and he died in the faith of the
primitive apostles. His piety was monastic, but his spirit was
progressive, sympathizing with liberty, advocating public morality. He
was unselfish, disinterested, and true to his Church, his conscience,
and his cause,--a noble specimen both of a man and Christian, whose
deeds and example form part of the inheritance of an admiring posterity.
We pity his closing days, after such a career of power and influence;
but we may as well compassionate Socrates or Paul. The greatest lights
of the world have gone out in martyrdom, to be extinguished, however,
only for a time, and then to loom up again in another age, and burn with
inextinguishable brightness to remotest generations, as examples of the
power of faith and truth in this wicked and rebellious world,--a world
to be finally redeemed by the labors and religion of just such men,
whose days are days of sadness, protest, and suffering, and whose hours
of triumph and exaltation are not like those of conquerors, nor like
those whose eyes stand out with fatness, but few and far between. "I
have loved righteousness, I have hated iniquity," said the great
champion of the Mediaeval Church, "and therefore I die in exile."
In ten years after this ignominious execution, Raphael painted the
martyr among the sainted doctors of the Church in the halls of the
Vatican, and future popes did justice to his memory, for he inaugurated
that reform movement in the Catholic Church itself which took place
within fifty years after his death. In one sense he was the precursor of
Loyola, of Xavier, and of Aquaviva,--those illustrious men who headed
the counter-reformation; Jesuits, indeed, but ardent in piety, and
enlightened by the spirit of a progressive age. "He was the first," says
Villari, "in the fifteenth century, to make men feel that a new light
had awakened the human race; and thus he was a prophet of a new
civilization,--the forerunner of Luther, of Bacon, of Descartes. Hence
the drama of his life became, after his death, the drama of Europe. In
the course of a single generation after Luther had declared his mission,
the spirit of the Church of Rome underwent a change. From the halls of
the Vatican to the secluded hermitages of the Apennines this revival was
felt. Instead of a Borgia there reigned a Caraffa." And it is remarkable
that from the day that the counter-reformation in the Catholic Church
was headed by the early Jesuits, Protestantism gained no new victories,
and in two centuries so far declined in piety and zeal that the cities
which witnessed the noblest triumphs of Luther and Calvin were disgraced
by a boasting rationalism, to be succeeded again in our times by an
arrogance of scepticism which has had no parallel since the days of
Democritus and Lucretius. "It was the desire of Savonarola that reason,
religion, and liberty might meet in harmonious union, but he did not
think a new system of religious doctrines was necessary."