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Girolamo Savonarola

[sav-uh-nuh-roh-luh; It. sah-vaw-nah-raw-lah]

Savonarola, Girolamo, 1452-98, Italian religious reformer, b. Ferrara. He joined (1475) the Dominicans. In 1481 he went to San Marco, the Dominican house at Florence, where he became popular for his eloquent sermons, in which he attacked the vice and worldliness of the city, as well as for his predictions (several of which, including the death date of Innocent VIII, turned out to be true). In 1491 he became prior of San Marco, and after the death of Lorenzo de' Medici, who was his enemy, and the subsequent exile of the Medici (1494) he became the real spiritual ruler of the city. He was uncompromisingly severe in his condemnation of what he considered the paganism of the times and called for a regeneration of spiritual and moral values and a devotion to asceticism. When Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494 (as Savonarola had predicted), Savonarola supported him, hoping that Charles would lead the way to the establishment of a democratic government in Florence and to the reform of the scandalously corrupt court of Pope Alexander VI. Alexander, understandably infuriated, ordered Savonarola to refrain from preaching; however, he continued to preach, and the pope excommunicated him for disobedience in 1497. Savonarola now declared Alexander no true pope, being elected by simony. The people of Florence, who had for a time staunchly supported Savonarola, tired of his rigid demands. Hostility toward him grew, led especially by local Franciscans, and in Mar., 1498, the government, threatened by a papal interdict, asked him to stop preaching. His ruin came suddenly when one of his disciples accepted an ordeal by fire to prove Savonarola's holiness. Rain prevented the event. Nevertheless, there were riots, and Savonarola and two disciples were arrested by the city. Under torture he confessed to being a false prophet, or so it was announced. The three were hanged for schism and heresy; papal commissioners had passed on the sentence, which was assured by Alexander's vindictiveness.

See biographies by P. Villari (2 vol., tr. 1888; repr. 1972), R. Ridolfi (1959), and R. R. Renner (1965); study by D. Weinstein (1970).

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Licensed from Columbia University Press

Girolamo Savonarola

Savonarola, painting by Fra Bartolomeo; in the Museo di S. Marco, Florence

(born Sept. 21, 1452, Ferrara, duchy of Ferrara—died May 23, 1498, Florence) Italian preacher, religious reformer, and martyr. He joined the Dominican order in 1475 and was sent to Florence to lecture at the convent of San Marco, where he became known for his learning and asceticism. His apocalyptic preaching maintained that the church needed reforming, that it would be scourged and then renewed. After the overthrow of the Medici family (1494), Savonarola became leader of Florence, setting up a democratic but severely puritanical government, notable for its “bonfire of the vanities,” in which frivolous materials were burned. He also sought to establish a Christian republic as a base for reforming Italy and the church. He was opposed by the Arrabiati, supporters of the Medici, and by Pope Alexander VI, who attempted to restrain his unusual interpretations of scripture and his claim of prophecy. Savonarola was tried, convicted of heresy (1498), and hanged and burned. Despite popular veneration, attempts to bring about his canonization have been unsuccessful.

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Girolamo Savonarola

Girolamo Savonarola (September 21, 1452 – May 23, 1498), was an Italian Dominican priest and leader of Florence from 1494 until his execution in 1498. He was known for his book burning, destruction of what he considered immoral art, and hostility to the Renaissance. He vehemently preached against what he saw as the moral corruption of the clergy, and his main opponent was Pope Alexander VI.

Biography

Early years

Savonarola was born in Ferrara, the capital of an independent Duchy. According to another source, he was born at Occhiobello, 7 km from Ferrara. He was born into a noble family.

In his youth he studied the Bible, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Aristotle. Savonarola initially studied at the University of Ferrara, where he appears to have taken an advanced Arts degree. His stance against morally corrupt clergy was initially manifested in his poem on the destruction of the world entitled De Ruina Mundi (On the Downfall of the World), written at the age of 20. It was at this stage that he also began to develop his moral voice, and in 1475 his poem De Ruina Ecclesiae (On the Downfall of the Church) displayed his contempt of the Roman Curia by terming it 'a false, proud whore'.

Friar

Savonarola became a Dominican friar in 1475, during the Italian Renaissance, and entered the convent of San Domenico in Bologna. He immersed himself in theological study, and in 1479 transferred to the convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli. Finally in 1482 the Order dispatched him to Florence, the ‘city of his destiny’. Savonarola was lambasted for being ungainly, as well as being a poor orator. He made no impression on Florence in the 1480s, and his departure in 1487 went unnoticed. He returned to Bologna where he became 'master of studies’.

