HIST30006_Readings_Week 11

The Renaissance in Italy

SUBJECT READER 
 COMPILED BY CATHERINE KOVESI

WEEK 10

Belief in the Renaissance: Fra Girolamo Savonarola 10.1_Savonarola Savonarola, Girolamo. ‘Sermon on the Book of Psalms – No. 3’. In A Guide to Righteous Living and Other Works, translated and edited by Konrad Eisenbichler, 99-118.

Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2003.

10.2_Savonarola Savonarola, Girolamo. ‘Selections from a Draft Constitution for Florence’. In The Civilisation of the Italian Renaissance: A Sourcebook, edited by Kenneth R. Bartlett, 329336. Lexington: D. C. Heath and Company, 1992.

10.3_Landucci Landucci, Luca. ‘The Rise and Fall of the Self-Made Prophet Girolamo Savonarola’. In Images of Quattrocento Florence: Selected Writings in Literature, History and Arts, edited by Stefano Baldassar and Arielle Saiber, 276-283. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000.

10.4_Weinstein Weinstein, Donald. ‘Savonarola, Florence, and the Millenarian Tradition’. Church History 27, 4 (Dec. 1958): 291-305.

10.5_Weinstein Weinstein, Donald. ‘Savonarola: For and Against’. In Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance, 227-247. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1970.

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SECTION 1

Girolamo Savonarola, Sermons on the Book of Psalms: Sermon No. 3, 13 Jan. 1495 Sermons of the Reverend Father Fra Girolamo from Ferrara delivered in Santa Maria del Fiore in the year 1494 according to the Florentine style(1) on various Psalms and Scriptures beginning on the day of Epiphany and following on the other Sundays, gathered by Ser Lorenzo Violi(2) from the spoken voice of the preacher. ‘Behold the sword of the Lord falling on the earth quickly and swiftly’.(3) Our intention, this morning, is to repeat all we have said and preached in Florence these last years on the renewal of the Church, which will happen completely and soon.

We will repeat ourselves so that those persons who did not hear it previously might hear and know that the renewal will certainly take place and soon. And those who heard it previously and believe it, might this morning be reconfirmed of this; and those who did not believe and do not believe, might be converted; and those who still will not believe, and remain stubborn, might at least be left confused and might pale at the reasons we will bring forth.

In every creature there is a limit to its creation, its being, and its powers. Eternity has no limit and no end whatsoever, for eternity is be possession of unending eternal life.(4) Time is not unified, eternity is, because time is in part past, in part present, in part future. But God, most able to do anything, is eternal and embraces all time. Because for Him everything is present, and what was, is, and will be is for Him always present, and he always understands and sees everything. And as we have said God is most capable of doing everything and He understands everything, so the more a creature is higher than matter, the more it is able to do more things and to understand more things. And so mankind is more capable and understands more than any other animal.

And so also angels, which are higher from matter than mankind, understand and knmv more than mankind, and are capable of doing more things. And so angels know the order of the entire universe. But future events, that are contingent, that may and may not be, and that depend on the free will of man, neither angels nor any other creature can know them, for God has retained this knowledge of the future for Himself alone and He communicates it to whomever He likes as much and whenever He wants. It is certainly true that angels know those future events that derive from a necessary cause, just as the astrologer knows when he determines a future eclipse from the necessary movement of the heavens. Angels also determine and see on the basis of bow those things 834

happen in the majority of cases, as one, for example, determines that an olive tree will produce olives and that a stalk of grain will produce grain, because this nearly always happens and happens as it does in the majority of cases, although at times the opposite might happen and this might happen, but in rare cases. Because of this, one can manifestly conclude that soothsaying and astrology, which seek to guess future contingents, are completely false things; because future events and those that depend on free will, that might and might not be, only God knows them and that creature to whom God chooses to reveal them, as we have said. And so I tell you that because astrology seeks to guess, it is the source of many superstitions and heresies.

Why such astronomy is completely false can be proven like this. Philosophy is either true or false: if it is true, astrology is false, for philosophy says that there is no determined for future contingencies;(5) if philosophy is false, astrology is also false because in philosophy one proves those things an astrologer presupposes as principles. If, therefore, philosophy is false and proves the principles of astrology, then these principles will be false; if the principles of an astrologer are false, what follows from them will also be false.

A second proof: either our faith is true, or it is false. If it is true, astrology is false because the canons of the faith reproach it; if the faith is false, astrology is also false because, according to astrologers, the faith of Christ - which began from the beginning of the world, because at that time they believed Christ would come and we believe Christ has come -, comes, according to astrologers, from the inclination of a fixed star that inclines mankind to this faith, and this faith is false: therefore, astrology is false, for these stars that incline towards falsehood and on whom astrology is founded, are a false thing: therefore astrology is false.

Similarly, if the faith of Christ, in which there is more good, justice, and decency than in any other faith, is false, then every other faith is false; therefore astrology, which tends to believe this, is false. On the basis of what has been said, you can therefore conclude that soothsaying and such similar astrology is false, and that future events that depend on free will are uncertain for every creature, but for God they are certain and for those to whom He reveals them.

Moreover, first principles are more certain than the conclusions we infer from them using our intellects. But that is not how it happens in God, because He does not know the causes on account of the effects, but rather He knows, without reasoning [discorso], the conclusions [already present] in the principles and the effects [already present] in the causes. Angels, as well, participate in this light, because they understand without reasoning. The prophets also had this light of God, and thus David said in his psalm: Their music goes out through all the earth [Ps 18(19):5], meaning [the voice] of the apostles, which happened many years after David, and yet he, with that light, saw 835

their work like something already done. By this light the holy prophets as well understand from external signs what they mean intrinsically, as Daniel did when, in the time of King Belshazzar when that hand wrote those signs on the wall, that is, Mene Tekel Parsin, and he understood the sense and the intrinsic meaning of those signs and letters [Dan 5:1-30].(6) And so this light is part of that eternity which God communicates to whomever He wishes.

'Well, then, what do you mean, friar, by all this? The events you have predicted in the last four years, where did you get them from?' I do not need to tell you this, for the mind is not disposed to understand it. I have, in fact, told it to some confidants of mine, one or two at most; but I really want to tell you that you must believe it, for I am not crazy and I do not act without reason. In the past I, too, mocked such things, but God allowed me to do so in order that I might have compassion for you when you would not readily believe. But you must truly believe, because you can already see that by now a great part of what I preached to you has already come true, and I tell you that the rest will also come true and not one shred will be missing; and I am more certain of this than you are that two and two makes four, and more certain than of the fact that I am touching the wood of this pulpit, because this light is more certain than the sense of touch. But I want you to know very well that this light does not, however, make me saved: Balaam prophesied, but was nonetheless a sinner and a wicked man, even though he had this light of prophecy in him [Num 22-25]. But I tell you, Florence, that this light was given to me for you and not for me, because this light does not make man welcomed to God. And I want you to know that I began to see these things more than fifteen years ago, perhaps twenty, but in the last ten years I have begun to say them: and first in Brescia, when I preached there, I said some things; then God allowed me to come to Florence, which is the heart of Italy,(7) so that you might spread the news to all the other cities of Italy.

But your ears, Florence, did not hear me, but God. But the other people of Italy have always heard through the voice of others, so you will have no excuse, Florence, if you do not mend your ways; and believe me, Florence, that it is not I, but God who says these things. You can understand this because you have seen these people who were on the road of wickedness and have returned to penance; and believe that this result could not have been achieved by a poor little friar had God not worked through him. Believe, therefore, Florence, and convert and do not think that your scourge has passed, for I see the sword coming back.

Because of its nature a stone will go towards the bottom and does not know why, the swallow makes its nest out of earth and does not know why, but they do this out of natural instinct and they do not know the reason why they function like this. But mankind is free by free will. Along the same line there have been some who, in their simplic836

ity, have predicted many things and did not know the reason why. And there have been others who have predicted many things not out of their simplicity, but they have known the cause and the reason why. So, in whichever of these two ways you want to say one can predict something, I have predicted it to you: that all of Italy will be turned upside down, and Rome as well, and then the Church must be renewed. But you do not believe it; and yet you should believe, because it is sooner God that tells you this than me.

Now let us begin with the reasons that I have brought to you in the past several years that show and prove the renewal of the Church. Some reasons are probable and can be contradicted. Other are demonstrative and cannot be contradicted because they are based on holy Scripture. And the ones I will give you are all demonstrative, all based on holy Scripture.

The first reason is because of the moral corruption of the prelates. When you see a good head, you say that the body is well; when the head is bad, woe to that body. So, when God allows there to be ambition in the head of a government, lust, and other vices, know that the scourge of God is near. I will prove it to you. Go, read in the [twenty-]fourth chapter of Kings, near the end [where it speaks] of Zedekiah, where it says: The Lord was angered against Jerusalem [2 Kings 24:20]. Also in Firs! Kings, where it says that God allowed David to sin in order to punish the people.8 The same can be read in [the story of] Manasseh (2 Kings 21]. So, when you see that God allows the leaders of the Church to exceed in iniquities and simonies, say that the scourge of the people is near. I am not saying that it is in the leaders of the Church, but I am saying 'when you see it.'

The second reason is because of the disappearance of righteous and just people.

Every time God removes the saints and the righteous, say that the scourge is near. Here is the proof of this: when God wanted to send the flood, he removed Noah and his family. Similarly He removed Lot from Sodom when he wanted to burn it. See how many men one can find today that one might call just and righteous; and so say that the scourge is near and that the wrath, with the sword of God, is roused.

The third reason is because of the exclusion of the just. When you see that some lord or head of government does not want the righteous and just near him, but chases them off because he does not want the truth told to him, say that the scourge of God is near. The fourth reason is because of the wish of the just. When you see that men of good life wish for and call for the scourge, believe that it will arrive shortly. See whether it seems that today everyone is calling for the scourge; and believe me, Florence, that your punishment would already have come were it not for the prayers and orations of the righteous, believe me that today you would be a garden.

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The fifth reason is because of the stubbornness of sinners. When sinners are stubborn and do not want to convert to God and do not respect nor appreciate those who call them to the right path, but always go from bad to worse and are stubborn in their vices, say that God is angry. This reason and the two previous are proven by what God did in Jerusalem when He sent there many prophets and holy men in order to convert those people, but they were always stubborn and they chased away the prophets and stoned them, and all righteous people at that time seemed to be calling for a scourge.

Similarly, many miracles were shown to Pharaoh, but he always remained stubborn.

And so, Florence, await the scourge, for you know how long you have been told to convert and you have always remained stubborn. And you, Rome, Rome! This has been said to you, as well, and still you remain stubborn, and so await the wrath of God. The sixth reason is because of the multitude of sinners. Because of David's pride the plague was sent. See whether Rome is full of pride, lust, avarice, and simony! See whether sins always multiply in her, and so say that the scourge is near and that the renewal of the Church is near.

The seventh reason is because of the exclusion of the primary virtues, that is, charity and faith. At the time of the early Church one lived with complete faith and complete charity. See how much of it there is in the world today. You, Florence, you wish to tend only to your ambition and for everyone to praise himself. Know that you have no other remedy but penance, because the scourge of God is near.

The eighth reason is because of the denial of the believers. See how today it seems no-one believes nor has faith any longer, and everyone seems to say: 'What does it matter?' When you see this, say that the scourge is near.

The ninth is because of the decline in divine worship. Go, see what is done in the churches of God and with how much devotion one lingers there. And so divine worship has declined! You will say: 'Oh, there are more clergy and prelates than ever! If only there were fewer!' Oh, tonsure, tonsure, this storm has risen because of you! You are the cause of all this evil! And today anyone with a priest in the house thinks he is blessed. And I tell you the time will come and soon when one will say: blessed be the house with no shaved tonsure in it.

The tenth reason is because of universal opinion. See, everyone seems to be preaching and waiting for the scourge and tribulations, and everyone thinks it is right that the punishment of so many iniquities should come. The abbot Giovacchino and many others preach and announce that this scourge will come in our time.(9) These are the reasons why I preached to you the renewal of the Church. Now let us speak about the images that point to it.

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In order to explain the images in Holy Scripture, one must know that Scripture has two meanings: one literal, which is the meaning intended by the person who wrote and composed that letter; the other mystical, and this is intended in three ways: allegorical, tropological, and anagogical.

Let us take the allegorical. Know that in order for a piece of writing to have an allegorical meaning, it must have three things: first, it must have a literal meaning; second, it must be history and not a story [fabula] - and therefore poems do not have an allegorical meaning - ; third, that it be Holy Scripture: and so, allegorically speaking, we say that the Old Testament meant and represented the New Testament.(10) Also, a cherub was on the ark of the covenant and looked at another cherub: and they represented the Old and the New Testament [Ex 25:19, 37:8; 1 Kings 6:23-26].

Also, a wheel was in a wheel: the two wheels meant the same thing [Ez 1 :15-16, 10:10].

Elsewhere it says: And the word of the lord came and I saw.(11) This prayer begins at 'and' (and this is a habit of prophets, in whom first the Spirit of God begins to speak and then they utter the words, and they join the external words with the internal ones), and then follows and says: and I saw a man come with a short rope and measure Jerusalem, and then befell silent [Ez 40:3, Rev 21:15]. The prophet saw a man, and this prefigures Christ who came to measure Jerusalem, that is, the Church and to see how much was the Church's charity, and he measured it with a short rope, that is, with the wisdom of God, which measures everything. And after he had measured the width, he remained silent, that is, from the width he could tell the length as well, which must be proportionate to the width. And so he knew how much the charity of the Church was.

This charity must be large and long so that it might reach out and extend to its neighbour, as far as its enemy.

And so, when I revealed this prophecy to you, I told you that the Church had two walls: one is the prelates of the Church, the other the secular princes, who also must support the Church. But when God comes to measure the Church, He will not find either of these two walls because one of these two walls has fallen on top of the other so that both of them are in ruins and all the square stones of these walls have broken and are no longer square, that is, they do not have the width of charity and have become rounded, turned to their own interests and gathered unto themselves; and with these stones they have bombarded the city, that is, with their bad example they have also corrupted and ruined the city and the citizens. And so the scourge is near, as it was and as it happened with Jerusalem.

The second image I presented to you was the one when it was forbidden in Jerusalem to keep weapons of any type and no smith could fashion any weapon; even the 839

prod to spur the bulls had to be blunted. The smith who is always at the fire represented the fire of charity, which must always burn within us. The beating hammer is continual prayer, which must always beat for God: Knock and it will be opened to you [Mt 7:7]. The blunted prod is philosophy, which does not prick as sharply as the study of sacred Scripture. And so King Nebuchadnezzar came and cruelly scourged that people that had no weapons, that is, no charity. This same thing will soon happen to the Church, where no shred of charity is left today.

The third image I presented to you was that of the Apocalypse, where it says that he saw four horses: one white, the other reel, the third black, the fourth pale [Rev 6:2-8]. And I told you that the white one meant the time of the apostles; the red the time of the martyrs, which was the second age of the Church, the black one meant the time of the heretics, which was the third age of the Church; the pale one meant the time of the lukewarm, which is today. So I told you that the renewal of the Church had to happen and quickly. And so God will give his vineyard, that is, Rome and the Church, over to be tended by others, because in Rome there is no charity left at all, but only the devil. And let this suffice with respect to images. Now I will tell you about the parables that represent the renewal of the Church.

The first parable is: a citizen has a farm with two fields next to each other, one full of stones and thorns and weeds and of every other unfruitful thing; and that citizen does not plough this field and does not cultivate it. Every year he ploughs and cultivates the other field and looks after it with great care because it looks like fruitful land; nonetheless, the citizen has never gathered any fruit from it. Tell me, what do you think that citizen will do with these two fields? Certainly, if he a prudent, he will take all the stones and thorns in that first field and throw them onto the other field and he will begin to plough and cultivate this field. That citizen is Christ, who has become citizen, that is, a man like you, and He has a field full of stones and thorns, that is, the land of the infidels, full of hardness like stones and heresies like thorns; and He has the land of the Christians, which till now He has cultivated and which has not yet produced any fruit at all for him; so He will have the infidels convert and He will sow His law in that land, and this one, which He has cultivated so much, He will abandon and it will remain full of heresies. Therefore, the renewal of the Church will happen and many, who are here at this sermon, will see it.

The second parable: a fig tree was planted and the first year it bore many figs and no leaves; the second year it still bore many figs and some leaves, but very few; the third year it bore as many figs as leaves; the fourth year it bore more leaves than figs; the fifth year it bore very few figs and very many leaves; and, carrying on like this, it came that it produced nothing but leaves so much so that, not only it did not bear fruits, but its

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leaves hindered the other plants and did not let them grow. What do you think the gardener should do with this fig tree? He will certainly cut it down and throw it on the fire.

This fig tree is the tree of the Church which, although at its beginning bore many fruits and no leaves, has reached the point today of not bearing any fruits at all, but only leaves, that is, ceremonies and display and superfluous things that wear down the other plants in the land, that is, with their bad example the prelates of the Church lead other people into very many sins. The gardener will come, that is, Christ and He will cut this unfruitful tree down: thus the Church will renew itself.

The third parable: a king had an only begotten son; he found a poor woman, torn, muddy; the king, moved to compassion, took her and led her into his house and took her as his legitimate spouse; he had two daughters from her, whom he gave as wives to his only begotten son. After some time, the king's wife began to fall in love and do many wicked things with her courtiers and servants. The king found out; he took her and got rid of her, and sent her back into poverty and into the dirt where she had been before. Then one of his daughters began to sin as her mother had done and much worse; for this reason the king, irate, sent her away and removed her from himself and from his son and commanded that no bread be given to her. The other daughter, not cautioned by the sins and sufferings of her mother and sister, began to sin the same and do much worse than her mother and sister, and much more wickedly than them.

Tell me, wise man, what would this woman deserve? She certainly deserves a much greater punishment than her mother and sister.

Now, I will explain this parable to you. The king is God, who took that poor woman as his spouse, that is, the synagogue of the Jews as His Church, and it sinned, and you know how God sent her away from Him and back to the mud where she first lay, that is, He put her back into her earlier servitude and misery and blindness. The two daughters are the Eastern Church of the Greeks and the Roman Church, given by God as brides to his Only Begotten Son, Christ Jesus crucified, in which we must soldier under the faith of His Son, Jesus Christ.(12) The Eastern one sinned in its heresies, and so God sent her away from Himself and from His son Jesus Christ, and has commanded that she not be given bread, so no preacher nor anyone else goes there any longer to give it the food of the soul, spiritual food, nor to enlighten it. This other one is the Roman Church, full of simony and iniquity, that has sinned much more than the first and the second. What do you think she deserves, do you not believe that God would want to punish her? You certainly think so, and much more severely than her mother and sister, for they would rightly complain to God saying: 'If we sinned, you had us bear the punishment, but this other one, who has sinned more than us, why do you not punish her?' And so firmly believe that the Church will be renewed and soon.

