Death in Florence: the Medici, Savonarola and the Battle for the Soul of the Renaissance City

by Paul Strathern

  would fall a prey to raging foes; they would see rivers of blood in the streets; wives would be torn from their husbands, virgins ravished, children murdered before their mothers’ eyes; all would be terror and fire, and bloodshed.

  Standing in the pulpit above the aghast faces of the congregation, Savonarola brought his sermon to a close with ‘a general exhortation to repentance, inasmuch as the Lord would have mercy on the just’.

  The people of Brescia would have cause to remember Savonarola’s words when twenty-three years later their city was sacked by an invading French army and around 10,000 of its inhabitants were slaughtered amidst scenes of the same hideous cruelty that Savonarola had described.fn3

  Savonarola’s travels through northern Italy may have enabled him to hone his preaching skills, but his mother soon became pained by his frequent absences from Ferrara, and wrote telling him so. Savonarola replied to one of her letters:

  You must not be upset that I am so far away from you … because I am doing all this for the good of many souls – preaching, exhorting, hearing confession, reading and counselling. It is for this reason that I am constantly travelling from place to place wherever my superiors send me. For this reason you should take comfort from the fact that one of your children has been chosen by God to undertake such work. If I remained continually in Ferrara, I would not be able to do such good work as I manage to do outside it. Hardly ever does a genuinely religious person work fruitfully in his own country. This is the reason why we are so frequently told in the Scriptures that we must leave our own country, for the preaching and counsel of a local man is never appreciated as much as that of a stranger. This is why Our Saviour says that a prophet has no honour in his own country. Therefore, because God has deigned to elect me from my sinful state to such a high office, you should be content that I labour in the vineyard of Christ so far from my own country.19

  It is evident from these words that his sense of his own destiny as a prophet had by this stage become firmly fixed in his mind – indeed, central to his sense of his own identity. And it was now that news reached Savonarola of his call to return to Florence. Savonarola was ordered to take up residence as a teaching master at his old monastery of San Marco. Here at last he would have a more permanent base, and a permanent congregation on which he could exercise his powers to some lasting effect. We know that some time around late May 1490, Savonarola set out from Bologna on the fifty-mile journey south along the Savena valley towards the pass across the high Apennines to Florence.

  According to an illuminating tale recorded by Burlamacchi, Savonarola only reached the village of Pianoro, some ten miles down the road, before he was overcome with exhaustion. Despite his earnest, youthful appearance, Savonarola was by now no longer a young man – indeed he was less than three years from his fortieth birthday (a ripe old age in an era when the evidence of the monastery registers suggests that a monk was very lucky to live beyond fifty). Yet still he obstinately refused to modify his ascetic ways, even whilst travelling; as a result, his frugal diet proved inadequate for the physical task of trudging up the long trail into the mountains, and he finally collapsed. The unconscious monk, devoid of possessions other than his breviary and the worn Bible he had inherited from his grandfather Michele, was found lying at the roadside by an anonymous traveller who gave him food and drink. After a night’s rest at a wayside tavern, Savonarola continued on his way, accompanied by the kind stranger. Some time later they approached Florence, with the dome and towers of the city visible beyond the walls, and the traveller accompanied him right up to the Porta San Gallo, where he took his leave of Savonarola and bade him: ‘Go and do the task which God has assigned to you in Florence.’20 Savonarola never discovered the name of his Good Samaritan, but he would remember his charity and his benediction for the rest of his life.

  This tale has all the ingredients of mythology, yet it may well contain a grain of truth. It certainly has psychological veracity: we know from remarks made in his later sermons that Savonarola felt he had specifically been guided back to Florence by God, so that he could embark upon a new life and fufil the destiny that he was convinced now lay before him.

  fn1 Our term ‘humanities’, as in the academic classification, dates from this period. The humanities embraced the study of secular (that is, human) learning and literature, especially classical literature, and natural philosophy (that is, science) – as distinct from divinity, which studied divine knowledge, or theology.

  fn2 A number of sources claim that Pico’s amorous incident at Arezzo took place whilst he was on his way to Rome, and the dates of this incident and his departure for Rome would appear to be close, despite their disparate intentions.

  fn3 The years following Savonarola’s apocalyptic prediction were particularly turbulent in Italy, and many cities in northern Italy beside Brescia would have fulfilled such a prophecy.