Savonarola returned to Florence in 1490 at the behest of Count Pico della Mirandola. There he began to preach passionately about the Last Days, accompanied by visions and prophetic announcements of direct communications with God and the saints. Such fiery preaching was not uncommon at the time, but a series of circumstances quickly brought Savonarola great success. The first disaster to give credibility to Savonarola’s apocalyptic message was the Medici family's weakening grip on power owing to the French-Italian wars. The flowering of expensive Renaissance art and culture paid for by wealthy Italian families now seemed to mock the growing misery in Italy, creating a backlash of resentment among the people. The second disaster was the appearance of syphilis (or the “French pox”), possibly brought back by sailors from the New World, which was a running epidemic and as deadly as the plague. Finally, the year 1500 was approaching, which brought about a mood of millennialism. In minds of many, the Last Days were impending and Savonarola was the prophet of the day.

His Church of San Marco was crowded to overflowing during his celebration of Mass and his sermons. Savonarola was not an academic theologian. He did not proclaim theological theories or difficult teachings. Instead, he preached that Christian life involved being good, practicing the virtues, rather than carrying out displays of excessive pomp and ceremonies. He did not seek to make war on the Church of Rome. Rather, he wanted to correct the transgressions of worldly popes and secularized members of the Papal Curia.

Lorenzo de Medici, the previous ruler of Florence and patron of many Renaissance artists, was also a former patron of Savonarola. Eventually, Lorenzo and his son Piero de Medici became targets of Savonarola’s preaching.

Leader of Florence

After Charles VIII of France invaded Florence in 1494, the ruling Medici were overthrown and Savonarola emerged as the new leader of the city, combining in himself the role of secular leader and priest. He set up a rather modern democratic republic in Florence. Characterizing it as a “Christian and religious Republic,” one of its first acts was to make sodomy, previously punishable by fine, into a capital offence. Homosexuality had previously been tolerated in the city, and many homosexuals from the elite now chose to leave Florence. His chief enemies were the Duke of Milan and Pope Alexander VI, who issued numerous restraints against him, all of which were ignored.

In 1497, he and his followers carried out the Bonfire of the Vanities. They sent boys from door to door collecting items associated with moral laxity: mirrors, cosmetics, lewd pictures, pagan books, immoral sculptures (which he wanted to be transformed into statues of the saints and modest depictions of biblical scenes), gaming tables, chess pieces, lutes and other musical instruments, fine dresses, women’s hats, and the works of immoral and ancient poets, and burnt them all in a large pile in the Piazza della Signoria of Florence. Many fine Florentine Renaissance artworks were lost in Savonarola’s notorious bonfires — including paintings by Sandro Botticelli and Michelangelo Buonarroti, which are said to have been thrown on the pyres by the artists themselves, though there are some who question this claim.

Florence soon became tired of Savonarola because of the city’s continual political and economic miseries, where God did not seem to intervene to come to the city's aid, and the Last Days did not seem to arrive - despite the city government's insistence that the Apocalypse was near to fulfilment. When a Franciscan preacher challenged him to a trial by fire in the city centre and he declined, his following began to dissipate.

During his Ascension Day sermon on May 4, 1497, bands of youths rioted, and the riot became a revolt: dancing and singing taverns reopened, and men again dared to gamble publicly.

Excommunication and execution

On May 13, 1497, the rigorous Father Savonarola was excommunicated by Pope Alexander VI, and in 1498, Alexander demanded his arrest and execution. On April 8, a crowd attacked the Convent of San Marco; a bloody struggle ensued, during which several of Savonarola’s guards and religious supporters were killed: he surrendered along with Fra Domenico da Pescia and Fra Silvestro, his two closest associates. Savonarola was faced with charges such as heresy, uttering prophecies, sedition, and even other crimes, called religious errors by the Borgia pope.

During the next few weeks all three were tortured on the rack. All three signed confessions; the torturers spared only Savonarola’s right arm, in order that he might be able to sign his confession, which he did sometime prior to May 8. On that day he completed a written meditation on the Miserere mei, Psalm 50, entitled Infelix ego, in which he pleaded with God for mercy for his physical weakness in confessing to crimes he believed he did not commit. On the day of his execution, May 23, 1498, he was still working on another meditation, this one on Psalm 31, entitled Tristitia obsedit me.