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Having discussed the parables, we will speak of the renewal of the Church as much as we have seen, as much as we know, and have predicted it you. And so that you might understand better, you must know that there are two ways of knowing. The first is when, through some external sign, we know what that sign means internally. The second way of knowing is through the imagination. About the first: when Pope Innocent died,(13) something happened that made you laugh at me, for I had said that the Church had to be renewed; and because of that sign you thought I had made a great mistake and what I had predicted could not come to pass; and I, through that external sign, saw that the Church was going to be completely renewed and I was counting on what you were saying against me.

About the second, which is through the imagination, I could see in my imagination a black cross above that Babylon Rome, and on this cross was written 'the Wrath of the Lord,' and the weather here was calm, tranquil, and dear; therefore, because of this vision, I tell you that the church of God is to be renewed and soon, because God is irate: and then the infidels will convert and this will happen soon. Another vision: I saw a sword above all of Italy and it was quivering, and I saw Angels coming and they had a reel cross on one side and a lot of white stoles on the other. And these Angels gave the cross to anyone who wanted to kiss it and so they handed out the white stoles. And there were some who took these white stoles; there were some who did not want them, some others not only did not want them, but they also advised others not to take them and they were able, through their persuasive powers, to see that many did not take them. After this, when these Angels had left, many Angels returned with chalices in their hands, filled to the brim with good sweet wine, but at the bottom there were most bitter dregs. And these Angels offered the chalice to everyone; and those who had gladly taken the stoles gladly drank the wine that was sweet on top, and they savoured it; to the others they gave the most bitter dregs, because they did not have stoles, and these would rather not have them and they twisted and turned, but they had to drink them. I immediately saw that sword that quivered above Italy turn to point down and strike these people with great storm and ruin, and it struck everyone. But those who had taken the white stoles felt this scourge less and drank the sweet wine that was in the chalice. The others were forced to drink the most bitter dregs and, in that scourge, begged the others who had the white stoles and said: 'Give me a little of your stole, so that I might not have to drink these most bitter dregs,' and they were told: 'There is no time for this.' For this reason, I tell you that the renewal will take place and soon.

I will explain it to you. The quivering sword - I do want to tell you, Florence - is that of the king of France, that is showing itself to all of Italy. The Angels with the reel cross and the white stoles and the chalice are the preachers that are announcing this scourge to you - and they give you the red cross to kiss, that is, the passion of martyr842

dom - and are telling you to bear this scourge that has to be for the renewal of the Church. The stole means purifying one's conscience and cleaning it of all vices, so that it be white with purity. The chalice, filled to the brim with good wine means the chalice, the passion, which everyone must drink from; but those who have taken the stoles and cleansed their conscience, they will drink the sweet wine, that is, they will feel little of this scourge, as is represented by the sweet wine at the top of the chalice, that is, they will be the first to be scourged; but it will be sweet, because they will bear it patiently and, if they die, they will go to eternal life. The other will be forced to drink the most bitter dregs, which will seem bitter to them, as they certainly will be. And this sword has not yet turned to point down, but it has shown itself throughout Italy, for God waits for you to do penance. Mend your ways, Florence, for there is no other remedy but penance. Put on the white stole while you still have time and do not wait any longer, for later you will not have time for penance.

Now we will speak about this renewal from the perspective of the intellect, and this is of two types. Earlier I spoke to you about renewal using formal and non-formal words.(14) You must know that I did not dig the formal words out of Scripture nor find them anywhere else, nor have I composed them out of the imagination, nor received them from anyone in heaven or on earth, but from God. I cannot tell you more clearly: hear me, Florence, God says these words. Now then, I tell you that I have said them to you, Florence, hear me well, these are the words: ‘Rejoice and be glad, you who are just, nonetheless prepare your hearts against temptation by reading, meditating, and praying, and you will be freed from a second death. You, worthless servants, who lie in filth, lie in it until now: your bellies are full of wine, your loins are dissolved by lust, and your hands are dripping with the blood of the poor; this, then, is your part. But know that your bodies and souls are in my hands, and in a short time your bodies will be struck by scourges, and I will consign your souls to the eternal fire.(15) The other formal words are these: ‘Hear, all you who dwell on the earth, the Lord says this: I, the Lord, speak in my holy zeal. Behold the days are coming when I will unsheath my sword above you. Turn, therefore, towards me before my anger brims over. For then, when the tribulations have come, you will seek peace and you will not find it.(16) As for the words that are not formal, remember what J said to you three years ago, that a wind will come similar to the one in Elijah's story and that this wind will beat against the mountains. This wind has come and this has been the rumour that has spread this year all over Italy; and it spoke of this king of France, and this rumour flew everywhere like the wind and beat against the mountains, that is, against the princes of Italy, and it has kept them confused about whether to believe or not that this king would come. And, look, he has come. And you used to say: 'He will not come, he has no horses, it is winter' and I used to laugh at you, for I knew what would come to pass.

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Look, he has come, and God has turned winter into summer, as I told you then. Remember as well that I told you that God would go beyond the mountains and would take him by the bridle and would lead him here, in spite of and contrary to everyone's opinion; and, look, he has come. Remember also that I told you that great fortresses and great walls would be worth nothing; see whether it has all come to pass. Tell me, Florence: where are your fortresses and your strongholds? What good were they to you? Remember also that I told you that your wisdom or your prudence would be worth nothing to you, and that you would understand everything backwards, and that you would not know what to do, or what to take, like a drunken man or someone out of his wits. And now it has come and it has proven to be true and nonetheless you never wanted to believe me, and still you do not believe. I speak to you, you stubborn man: you will also not believe the rest, for God will not want to give you so much grace that you might believe, because your stubbornness does not deserve it. Remember those other times, three or four years ago, when I used to preach to you? I had so much strength in my voice, so much passion, so much fury in my speech that people feared a vein would burst in my chest. You did not know why, my son, nothing else could be done.

Remember three years ago, on Lazarus' Sunday,(17) when a lightning bolt fell on the dome, what I told you that morning? That that night I could not rest at all and wanted to take that Gospel passage about Lazarus to preach on it, but could never work with it in my mind. And you know that these wore.ls came out of my mouth at that time: Behold the sword of the Lord falling on the earth quickly and swiftly. And I preached to you that morning and told you that the wrath of God was rising and that the sword was ready and soon; and now I repeat this to you: you really should believe.

Remember how three years ago I began to preach on Genesis and did not know, then, the reason why, but I did all I could in order to renew old things? And when we came to the Flood it was not possible for me to go any further, so abundant was the subject matter. And then I had to go preach away from here. Then, last Lent, I began again with the Flood where I had left it off and I began to do the Ark, thinking to finish it, when suddenly the subject matter became so abundant that I could not finish it that Lent. Having picked it up once again, before I could finish it I was again interrupted because I had to go on your behalf to the king of France; and there were still two sermons left before I could finish it and bring it to a close, and no sooner was it finished, remember, the flood came and that day things here were about to be thrown upside down by the French. I will infer this, that this was the work and a mystery of God and not something ordained or arranged by me; and you certainly should believe it, Florence, and not remain so adamant in your incredulity.

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Remember also that I told you that in the past I had been a father to you and that God had been the mother, for I had reproved you sharply and bitterly and shouted at you in a loud voice that you should mend your ways, as a father does who diligently reproves his children; and that now I wanted to be a mother to you and God wants to be the father: just like a mother, when she sees her child err, will threaten him and shout at him and say that she will tell the father as soon as he arrives, and have him punish him; but then, when the father arrives, she does not accuse the child, but says: 'If you should ever again make this mistake I will have your father punish you,' so, too, although I now reprimand you, I do not reprimand you with that force and sharpness as I used to, for I see that the father, that is God, has come to punish you. And so I say to you and beg you, in a low and humble voice: my children, do penance, do penance.

Remember, as well, Florence, that I told you that I gave you an apple, as a mother does when she gives an apple to her child when he cries in order to calm him down and then, when he still cries and she cannot calm him down, she takes that apple away from him and gives it to another child. I say this to you, Florence: God has given you an apple, that is, He has chosen you for himself; if you do not do penance and convert yourself to God, He will take that apple away from you and give it: to someone else; this is as true as I am standing up here. And so, Florence, do these four things I have told you and I promise you that you will be richer than ever, more glorious than ever, more powerful than ever. But today nobody believes that the Angels participate with mankind and converse with them, nor that God speaks to any man. I tell you, quad similitudo est causa amoris, that is to say, similarity is the root of friendship. And so, when someone draws near to God and to the Angels through faith and charity, the more he becomes a friend of God and of His Angels: and they speak and converse with him.

I do not mean to say, nor have I ever said it, that this is the reason why God speaks with me; I say neither yes nor no; you are so far from the faith that you do not believe; you would much sooner believe in some demon who would speak with men and predict the future. You are witless and out of the faith. Tell me, if you believe that Christ was incarnated in the Virgin and that He let himself be crucified-what could be more difficult to believe than this-, you should nonetheless believe this, too, which is easier to believe, that is, that Christ speaks with men. Therefore, if you are a Christian, you must believe that the Church must be renewed. Daniel says that the Antichrist must come and that he must persecute Christians there, in Jerusalem; therefore, it is necessary that Christians be there, therefore it is necessary that those who are there be baptized. But, in order to do this, there is need for men other than those the Church has today. Therefore, the Church must be renewed so that men should become good and should go there to convert the infidels to Christianity. Go, read the Doctors on the Gos845

pel of Matthew, where it says: This Gospel will be preached in the entire world [Mt 26: 13] and then the end will come.(18) Believe me, Florence! You really ought to believe me because, until now, I have not seen a single shred of what I told you fail to come to pass, and in the future you will also not see any fail.

Many years ago I predicted to you the death of Lorenzo de' Medici and the death of Pope Innocent. Also what has happened now in Florence, the change in government. Also I said to you that on the day when the king of France would be in Pisa there would be a renewal of the State here. I did not say these things in public from up here, but I said them to those who are here at this sermon, and I have witnesses here in Florence.

I know that this morning I am crazy and that I speak all these foolish things [2 Cor 11:21], but I want you to know that this light does not justify me; but, if I am humble and have charity, then I will be justified. And this light has not been given to me for myself, nor because of my merits, but for you, Florence. And so, Florence, this morning I told you these things, so openly, inspired by God to say them to you like this, so that you might know the entire thing, so that you might not have any excuse afterwards when the scourge comes, and so that you might not say: 'I did not know.' I cannot say it more dearly to you and I know that this morning I will be called crazy, for many have come to take notes. If you say I am crazy, I will be patient. I have spoken to you like this because God has wanted me to speak to you thus. From the time I began to preach to you on this Apocalypse we have been greatly opposed; you know some of them, God knows some, and His Angels some.

One must fight against two-fold wisdom, that is, against those who have the Old and the New Testament, against two-fold science, that is, against philosophy and against astrology and the study of sacred Scripture and against two-fold malice, that is, against the evil the lukewarm are doing today, who know that they are doing evil and they want to do it. This was not so at the time of Christ because there was only the Old Testament and, if they went wrong, they thought they were doing good. And so I tell you that, if Christ were to return down here today, He would be crucified once again. I tell you, I have revealed nearly nothing to you because, I tell you, if I were to reveal everything to you I would be here for at least six days. Believe me, I have already been in danger of death many times.

I told you: Behold the sword of the Lord falling on the earth quickly and swiftly. Believe me, God's knife will come, and soon. Do not mock this 'quickly,' and do not say this is a 'quickly' of the Apocalypse that takes hundreds of years to arrive.(19) Believe me that it will be soon: to believe does not hurt you at all, in fact it helps you, for it makes you return to penance and makes you walk along the path to God; not to believe can harm you and does not help you; so believe that the time is soon; the moment 846

cannot be told, for God does not want it told, so that His chosen people will always fear and have faith and charity, and will always walk along the path to God. And so I have not told you the predetermined time so that you might always do penance and that you might always be pleasing to God; because, for example, if one told the people: 'The tribulations will arrive ten days from now,' everyone would say: 'I can wait a while longer before I mend my ways,' and it would be like giving them a licence to do wicked things in the meantime, and this would not be helpful. And so God does not want the predetermined time to be preached. But I can very well tell you this, that the time for penance is now; do not mock this quickly for I tell you: if you do not do what I tell you, woe to you, Florence, woe to the people. woe to the simple citizen, woe to the great man!

Lastly, I conclude: I have been crazy this morning, and you will say so, and I knew you would say so even before I climbed up here. God has wanted it this way, and so I tell you, and keep this as the final conclusion, that God has prepared a great banquet for all of Italy; but all the food is bitter, and he has offered only salad, a little bitter lettuce. Understand well, Florence: all the other food has still to come and it is all bitter and a lot, for this is a great banquet; so I conclude for you, and keep it in mind, that Italy is now only at the beginning of its tribulations.

Oh, Italy and princes of Italy and prelates of the Church, the wrath of God is upon you, and you have no remedy whatsoever, expect to mend your ways! And I will begin at my sanctuary [Ez 9:6]. Oh, Italy, oh, Florence, the tribulations are coming upon you because of your sins! Oh, nobles, oh, powerful persons, oh plebeians, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and power cannot resist it, nor knowledge, nor flight!(20) And that will not be all, for you do not know how things have been ordained.

Oh, princes of Italy, flee the land of the North Wind,(21) do penance while the sword is not out of the sheath, and flee from Rome while it is not bloody! Oh, Florentines, flee from Florence, that is, flee for your penance from sin and flee from wicked people.

This is the conclusion. I have told you all these things drawing on human and divine reasons, in modesty, holding back my tongue. I have begged you; I cannot command you because I am not your lord, but your father; it is up to you, Florence; I pray God for you, that He might enlighten you, to whom be the glory and the power for ever and ever [Rev 1:6]. Amen.

Notes 1. The sermon was delivered on 13 January 1495, on the octave of Epiphany. In Florentine style the year lags one year behind our common style (or common era) for all dates from 1 January to 24 March and then joins with common style on 25 March; this difference is caused by the Florentine practice of beginning the computation of the year from the feast of the Incarnation (25 March).

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2. The Florentine notary Lorenzo Violi (or Vivoli) was born in 1464 and died after 1549. A lay follower of Savonarola, he transcribed the friar's sermons as they were being delivered-beginning, in fact, with the 1495 cycle on the Psalms from which this current sermon is taken. In the late 1530s, long after Savonarola's death, the now elderly Violi composed one of the earliest defences of the friar, Le giornate (ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini. Firenze: Olschki, 1986). In it, he comments on his first transcriptions saying that the sermons on the Psalms were 'the first he began lo jot down, and that he did not take great pains to transcribe them precisely, word by word, but he transcribed their substance, more as an exercise for his own interests than for any other reason, never thinking that they would be printed and published, especially since in those early days he was not as devoted lo the friar's mission as he later became' (Le giornate, 1986, p. 37; my translation). All in all, Violi would eventually transcribe five cycles of sermons: on the Psalms (1495), on Amos and Zechariah (Lent 1496), on Ruth and Micah (May-November 1496), on Ezekiel (Lent 1497), and on Exodus (Lent 1498). On Violi, aside from G.C. Garfagnini's introduction to Le giomate, see: Cesare Vasoli, 'Note sulle Giornate di Ser Lorenzo Violi' Memorie domenicane n.s. 3 0972): 1156; Armando F. Verde, 'Ser Lorenzo Violi "segretario" del Savonarola' Memorie domenicane n.s.

18 (1987): 381-99; Gian Carlo Garfagnini, 'Ser Lorenzo Violi e le prediche del Savonarola' Medioevo e Rinascimento 3 (1988): 261-85.

3. This exact passage is not in the Bible, though it echoes a number of passages such as Isaiah 34:5 or Ezekiel 21:7.

4. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1.10.1. See also Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, V.6.

5. In other words, it is impossible to determine the truth of predictions or of future events. Some thirty years after Savonarola, the notion was cited uer/Jatim by Francesco Guicciardini in his Ricardi; see Series C, ricordo 58: 'How well did that philosopher say it: de futuris contingentibus non est deteminata veritas' Go anywhere, the more you turn around the more you find this saying to he quite true.'

6. Belshazzar is often modernized to Balthasar. The story of Daniel at Balthasar's banquet became a fruitful subject for dramatic representations, the most famous of which may well be the thirteenth-century liturgical drama Ludus Danielis (The Play of 'Daniel) performed in the cathedral of Beauvais. The manuscript for this play is French and dates from about 1230.

7. Savonarola actually says l’ombilico de Italia ('the navel of Italy").

8. Savonarola is probably referring to 2 Sam 24 (the chapter immediately preceding 1 Kings), which tells the story of how God, in his anger aga 1st the Israelites, incited King David to 'number', that is, to take a census. of the population of Israel and Judah. Eventually David saw this ¡numbering' as a sin and begged God's forgiveness for it (v. 10); God, in turn, sent a pestilence on Israel to punish it for this sin (v. 15).

9. Joachim of Fiore (ca. 1135-1202), biblical exegete, mystic, and seer. Elected abbot of his monastery in Corazzo (1177), Joachim resigned this office in order to lead a more contemplative life. Although his doctrine and prophetic visions were condemned in 1255, Joachim's visions continued to capture the imagi nation throughout the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. In the early 1300s Dante placed him in Paradise and describes him as 'gifted with the prophetic spirit' (di spirito profetico dotato; Par. 12, v. llil).

10. With this definition of allegory Savonarola is discounting completely the possibility of an allegorical meaning for non-Scriptural texts, and in particular for the stories of classical mythology.

11. Et factum est verbum Domini el vidi. This exact passage (which is, in fact, an incomplete sentence that will be completed in the next Latin citation, which picks up and repeats the phrase el uidi 'and I saw') is not in the Vulgate. The expression factum est verbum Domini, however, ap-

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pears often in the prophetic books and elsewhere to indicate that God spoke to the prophet. Savonarola is thus claiming a prophetic voice.

12. In the original, the phrase "given as brides" is in the feminine plural and clearly refers to both the Eastern and the Roman, that is, Western Church, whereas the phrase "in which we must soldier" is in the feminine singular and clearly refers only to the Roman Church.

13. Pope Innocent VIII (Giovanni Battista Cyho), b. 1432 in Genoa, elected 29 August 1484, d.

25 July 1492.

14. lt seems that by formal words Savonarola means 'in Latin' and hy non-for mal words 'in Italian.' In fact, in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, Latin was regularly called 'grammar', so by 'formal' Savonarola may well mean 'grammatically' (that is, in Latin) and by 'non-formal' he may mean 'colloquially' (that is, in the vernacular).

15. As Savonarola says, this passage is not in the Vulgate nor in Patristic literature. Savonarola clearly intends his listeners to believe that these are original words that God is saying directly to him and in Latin.

16. As was the case with the previous citation, this passage also is not to be found in the Bible, though it echoes passages such as Exodus 15:9, Deuteronomy 32:41, and especially Ezekiel 21 :35.

17. Lazarus Saturday (not Sunday, as Savonarola says) falls on the Saturday before Palm Sunday and commemorates the raising of Lazarus from the dead (Jh 11: 11-44). Savonarola may have said 'Sunday' because his public response to the the bolt of lightning that had fallen that Saturday night would have been made on the following morning (Sunday).