  6

  The Return of Savonarola

  SAVONAROLA TOOK UP the post of teaching master at the monastery of San Marco probably some time in early June 1490, delivering lectures on logic to novices and other members of the community. However, he also took to giving extra lectures on Sundays after Vespers, beneath a damask rose-tree in the monastery gardens. In these informal, almost intimate lectures to his fellow friars he began explaining passages from the Bible, resorting to the quiet, intense manner that had always attracted listeners during his more personal teaching. The beauty of the gardens on those long summer evenings, combined with the atmosphere of intense spirituality, soon began to attract devout listeners from beyond the monastic community. He also began receiving regular visits in his cell from Pico della Mirandola, who was now eager to receive religious instruction from Savonarola. As Savonarola would later confess, during their previous meetings he had done all he could to dissuade Pico from pursuing his ambition to create a universal philosophy. Instead, he had tried his best to convince Pico that he should follow his true calling and devote his life to Christianity and the one true God, without further delay. Savonarola had warned him that:

  for this delaye I threatened him … he wolde be punished yf he forsook that purpose which our Lorde had put in his mynde, and certainly I prayed to God my selfe (I will not lye therefore) that he might be some what beaten: to compell him to take that waye whiche God had from above shewed hyme.1

  Now Pico had indeed been ‘some what beaten’ and was a changed man. He had given away his villa and his estate near Mirandola to his nephew Gianfrancesco, who would later repay this gift by writing the first biography of his uncle. According to Gianfrancesco, during the period around the summer of 1490 Pico conceived the idea of following in the footsteps of St Francis of Assisi, travelling barefoot through the towns and cities of Italy. He was preparing to join the same order as Savonarola, the Dominicans, and devote his life to preaching, but could not yet bring himself to renounce the world entirely, despite the frequent urgings of Savonarola.

  All the indications are that Pico and Savonarola spent many hours discussing philosophy. Although Savonarola was undeniably seeking to influence Pico, there are indications that Pico also influenced Savonarola in the course of these discussions. Savonarola was engaged in his lectures on logic, and it was around this time that he conceived of his ‘Division of all the Sciences’.2 This is the nearest he came to providing a purely philosophical underpinning to his belief. Savonarola separated philosophy into two aspects: the rational, and the positive. Positive philosophy included the real and the practical, embracing the moral (ethics, economicsfn1, politics) and the mechanical (the arts). Rational philosophy, on the other hand, embraced logic and the speculative, which included physics, mathematics and metaphysics. Physics was inseparable from matter, mathematics was abstracted from matter, but metaphysics was absolutely free from material constraint, and was thus the queen of the sciences; it strove to discover the highest truth, and in doing so it elevated the human spirit. And as far as Savonarola was concerned, the only metaphysics was theology �
� Christian theology, as derived from the Bible.

  Savonarola’s philosophy was neither original nor particularly clear. For him, philosophy was not important – even so, it certainly illuminated the nature of his faith. The spiritual quest of metaphysics was quite separate from ethics, economics and politics. Yet these latter belonged to the real world, and as such could not be ignored. Savonarola’s regard for his congregations would always involve a deeply compassionate element. Besides being metaphysical, his message was also moral, and as such included ethics, economics and politics. These were not subjects that were open to free discusssion during this period: the Church laid down the law on ethics, and economic life was strictly regulated by the powerful guilds, whilst politics was a matter for rulers. But Savonarola saw these as subsumed by morality, and thus in the realm of real and practical philosophical debate. Society, which included ethics, economics and politics, was moral or it was nothing. And as such, contemporary society was due for a change.

  In the light of how many long hours Savonarola and Pico spent discussing philosophy, it is worth comparing their different philosophies. Pico had wished to build a universal philosophy-cum-religion upon 900 basic axioms: these would include all belief systems and all manner of thought, and yet would retain an outlook that was essentially humanistic. It left humanity free to choose what it wished to become, yet urged the use of reason to achieve ‘the higher realms of the divine’. By contrast, Savonarola’s basic axioms were contained in the Bible, and faith alone (aided by the reason of metaphysics, the queen of the sciences) could aspire to the divine. Once Savonarola had convinced Pico that it was right for him to abandon his 900 theses and his reliance upon arguments derived from all religions, the way was open for him to embrace an analogous mode of thought using the Bible and faith. Yet although Pico discarded his philosophy, he did not discard his intellectual powers. His traumatic clash with the pope may have rendered him a changed man, but it had not broken him. He never lost his compelling personal qualities and his supreme ability to reason: he could still discuss philosophy with his intellectual equal, Savonarola. This much was confirmed by Savonarola himself, who was hardly a man to be impressed by such qualities: yet years later, on Pico’s death, the austere friar would pronounce him ‘a man in whom God had heped many great gifts and singular graces, who is an inestymable loss to the church’.3

  Savonarola’s first sermon on his return to Florence was delivered on 1 August 1490 in the church at San Marco, just two months after his arrival. He had, it seems, already gained a certain hearsay reputation as a result of his apocalyptic sermons delivered in northern Italy; and this, together with the growing audience for his evening talks in the monastery gardens, ensured an unusually large crowd at San Marco that Sunday. According to Burlamacchi, who might even have been present, some were left standing, while others clung to the iron gratings, peering into the body of the church.

