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

by Paul Strathern

  Lorenzo had done his best to curb these flaws in his son, carefully grooming him to take over the reins of power. He had made sure that Piero cultivated the friendship of leading men amongst the Florentine families, such as Paolantonio Soderini, Bernardo Rucellai and Francesco Valori, many of whom were related to the Medici by marriage, and who had proved so loyal during his reign. Lorenzo had also encouraged Piero to listen to their advice. The continuation of Medici rule depended largely upon its popularity with a majority of the powerful leading families, to say nothing of the fickle support of the people. Unfortunately, Piero’s arrogance had not done much to encourage his popularity. This in itself would not have been too harmful had it not been for his aristocratic wife, Alfonsina Orsini. Lorenzo had married Piero to Alfonsina in order to strengthen the Medici alliance with Rome, as well as with King Ferrante of Naples, who had been her mentor. But Alfonsina was a snobbish young woman, and thought that in marrying a Medici she had married beneath her. Worse still, she considered Florence a dull provincial city, lacking the aristocratic and papal residences of Rome, devoid of the ostentatious riches and culture of the city that held sway over the entire realm of Christendom.fn3

  Like his father, Piero very much regarded himself as his own man, and as such he wished to establish his own style of rule, rather than merely follow in Lorenzo’s footsteps. Yet at the same time he also shared his father’s impatience with the petty details of the day-to-day administration of the city and the need to supervise the workings of the Signoria. As a result he retained his father’s counsellor Piero da Bibbiena for this purpose, and also kept on the ageing Giovanni Tornabuoni as manager of the ailing Medici bank. Yet in order to put his own stamp upon the administration of the city, at the same time he began promoting a number of new figures – some of whom were deserving and genuinely talented, whilst others were merely friends. Inevitably, these new appointments displaced a number of influential figures, who were often related to the powerful families that supported the Medici. Consequently, Piero began to fall out with the likes of Paolantonio Soderini and Bernardo Rucellai and would soon begin ignoring their recommendations, eventually dismissing them altogether as his advisers.

  Lorenzo’s skilful political stewardship had ensured that advisers such as Paolantonio Soderini and Bernardo Rucellai were married into the Medici family, thus commanding the loyalty of the powerful families to which they belonged. Hence, the dismissal of Soderini and Rucellai14 left them in something of a quandary. They could hardly now ally themselves with those leading families who bitterly, if covertly, continued to oppose Medici rule. Yet it soon became clear that there was a solution to this problem of divided loyalties. The brothers Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici had by this time returned to Florence after their years in the Low Countries and Spain building up their business, whose main commodity was the lucrative transportation of grain. Not only were they considerably richer than the senior branch of the Medici family, but in order to protect their fortune they had followed in the footsteps of their relatives and begun building up a political power-base of their own. This was inevitably allied to the power-base established by the senior branch of the family. However, Piero de’ Medici made little secret of his increasing jealously of Lorenzo and Giovanni, whom he regarded as mere upstarts, causing relationships between the two sides of the family to cool. This disaffection was particularly accentuated by the dismissal of Soderini and Rucellai. Unable and unwilling to break their ties with the Medici, Soderini and Rucellai let it be known that their loyalties now inclined towards the other branch of the Medici family, headed by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, who had already served his time in several senior elected posts in the city administration, where he had proved himself to be a highly organised and talented politician.

  As a result, some began to question why the descendants of Cosimo de’ Medici’s branch of the family should simply accede to the rule of the city by right, especially if another member of the family proved himself better equipped to fulfil this role. Yet such talk gained little support within the Medici faction as a whole. These adherents rightly understood that if rule by the son and heir of one branch of the Medici family was questioned, it might not be long before the entire structure of Medici rule came under question. Why, in a city that so prided itself upon being a democratic republic, should one particular family take precedence?

  fn1 Or ‘the clompers’ – so named after the sound that their distinctive wooden clogs made on the stone-slabbed streets, especially when they trudged off to work in the stillness of the dawn.

  fn2 Given Savonarola’s fanatical adherence to the truth, such a claim is highly unlikely to have been a lie. Indeed, modern neuroscience would tend to support Savonarola’s claim. During such ‘visions’, localised brain activity indicates that the person undergoing this mental state does actually ‘see’ what he claims to see. Similarly, when a subject claims to hear ‘voices’ speaking to him, appropriate brain activity indicates that he is speaking the truth. In neither of these cases does the subject feel that he is in any way responsible for these mental effects, which appear to him to emanate from a powerful outside source.

  fn3 In the eyes of history, the very opposite is of course the case. By now the Renaissance was at its height in Florence, whereas Rome was still largely medieval in its culture. In the Holy City, the Renaissance was only just beginning – and even this was to a large extent due to imported Florentine artists.