18. Savonarola is most probably thinking of Thomas Aquinas; see, for example, Aquinas' Summa theologiae, I.ii.106.

19. Early Christians expected Christ to return very soon, almost immediately (see Rev, 22:20).

20. The passage is not in the Bible; Savonarola has compiled it by drawing upon phrases from a variety of passages from, among others, Leviticus, 1 Kings, Isaiah, Judges, 1 Samuel, etc.

21. Savonarola is alluding to Ezekiel 1:4 Â 'I saw a storm wind coming from the north'.

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SECTION 2

Girolamo Savonarola, Selections from a Draft Constitution for Florence Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) was born in Parara, the son of the court physician. In 1475 he entered a Dominican monastery, where he found fame as a preacher and theologian. In 1491 Savonarola became prior of the monastery of San Marco in Florence, having been invited there by Lorenzo the Magnificent, whose family had some rights of appointment to the foundation. The Dominican preacher used his position to speak out strongly against abuses in both the Church and the Florentine Republic, attacking the Medici in particular for subverting the freedom of the Florentine people.

As a result, Savonarola found himself the spokesman for the anti Medicean faction following the expulsion of Lorenzo's son, Piero, in 1494 as a consequence of the French invasion of Italy. As the power behind the government, Savonarola used his influence to attempt to purify the city by extirpating what he considered unchristian activities as well as the traditions of classical humanism, which he identified as pagan. Many ancient texts were destroyed, including Latin poets such as Catullus and Ovid; Boccaccio's Decameron was deemed unfit for moral Florentines, as were the paintings of certain artists.

Huge pyres of works of art including paintings of Botticelli, who became a follower of the preacher books, manuscripts, musical instruments, mirrors, cosmetics, clothing, cards, dice, and similar "ungodly" objects were burned in the Piazza della Signoria.

Moreover, Savonarola began an assault on the failings of the Renaissance papacy, calling for the deposition of pope Alexander VI (Roderigo Borgia). Although excommunicated, Savonarola continued to preach, but political defeats and Florence's isolation during the dangerous period of the French invasions weakened his power. Eventually, in 1498, Savonarola was arrested by the opposing faction, which had secured power. With the blessing of the Pope, Savonarola was burned in Florence in the Piazza della Signoria.

O SOUL, BY SIN MADE BLIND O soul, by sin made blind - and sorely robbed of rest, God hates in you mankind - for this your life unblest; your bridegroom, Jesus Christ - you've lost indeed, nor do you plead - for pity, help, or peace.

Alas, alas, alas, fear of the Lord is dead in us.

In Prato and in Bibbona - a thousand signs are shown, yet not the smallest corner-new faith can light and own; on vice your mind alone - is still intent: what punishment - will soon against you pass!

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Alas, alas, alas …

Italy is at war - and famine finds new room; the plague wins every shore - and spreads God's wrathful doom: such is the food of gloom - left for your blind, lost life, mankind - of faith as frail as glass.

Alas, alas, alas …

Prophets, astrologers - learned and saintly men, preachers with sermons terse - your woes had in their ken; yet madly over again - you sing and play your sinful way: - virtue's no more with us.

Alas, alas, alas …

Tell me each gift and grace - God did you assign; how many thoughts, not base - did in your heart once shine, and how much help divine! - But, thankless still you are of will - and sloth too deep to pass.

Alas, alas, alas . . .

Go back to Jesus Christ - and to His Mother dear; no more by vice enticed - desert your path of fear.

Our Virgin Mary's near - and full of grace: tears on her face - she begs her Son for us.

Alas, alas, alas fear of the Lord is dead in us.

SOURCE: Girolamo Savonarola, "O Soul, By Sin Made Blind," in J. Tusiani, trans. and ed., Italian Poets of the Renaissance (Long Island, N.Y.: Baroque Press, 1971), p. 81.

SELECTIONS FROM A DRAFT CONSTITUTION FOR FLORENCE Every Florentine citizen who wants to be a good member of his city and to help her, as everyone should wish to do, must first of all believe that this council and this civil government were ordained by God. This is true, indeed, not only because all good government comes from God, but also and especially because of the providential care which God has recently manifested in preserving the city. No one who has lived here for the past three years and is not blind and devoid of judgment would deny that, but for the hand of God, this government would never have been created against so much and such powerful opposition, nor would it have maintained itself to this day among so many traitors and so few friends. God, however, demands of us that we ourselves use the intellect and the free will he has given us. He has made all that pertains to government imperfect at first, so that with his help we can improve it. This government is still imperfect and has many flaws. We have hardly more than the foundation. Every citizen, therefore, should strive to perfect it. It can be made perfect only if all or at least the majority are blessed with the following four virtues.

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First, fear of God. It is known that every government comes from God, for everything does. He is the first cause of all things and he governs all things. The government of things in nature is visibly perfect and stable, because natural things are subject to him and do not disobey. As they submit to all his commandments, he will always guide them to the perfection of their order and show them whatever they must do.

Second, love of the common good. When they hold offices and other dignities, the citizens must put aside all private interests and all the special needs of their relatives and friends. They must think solely of the common good. This concern will illuminate the eye of the intellect. With their own affections put aside, they will not see falsely. With a firm grasp of the true ends of government they will not tend to go wrong in their decisions. They will deserve God's help, indeed, in fostering the growth of the common good. This, it is said, is one of the reasons for the expansion of the Roman empire, that they loved the common good of the city very much, and therefore God, to reward this virtue (for he does not want any good to go unrewarded, and yet their virtue, lacking the sanctification of grace, did not merit eternal life) rewarded them with temporal goods corresponding to their virtue. He caused the common good of their city to grow and extended their empire over the whole earth.

Third, love of one another. The citizens must drop feuds and forget all past offenses.

Hatred, bad feelings, and envy blind the eye of the intellect and do not let it see the truth. Sitting in councils and in public offices, anyone who is not well purged in this regard will make many mistakes. For this God will let them suffer, for their own sins and those of others. But when they are well purged of such feelings, He will enlighten them. Beyond this, if they are peaceful and love one another, God will reward their benevolence with perfect government and growing power. This again is one of the reasons God gave such an empire to the Romans, for they loved one another and in the beginning lived in concord. Theirs was not divine charity, but it was good and natural charity, and God therefore rewarded it with temporal goods. If the citizens of Florence love each other with charity natural and divine, God will multiply their temporal and their spiritual goods.

Fourth, justice. Justice purges the city of bad men, or makes them live in fear. The good and just endure in high authority because they are gladly elected to office by those who love justice. They are enlightened by God in legislation and in guiding the city to a happy state. Justice will make the city fill up with goodness because it always rewards goodness; and the good men, wanting to live where there is justice, will congregate there in great numbers. God, for justice also, will increase the city's empire, as he did that of the Romans. Because the Romans exercised strict and severe justice, He gave them imperial power over the whole world. He wanted justice to make his peoples righteous.

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The Florentine citizens, if they deliberate and use rational judgment, will see that they require no other government than the one we have described. If they have faith, moreover, that it was given to them by God, and exercise the four virtues we have named, their government will doubtless be soon perfected. They will arrive at good counsels together, in which God will illuminate their minds concerning whatever they seek to do.

God will give them special light, moreover, because they are his servants, and they will know many things that they could not have found out for themselves. They will create on earth a government like that of heaven. They will be blessed with many spiritual and temporal blessings. If they will not have faith, however, that this government is given to them by God, and that they must truly fear God and love the common good, and if they follow only their own wills, without love for one another but with factionalism as always before, and if they fail to do justice, the government ordained by God will still remain. Only they and their children will be wholly consumed rather than receive the grace of it.

God has shown signs of his anger already, but they do not want to open their ears. God will punish them in this world and in the next. In this one they will always be restless and full of passions and sadness; in the other they will burn in the eternal fire. For they refused to follow the natural light, and even the divine signs which have been vouchsafed them, and to realize that this truly is their government. Some who failed to act righteously under this regime and were always restless with it are already suffering the pains of hell. Florentines! You have seen that God wants this government and signs have been given you, you know that it has not faltered despite attacks from within and without, and you realize that those who attack it are threatened by God with many punishments. I beg you by the bowels of mercy of our lord Jesus Christ, that you be content now to accept it. If you are not, God will send a greater scourge to assail you than he has done before. You will lose then both this world and the other. But if you support it, you will gain the happiness that I shall attempt to describe in the next chapter. +++ This government is made more by God than by men, and those citizens who, for the glory of God and for the common good, obey our instructions and strive to make it perfect, will enjoy earthly happiness, spiritual happiness, and eternal happiness.

First, they will be free from servitude to a tyrant. How great that servitude is we have declared above. They will live in true liberty, which is more precious than gold and silver. They will be safe in their city, caring with joy and peace of mind for their own households and for making an honest profit in business. When God increases their property or their status, they will not be afraid of someone taking these away. They will be free to go to the country or wherever they want without asking per mission from the tyrant. They will marry their sons and daughters to whomever they choose. They will 853

be free to have weddings and celebrations and friends and to pursue science or art, whichever they please, and in other ways too, to build for themselves a certain earthly happiness.

Second, spiritual happiness will follow. Everyone will be able to dedicate himself to the good Christian life, and no one will prevent him. No one when in office will be forced by threats not to give justice, because everyone will be free. Nor will a man be forced by poverty to make evil pacts. The government of the city being good, riches will abound and everyone will work. The poor will earn money. The boys and girls will receive a holy upbringing. Good laws will protect the honor of women and girls. Religion especially will flourish, for God, seeing the people's good will, will send them good clergy.

As the Scripture says: "God gives priests to suit the peoples." And these priests will be able to govern their flocks without hindrance, and good church officials and good monks too will become numerous. The bad, indeed, will not be able to live here, since contrary expels contrary.

Thus in a short time the city will be filled with true religion. It will be like a paradise on earth. The people will live amidst rejoicing and singing of psalms. The boys and girls will be like angels growing up in both the Christian and the civic life combined. They, in time, will create a government in this city that is more heavenly than earthly. The happi ness of the good will be so profound that they will enjoy in this world a certain spiritual beatitude.

Third, not only will this earn the people eternal happiness, but it will raise the level of that happiness by a great deal. Their merits and therefore their reward in heaven will be increased. For God gives to those that govern well the greatest reward, since beatitude is the prize of virtue, and the greater a man's virtue, the greater his actions, the greater the prize. It is certainly greater virtue to rule oneself and others, and especially a community and a kingdom, than merely to rule oneself. It follows that he who rules a community merits in eternal life the greatest prize. Greater reward as we see in all the arts is given to the master who governs the undertaking than to the servants who obey his directions. In the military art, more is given the captain of the army than the soldiers; in building, greater reward is given the master builder and the architect than the manual workers. And so on in all the arts. The better the actions of a man, moreover, the more he honors God and makes himself useful to his neighbors, the more deserving he is. Certainly to govern a community well, especially one like the Florentine, is an excellent action. It will, as we have shown, bring great glory to God and benefit the souls and bodies and temporal prosperity of men. There can be no doubt, then, that it merits a high reward and great glory.

We know that one who gives to charity or feeds a few poor is greatly rewarded by God, for our Savior says that in the day of judgment he will turn to the just and say: "Come, 854

blessed of the Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world, for when I was hungry and when I was thirsty and when I was naked and wandering, you fed me and dressed me and took me in. And you came to visit me when I was ill, for what you have done to my little ones, you have done to me also." If God, then, gives great rewards for each man's particular charity, what reward will he give to the man who governs a large city well? Good government feeds many poor, provides for many who are wretched, defends widows and orphans, and takes out of the hands of the powerful and wicked the persons who otherwise could not defend themselves from their power, liberates the country from thieves and assassins, protects the good, and maintains good living and religious practice. Beyond all this it does infinitely more good. Similar loves similar moreover and he will love most whoever most resembles him. All creatures are similar to God, and all are loved by him, but because some are more similar to him than others, he loves them more. He who governs is more similar to God than he who is governed, and therefore surely, if he governs justly, is more loved and rewarded by God for this than for private. actions when he is not governing.

Whoever governs also takes more risk and suffers more weariness of mind and body than he who does not govern, for which again he deserves greater reward.

But the would-be tyrant is unhappy. First, he has no earthly happiness, for though he has riches, he cannot enjoy them because of the affliction of his spirit, his fears and continual worries, and especially because of the vast sums he must spend to remain in power. And though he wants to make everyone else a mere subject, he is the merest subject of all, forced to wait upon everyone in order to win people over. He is deprived of friendship, which is the greatest and best thing a man can enjoy in this world, because he does not want anyone to be his equal, because he is afraid of everyone, and especially because a tyrant is almost always generally hated for the evils he perpetrates. If bad men love him, it is not because they really wish him well, but because they want to profit from him. No true friendship, therefore, can exist among them. Because of the evils he does, he does not have fame and honor. Others always hate and envy him. He can never really be consoled and free of melancholy, because he must always be vigilant and suspicious that his enemies may try something. He is necessarily always afraid.

He does not trust even his guards. He is spiritually unhappy also, moreover, for he lacks the grace of God, and all knowledge of him. Surrounded by sinners and by the perverse characters who make up his assiduous following, he is bound to fall into evil ways.

He will, therefore, be eternally unhappy, for tyrants are almost always incorrigible. The multitude of his sins means that sin has become a habit with him, extremely hard to abandon. To give back all the property he has stolen, also, and to offer reparations for so many evil deeds would mean being left in his underwear, a thing one can imagine would be difficult to one accustomed to a life of such pride and indulgence. He is also prevented by his flatterers, who make light of his sins and convince him that wicked 855

things are good, even by the tepid monks who confess and absolve him, showing him white when they should show him black. Thus he is wretched in this world and goes to hell in the other, where he is more severely punished than other men. There stands against him the multitude of his sins and of the sins he has caused others to commit.

He is also condemned for the office he has usurped, for, as the good ruler earns God's greatest rewards, the bad one is most severely punished.

The tyrant's followers all participate in his wretchedness in temporal, in spiritual, and in eternal things. They lose their liberty, which is the greatest of treasures, as well as their property and honors and sons and wives. For all these come into the tyrant's power. They are always imitating his sins, in order to please him and to be as like him as they can. In hell, too, therefore, they will participate in his terrible punishment.

The citizens who dislike civil government because it stops them from being tyrants all participate in the same wretchedness even though they are not actually tyrants. They lack riches, honors, reputation, and friendship. All the lean ones congregate around them hoping to repair their fortunes, and all the bad men surround them. They must be always spend ing money, and the good people avoid them. They have not a single real friend, for their followers try to rob them. Their bad companions lead them into a thousand sins which they would not otherwise commit. They are restless in heart and at all times filled with hatred, envy, and complaints. Thus they have hell both in this world and the next.

Since (as we have shown), therefore, those who rule well are happy and are like God, and those who rule badly are unhappy and like the devil, every citizen should abandon his sins and his private affections to strive to rule well. Everyone should work to preserve and increase and perfect this civil government, for the honor of God and for the salvation of souls. God gave this government especially to Florence because of his love for this city. Through this government, it can be happy in this world and the other, by the grace of our Savior Jesus Christ, king of kings, lord of lords, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and rules in saecula saeculorum.

SOURCE: R. Watkins, ed., Humanism and Liberty (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina, 1978), pp. 253-260. Reprinted by permission of Renee E. Watkins.

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SECTION 3

Luca Landucci, The Rise and Fall of the Self-Made Prophet Girolamo Savonarola The most intense pages of Landucci's diary are those devoted to Savonarola and his fanciulli. In vivid and concise prose describing the main events of the Dominican friar's second stay in Florence, he first celebrates Savonarola, then expresses deep sadness at the preacher's public disavowal of his prophetic virtues. Landucci had initially welcomed the great success of the Savonarolan movement in Florence, but after its leader was excommunicated in 1497, he stopped attending the friar’s sermons, though the memoirs reveal that his faith in the Dominican friar survived. Imbued with both the humanist ideals of liberty and the numerous prophecies which, throughout the quattrocento, had foretold the universal cleansing that Florence was to carry out, Landucci saw Savonarola's preaching and the acts of the fanciulli as the eagerly awaited fulfillment of such predictions. Nevertheless, like many of his fellow citizens, Landucci had to admit that his dream of seeing Florence become the new Jerusalem had finally been shattered by the tragic fate of the Dominican friar and the persecution of his followers that ensued.

On June 17 [1495] Fra Girolamo spoke with King Charles VIII of France at Poggibonsi.(1) People said it was thanks to him that the king had not come to Florence.

They said that the friar had urged the king to act for the sake of Florence, and had told him that God wanted him to take care of Florence, and that the whole city was on his side. They said that the friar had helped Florence and that the king had taken his advice. At that time the Florentines held the friar in such high esteem and such veneration that many men and women would have thrown themselves into the fire if he had ordered them to do so. He claimed to be a prophet, and many people believed him ....

On June 20 [1495] Fra Girolamo met the king again, and on the 21st he delivered a sermon in which he spoke about his dialogue with the king, report ing how the king had promised much that was good. He said that if the king did not keep his promises, he would suffer great harm and God would deprive him of his office; he would no longer be God's minister and would lose the thing he held most dear. This is what he solemnly revealed to all those present at his sermon, some thirteen or fourteen thousand people, saying that things would happen exactly as he had predicted. He also said that he had predicted things that were going to happen to the king ....

On February 7, 1496, the fanciulli took a veil off the head of a young woman in Via Martelli - an act which caused her relatives to protest violently. The fanciulli did that because they had been urged by Fra Girolamo to correct people who were not wearing 857

decent clothes, or who were gamblers. When someone said, "Here come the Friar's fanciulli," every gambler, no matter how good a person he might have been, took to flight, and women behaved in the most upright manner. The fanciulli gained such respect that everyone kept away from dishonest things, and especially from the unnameable vice. In that holy time neither youths nor old people could have been heard speaking about it. But it did not last long. The wicked have proved more powerful than the good. Praise be to the Lord for having granted me the opportunity to live in that brief holy period. I pray that God will once again provide that righteous way of living. The things that happened back then prove that it was a blessed period in the history of Florence - one should meditate carefully on this fact.

On February 16, 1496, carnival started. A few days before, Fra Girolamo told the fanciulli to stop playing foolish games such as throwing stones and using firecrackers and that they should go about the city, instead, to beg and collect money for the needy.

Through God's will, a change took place, and for many days the fanciulli went begging.

At each street corner you could find them holding a crucifix in their pure little hands.