On the day of his execution he was taken out to the Piazza della Signoria along with Fra Silvestro and Fra Domenico da Pescia. The three were ritually stripped of their clerical vestments, degraded as "heretics and schismatics", and given over to the secular authorities to be burned. The three were hanged in chains from a single cross; an enormous fire was lit beneath them; they were thereby executed in the same place where the "Bonfire of the Vanities" had been lit, and in the same manner that he had condemned other criminals himself during his own reign in Florence. Jacopo Nardi, who recorded the incident in his Istorie della città di Firenze, wrote that his executioner lit the flame exclaiming, “The one who wanted to burn me is now himself put to the flames.” Luca Landucci, who was present, wrote in his diary that the burning took several hours, and that the remains were several times broken apart and mixed with brushwood so that not the slightest piece could be later recovered, as the ecclesiastical authorities did not want Savonarola’s followers to have any relics for a future veneration of the rigorist preacher they considered a Saint. The ashes of the three were afterwards thrown in the Arno beside the Ponte Vecchio.

Niccolò Machiavelli, author of The Prince, also witnessed and wrote about the execution. The Medici subsequently regained control of Florence.

Character and influence

His religious actions have been compared to those of the later 17th and 18th century Jansenists, although theologically many differences exist. Savonarola did not produce a theological doctrine on salvation, and faithfully adhered to even minor theological definitions of the papal Magisterium. However Savonarola's call to simplicity in church interior and his rigorous moral stances have been compared to those of Jansenists. Also the insistence on the immediate danger of hell and the fewness of the elect can be considered to be a similarity.

After Savonarola's death, a secret Catholic group known as the Piagnoni sprang up in Florence to preserve his memory, organized into a sort of Catholic guild. Franciscan Friars were prominent among the Piagnoni, and they briefly re-appeared in 1527 when they once again overthrew the Medici, but through intervention of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation it was brought to an end in 1530 at the Battle of Gavinana and the Medici were restored to power.

Savonarola left many admirers throughout Europe, in particular among religiously pious humanists who valued his deep spiritual convictions. Erasmus, who refused to become a Protestant is said to have remained Catholic due to the lecture of Savonarola.

In the twentieth century, a movement for the canonization of Frà Savonarola began to develop within the Roman Catholic Church, particularly among Dominicans, with many judging his excommunication and execution to have been unjust. His potential beatification and canonization is opposed by many Jesuits, who consider Savonarola's (secular) conflict with the papacy to have been an intolerable crime.

In fiction

The novel Romola by George Eliot features Savonarola as a central character.
The novel The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason makes extensive references to Savonarola.
The novel The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant makes extensive references to Savonarola.
In Natahan Combs' The Burning of Girolamo Savonarola 2006 film, Savonarola deplores the way history has treated him and his legacy. Includes a reenactment of the Bonfire of the Vanities.
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's The Palace, a novel of the Comte st. Germain, features Savonarola and his Bonfire of the Vanities
The novel I, Mona Lisa by Jeanne Kalogridis also features Savonarola as a central character.
The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi, by Jacqueline Park, features Savonarola as a rather menacing character.
The novel The Jamais Vu Papers, by Wim Coleman and Pat Perrin, features Savonarola as a character in the dream world, perpetually burning, and father to scientist Imogene Savonarola.
The short story, "Savonarola Brown" by Max Beerbohm features a spoof play about Savonarola.
The novel The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone describes Michelangelo's brother as a later-regretful disciple of Savonarola and the effect of Savonarola on the Medici family. It also describes how Savonarola was eventually assassinated and hung upside down a la Mussolini.
The novel The Magus by John Fowles refers to Savonarola's confinement prior to his execution, "Sometimes rooms seem to imbibe the spirit of the people who have lived in them- think of Savonarola's cell in Florence".
The play, Bonfires and Vanities, by Candida Cave features the struggle between Savonarola, Lorenzo de'Medici and Pope Alexander Vl.

References

Notes

Bibliography

Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians, James Lawson, Warner Press, 1911, pp. 73–84.
Bonfire Songs: Savonarola's Musical Legacy (1998), Patrick Macey, Clarendon Press, Oxford
New York Times, Savonarola, Second Lecture of the Course by Dr. Lord at Association Hall, January 10, 1871, pp. 2–3.
Joachim Weinhardt, Savonarola als Apologet. Der Versuch einer empirischen Begründung des christlichen Glaubens in der Zeit der Renaissance (Berlin–New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), Pp. xi+296 (Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte, 83.)