  Savonarola did not disappoint the spilling congregation beneath the delicate frescoes and long, echoing nave. He returned to his favourite topic, the Apocalypse, and for the first time in Florence articulated what would become his famous prophecies regarding the Church: its reform, how it would be scourged, and the imminence of these events. In later years he would fondly recall the effect of his sermon with the words: ‘I am the hailstorm that shall smash the heads of those who do not take cover.’4 Such was the popularity of this, and of Savonarola’s ensuing sermons, that when he was chosen by the prior of San Marco to give the Lenten sermons for the following year, it was decided that he should deliver them in Florence’s main church, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (the Duomo).

  By now, word had reached Lorenzo the Magnificent of the disturbing tenor of Savonarola’s preaching. The man brought to Florence to assist the spiritual life of Lorenzo and his son Giovanni, to inspire a new orthodoxy within the court and the populace, had started making subversive prophecies concerning the Church. As a result Lorenzo sent word to Savonarola, by way of a group of leading citizens, that in the forthcoming Lenten sermons it would be best if ‘he did not speak much about future events’.5 But this was not the way to deal with Savonarola: threats only incited him to obstinacy, and worse. He saw them as attempts to compromise his integrity, an element that was central to his faith, his personality, indeed his very being.

  Yet Lorenzo the Magnificent was not the only one alarmed by Savonarola’s attitude, and Savonarola himself admitted that he was approached ‘by all kinds of people’6 who warned him against being so reckless. Some of these were young monks at San Marco, amongst whom he had begun to gather a devoted following. Unlike the deputation from Lorenzo, these were not threats, but friendly advice from those he knew to be sympathetic to his cause, and Savonarola decided to take heed of their warning. He set about preparing a series of sermons on more orthodox themes, which he would deliver in a less sensational manner. But he soon found ‘I was unable to do this, because everything that I read or studied was so boring, and when I tried to preach in any other manner than the one I was used to, I even bored myself.’7 He would recall how he had heard a voice encouraging him to return to his former way of preaching: ‘You fool, do you not understand that it is the will of God that you should preach in this way?’8 This ‘voice’ soon persuaded him.

  As result, when Savonarola next stepped up to the lectern in the cathedral, he delivered what even he would characterise as ‘a terrifying sermon’9. His voice rang out beneath Brunelleschi’s great dome as he spoke of the coming of ‘a time such as none has ever heard of before’.10 He launched into a long and explicit tirade against the city’s evils, denouncing sodomites ‘who hide not what they are’, murderers ‘who are filled with evil’, gamblers and blasphemers, all of whom were ‘abhorred by God’. He denounced banking as ‘usury’, explained how the rich ‘will suffer great affliction’ and condemned ‘the unjust taxes which are grinding down the poor’. He warned them that ‘the time is nigh when you will be struck down with the sword’. The city would no longer be known as Florence, but as ‘the great den of iniquity’.

  The large audience for Savonarola’s Lenten sermons of 1491 included all elements of the city’s population, but especially the poor, who began to know him as ‘the preacher for those in despair’.11 According to his biographer Ridolfi, ‘as a result of this Lenten preaching, Savonarola started to become master, if not of Florence itself, at least of the people of the city’.12

  In accord with Florentine tradition, the preacher of the Lenten sermons at the cathedral delivered a private sermon for the gonfaloniere and his eight-man Signoria at the Palazzo della Signoria on the Wednesday after Easter, which this year fell on 6 April. In practice, this would also have been attended by a number of other senior government officials, advisers and counsellors: even so, it would have been a small gathering compared with a sermon in San Marco or the cathedral. We do not know precisely how Savonarola spoke, but his notes for the sermon survive, giving a good indication. He must have found the prospect of preaching in this more intimate atmosphere intimidating. Beginning a little ineptly and provocatively, he compared himself to Christ in the house of the Pharisee, ‘which forces me to be somewhat more subtle and sophisticated than in Church’.13 Despite this, he soon launched into a rather more explicit confrontation:

  Everything that is good and everything that is evil in this city depends upon the man who rules it. He is the one responsible for all that is wrong with this city, for if he acted in the proper manner the entire city would be sanctified. Tyrants never change their ways, and this is because they are arrogant, they thrive on flattery, and refuse to return what they have stolen from the people. They leave everything in the hands of corrupt ministers, listen only to false praise, pay no attention to the poor and only care about those who are wealthy. They require the poor and the peasants to labour ceaselessly for them without being paid proper wages. They expect their ministers to condone this, they corrupt the voters, employ criminal tax-collectors, and thus make it even wo
rse for the poor.