And so it happened that during carnival the fanciulli gathered after vespers. They were divided into four groups, according to their city district. Each district displayed its banner; the first one had a crucifix, the second an image of Our Lady, and so on. The communal trumpeters and pipers were also there, together with the guards and the city officials. While walking in procession, they all sang lauds and shouted, "Long live Christ and the Virgin Mary, our Queen!" All the fanciulli held olive branches, and this sight touched the hearts of the wise and righteous people to the point of tears: they said to one another, "Such a great and unusual thing must certainly be the work of God. These children are the ones who will enjoy the good he has promised." It was like seeing the throngs of people who gathered around Jesus in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday saying, "Blessed are you who come in the name of the Lord."(2) One can fittingly quote those words from the Bible, "From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise."(3) There were about six thousand fanciulli or more, all of them between five or six and sixteen years of age. All the districts gathered near the Servite friars, at the loggia of the Speciale degli Innocenti, and in the piazza. From there they began the procession, first passing in front of the Church of the Annunziata and then proceeding toward San Marco. They took the typical processional route: passing by Ponte Santa Trinita before arriving in the Piazza [della Signoria]. Once they reached Santa Maria del Fiore, they gave offerings before a large crowd of men and women; the men were placed on one side, the women on the other. The ceremony was carried out with such great devotion that many were moved to tears. Indeed, nothing like this had ever been seen before. They said that the offerings amounted to many thousands of florins.

There were some basins in which one could see the offerings made: gold florins, silver florins, and silver coins. Some had given veils, silver spoons, handkerchiefs, shawls, and 858

other things. People gave selflessly. It looked as if everyone wanted to give all he or she possessed, especially the women; as if everyone wanted to make offerings to Christ and to His mother. What I am saying here is true-I witnessed these things and experienced great sweetness. Even some of my sons were in those pure and blessed groups of children.

On February 17, the first day of Lent, a large crowd of fanciulli came to Fra Girolamo's sermon in Santa Maria del Fiore. A stand for the fanciulli was placed by the wall, opposite the pulpit,just behind the section occupied by the women. Some fanciulli found places among the women. Before the sermon started, all the fanciulli who were on the stand sang sweet lauds. Then the canons began to chant the litanies, and the fanciulli responded. It was such a sweet melody that many openly let fall tears, especially the virtuous people who kept saying, "This is the work of God." The fanciulli sang every morning throughout Lent before the friar's arrival in church. Another wonder must be noted - namely, that each morning it was impossible to keep the children in bed, and they all rushed to the sermon before their mothers ....

On March 27, 1496, Palm Sunday, Fra Girolamo had all the fanciulli walk in procession holding olive branches in their hands and with one placed in their hair; many also carried a red cross, a span or so high. People said there must have been five thousand fanciulli or more; many little girls were also there. Behind them walked the authorities of the Florentine government and the city district officials; then all the citizens of Florence, men first and then women. No one had ever seen such a great procession; I imagine that no one, man or woman, missed this opportunity to give offerings.

Generous offerings to the Monte di pieta were laid on an altar inside Santa Maria del Fiore. In front of the procession someone carried a tabernacle with a depiction of Christ riding the donkey upon His entrance to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. A baldachin was held above it and the procession went through the entire city while everybody kept shouting, "Long live Christ our king." ....

On April 17, 1496 Fra Girolamo preached in Prato, in the Church of San Marco, and a large crowd of people poured in from both Florence and the countryside. He predicted that, after the tribulations, there would be great bliss ....

On the 15th [of August, 1496] Fra Girolamo preached at Santa Maria del Fiore.

Because of the large crowd of people, one of the stands that had been erected for the fanciulli, which was by the door facing the baptistery, collapsed. No one was hurt, and this was considered a miracle. One must realize that there were four stands, two by the wall opposite the pulpit, one in the section occupied by the men, and one in the middle of the church, where the women stood. Because the number of the fanciulli had augmented, it had become necessary to build those stands. There was great devotion in that church, and it was marvelous to listen to those children singing. They gathered 859

throughout the church and sang with such piety and so well that it was hard to believe that they were only children. I went there myself, many times, witnessing these children and experiencing the great spiritual sweetness. Indeed, the church was filled with angels ....

On February 25, 1498, Fra Girolamo preached in Santa Maria del Fiore. He kept saying that his excommunication was not valid and, as such, it should be disregarded.

We should note that all his sermons have been transcribed and organized by a young notary named Ser Lorenzo Violi.(4) By documenting everything Fra Girolamo has said while at the pulpit, gathering all his epistles, and everything else he has preached and prophesied in these last years, Ser Lorenzo has proved to be, as it were, superhuman. It is a wonder that he has done all this, and the fact that he has been able to write down every single word exactly as it has been uttered, without making any mistakes, must be regarded as a miracle, for it seems an impossible task. It was accomplished, no doubt, by divine will for the good, and it is regarded as such by righteous men.

During carnival on February 27, countless vanities, such as naked images, chessboards, heretical books, Morganti,(5) mirrors, and many other costly, futile objects said to be worth thousands of florins were heaped up in the Piazza della Signoria. The fanciulli did just as they had done for the procession: they held olive branches and crosses and were divided into four groups according to their city district, each district displaying tabernacles. After dinner, they burned the heap of objects. Although some of the lukewarm tried to waylay them and do other despicable things, they nevertheless succeeded in setting fire to the heap, and saw to it that everything was burned. It must be noted that the wooden frame had not been made by the fanciulli; it consisted of precious objects and of a wooden square more than twelve braccia long on each side, which had taken carpenters a numbers of days' work. It was thus necessary to have armed men guard it at night, for some of the lukewarm, certain youngsters called Compagnacci, wanted to damage it.

It is well known that the friar's followers so venerated him that on that morning, although it was carnival, Fra Girolamo celebrated Mass at San Marco and personally administered Holy Communion to all his friars and many thousands of men and women.

He then walked with the Eucharist up to a pulpit near the church door and proceeded to walk outside with it, holding the Eucharist up in his hands for all to see, while he gave the crowd his blessing and recited prayers such as, "Save your people, O Lord,"(6) and the like. A large crowd had gathered, believing that they would see signs from God. The lukewarm mocked all this and sneered at it, saying, "He has been excommunicated and yet 'communicates' others." Although I believed in him, I, too, thought this was not right. At any rate, because he was excommunicated, I preferred not to risk being a party to his sermons any more ....

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On April 10, 1498, at 5:30 P.M., Fra Girolamo Savonarola, together with Fra Domenico [da Pescia], was taken to the Bargello.(7) He had to be carried because the handcuffs and the fetters around his ankles kept him from being able to walk. They gave him three strappadoes; four, however, to Fra Domenico. Fra Girolamo then said, "Put me down so that I can write about my life for all of you." Imagine how the good people who wanted to lead a righteous life and believed in him reacted when they heard about the strappadoes he had suffered. They could not keep themselves from weeping, for he had taught them this prayer, "Do good to those who are good and to those who are upright in heart."(8) They could not keep themselves from bursting into tears, and prayed to God with all their might.

On April 19, 1498, in the great hall of the government palace, Fra Girolamo’s confession, which he had written in his own hand, was read before the city council. We had thought he was a prophet, but instead, he confessed to not being a prophet and to never having received from God the things he ad said in his sermons. He had also confessed that many of the things that had taken place since he first started his prophecies had proved to be just the opposite of what he wanted the people to believe. I happened to hear the reading of his confession and was utterly surprised, quite astonished, indeed. I grieved at seeing such a great dream fall apart simply because it had been foolishing founded on a single lie.(9) I expected Florence to become a new Jerusalem, out of which the laws, the glory, and the example of a righteous life would spring, and I was longing to see the renovation of the Church, the conversion of the infidels, and the good granted their rewards. I experienced, instead, the exact opposite, and I was taught a lesson. “You work out everything, O Lord, in conformity with the purpose of your will.”(10) …

On May 23, 1498, a Wednesday morning, the execution of these three friars took place. They led them from the Palazzo [della Signoria] and had them walk on a platform that had been placed near the ringhiera. The Otto [di guardia] and the collegi were there,(11), as well as the papal legate,(12) the general,(13) canons, priests, and monks of various sects, and Bishop Paganotti,(14) who had been entrusted with the task of demoting the three friars. The entire ceremony was held on the ringhiera. The friars were divested of all their paraments while the various formulae proper to the ceremony were pronounced. Throughout the entire procedure, while their heads and hands were being shaved, as is typical of the demotion ceremony, it was claimed by people that Fra Girolamo was being condemned to the stake because he was a heretic and a schismatic. The demotion completed, they handed the friars over to the Otto, who immediately ordered that they be hanged and burned. They were thus taken to the cross at the end of the platform. The first one to be hanged from one of the arms of the cross was Fra Silvestro [Maruffi]. Since the rope did not choke him, it took a while 861

before he passed away; one could hear him repeating, “O, Jesus,” while hanging from the cross. The second to be hanged was Fra Domenico [da Pescia], who also continually repeated, “O Jesus.” The third was the friar who had been called a heretic, who did not speak in a loud voice, but softly, and that is how he was hanged. None of them addressed the crowd, and this was regarded as a very surprising thing, especially since every one expected to see signs from God and thought that on such an occasion the friar would somehow reveal the truth. This is what was expected, especially by the righteous people, who were eagerly awaiting God's glory, the beginning of a virtuous life, the renovation of the Church, and the conversion of the infidels. They were disappointed, therefore, that neither Savonarola nor the other two made any sort of speech.

As a consequence, many lost their faith.

Once all three of them had been hanged with their faces turned to the Palazzo della Signoria with Fra Girolamo in the center, the platform was finally moved away from the ringhiera, and a fire was prepared under the circular end of the platform. They placed gunpowder under it and then set it aflame. The heap burned amid a great noise of crackling and explosions. Within a few hours their bodies were completely burned, and their arms and legs fell off bit by bit. Since part of their torsos had remained attached to the chains, people threw stones to make them fall down. Being afraid that some might try to take pieces of the corpses,(15) the executioner and those in charge of the ceremony pulled the cross down to the ground and burned it with a great quantity of wood. They set fire to the corpses and saw to it that none of their remains were left.

They then sent for some carts to have each speck of dust brought to the Arno. The guards escorted them to Ponte Vecchio, and from there they dumped the ashes into the river, causing every last trace to disappear. Nonetheless, a number of the faithful attempted to gather the coals floating on the water. Those who did so, however, acted in secret and with fear. No one, in fact, could either mention what had happened or speak about it without risking his life, as Savonarola's enemies wanted to extinguish all memory of the friar.

Source: Luca Landucci, Diario fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516 contimato da un anonimo fino al 1542, ed. Iodoco del Badia (Florence: Sansoni, 1883), pp. 108-109, 123-126, 128-129, 136-137, 162-163, 172-173, 176-178.

1. A village in the Florentine countryside.

2. See Matthew 21:9 and John 12:13,"Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"

3. Psalms 8:2.

4. On Violi, see the studies indicated under Landucci in the "Religion" section of the bibliography.

5. Popular chivalric books, like Morgante by Luigi Pulci.

6. Psalms 28:9.

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7. The police headquarters.

8. Psalms 125:4.

9. Savonarola's alleged prophetic virtues.

10. Ephesians 1:11 11. For the Eight and the Collegi, see Dati's description of the Florentine officials.

12. The Spaniard Francesco Romolino.

13. Gioacchino Turriani, Dominican general.

14. Benedetto Paganotti, bishop of Vaison and vicar of the archbishop of Florence.

15. To use them as miracle-working relics.

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SECTION 4

Donald Weinstein, Savonarola, Florence, and the Millenarian Tradition From the end of 1494 to the spring of 1498 Girolamo Savonarola of Ferrara was a prophet with honor in his adopted country. The Florentines believed in his divine mandate and in his message that the French invader, Charles VIII, was the instrument of God, come to punish the corrupt Church and the sinful Italians and to institute a universal reform. Believing, as he told them, that Florence was divinely chosen to lead the way, the Florentines gave Savonarola the opportunity-rare for prophets-of translating his vision into a practical program. From the pulpit Savonarola taught the first city of the Renaissance how to become the first city of the New Age. Florence, reformed by the friar and his followers, was to be the center from which the spiritual light would illuminate the world.

This episode of the Dominican capturing the hearts and minds of the worldly Florentines has been suggestive to men of every age and ideology. Savonarola has been the occasion for polemic within Catholicism and the hero of movements outside it. To some he has been the saintly exponent of Catholic reform, to others, a rebel against the legitimate authority of the Church.(1) Some Protestants hailed him as a precursor of the Reformation,(2) and Italian patriots, as a herald of the Risorgimento.(3) Still others, convinced of the sharp break between Middle Ages and Renaissance, have seen him as the last ray of the setting medieval sun.(4) With the passing of time the more anachronistic of these interpretations have faded with the cooling of the polemical ardor which produced them, or have been shattered by sounder historical views. No one, for example, has recently been calling Savonarola a Protestant or a liberal nationalist.

Yet, as Giorgio Spini recognized just ten years ago, Savonarola studies are still too often marked by a polemical and unhistorical spirit, still involved in the old questions of the friar's spiritual quality and religious orthodoxy.(5) This is no less true of the nearly definitive Savonarola biography by Roberto Ridolfi of 1954 than of the great study by Joseph Schnitzer of 1924.(6) In an effort to get some historical perspective intellectual historians have been directing attention to Savonarola's connections with various ideas and movements of the fifteenth century. But here too there is disagreement. On the one hand Delio Cantirnori and Giorgio Spini have argued that Savonarola was a spokesman for certain eschatological currents of late medieval piety, notably the millenarian ideas of Joachim of Fiore and the tradition which developed after him, chiefly among the Spiritual 864

Franciscans.(7) Eugenio Garin, on the other hand, emphasizes Savonarola's good relations with the intellectual leaders of Renaissance Florence and attributes some of his main ideas to them. He and Andre Chastel link Savonarola's idea of a great reform to Marsilio Ficino's neoclassical notion of a golden age.(8) Professor Garin attributes Savonarola's emphasis upon the spiritual value of contemplation to the influence of his friend, the famous Renaissance personality, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.(9) Thus the problem has been set on a sounder historical track, but it remains a problem: what, precisely, was Savonarola's prophetic message: what were its sources? What connections did it have with traditional and newer currents of thought? The most obvious place to begin is with Savonarola's own explanation. To justify himself to the Pope and to his critics, and to spread his message, Savonarola wrote an explanation of his prophecies, a Compendium Revelationum, in 1495.(10) Briefly, his account is as follows: God, seeing the sins of Italy multiply, especially the sins of secular and ecclesiastical princes, decided to cleanse His Church with a great punishment (flagella) and institute a reform of Christendom. He chose Florence for the announcement of these things because she is in the center of Italy, like a man's heart, and from there the tidings would spread to other parts of the country. He chose Savonarola for His ministry, and arranged for him to come to Florence in 1489, where in the Church of San Marco, he began to preach publicly on the Apocalypse.

Savonarola's account continues. In these sermons he had put forward three predictions: first, the renovation of the Church in those times; second, the punishment of all Italy before the reform began; and, he adds almost superfluously, as a third prediction, the speedy coming of both these events. He said that he labored to persuade his hearers by rational arguments and figures from Scripture, although he himself had received this message from God "in another manner," because men's minds did not yet seem prepared to receive the revelation of such mysteries. As he judged that the public was becoming prepared he began to reveal some of his visions, although still in the form of parables. Even so he suffered from men's scorn, and decided at last to omit all references to visions and the like. But during Lent of 1491 a voice came to him, upbraiding him for not understanding that it was God's will that he announce these things, and the next morning he delivered his famous "terrible sermon," speaking openly the words with which he was divinely inspired.

The Compendium was Savonarola's defense against criticism and his apology for claims to be God's prophet. As an apology it presented a very simple explanation of the central question: God revealed His plan to Savonarola and sent him to Florence, the city chosen as the starting point of the reform. In contrast to the Compendium, however, evidence from Savonarola's sermons and from a study of his career in Florence suggests a more complicated development of his prophecy. In the Compendium 865

he gives the impression that his mission as a prophet began upon his arrival in Florence in 1489, but in reality he had first come to the city in 1482 and stayed until 1487, when he left, not to return until 1490, not 1489.(11) These chronological discrepancies are connected with problems about Savonarola's prophecy itself. He had begun formulating his prediction of the coming tribulations during his first stay in Florence, not before his arrival, and he began to prophesy in the neighboring town of San Gimignano, not in Florence.(12) In fact, there is no record of his having delivered his prophecies in Florence at all by the time he left the city in 1487.

Still more important, the prophecy of these earlier years was not the same as the message Savonarola announced during the French invasions of 1494. It was neither millennial in content nor specifically Florentine in direction.(13) There is, then, a change in his prophecy, a progression from concern with tribulation and the Last Days to a conviction of triumph and fulfillment which the Compendium obscures and modern studies have not adequately recognized.(14) This factor of development is a significant key to a fuller understanding of Savonarola's message.

To be sure, the idea that the world was in an evil period had been with Savonarola for a long time. In a poem he had written in 1472, when he was twenty, he had complained that the world was upside down and every virtue spent. St. Peter's and Rome, having abandoned their great office, were headed for ruin. The Final Day, when God would punish the world, was coming.(15) These ideas of corruption and the failure of Rome's leadership led him to search the Scriptures, where he found evidence that the tribulations of the Apocalypse were imminent. In his earliest prophetic sermons in San Gimignano he sounded a stronger apocalyptic note. His text was from Matthew (3.2, 4.17), "Do penance for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."(16) There is yet no trace in these sermons of the hope for a universal reform or the prophecy of a New Day. When he returned to Florence in 1490 he announced his message of tribulations in sermons on the Apocalypse and the First Epistle of John.(17) The world was full of pride and blasphemy, and therefore, as the abbot Joachim of Fiore and St. Vincent of Ferrer had said, the time was at hand. After six days, when men had escaped from the toils of material things, the sun would open and illuminate the world; men would be brought to the mountain of contemplation, where they would have revelation and knowledge (scientia) of the Old and the New Testaments.(18) As he cited Joachim of Fiore, the father of the most powerful of medieval millennial doctrines, so some of his contemporaries accused Savonarola of adhering to this dangerous teaching.(19) But he also cited St. Vincent of Ferrer, who, earlier in the century, had prophesied the coming end of the world, not the millennium.(20) Savonarola's eschatology was vague and uncertain at this time. His chief interest was individual conversion and reform, his chief source, the Bible, which he read more in the moralizing spirit of the Old Testament 866

prophets than with the elaborate millenarian exegesis of a Joachim of Fiore. The most striking aspects of his later prophecy-the special eschatological role for Florence and the idea of a world reform, are not evident in these sermons nor in those of the years immediately succeeding.

Fra Placido Cinozzi describes how Savonarola's reputation grew steadily, so that he soon became the foremost preacher in the city.(21) He outstripped a number of rivals, of whom the foremost was Fra Mariano da Genazzano, a Friar Hermit of St. Augustine favored by the Medici, whose sermons, polished with classical learning, had been the delight of Poliziano and other humanists of the Medici circle.(22) Savonarola's fare was more exciting than the humanist-preacher's. His attraction lay not, as with Fra Mariano, in the elegance and learning of his style, but in the sensational content of his prophetic message.(23) Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, one of his earliest biographers, said that to those who had heard him preach before he had begun to prophesy the change seemed a miracle; his listeners were rapt, as he penetrated their hearts rather than their ears, talking of the coming destruction and the reform of the Church (spiritualis instauratio).(24) He made pointed remarks about tyrants, who must come to a bad end.(25) Lords, he said, built lavishly in order to render themselves immortal; in the meantime they oppressed the poor, violating the natural law of brotherly love.(26) The poor had only their labors, pressed down by taxes which went to pay for palaces and prostitutes. Nor could they even enjoy charity any longer; the grandi were too concerned with their sensual pleasures.(27) For this championing of the poor Savonarola was sneeringly referred to as "the preacher of the desperate."(28) But his criticism did not lead him into the arena of political reform. Neither did he follow the direction of those medieval radical millenarian movements which sprang from poverty and social protest.(29) He was still a moralist and a penitential preacher rather than a political reformer or a millenarian. His chief concern was the corruption of the Church and the decay of individual virtue, rather than social injustice or the lack of political liberty. This is true as late as early 1494, when he delivered Lenten sermons calling for the building of a Noah's ark against the coming flood.(30) Yet, by the time Savonarola wrote the Compendium of Revelations in 1495 he had elaborated his famous message. What accounts for the change? Savonarola wrote the Compendium in the spring and summer, that is, in the months just following the French invasion and the political upheaval in Florence. During that time Charles VIII had marched through Italy with shocking ease, the Medici had been evicted from Florence, and the aspiring Florentine oligarchy thwarted by a popular movement. Savonarola had become the spiritual father of the city, if not its effective ruler, and the head of the popular party. He became the city's principal ambassador to Charles VIII, and 867

his was the strongest voice in maintaining that the destinies of Florence were bound up with those of the French king, God's avenging instrument. Moreover, the reform of the Florentine government proceeded along lines either suggested or supported by the friar from his pulpit. That the crisis of October-November 1494 was the turning point in Savonarola's career has always been evident. That this crisis was also the turning point in his development as a prophet needs demonstration. It becomes clear, however, when we compare the imprecise ideas of Savonarola's earlier preaching with the message which emerged in his sermons during this period of crisis.

When Charles VIII penetrated Tuscany there was great alarm in Florence on account of the anti-French policy which the Medici government had been pursuing.

Piero de' Medici himself, trying to avert complete catastrophe, rushed to the camp of the king and quickly ceded to him the Florentine border fortresses and the two port cities of Pisa and Livorno. At home in Florence this action seemed a blow to civic honor and a disastrous surrender of hard-won positions. It was the culmination of a long series of unpopular actions by Piero de' Medici, the last straw, in fact, and when he hurried back to the city he found the governmental palace barred to him and the people menacing him in the streets. Failing to rouse support Piero and his brothers rode out the Bologna gate to exile. Sixty years of Medici primacy in Florence were over.(31) Just as Charles was entering Tuscany and preparing to march on Pisa, the greatest prize in Florence's possession, Savonarola ascended the pulpit of the Cathedral, to begin a course of sermons which lasted to the end of the year.(32) Now he was triumphant. He recalled his prophecies of the coming deluge. He had announced the tribulations, he had seen the divine sword over Italy, and so it had come to pass. But already we can detect a change from his earlier preaching. He had foretold punishment for all of Italy, with special force against Rome. Now, in the first of these November sermons, he spoke directly to Florence. As the predicted vengeance seemed suddenly to be concentrating upon this one city, so it appeared that God's message had been directed to her. God had chosen him to illuminate this city rather than other places, and her failure to listen was now bearing its bitter fruit. In other respects, however, his message was the same as before. He made no promise of special treatment for Florence; she was to suffer in the general punishment. At the most he could offer the consolations of prayer and repentance which would help the Florentines withstand the trials to come.(33) A few days after he began these sermons he was elected to an embassy to the French king at Pisa, where, according to a contemporary chronicler, he reminded Charles of the ancient alliance between Florence and the House of Anjou in the interest of liberty.(34) From this time, moreover, he continually reminded Charles of the king's divine mission to institute the great reform.(35) While Savonarola was away from Flor868

ence the revolution against the Medici took place. The impact of this event was immediately reflected in Savonarola's sermons upon his return from Pisa. Now he understood that the problem of religious reform in Florence was connected with the problem of government. Like the traveler to Jericho (Luke 10.30-5) the Florentines had been in the hands of thieves. The Samaritan, who is Christ, had helped them, giving them over to the care of the innkeeper, who was the friar himself, while the two pence He had given them were the Old and the New Testaments.(36) The fact that their first trial had passed without bloodshed was suggestive to him: it was necessary to see, he said, whether God had been more merciful to this city than to the others. In the meantime the Florentines were to continue to build their spiritual ark against the coming flood, and if they persevered they would continue to be consoled.(37) The flood came soon. Charles VIII entered Florence on November 17, with armor and canopy, the symbols of the conqueror. Several times it seemed that he would put the city to sack. But after considerable argument, in which Savonarola was twice called upon to intervene with the king, the Florentines and the French resumed their old alliance.(38) Charles marched out with his army on November 28, bound for the conquest of Naples. The Florentines then turned to the ordering of their domestic affairs, and a few days later the beginnings of the post-Medicean republic were laid by a sovereign assembly of the people.

These two events, the passing of the French armies and the uprooting of the Medici regime, had an important effect upon Savonarola's prophetic message. Previously he had only expressed the hope that Florence might be spared punishment. Now that the danger was passed it seemed clear that Florence was chosen for divine favor.(39) The flood she had escaped was the divine instrument for the reform of the Church.

The people in the ark, the Florentines, were to be the bearers of the reform.(40) Now, moreover, the political revolution took on more significance, and Savonarola's vision of the city's task began to emerge. Florence was a "new city," but she had to consolidate her formal revolution with an internal, spiritual one.(41) For the first time Savonarola, fortified by his own active role in the recent events and his increased authority, chose to give direct advice on the governing of the city, and he gave it as part of his divine mandate. In Florence, he said, where men were especially rich in spirit and talent, dissension arose easily and soon led to despotism, despotism to corruption and spiritual decay.(42) Now, for the first time, he attacked the Medici regime directly.(43) Only by insuring against its reappearance could the civic reform be protected.(44) Florence needed a republic which followed a careful course between oligarchy on the one side and mob rule on the other. Publicly in the pulpit, privately in meetings with political leaders he urged his program: the French alliance, the ending of civic conflict, the modeling of a government upon the Venetian constitution, with its safeguards against 869

extremes.(45) In this context he conceived his idea of taking Christ as king of Florence.

Making Christ king, he pointed out, meant standing under His law. Through the contemplation of Christ the people would learn to unite in His love and the love of their neighbors. This would bring about the civic reconciliation of factions, and Florence could attend to its work as the city of reform for Italy and the world.(46) With the growing conviction that Florence, the republic of Christ, had a mission to fulfill, Savonarola found new meaning in the Scriptures. He had always gone to the Bible for his inspiration, but now he read it with a sharper sense of its application to the immediate situation. He had been preaching on Genesis, concentrating on the analogy between the Italian crisis and the Flood. With the change in government and the peaceful departure of Charles' army he switched texts, taking up Haggai, the prophet who had preached to the Jews after their return from captivity. Haggai had inspired the building of the new temple, promising that it would be more glorious than the first. Savonarola likewise urged his followers to build a new temple, the new regime in Florence, and in his second sermon on Haggai he made his electrifying prophecy:(47) ... I announced this good news to the city, that Florence will be more glorious, richer, more powerful than she has ever been. First, glorious in the sight of God as well as of men: and you, oh Florence, will be the reformation of all Italy, and from here the renewal will begin and spread over all, because this is the umbilicus of Italy. Your councils will reform all by the light and grace that God will give you. Second, oh Florence, you will have innumerable riches, and God will multiply all things for you. Third, you will spread your empire, and thus you will have power temporal and spiritual.

The two main parts of this declaration-the concept of Florence as the vital center of the reform, and the promise of Florentine wealth, power and glory-appear here for the first time. The declaration climaxed a period of development which is to be traced from the beginning of the Florentine crisis. In this time Savonarola found new meaning in Scripture which helped him to understand what was happening more clearly than before. Allegory now was to him not only the prefiguration of the New Testament in the Old but the prefiguration of the New Day beginning in his own times, and of Florence's mission. For instance, the story of the Sunamite woman in Kings (4 Kings 4 in the Douai, 2 Kings 4 in the King James version) referred not only to the Incarnation and the reform of the Church in a general sense but also to Florence, "the Florentine Church," and the new reform coming.(48) Similarly, Jerusalem became for Savonarola a symbol of Florence. God wanted to build a new city, which would no longer be Florence but a New Jerusalem, holy and peaceful, the leader of the restored Church in the New Age.(49) Here Savonarola's preaching, vaguely apocalyptic and predominantly penitential in 1490, began to take its ultimately millenarian form. In the fourteenth sermon on Haggai, Savonarola turned back to the seven-day scheme of the Apocalypse, 870

investing it with a more precise, more clearly millennial interpretation than he had done earlier. The world was in transition from the fourth age, the age of the pale horse and of those indifferent about religion. The fifth age, of Antichrist and conversion, was beginning. After the reform, in which Florence would become the city of God, renewed, like Jerusalem, with the rebuilding of the temple, the infidels and pagans would convert to Christianity.(50) With the spread of Florentine influence over the earth men would rest in the recreated Church (Chiesa renovata), turn from worldly affairs to the love of divine things, and the Church would be glorious throughout the world.(51) Thus Savonarola brought promises of a New Age instead of warnings of the Last Days. His vision of the Seventh Day was close to the Joachimites' idea of a World Sabbath, and his prophecy of the coming Holy or Angelic Pope who would reduce the world to one sheep-fold under one pastor was a common Joachimite figure.(52) He represented Charles VIII in terms akin to the Joachimites' prophecy of a New Charlemagne who would take up a crusade to the East.(53) But though Savonarola used some of the themes and figures which had long been circulated by the epigoni of Joachim of Fiore, his own form of millenarianism was of a different spirit. Joachimism rejected the idea of a single Christian dispensation in favor of the concept of the continuing revelation of God in history. Savonarola was not interested in speculations of this nature, and continued to refer to Scripture as the ultimate source of Christian knowledge. The Joachimites emphasized that in the third age of the Holy Spirit, the secular Church would give way to a rule of monks. Savonarola saw Florence as the nucleus of the coming millennial world community and foretold that Florence would be the New Jerusalem, but he did not prophesy a change in the organization of the Church as such. In fact he expressly denied this.(54) The Joachimite prophecy was based on an original and abstract Biblical exegesis. Savonarola's prophecy was more ex tenipore, forged out of the fervor of daily events; his spirit the spirit of Old Testament prophetism, his exegesis inspired rather than studied.

As for the attribution of Savonarola's ideas to the influence of contemporary Florentine thinkers, here too important distinctions must be made. Intellectual circles in Florence were interested in religious reform, and there was, with the help of astrology, considerable expectation and prediction of a coming great revival.(55) But Savonarola's expectation of reform had other sources. His main inspiration was, as already noted, the Bible, and for him reform was based upon individual conversion of life. For the men of Pica's and Ficino's circles, the religious revival would follow the revival of ancient learning and philosophy. Ficino saw the decline of Christianity as a problem of the separation between philosophy and religion, and the reform as a consequence of their reunion.(56) In short, the Florentine thinkers called for a republic of letters,(57) while Savonarola called for a republic of virtue, in which learning would have a subordinate 871

place. He was no obscurantist but he did not believe learning was the way to God. As he put it, we cannot know God by studying Cicero and Aristotle.(58) Ficino's concept of a Platonic theology, and Pico's belief in a reconciliation of all the great philosophies and religions in a world system were equally alien to him.

But if Savonarola differed with the men of the advanced circles of Florence over the nature of the religious revival, he shared with them one fundamental conviction: the center of the great awakening would be in Florence. Savonarola's message, that a free republican Florence would be the vital center of Italy and of the New Age, was not only a prophecy but also a restatement of a traditional theme of Florentine thought. From the Middle Ages Florentine historians had written of the city's peculiar heritage and destiny. Florence was the daughter and heiress of Rome, founded by Caesar, rebuilt by Charlemagne. Dante ref erred to this legend, calling Florence the most beautiful and famous daughter of Rome,(59) and Giovanni Villani added that, while Rome was in decline, her daughter Florence was mounting and pursuing great causes.(60) Hans Baron has shown how this legend had been adapted to changing political circumstances by Florentine humanist historians.(61) In the struggle for Florence's independence against the expanding power of Milan at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Florentines had begun to think of themselves as the champions of liberty. The Guelf tradition of Florentine loyalty to the Papal against the Imperial party they redefined as a tradition of Florentine leadership for liberty in central Italy.

Inspired by Florence's successful resistance to the Visconti of Milan, Leonardo Bruni rewrote the legend of the city's Roman origin. Florence, he said, was founded not by servile Romans under the rule of Caesar, but by free Romans imbued with the virtus of the pre-Caesarian Republic. Thus, he concluded, Florence inherited the Roman legacy of freedom which she carried on in her Guelf leadership and her republican institutions. Bruni had also discovered a connection between Florentine liberty and Florentine leadership in the progress of Renaissance culture. The free civic institutions nurtured the humanist studies of free men, and from Florence these studies took root in Italy.

So the tradition of Florentine preeminence had been formed and established, although, during the sixty years of Medici control, civic writers had made more of Florentine cultural leadership than of her leadership for liberty. To take a few examples: in 1455 Alamanno Rinuccini wrote to tell the philosopher Argyropolous that in Florence he would find a city not only unsurpassed in beauty and agreeableness but also far outdistancing the rest in humanist studies.(62) The poet Ugolino Verino, later a friend of Savonarola, called attention to the two-fold growth of Florence, in the arts and in her imperium, from the time of Dante. Florence's leadership, Verino wrote, was such that the golden age of the past had to give way to that of the present.(63) Perhaps the best 872

known version of this theme is in Marsilio Ficino's letter to Paul of Middelburg, in which Ficino rejoiced in the revival of learning and the arts in Florence which was ushering in the golden age, formerly thought to be in the past.(64) Savonarola borrowed directly from this patriotic tradition. His constant references to Florence as the center of Italy, the home of its most intelligent men, his statements that Rome must give way while Florence would prosper, echo the civic writers. Like Coluccio Salutati he called Florence the umbilicus of Italy, and as Salutati had done, he spoke of Florence's election.(65) His reference to Florence's superior "spirit and talent" recalls Gregorio Dati's phrase, "art and talent,"(66) and his prophecy of the illumination of Italy by Florence recalls the panegyric of the humanist Pandolfo Collenuccio, who used the same figure of illumination in discussing Florence.(67) Savonarola, moreover, once again related this theme of Florentine leadership to the ideal of civic liberty. The report of his appeal to the old Guelf alliance with Charles of Anjou in his embassy to Charles VIII, mentioned earlier, may have been a fabrication, but it is significant that the chronicler, a partisan of Savonarola, linked the friar with the tradition of civic liberty.(68) In his work for the establishment of the Republic, Savonarola was the declared pupil of Leonardo Bruni and the heir of the patriotic historians. From Villani to Guicciardini Florentine historians read the city's history as a dialectic between factions, parties or classes. They saw the problem of the Republic as one of preventing internal strife and the consequent rise of despotism. Bruni had established the connection between Florence's liberty and her pre-eminence in culture. After this relationship had been minimized during the Medici period Savonarola called attention to it once more. He appealed to Florentine history to prove that the republic was the traditional, as it was the natural, form for this city so rich in men of spirit and talent.

He appealed to the testimony of the civic chroniclers for proof that Florentines had always been terrible against tyranny, monarchy and aristocracy.(69) Any attempt to go against nature and tradition, he said, would lead to a new loss of freedom. Moreover, Savonarola's appeal to Florentine traditions was no mere generality. He cited Leonardo Bruni and he showed that he had read that humanist.(70) With Bruni he shared a strong feeling for a so-called "popular" republic--one which would prevent the rule of one man or a few by constitutional safeguards, where liberty would grow out of equal treatment by the laws. With Bruni also he shared a faith that civic liberty was the foundation of Florentine greatness in Italy and in the world.

For Savonarola, Florence's leadership would be primarily spiritual, rather than cultural as it was for the humanists; yet how much his message reflected of secular patriotism! Florence would be "richer, more glorious, more powerful than ever." Pisa would be returned. Florence would spread her imperium and her power, temporal as well as spiritual. Like his humanist predecessors Savonarola seemed to feel no conflict between 873

his exaltation of Florentine liberty and his promises of the extension of her hegemony.

These were prophecies closer to the hearts of the bourgeois Florentines than was the monastic-centered millennialism of the Joachimites or the esoteric theosophizing of Ficino's circle; far closer, indeed, than Savonarola's own earlier condemnations of worldly wealth and his identification with the cause of the "desperate."

Savonarola's absorption of these views indicates that, while the crisis of November 1494 was decisive in the elaboration of his millenarian prophecy, we must look further back to find the explanation of his identification with Florentine secular interests. Indeed, in the four years of his successful preaching in Florence strong ties binding him to the city, ties of mutual interest and affection, grew in a number of ways, and he had become a Florentine in outlook. We may never know fully why Lorenzo de' Medici had Savonarola recalled to Florence in 1490,(71) but we do know that in several respects the friar's preaching served Florentine interests very well. His first prophecies of the punishment of Rome in 1483 came when Florence was at war with Pope Sixtus IV; his San Gimignano prophecies, when she was at war with Innocent IV. His success in founding an independent Tuscan congregation of Dominican houses was in line with the Medici policy of Florentine expansion in Tuscany. It removed one source of outside interference in the city's affairs and gave Florence an excuse for further interference in the affairs of her Tuscan neighbors.

In 1491 Savonarola had been elected prior of San Marco. The wandering mendicant preacher now held important dignities in the city. He had become a Florentine by adoption. Not only this, but his fight for the independence of the Tuscan Dominican houses from the Lombard Congregation made Savonarola dependent upon the protecting walls of Florence. At the time of the separation he was ordered to appear before the vicar-general of the Lombard Congregation but refused to go. Later, as he continued to thwart papal efforts to break the alliance between Florence and France, the Pope used this matter of the Dominican quarrel to bring him down. He was ordered to unite the Tuscan houses with a new Roman-Tuscan congregation. When he refused he was excommunicated, thereby becoming entirely dependent upon the shifting winds of popularity within Florence.(72) Savonarola not only identified himself with Florentine political interests, he also played a role in the city's intellectual life. A Medici foundation, San Marco had always served the intellectual and artistic community, and it continued to do so under Savonarola's priorate. Savonarola was Giovanni Pico's spiritual advisor and he helped with Pico's polemic against astrology.(73) Three of his closest friends were the brothers Domenico, Girolamo and Antonio Benivieni, philosophers and members of the Medici Platonic circle.(74) Giovanni Nesi, Neoplatonist poet and Florentine man of affairs, was his strongest supporter, and referred to the friar as the "Socrates of Ferrara.�(75) 874

This list of friends and followers from the Florentine intelligentsia could be greatly extended; suffice it to mention that Piero Crinito, a pupil of the humanist Politian, referred to Savonarola as "the best informed man in philosophy of his time," and called San Marco, in humanist fashion, the Marcian Academy.(76) Such were the sources and varieties of Savonarola's identification with the Florence of the humanists, the Medici, and the Platonic Academy. This identification helped lay the foundations for his prophetic message and determined that it would have the civic, patriotic character which it did later assume. The prophecy that Savonarola announced in November, 1494 was different both in spirit and in detail from his earlier message. He read the Bible in a new way and his vision of the New Jerusalem was inspired by the immediate impact of Florentine and Italian events as well as by the more subtle effect of his growing identification with Florentine interests and traditions. His version of the reform and the millennium was permeated with concepts drawn from Florentine civic thought. His promise that Florence would be richer, more powerful, more glorious than ever was a new secularization of the eschatological theme. If earlier prophecies of a reforming Emperor had reflected the political world of the Middle Ages, Savonarola's message bore the stamp of the city-state society of fifteenth century Italy and reflected the pre-eminence of Florence in the Renaissance. It was his genius for combining the traditional appeal of the penitential preacher with the religious as well as the material ambitions of Renaissance Florence into a Biblical vision of the New Jerusalem which makes Savonarola an interesting figure for historical study. Neither a spokesman for a dead past nor for an unborn future, he was a prophet for the fifteenth century, with its living religious interests and its tensions between the spirit and the flesh.

Notes *This is a slightly expanded version of a paper read at the 84th meeting of the American Society of Church History, April 18-19, 1958 at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. I should like to acknowledge my great debt to Dr. Hans Baron, Newberry Library, Chicago, for his kind help and advice and to Professor Eugenio Garin, of the University of Florence, from whom I received much aid while doing research on this topic as a Fulbright scholar in Italy, 1953-1955.

1. See for example the defense of Savonarola by Lorenzo Luotto against the criticisms of Ludwig Pastor, ll vero Savonarola e il Savonarola di L. Pastor (Florence, 1897).

2. There is a good survey of Savonarola interpretations in Joseph Schnitzer, Sav,marola ein Kulturbild aus der Zeit der Renaissance 2 vols. (Munich, 1924). I cite the expanded and revised Italian translation by Ernesto Rutili (Milan, 1931) II, chap. 40. See also Alfred Teichmann, Savonarola in der deutchen Dichtung (Stoff· und Motivge· schichte der de11,tsc1len Literatur 16; Berlin, 1937).

3. For an account of the “new piagnonism'' of the nineteenth century see Giovanni Gentile, Gino Cappcni e la cultura toscana nel sewlo decimonono (Florence, 1922).

4. The metaphor is used by Francesco De Sanctis, quoted by Luigi Russo, Machiavelli (3d ed; Bari, 1949) p. 2.

5. Giorgio Spini, “Introduzione al Savonarola," Belfagor III, 4 (31 July, 1948) pp. 414-428. See also Delio Cantimori, "Giuseppe Schnitzer: Savonarola," Annali della R. Scuola Norniaie Superi875

ore di Pisa. Lettere, Storia e Filosofia II (1932) pp. 80-104, and Roberto Palmarocchi, '' Savonarola, Girolamo, '' Enciclopedia italiana XXX ( 1936) pp. 973-5.

6. Roberto Ridolfi, Vita di Girolamo Savona-rola 2 vols. (Rome, 1954); Schnitzer, op. cit.

7. Spini, op. cit., pp. 418-421; Cantimori, op. cit., pp. 98-100.

8. Of the many works of Eugenio Garin I mention here only the one most pertinent to this specific point: "Girolamo Savonarola," Address to the Lib· c>ra Cattedra of Florence (Florence, 1953); Andr6 Chaatel, "L 'Antichrist a la Renaissance,'' Atti del Congresso lnternazionale di Studi Umanistfoi ed. Enrico Castelli, L'Umanesimo e il demoniaco nell' arte (Rome, 1952) pp. 177-186.

9. Eugenio Garin, "Desideri di riforma nell' oratoria del Quattrocento,'' Belfagor Quaderno 1, Contributi alla storia del Concilio di Trento e della controriforma (Florence, 1948) p. 9.

10. There are numerous editions in Italian and Latin. I cite that in Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Vita R.P. Fr. Hierontymi Savonarola Ferrariensis 2 vols. eel. Jacques Quetif (Paris, 1674) I, 221-230.

11. Ridolfi, Vita I, 20-45. See also Ridolfi, Studi savonaroliani (Florence, 1935) pp. 34-71.

12. See the record of his trial published in Pasquale Villari, La storia di Girolamo Savonarola e di suoi tempi 2 vols. (2d ed. Florence, 1887-8) I, cxlix:-cl. This is confirmed by the account of Savonarola's devoted disciple and biographer, Fra Benedetto Luschino (da Firenze), who also reports that Savonarola told him how his first idea of the coming punishment and renovation of the Church came to him through rl'ason and the reading of Scriptures. Vulnera diligentis Ms. Biblioteca Riceardiana (Florence) No. 2985, Book III, f. 15r.

13. The Latin notes for one of these San Gimignano sermons are published in Roberto Ridolfi, Gli archivi delle fa miglie fiorentine (Florence, 1934) pp. 79-81.

14. Professor Cantimori, in his review of Schnitzer, observes the absence of any sense of spiritual development in Schnitzer's interpretation of Savonarola, and notes that Schnitzer interpreted Savonarola's early thought on the basis of expressions only found in his later work. op. cit., p. 91.

15. In Mario Ferrara, Savonarola 2 vols (Florence, 1952) I, 7-9.

16. Ridolfi, Studi p. 45.

17. Ridolfi, Vita I, 52-3.

18. Girolamo Savonarola, “Lezioni sull' Apocalisse,'' partly in Villari, Savonarola, I, xv-xviii. The full text is in Sermones sivc magis lectiones super Apocalypsim Ms. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Florence) Conventi soppressi No. I. VII 25, ff. 53-85.

19. See for example the attack by the hermit Angelo, Epistola dell' heremita de Valle Ombrosa dello stato della Chiesa (Vallombrosa, 1496) Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Florence) Guicciardini No. 3-10-7.

20. "Vincenzo Ferreri (Ferrer) santo," Enciclopedia Cattolica (Vatican City, 1954) XII, 1444.

21. In P. Villari, E. Casanova (ed.) Scelta di prediche e scritti di Fra Girolamo Bavonarola (Florence, 1898) p. 15.

22. Ibid., p. 14. On Fra Mariano see D. A. Perini, Un emulo di fr. Girolamo Savonarola: fr. Mariano da Genassano (Romo, 1917).

23. Girolamo Benivieni tells how his brother Domenico criticized Savonarola for the lack of grace in his style, especially as compared to Fra Mariano: Lettera mandata d Clemento VII (1530) Ms. Biblioteca Riccardiana (Florence) f. 8 v-r.

24. Gianfrancesco Pico, Vita I, 27.

25. Girolamo Savonarola, Prediche nuova mente venute in luce …. sopra ii salmo Quam bonus Israel Deus (Venice, 1528) f. LII v.

26. Ibid., ff. LXII r-LXVIII v.

27. Ibid., f. XI r.

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28. Girolamo Savonarola, Prediche italiane a·i Fiorentini 3 vols. in 4, ed. F. Cognasso, R. Palmarocchi (Documenti di storia italiana; Perugia, Florence, 1930-5) II, 318-19.

29. The social basis of medieval millenarian movements is most recently discussed in Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (London, 1957).

30. Girolamo Savonarola, Sermones quadragesimales super archam Noe (Venice, 1536). For the dating of these sermons see Bibliografia delle opere del Savonarola ed. Fiero Ginori Conti, Vol. I Roberto Ridolfi, Cronologia e bibliografia delle prediche (Florence, 1939) pp. 40-6.

31. These events are described in Schnitzer, op. cit., I, 163-212, and Ridolfi, Vita I, 116-126.

32. These make up the first volume of the Prediche italiane ai fiorentine op. cit.

33. Ibid., I, 9-19.

34. Bartolomeo Cerretani, Storia fiorentina in Joseph Schnitzer (ed.) Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte Savonarolas III. Bartolomeo Cerretani (Munich, 1904) pp. 15-16.

35. See his letters to Charles, nos. XX, XXVII-XXIX in Le lettere ed. Roberto Ridolfi (Florence, 1933).

36. Prediche italiane I, 55-6.

37. Ibid., p. 64.

38. This is described in Cerretani, op. cit., pp. 26-7; Luca Landucci, Diario fiorentino ed. Iodoco Del Badia (Florence, 1883) pp. 87-8. The text of the agreement is in Archivio storico italiano 1 (1842) pp. 362-375.

39. "… pero el nostro Noll che ll nell' area parla a tutti quelli che sono dentro, intra i quali noi siamo da Dio stati eletti a fuggire tan to pericolo.'' Prediche italiane I, 107.

40. "Risponde Noe: Si come per el diluvio si rinnovb el mondo, coai manda Dio queste tribulazioni per rinnovare la chiesa sua con quelli che ataranno nell' area.'' Ibid., pp. 108-9.

41. Ibid., pp. 114-115.

42. Ibid., p. 184.

43. The point is important in following the development of Savonarola's message. Francesco Guicciardini noticed it: Storie fiorentine p. 109 in Op ere ed. Roberto Palmarocchi (Scrittori d 'Italia 134; Bari, 1931).

44. Prediche italiane I, 115.

45. Ibid., pp. 195-7.

46. Ibid., pp. 362-3.

47. Ibid., p. 145.

48. Ibid., pp. 170-1.

49. Ibid., pp. 201; II, 324-5.

50. Ibid., pp. 201-214.

51. Ibid., pp. 269-275.

52. For his use of the Biblical unum ovile (e.g. John 10.16) see Prediche italiane III2, 206, 256. For the Papa santo see Ibid., pp. 313-4, 528. The Joachimites also used the terms Papa sa·nctus and pastor bonus: see K. Burdach, P. Piur, (ed.) Vom Mittelalter zur Reformation; Forschungen zur Geschichte der deutschen Bildung II. 5, 307-8.

53. On the Joachimite "Second Charlemagne '' Prophecy see especially Marjorie E. Reeves, Studies in the Reputation and Influence of the Abbot Joachim of Fiore, Chiefly in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Ph.D. Thesis, University of London, 1932).

54. Savonarola, Le lettere, p. 42.

55. On reforming interests in Florence see Garin, "Desideri," and the resume in my thesis, Prophecy and Humanism in Late Fifteenth Century Florence (Ph. D. Dissertation, State University of Iowa, 1957) Chap II. On the astrological predictions of religious reform see Benedetto Soldati, La poesia astrologica nel Quattrocento (Florence, 1906) pp. 196-7; Chastel, op. cit., passivm.

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56. See especially Marsilio Ficino, Della 1¡eligione christiana. (Florence, 1568) pp. 7-8.

57. Eugenio Garin, L'umanesimo italiano (Bari, 1952) p. 114.

58. Prediclie italiane III1, 151, 400.

59. Quoted by Mario Salmi, "La 'Renovatio Romae' e Firenze,'' Rinascimento I (Florence, 1950) 20-1.

60. Quoted by Ferdinand Schevill, History of Florence (New York, 1936) p. 228.

61. Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance 2 vols. (Princeton, 1955) I, 38-60.

62. Alamanno Rinuccini, Lettere ed orazioni ed. Vito R. Giustiniani (Florence, 1953) p. 14.

63. Ugolino Verino, Flametta ed. Lucia.no Mencaraglia (Florence, 1940) p. 96. I have so far only been able to see reviews of Warman Welliver's L'impero fiorentino (Florence, 1957). If his thesis is correct Lorenzo de’ Medici was responsible for developing a program of Florentine imperialism.

This would, it seems to me, strengthen further the bonds between Savonarola's prophecy and Florentine traditions.

64. Marsilio Ficino, Opera. (Basel, 1561) pp. 616-617.

65. See Salutati's panegyric in Eugenio Garin (ed.) Prosatori latini del Quattrocento (Milan, 1952) p. 34.

66. Baron, op. cit., I, 152-3.

67. In Eugenio Garin (ed.) Il Rinascimento italiano (Milan, 1941) p. 371.

68. In explaining the Florentine reception of Charles VIII Comines says, ''... les Florentina mal voulentiers estoient contre la maison de France, de laquelle ilz ont este de tous temps vrays serviteurs et partisans, tant pour les affairs qu 'ilz ont en France, pour la marchandise, que pour estre de la part guelfe: ... " Memoires de Philippe De Commynes ed. R. Chantelauze (Paris, 1881) p.

536. I am indebted to Dr. Hans Baron for this reference.

69. Girolamo Savonarola, Trattato circa il reggiment,o e governo ilclla cittd di Firenze ed. A. de Rians (6th ed., Florence, 1847) p. 13.

70. Girolamo Savonarola, Prediche sopra Ezechiele ed. Roberto Ridolfi 2 vols. (Rome, 1955) I, 97.

71. We do know that. Giovanni Pico had met Savonarola earlier and interceded with Lorenzo to secure the return of the friar to Florence. La vita del Beato Ieronimo Savonarola scritta da un anoninio ed. Piero Ginori Conti (Florence, 1937) p. 17. For further evidence see Ridolfi, Vita I, 43-4.

72. On Savonarola's work for Dominican reform see Joseph Schnitzer, Savonarola im Streite mit seinem Orden 11nd seinem Kloster (Munich, 1914).

73. As their mutual friend and disciple, Storia dell' Accademia Platonica di ae Novo Saeculo (Florence, 1947) b. 4 r.

74. On Domenico see Arnaldo Della Torre, Storia dell' Accademia Platonica di Firenze (Florence, 1902) pp. 771-2. On Girolamo see Caterina Re, Girolamo Benivieni fiorentino (Citta di Castello, 1906). On Antonio see Della Torre, op. cit., pp. 780-3. See also my thesis, Chap. IV. 75. ''Ferrariensis igitur Socrates,'' Nesi, op. cit., b. 5 r.

76. Piero Crinito, De honesta disciplina ed. Carlo Angieleri (Edizione nazionale dei classici del pensiero italiano II.2; Rome, 1955) pp. 104-5.

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SECTION 5

Donald Weinstein. Savonarola: For and Against BUT NOW I AM COMPELLED TO WRITE ABOUT MY PUBLIC PROPHECIES, ESPECIALLY THE MORE IMPORTANT ONES, BECAUSE MANY WHO HAVE HEARD THEM FROM ME IN THE PULPIT HAVE TRIED TO DESCRIBE THEM, BUT BEING INEXPERT WRITERS IN LATIN THEY HAVE BUTCHERED THE TRUTH OR CONTAMINATED IT WITH MANY ERRORS; OTHERS HAVE USED THE VERNACULAR TO DISSEMINATE MY WORDS, BUT, WHETHER OUT OF STUPIDITY OR INTENTIONAL MISINTERPRETATION OR MALIGNITY THEY HAVE MADE ADDITIONS, SUBTRACTIONS; AND DISTORTIONS. - Savonarola, Compendium Revelationum I To the kind of polemics referred to in the above passage from Savonarola' s Compendium, few of the issues discussed in the last chapter were directly relevant. Benivieni's mystical commentaries, Gianfrancesco's religious scepticism, and Nesi's Hermeticism touched on, but did not speak directly to, the issues of belief and commitment and political allegiance as most Florentines would have understood them. For the most part, with the exception of some of Benivieni's songs, the Laurentians addressed themselves to members of their own circle of philosophers and literati, while the more immediate, practical questions were these: Was Savonarola a true prophet or a charlatan and a heretic? Was he a bringer of peace and love or a demagogue and a rebel against the Church? Was he the champion of Florentine liberty or its subverter? How could one arrive at sound answers to such questions, and how could one believe in Savonarola and yet remain a faithful son of the Church?

Most of these questions were raised publicly by those who disapproved or doubted Savonarola's claims of divine prophecy, or by those who opposed his political influence in Florence. Even before the events of 1494, some of these questions had been asked by Fra Mariano da Genazzano, the favorite preacher of the Laurentians. They were also asked by Fra Domenico da Ponzo, onetime admirer of Fra Girolamo, who returned to Florence after the overthrow of the Medici as an agent of Lodovico il Moro.1 They were asked, answered, and asked again throughout the brief term of 879

Savonarola's ascendancy, and, indeed, well into the next century.2 Savonarola's contemporary opponents have, for the most part, been harshly treated by his modern biographers, who are inclined to impugn their motives as well as to belittle the quality of their arguments.3 Most of the anti-Savonarolan writings do, in fact, contain some wild charges which are difficult to accept as the considered opinions of intelligent men of good faith. For example, Giovanni Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, son of the famous humanist, a canon of the Florentine Cathedral chapter and a student of canon law, pounced upon Savonarola as soon as he was imprisoned on April 8, accusing him of causing the death of Carlo Strozzi, after promising to cure him of an illness, and darkly hinting at his complicity in the deaths of others.

To Bracciolini, Savonarola was "another Antichrist," insanely given over to the power of Satan.4 While we would regard such charges as vicious and absurd, the ascription to Savonarola of demonic powers was, after all, analogous to his own and his friends' belief in his angelic powers. To Savonarola's own declarations that he had had "secret intelligences" and visions of the Virgin, the obvious reply of sceptics was not-as it would be today-to deny that such things were possible, but to charge that his visions were from the Devil. To Giovanni Nesi's characterization of Savonarola as a moon-based seer who used the science of the Kabbalah to bring about the reform of Christianity, Bracciolini could well reply that Savonarola used the Kabbalistic art to subvert the Church.5 For us to accuse the anti Savonarolans as a group of malice would only compound one partisanship with another. The controversy surrounding Savonarola was passionate; few on either side were scrupulous in their choice of weapons, but these were always the weapons of the age, an age in which demons were real and the birth of a new Antichrist was a frequent event.

In addition to the belief that Savonarola was demonic, certain other charges were common in the anti-Savonarolan tracts. One was that Savonarola plotted the establishment of a new religious sect. To some Fra Girolamo was another Mahomet, who "with the tail of a scorpion smote the Bock of Christ with dreams and visions, seducing the crowd to [believe in] a new sect so that he might be called the originator of great deeds."6 Francesco Altoviti, who had lived in exile as an enemy of the Medici7 but was equally hostile to the new republic, wrote that the Ark to which Savonarola had summoned the Florentines was a schismatic heresy which aimed to subject the world to new religious laws of poverty and simplicity.8 Giuliano de' Gondi, in a pratica of March 14, 1498, expressed his fear that Savona rola had founded "a new sect of Fraticelli like the one that formerly existed in this city" and aspired to make himself its Angelic Pope.9 Raffaello da Volterra charged, after Savonarola's fall, that "he used to say that everyone ought to abandon and not even go near the City of Rome 880

which all Christians venerate and which is the very source of religion (ac religionis causa). And with such arguments and promptings he would have founded a new heretical sect, if divine providence had not intervened.�10 The kernel of truth in these charges was contained in Savonarola's repeated predictions that Rome would be punished, perhaps abandoned in favor of a new center a new Jerusalem, and in his exaltation of Florence as the center of a Christianity renewed and triumphant. These were dangerous prophecies, as Savonarola was well aware, and they grew more dangerous in the retelling.

Just as in the tense days of the struggle with another Pope a century earlier, when the air had been filled with the prophecies of the original Fraticelli, some Florentines turned for advice to a holy man of Vallombrosa.11 Sometime early in 1496 a delegation from Florence visited Angelo Fondi, a hermit of Vallombrosa called Angelo the Anchorite, to ask his opinion concerning the prophecies of the new "fraticcllo in Florence who claims that he has been in Paradise and that the Church will be reformed."

Angelo gave his answer in a letter to the Signoria and people that May.12 He could not believe, he told them, that Savonarola, a man learned in Scripture, had really declared that Jerusalem would replace Rome. This was part of the false Jewish messianic belief and he himself rejected it. As to whether Savonarola had really been in Paradise, and whether he was really a prophet, Angelo believed that both were possible and had good precedents; but this would only be known by watching Savonarola's life and works. He himself, he continued, made no claims to the gift of prophecy, nor had he been in Paradise; he was earth-bound and a sinner; he interpreted Scripture with the light of the intellect, not through visions: nevertheless, he agreed with the friar that "the empire of Constantinople" would soon be recovered, that the churches of the East and West would be reunited and the Church reformed. Charles VIII, of the race of the Carolingians and the Kings of France, was God's appointed instrument for this task, and he would be the last Emperor. As for the Florentines, Angelo said, they were almost alone among the people of Italy in recognizing and preserving the truth, and therefore God had given to them more light and wisdom than He had given to anyone else, for He does not impart His revelations to all nations.

Clearly, although he maintained a careful orthodoxy with respect to the Church of Rome, Angelo subscribed to some version of the Second Charlemagne and Last Emperor prophecies and was strongly attracted to the notion that Florence had been elected for a special role in the coming renovation.13 Even before his reply to the Florentines he had urged them together with the Venetians to support the New Charlemagne, "the Prince of God" who fulfilled the prophecies of the Apocalypse and of 881

Isaiah, and he celebrated the Florentines' "coming felicity and glory."14 But toward Savonarola himself Angelo rapidly soured. The main reason for his hostility was Savonarola's anti-Romanism, Apparently Angelo soon came to believe what he had earlier dismissed as rumor that Savonarola prophesied the actual substitution of Jerusalem for Rome and the transference of the Church's capital to the Holy Land. This he connected to what he regarded as Savonarola's damnable notion that the Church should give up its worldly goods, and he charged that such ideas derived from the false prophecies of Joachim of Flora and Saint Bridget of Sweden. Rome, he countered, is the world city; the Pope is the leader of Christendom and occupies a holy office. He who offends the Pope offends Christ. In refusing to submit to examination Savonarola was like Mahomet who preferred to spread his doctrine by means of the sword.15 He was wrong even in calling Florence the center of Italy.16 In the measure that Angelo's attacks failed to affect Savonarola's position in Florence they mounted in fury, although they changed little in substance. After Savonarola was excommunicated in the spring of 1497, Angelo wrote again, this time to the friars of San Marco who had left Florence temporarily in order to escape the plague then raging in the city. He exhorted the friars to abandon this false prophet, enemy of the clergy, of the Roman faith, and of the Church,17 When they refused, he castigated them for their blindness.18 A letter in which Angelo tried to persuade the canons of the Florentine cathedral to bar Savonarola from preaching there was equally unavailing,19 and after this the hermit of Vallombrosa seems to have given up the fight.

Other critics rejected Savonarola's apocalyptic eschatology altogether. The unknown author of the Epistola responsiua.20 for one, denied that Savonarola's references to the novissimi giorni in Scripture signified the consummation of time. It was "Jewish blindness" which misinterpreted Isaiah's prophecy-"And in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow into it" (Isaiah 2:2)-since, he said, Isaiah was not refer ring to the end of the world but to the last days of the Prophets, when the prophecy whose consummation was Christ was to be fulfilled. Savonarola's was an old error, he claimed; men even more truly inspired than he had been similarly deluded. In the early Church many "saints and apostolic men" had believed that the day of Christ's advent and the end of the world were at hand, as had many of the holiest doctors and learned men of later times. More recently, from the time of Saint Bernardino on, the fable was maintained that the Turks were about to be converted to Christianity and the government of the Church reformed by Christ.21

882

This, the Epistola responsioa continues, was the common opinion of men who had been preaching the Word of God in Italy these many years.

The most detailed attack upon Savonarolan prophecy was the work of a fellow Dominican, Giovanni Caroli of the Convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

Name-calling, ridicule, character defamation and distortion-Giovanni Caroli shrank from none of these; nevertheless his polemic stems from an anti-millenarian and anti-Hermetic position which deserves attention. He was born in the same year as Savonarola, 1452, and was a man of some learning. A bibliophile steeped in both classical and sacred letters, he had been a disciple of both Antoninus, the saintly former Prior of San Marco and Archbishop of Florence, and of Cristoforo Landino, the Florentine Platonic philosopher.22 The occasion of Caroli's attack was the appearance of Giovanni Nesi's Oraculum de nouo saeculo, which epitomized everything that Caroli despised in the Savonarolan enterprise, and he made the Oraculum his prime target.23 Caroli's strategy was to rush his enemy's defenses. By what means did Nesi or his prophetic bird, the pleas, or his "Ferrarese Socrates" prove their "oracular" knowledge?

By which authorities? By what good results? What did Nesi, a layman, know of Sacred Scripture, its teaching about prophets and prophecies? If even the pagan Cicero had not presumed to call his man-made dream (Somnium Scipionis) an oracle of the gods, how did Nesi, a Christian, pretend that his dream was something more than poetic fiction? The idea of a reformatio of the Church implies that it suffers from a deformatio, a corruption of form; but since the form of the Church is a work of divine grace, what mere man could pretend to prescribe what the perfection of form might be? Surely not Nesi, a mere layman, ignorant of sacred literature. Surely not Pico della Mirandola, that man so well known for his holy doctrine and pious private life!24 Surely not that demagogue from the swamps of Ferrara who could hardly l be said to possess the simplicity and humility which God has always required of His prophets! That a renovation would some day come about Caroli did not deny; but that men should presume to say when it was coming, and indeed to claim that it was coming in the present lifetime, was impious presumption, an offense against God who alone knows the future. In this connection Caroli quoted Saint Paul ) (somewhat out of context): "Sensual man does not perceive these things which are of the spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand what may only be examined spiritually" (I Corinthians 2:14). While Caroli did not dispute the idea of a renovatio, he specifically denied Nesi's and Savonarola's millenarian interpretation of it. Renovatio must be distinguished from the idea of a novo saeculo. Scriptures, he maintained, neither predict nor imply such a new era; after every flagellum in his883

tory the same world, the same people, the same religion remain. The final change (novissima mutatio) is entirely unknown to the world and remains hidden in the judgment and the will of God. We may indeed believe that some day the world will come to an end, but the renovation of the Church and the conversion of the infidel are not matters for men to predict. Therefore everything "the Socrates of Ferrara" says in his Compendium of Revelations about his visions, about great changes to come, about angels conversing with men, and all the rest, is vain dreaming and fantasy.

Again, as to Savonarola's prediction that these things will come about cito et oelociter, in our own day, this is entirely against our faith and contrary to the Gospel truth. No one ought to pretend to know what God wishes to be kept secret. The cito of the Apocalypse (Revelation II :14, 22 :12, 20) is beyond man's understanding, since that which to God is close at hand, to us is of the utmost remoteness. Therefore, Caroli concludes, no man can know when the Mahometans will be converted or when the world will be reduced to a single faith and a single sheepfold. All such oracles are fantastic.

Caroli heaped particular ridicule upon Nesi's efforts to impute to his "rabble-rouser" esoteric wisdom, a knowledge of deep mysteries, astral science, Pythagorean aphorisms, and oracular visions. All of these came in for a share of his scorn. “Such wonderful science. How surprising that neither the [Florentine?] Academy, nor the schools of Padua nor those of Bologna have invited him to teach them what he alone knows. We must not believe in dreams, for they remain but dreams. We must not believe that anyone can reveal what the angels in heaven do not know. Nesi's six eagles of philosophy which mix truths with falsities the better to be believed, ought to be avoided just as much as if they were totally false. We ought not seek to know more than is fitting; as the Apostle says, it is enough to be wise unto sobriety (Romans 12:3). Let us leave to divine Providence those superfluous things which are in abundance so that we may not lack what is essential.�

Apparently, Caroli's opposition to the Savonarolans also stemmed in part from his political loyalties. He looked back upon the Medicean years as sixty years of felicity for the city, while he regarded this new "government of frati" and of a foreigner at that, as the real tyranny. His criticism of Savonarolan politics derived from a notion of a right order of society in which the possibilities of liberty are decidedly limited. All that talk of Nesi's about being purged in a flowering meadow and a Rowing stream and putting on the cap of liberty-what was it but demagoguery and an invitation to license, he scoffed. As the Apostle said, "All things are lawful but not all things are expedient; all things are lawful, but I will not be brought under the power of any of them" (I Corinthians 6:12). According to Caroli, moreover, Savonarola's program for 884

Florence was of a piece with his religious millenarianism, equally false, equally heterodox. The Plato of Nesi's description and Nesi's representation of the Platonic ideas are fictions: Plato dealt with things incorruptible and immortal, with universals, which are everywhere and eternal, not with corruptible things like the politics of real cities. As for the model of the supernal Jerusalem, how closely this fictitious city of the Savonarolans resembles that; let the effect speak for itself ! Besides, he asked, whoever heard of anyone being sent as a prophet to a particular city or people, to tell them what he has heard from the divine mouth? Whoever heard of anyone being delegated by God as an advocate (patron us) for a particular city? Indeed there is a way to reform a city; this is to begin by reforming the lives of the members of a single household, to lay a foundation which will provide a good example and thus spread its influence throughout the city.

Plainly Caroli did not direct his polemic at Savonarola's eschatology alone, but also at the Ficinians' notion of an esoteric wisdom, as well as at their religious syncretism and their efforts to identify Savonarola's apocalyptic millennium with their own dreams of a coming golden age. The bitterness of his hostility to occultism may be partly explained as that of a reformed sinner, for, as he admitted, he himself had once been interested in oracular dreams.25 Now, however, his chief authority was Scripture, particularly the writings of Saint Paul; of scholastic theology there is even less in Caroli than in Savonarola. Paradoxically, the contemporary writer with whom Caroli might have had the strongest affinity in other circumstances was Gianfrancesco Pico, to whom Nesi's Oraculum was addressed. Gianfrancesco too had attacked the vanity of human learning and the pretensions of man-made oracles in the name of a divinely revealed Biblical wisdom. But where the younger Pico saw in Savonarola the restorer of Gospel faith, Caroli, the Dominican, Medicean sympathizer, and Florentine patriot, saw only the arrogant demagogue mouthing vain and blasphemous millennialist hopes.

Playing upon Florentine chauvinism by complaining that it was shameful to be ruled by a foreigner was a common theme in the anti-Savonarolan tracts. Civic pride, as we have already seen, was an emotion deeply felt among Florentines of every class.

Since a foreigner was anyone who came from outside Florentine territory it is not surprising that there were objections to Savonarola as a forestiero; but in his case such objections were compounded by his clerical status and his claim to special divine illumination. However inaccurate the taunt that Florence was now governed by friars, it was repeatedly hurled against the Piagnoni, even by other friars. Priests and friars, like women, had their place in the scheme of things, but that place was not in the councils and counsels of state, however many precedents Savonarola might muster.

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Why, asked Francesco Altoviti, did the Florentines have to find a leader from outside the city? If they needed a religious there were plenty of worthy Florentines who could have served.26 Giovanni Caroli raised the same question and, indeed, offered a list of eligible alternates, both laymen and religious, from good families and good Florentines all.27 The basis of these objections seems to have been the fear that to follow the leadership of a foreigner, not to speak of a rootless friar, was to jeopardize the city's wellbeing. This was not merely because a foreigner might not have Florence's good at heart, there was the further worry that someone who was not a true Florentine would not be eligible to perform the city's spiritual obligations and thus to insure Florence the continued protection of her patron saints and of divine Providence itself. La chiesa fiorentina, words frequently on Savonarola's tongue, were no chance phrase. In celebrating the city as the Lord's chosen, the friar had penetrated to the religious core of Florentine civic patriotism, but, ironically, not everyone was ready to accept Savonarola's own credentials for membership in the holy community.28 Francesco Altoviti charged that Savonarola had sus pended the old civic ceremonies and festivals, such as the celebration of the feast of Saint John the Baptist, the city's patron, against the divine will, and that one immediate material result of this was that the city was on the verge of economic disaster, since the civic festivals had provided employment to many workers.29 In this connection, the obvious counter to Savonarola's claim of prophetic illumination was the argument that he had brought discord and other misfortunes upon the city and therefore whatever special powers he may have had came not from God but from the devil. This was the contention of Marsilio Ficino, as we have seen, and of the humanist poet Ugolino Verino, once an ardent Piagnone, who also publicly turned against Savonarola in 1498.30 The creation of civic discord was one of the signs of Antichrist, and Fra Leonardo da Fivizzano, the Augustinian preacher in Santo Spirito, believed that Antichrist was alive in the friar of San Marco, who, by promoting civil discord among the Florentine citizens, revealed his secret hatred of their city.31 II I believed and I believe, because his preaching made Florence a paradise on earth.

- Bartolomeo Redditi, Breve compendio never was there so much unity or such loving citizens, each tasting the sweetness of liberty.

- Alessandro Braccesi to Pope Alexander VI 886

Against the doubting Thomases who questioned Savonarola's authenticity as a prophet and the Cassandras who wrung their hands over the new dangers threatening the city, the Piagnoni had certain distinct advantages: they were able to point to the achievements of the recent past. The new Cyrus had come, just as the friar had predicted he would; the Medici tyranny had been overthrown and a governo libero established; the city had been saved from apparent disaster; a beginning had been made on religious and moral reforms. True, all was not well in Florence; but this was because of those very same enemies who questioned the friar's divine mandate and refused to do the work of repentance and reform which he demanded of them in God's name. In answer to Angelo the Anchorite the physician Girolamo Cinozzi could reply that one had but to look around to see that the time of tribulations and persecutions, the time of the great devil whose name was death, had come just as "our venerable father" had predicted, and that all those who followed his true preaching were saints.32 In reply to the author of the Epistola responsitta Domenico Benivieni, brother of Girolamo and a canon of the Basilica of San Lorenzo, was able to retort that far from prophecy being impossible in these latter days, Savonarola had proven his prophetic gift when the flagellum had come to pass.33 In addition to this, the holiness of the frate's personal life and the effects of his preaching for the reform of morals in the city were known to all and were further proof of his divine mission.34 As to his interference in the government, he did so only to augment the life of the spirit which had been threatened by tyrants, and he had brought about "the compilation of many good laws and statutes for the maintenance of the real liberty of the people and good morals." Bartolomeo Scala, the humanist who had been chancellor under the Medici and now served the new republic,35 replied to the criticism of a government of frati: there were ample precedents in Florentine history for the involvement of the religious. Besides, the Florentines had been in mortal danger from which their prophet had rescued them with 1 divine help, and he had restored the state to the rule of her best citizens after the removal of the former tyranny.36 To the charges of the Franciscan, Samuele Cascini, who maintained that Savonarola confused the spreading of divine grace with the spreading of the Florentine empire,37 no less a personage than Gianfrancesco Pico replied. Scripture itself, he said, gave kings their authority to carry the sword in order that they might promote the cause of good against evil. As to Samuele's complaint that Savonarola ought not to have made promises of material gain to the Florentines, Gianfrancesco Pico replied that he had only sought so much wealth for the city as was necessary, and that he had already brought about an "incredible restitution" of usurious profits.38

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It would serve little purpose to go through every apology and polemical tract written on Savonarola's behalf. Gianfrancesco Pico alone wrote one for practically every Piagnone crisis, including Savonarola's excommunication, his imprisonment, and the first pub lic reports of his confession.39 As a whole the Piagnone literature reveals a common set of beliefs; despite the variety of men who made up the Piagnone movement there was a generally shared appreciation of both the religious and the political program of Savonarola's preaching. Whether notary (Bartolomeo Redditi) or humanist (Bartolomeo Scala) or theologian (Dominico Benivieni) or physician (Girolamo Cinozzi), the response was remarkably similar. These writers accepted Savonarola's contention that Florentine political and religious reforms were connected with the coming universal reform of the Church, and they were convinced that Florence was divinely elected to lead the way toward the new era. Florence is God's chosen, just as the prophet has announced, wrote Domenico Benivieni;40 the New Jerusalem will be adorned in splendor, sang Fra Domenico da Pescia.41 Why did God choose Florence, passing over Venice, Milan, and Rome? asked the Franciscan theologian Giorgio Benigno. He answered: because God knew that Tuscany was the region most dedicated to religion and Florence, the very heart of Italy. Geographically her position was secure and, since her people were the most intelligent as well as the ancient allies of France, she was the most suitable of all cities for the reception of the prophecy of the coming of Charles VIII.42 Fra Giorgio, who had once been the tutor of Piero de' Medici,43 wrote that he had come to see that Savonarola's prophecy confirmed what he had learned in England about the correct exposition of the eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse.44 He himself, he said, had been preaching the same doctrine and he believed that the monks of Vallombrosa held similar views:45 the time is at hand in which the church of Christ is to be spread throughout the world; the emperor of the Turks will be killed and one sheepfold will be created under a single shepherd; the reign of Christ will last for a thousand years. At first he had been indifferent to the preaching of Savonarola, but he had been persuaded to give it his serious attention by Zanobi Acciaiuoli.46 Benigno believed that the Church would always be ruled by a successor of St. Peter and that Savonarola's prayer that God might choose Jerusalem and cast down Rome was only to be understood in a figurative sense. All the same, he agreed that God had chosen Florence for a special role over Rome as well as over Milan and Venice, because "He knew that the provinces of Etruria and Tuscany are the most dedicated to religion," that Florence especially has always been outstanding in religious leadership and dignity, "where fore it was fitting to send His religious prophet to the most religious city."

In their praise of Savonarola's political reforms the Piagnoni apologists reconstructed a link with the pre-Medicean Florentine tradition of civic liberty. Bartolo888

meo della Scala recalled Florence's long standing abhorrence of a regnum, a rule by one man which easily led to tyranny, and he invoked the city's old love of liberty.

With the removal of the recent tyranny, he argued, the patria had been returned to the hands of its best citizens, many of whom had suffered exile under the previous regime. The republic stood for the resolution of discord and envy and the recovery of the city's honor abroad.47 Domenico Benivieni and Bartolomeo Redditi argued that the recovery of liberty was a prerequisite for the assumption of the city's spiritual role. The citizens, who had been chosen to do the Lord's work, had to be protected by good laws. Florence was the chosen center for reform, therefore Savonarola, God's prophet, had to preach a suitable and "natural" regime for the city.48 Tyranny threatened the Christian life of the spirit; Savonarola's reforms, by the passage of good laws, protected liberty as well as they promoted good behaviour.49 The Great Council distributed offices so that the benefits of the city were shared by all,50 Benivieni's conception of Savonarola's civic leadership even seems to have incorporated Ficino's mystical conception of the mediator:51 the work of the prophet was an illumination which united God and man; the prophet was a bond and mediator between the two spheres, divine and natural, just as man himself was a bond between the various orders of created things. For this reason, he said, Savonarola's preaching, which necessarily included the preaching of the proper mode of government, prepared Florence for her great mission.52 None of the Piagnoni apologists claimed that the governo popolare was a democracy in the sense of extending participation in the state to all the city's inhabitants.

Both Scala and Domenico Benivieni contrasted the liberty of the governo popolare with domestic conflict and tyranny. While Scala explicitly stated that the new republic granted power to its "best citizens," Benivieni saw the Great Coun cil as extending the benefits of government to all; but neither admit ted the principle that all might share power equally. However, it was that pragmatic politician Francesco Valori who perhaps best summed up the meaning of Florentine liberty as the Frateschi saw it: the rule of law, freedom of action for Florentine citizens, self government, and no outside interference, not even from the Church.53 The Piagnoni also eagerly grasped Savonarola's promise of the extension of Florentine hegemony; they saw it as a fulfillment of long-expected, and richly merited, civic goals. Bartolomeo Scala recalled Florence's long history of empire, and saw in the 1494 restoration of the republic the first step in the recovery of her historic dignity.

Domenico Benivieni too saw the constitutional reform as the beginning of the extension of the Florentine imperium and this, he said, was right, because Florence was God's chosen.

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In sum, the Piagnoni apologists responded to Savonarola's prophetic message by emphasizing just those features which related it to the strongest civic traditions in both the religious and the political realms-indeed, as Savonarola had perceived, the two were difficult to separate. The idea of Florentine election to a special religious and political destiny and the idea of Florentine political liberty were both components of the Florentine myth as it had been elaborated over two centuries; they were also the two central components of the Savonarolan ideology. This makes it easy to understand the inherent advantage of the Piagnoni over their antagonists. Since they had identified their enterprise with the traditional values and goals of civic patriotism, the Piagnoni were able to put their enemies in the position of seeming to argue against those cherished values and goals as well as against the divine will which, according to the Florentine myth, had always sustained the glorious destiny of their city. Against them their opponents had no clear alternative doctrine or ideology to put forward. They could point out that Savonarola was a foreigner; they could heap scorn upon a government of frati; they could deny that Savonarola was a true prophet, that the new government had brought the blessings of liberty and independence, or that the future would be as glorious as Savonarola had promised. But these were negative, essentially defensive arguments with none of the glamor of the Savonarolan vision. With the persistent difficulties of the new republic and the repeated delays in the fulfillment of the dream, especially with Savonarola's own downfall and sub sequent "confession," the imputations of secret malevolence and demonic possession would take on greater force. But not for the present: the Florentines needed Savonarola's vision to sustain them in their difficult time, and the more it reflected their own traditions and their own deeper fantasies, the more firmly did they cling to it.

So long as it was possible to believe in it, they believed.

Notes 1. In addition to the evidence of letters from Lodovico Sforza to Fra Dome nico and to Lodovico's ambassador in Florence, dated January 24 and 29, 1495, respectively (cited in Joseph Schnitzer, Savonarola, trans. Ernesto Rutili, 2 vols. [Milan, 1931], vol.I, p. 260, n. 18), there is a letter from Fra Domenico him self to Lodovico, dated January 17, in Florence. In it Fra Domenico says he is at the orders of the Duke. This letter, which is apparently a holograph, is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City, and seems to have hitherto gone unnoticed by historians.

2. See below, pp. 360-61.

3. Anti-Savonarolan literature has received relatively little attention. The starting point is Joseph Schnitzer's "Die Flugschriftenliteratur fiir und wider Girolamo Savonarola," Festgabe Karl Theodor uon Heigel (Munich, 1903), most of which he incorporated in his biography of Savonarola. The short work by Cassandra Calogero, Gli auoersari religiosi di Girolamo Savonarola (Rome, 1935), is useful but highly unsympathetic to the anti-Savonarolans, as are the many no-

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tices in Roberto Ridolfi, The Life of Girolamo Savonarola, trans. Cecil Grayson {New York, 1959).

4. Giovanni Francesco Bracciolini, Contra fratrem Hieronymum Heresi archam libel/us et processus (Nuremberg: Ambrosius Huber, n.d.); Hain no. 14478 sig. a fol. 1 verso. Another work

by Bracciolini, which I have not been able to see, is Rejutatorium errorum Fratris Hieronymi Sauonarolae (Leipzig:Thanner, 1498); Copinger no. 13722; Reichling, fasc. III, p. 165. In 1500 Brae ciolini was exiled for five years from Florence on charges that he had favored, and claimed that God favored, the cause of the Pisans, and that he had insulted the King of France by saying that the King could only harm, not help, the city. According to Parenti the charges were brought by Frateschi out of revenge for Bracciolini's part in Savonarola's destruction. Piero Parenti, Storia Fiorentina, ed. Joseph Schnitzer, in Savonarola nacb der Aufzeichnungen des Florentiners Piero Parenti, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschlcht« Savonarolas, vol. IV (Leipzig, 1910 ), pp. 294-95· For another attack upon Savonarola as Antichrist, sec Epistola di Prate Leonardo da Fivizano dell'ordine di Sancto Augustina a tutti e veri amici di Jesus Cristo Crocifixo, ed. Achille Neri, II Propugnatore, vol. XII, part II ( 1879), pp. 230-40. Fra Leonardo was an Augustinian of Santo Spirito in Florence. Sec A. Neri, "Un avversario di G. Savonarola," Archivio storico italiano, 4th ser., V (1880), 478-82; also Massimo Petrocchi, Una "Deootio Moderna" nel Quattrocento italiano? (Florence, 1961), pp. 37-38, 54-64. His Epistola is dated May 12, 1497, and is a reply to Savonarola's "A tutti gli eletti di Dio c fedeli Cristiani" of May 8, Le lettere de Girolamo Savonarola, ed. Roberto Ridolfi (Florence, 1933), pp. 122-28.

5. "Hee est ilia tua scientia Cabalica quam iam pridem edoctus paraveras cum plerisquc complicibus novam sectam inducere ecclesiam subvertere." Con tra [ratrem Hieronymum, sig. a 5 verso.

6. [Anon.], Epistola responsiaa a /rate Hieronymo dellordine de frati predicatori delamico suo (n.p. or d.). On dating (after July 131 1495) and errors in cataloging, see Roberto Ridolfi, Vita di Girolamo Savonarola, 2 vols. (Rome, 1952)1 vol. II, p. 159, n. 18.

7. While Altoviti claims to have been an enemy of the Medicean tyranny, there was a Francesco Altoviti whom Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici recommended to his brother Piero as "a friend of the family." Sec the resume of Giovanni's letter in G. B. Picotti, La giooinezza di Leone X (Milan, 1927), p. 644.

8. Francesco Altoviti, Dejensione contra alla Archa di Fra Girolamo (n.p. or d.), sig. a fols. 2 recto-j verso. Probably written in the spring of 1497 and published in Florence by Francesco di Dino; GW no. 1588 (but the biographical information therein is erroneous).

9. C. Lupi, ed. "Nuovi documenti intorno a Fra Girolamo Savonarola," Archioio storlco italiano, 3rd ser., II, part I (1866), p. 44.

10. MS BNF Magi. VIII 1443, fol. 148 recto.

11. See above, pp. 44-46.

12. Frate Angelo peccatore Anachorita de/ heremo di Vallombrosa exhorta Ii Magnifici S. et Po. Fiorentino che relecte le passioni et ogni dubio perseuerino nel/amicitia del principe di dio Carlo Re di [rancia (n.p. or d.); GW nos. 1908, 1909. The letter itself is dated "xv kl. Junias" (May 18) 1496.

13. Although he expressly disavowed the prophecies of Joachim of Flora and the Joachites. According to Schnitzer, Savonarola, vol. I, p. 359, the belief that Charles VIII was the instrument of God for world reform was strong among the Vallombrosans. This was maintained by Fra Giorgio Benigno, see below, p.243.

14. Angelo Peccatore Anachorlta di Valembrosa, desldera ch« Ii Magnifici Signori et Popalo fiorentino conseruino lnoiolata unione et perpetuo amicitia con lo principe di Dio Carola Re di Francia (n.p. or d.); and Angelo peccatore anachorita de/lo heremo di Valle umbrosa desidera 891

che el serenisslmo princip« et magnifico dominio Veneta non si opponga al/a incommutabile dispositions divina (n.p. or d.); CW nos. 1907, 1910-12. Both letters are dated "kl. Ianuarii" (January 1) 1496. That they are correctly dated 1496, rather than 1497 as in GW, is established

by Ridolfi, Vita, vol. II, p. 161, n. 28.

15. Epistola dell' heremita de Valle Ombrosa de/lo stato de/la chiesa et rejor matione di Roma contra a moderni inscripta a Roma nel mcccclxxxxui, In essa si pruova, che fra Girolamo non puo esser propheta et narrasl mo/ti suoi errorl (n.p. or d.); GW no. 1916. Letter dated "Idibus Octobris" (October 15) 1496.

16. All the ancient cosmographers and historians, he wrote, placed "el mezzo unbilico et centro di Italia" at "ellacho velino" which is now called "de peluco" and is in "agro interanensi in confinibus sabinorum "Ibid., p. II (unnum bered). Angelo may have misread Pliny the Elder who, after describing the old Sabine territory near the lakes of Velinus (of which one is the modern Piediluco), passes on to the district of Rieti in which are located the lakes of Cutiliae, "said by Marcus Varro to be the umbilicus of Italy." Natural History 3. 109. See also A. F. von Pauly, G. Wissowa, et al., Real-encyclopadie der classichen Altertumswissenschaft, s.v. "Aquae Cutiliac."

I owe this reference to Professors John and Lydia Lenaghan.

17. Epistola del Romito di Vallembrosa a frati uscitl di Sancto Mareno con fortatoria alle persechutione dello excommunicate [rate Hyeronimo tanto ch« si conuerta (n.p. or d.); GW nos.

1913, 1914. Letter dated July II, 1497. For the friar's reply, see GW no. 1919.

18. Risposta duna lettera feciono efrati di Sancto Marco a Romito di Valen brosa alla risposta de frati di San Marco (n.p. or d.). Letter dated July 31, 1497. GW no. 1918.

19. In E. Sanesi, Vicari e canonlci fiorentini e ii 'caso Savonarola' (Florence, 1932), PP· 84-90.

20. See above, n. 6.

21. On the interest of Saint Bernardino da Siena (I take it this is who is meant) in apocalyptic ideas and his dependence upon Matthew of Sweden's Expositio super Apocalypsim which Bernardino copied from a MS in the Brigittine convent of the "Paradiso" in Florence, see D. Pacetti, "L'Expositio super Apocalypsim' di Mattia di Svezia ( c. 1281-1350) precipua fonte dottri nale di S. Bernardino da Siena," Archiaum Francescanum Historicum, 54 ( 1961 ), 273-302.

22. Biographical and bibliographical references to Caroli are to be found in J. Mabillon and M. Germain, Museum italicum, 2 vols. (Paris, 1687-89), vol. I, part I, p. 161; Jacques Quetif and J. Echard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum, 2 vols. (Paris, 1719-21), vol. I, pp. 898-900; Angelo Maria Bandini, Specimen llteraturae Florentinae Saeculi XV, 2 vols. (Florence, 1747-51), vol. I, pp. 189- 98; S. Orlandi, La biblioteca di S. Maria Novella in Firenze dal sec. XIV al sec. XIX (Florence, 1952), pp. 17-18 et passim. The only discussions I have found of the writings of Caroli are by Professor Garin. See La cultura filosofica del Rinascimento italiano (Florence, 1961 ), pp. 224-25; and "II centenario del Savonarola," Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, 32 ( 1953), 413-16.

23. Caroli's invective is found in manuscript together with his De compara tione aliarum aetutum ad senectutem (1498), MS BNF Conventi soppressi C.8.277, fols. 157 recto-roj verso. All the following references are based on this.

24. No doubt a jibe directed at Pico's escapades of 1486 and perhaps also at the rumor that Pico had kept a concubine to the last, despite his inclination toward the religious life. On the latter point see Ridolfi, Vita, vol. II, p. 133, n. II. 25. Garin, La cultura filosofica, p. 225, n. 1; also Caroli's Liber dierum lucen sium [ 1461 ], Book III: "Continet autem praesentum temporum conditionem ad modum Sompni Scipiones," Ms BNF Conventi soppressi C.8.279, fol. 42 verso.

26. Altoviti, Def ensione sig. a fols. 2 verso-3 recto.

27. Caroli, MS BNF Conventi soppressi C.8.277, fol. 172.

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28. For some interesting insights into the religious aspects of citizenship in fourteenth-century Italy which would undoubtedly also apply to the period under discussion here see Peter Riesenberg, "Civism and Roman Law in Four teenth-Century Italian Society," Explorations in Economic History VII (1969), 237-54.

29. Altoviti, Defensione (sig. a fols. 4 verso-s recto). Savonarola had used his influence to bring about the suspension of the Palio, the horse race normalJy held on the day of Saint John the Baptist, June 24, and he had substituted pious processions in place of the traditional pre-Lenten carnival celebrations.

30. Alessandro Gherardi has published some of Verino's writings relating to Savonarola in his Nuooi documenti e studi intorno a Girolamo Savonarola, and cdn. (Florence, 1887), pp. 290308.

31. Epistola di Prate Leonardo da Fivizano, pp. 235-s8. Sec also above, n. 4.

32. There are three extant letters by Girolamo Cinozzi: Epistola di Hiero nymo Cinzoi (sic) fisicho al uenerando P. Abbate & Generale di Valembrosa contra all'Abate Anachorita (n.p. or d.), GW no. 7044; Epistola de! predecto Hleron. a tucti i fedeli et amatori della oerita, published together with the above; Epistola di Hieronymo phisico in favore della verita predicata dal uenerando padre Hier. da Ferrara (n.p. or d.), CW no. 7043.

33. Epistola di maestro Domenico Beniuieni Fiorentino, canonico di S. Lorenzo a uno amico responsiua a certe obiectione et calunnie contra a frate Hieronymo da Ferrara (n.p. or d.), CW no. 3847, sig. a. fol. 4 recto.

34. Tractato di Maestro Domenico Benioieni, pret« fiorentino in def ensione et probatione della doctrina et propheti« predicate da frate Hieronymo da Ferrara nella citta di Firenze (Florence: Ser Francesco Bonaccorsi, 1496); GW no. 3849, sigs. a fol. 8 verso-b fol. 5 verso.

35. Biographical notices in Demetrio Marzi, La Cancelleria della Repubblica Florentina (Rocca San Casciano, 1910), pp. 236-39 et passim; see also, Michele di Lupo Gentile, "Bartolomrneo Scala c i Medici," Miscellanea storica della Valdelsa, XI (1903), 129-38; Nicolai Rubinstein, "Bartolomeo Scala's Historia Florentinorum," Studi di bibliografia e di storia in onore di Tammaro De Marinis, vol. IV (Verona, 1964), pp. 49-59.

36. Bartolomeo Scala, Apologia contra ultuperatores ciuitatis Florentine (Flor ence, 1496), with an introduction by the Florentine humanist Pietro Crinito; Hain no. 14498, sig. b fol. 5, recto.

37. Samuele Cascini, lnoectiua in prophetiam fratris Hieronymi (Milan, 1497); Reichling, fasc.

II, p. 140. On Fra Samuele, who seems to have had Lodovico Sforza of Milan as a patron, sec Luke Wadding, Scriptores Ordinis Minorum, 3rd edn. (Quaracchi, 1906), p. 313.

38. Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Defensio Hieronymi Sauonarolae Ferrariensis ... aduersus Samuel/em Cassinensem (n.p., 1615); Reichling, fasc. r, p. 178.

39. Ioannis Francisci Pico Mirandulae in libros de iniusta excommunlcatione pro Hleronymi Sauonarolae innocentia ad illustrissimum oirum Herculem Aestensem (n.p. or d.); Reichling, fasc. I, p. 178. This is the same work pub lished as Apologia R.P.F. Hieronymi Sauonarolae, in Gianfrancesco's Vita R. P. Hieronymi Sauonarolae, ed. Jacques Quetif, 2 vols. (Paris, 1674), vol.

II, pp. 3-50. Epistola de/ Conte Zoanjrancesco da la Miran du/a in f auore de fra Hieronymo da Ferrara dappoi la sua captura (Mirandola, 1498). Argumentum elusdem obiectione MS BNP Magi. XXXV 116, fols. 77 verso-79· (At the end, "Operetta dello d.M.S. Jho. Johanfrancesco" is crossed out).

40. Domenico Benivieni, Tractato, sigs. e fol. 8 verso-fol. 1 recto.

41. Fra Domenico da Pescia, Canzone spirituals, MS BNP Magi. II. II. 437, fol. 8.

42. Giorgio Benigno, Prophetica solutiones (Florence, 1497); GW no. 3845.

43. Benigno has been mentioned earlier, in connection with the Santa Croce riots of 1493. See above, p. 123. Born in Ragusa (Dubrovnik), his family name was Dragisic, but he was also 893

known as Dobrotic and as de' Salviati, this last because he had been a tutor in the Salviati household. A protege of Lorenzo the Magnificent, to whom he had been recommended by Cardinal Bessarion, he tutored both Piero and Giovanni de' Medici and taught in the Studio of Pisa. In 1511 he was elevated to the episcopate, then to an archbishopric. He attended the Fifth Lateran Council and died in 1520. See Parenti, Storie fioren tina, Ms BNF II. II. 169, fols. 14546; Luke Wadding, Annales Minorum seu Trium Ordlnum, 26 vols. (Rome-Quaracchi, 17311933); vols. IX, 226; XV, 144, 456, 533; Angelus Fabronius, Laurentii Medicis Magnifici Vita (Pisa, 1784), vol. I, p. 159; vol. II, pp. 289-90; Schnitzer, "Die Flugschriftenliteratur," pp. 20813.

47. Scala, Apologia, sig. b fols. I recto-a verso.

48. Benivieni, Tractato, sig. a fol. 4 recto. Also Bartolomeo Rcdditi, Breve compendia e sommario de/la verita predicata e projetata dal R.P. fra Girolamo da Ferrara, ed. Joseph Schnitzer, Quellen und Forschungen zur GeschlchtÂŤ Saoonarolas, vol. I ( Munich, 1902), pp. 37-38.

49. enivieni, Epistola, sig. a fol. 4 recto; Tractato, sig. b fol. 6 recto.

50. Benivieni, Tractato, sig. a fol. 4 recto.

51. On Ficino's conception of the mediator, sec Paul O. Kristeller, II pensiero filosofico di Marsilio Ficino (Florence, 1953), pp. 101-106.

52. Benivieni, Tractato, sig. a fols. 6 recto-8 verso.

53. On this last point Antonio Canigiani concurred: "This city has never recognized any superior." These statements were made in a pratica on the occasion of Savonarola's excommunication and published in Lupi, ed., "Nuovi documenti," pp. 45-48.

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