  9

  Noah’s Ark

  IT IS JUST possible that such behind-the-scenes machinations might even have led to the early downfall of Piero de’ Medici, especially if the people had turned against him. Yet they did not; and one of the main reasons for this must be accorded to Savonarola, who kept his secret deathbed agreement with Lorenzo and refrained from preaching against Piero. Savonarola had sensed his own growing power from the pulpit, and had even been willing to compromise with Lorenzo in the hope of gaining some political influence beyond San Marco. But at this stage any conscious idea of how to impose his beliefs upon the city of Florence as a whole almost certainly remained beyond his conception. After all, how on earth could such a thing have been done? He may secretly have wished to achieve this, have longed for it, even have dreamed of it – but such a thing was simply not possible. It would have involved something akin to turning the entire city into a monastery. Yet there is no doubt that some impossible dream along these lines was beginning to evolve in Savonarola’s mind. How consciously, how practically, it is impossible to tell – but the evidence is incontrovertible. For it was now, during his Advent sermons delivered in December 1492, that his preaching began to focus upon an entirely new topic. Amidst his usual condemnation of the irredeemable evil that threatened to engulf the world, he began preaching his first sermons on Noah’s Ark. Here was the vessel that had in biblical times carried the survivors of God’s Flood, and would do so again when once more God submerged the entire world of his original creation because it had become so corrupted that it was beyond redemption. This was something more than the apocalyptic warnings and injunctions to the faithful to adhere to the original teachings of Jesus in the City of Jerusalem. For the first time, Savonarola was suggesting a positive practical idea for salvation on this Earth. Or so it would seem.

  In fact, we do not know the precise nature of these sermons, for according to his biographer Villari, the printed version that has come down to us:

  is so ill-assembled and filled with errors that it no longer contains even the slightest hint of Savonarola’s characteristic style, because whoever took down these notes was unable to keep up with the preacher’s words. It seems that all he could manage was to jot down the occasional rough and fragmentary indication of what Savonarola actually said. This was later translated into a coarse form of dog-Latin.1

  However, according to Villari, who not only had an unrivalled knowledge of Savonarola, but also seems to have had access to other sources:

  Savonarola spoke in his
sermons of a mystical Ark, where all who wished to escape and survive the Flood which was soon to overwhelm the world could take refuge. In the literal sense, this was the Ark of Noah which featured in the Book of Genesis. However, in the allegorical sense it could also be seen as the coming together of the righteous who would be saved. Savonarola then elaborated upon this theme, explaining that the length of the Ark represented Faith, its breadth was Charity, and its height was Hope.2

  Savonarola’s ‘strange allegory’ then took on even more practical dimensions, as he explained how this Ark was to be constructed out of ten planks. Unusually for Savonarola, here he was contradicting the Bible, where God explicitly states, ‘The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits,fn1 the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.’3 A clue to Savonarola’s motive here can perhaps be gleaned from the fact that in Roman times the city of Florence was originally divided into decumani, or ten districts. Yet Savonarola evidently went out of his way to ensure that this interpretation was not widely recognised, for ‘each day he would give a different interpretation of the ten planks out of which the ark was to be constructed’.4

  This curious melange of the practical, the metaphorical, the biblical and the spiritual would have a different emphasis to each section of his congregation. Indeed, its very mixture would have reinforced its powerful message. Even so, it was but a short step from the more spiritual aspects of the Ark to its practical manifestation, with its ten planks. Savonarola was clearly dreaming aloud here, letting his imagination roam, even if he still had no conception of how his Ark could be built. At the same time, he was certainly not making a political statement: this much he made clear. Piero de’ Medici and the authorities would not have felt threatened by his sermons, which merely encouraged the citizens to live a more deeply committed Christian life. Savonarola’s promise of support for Piero remained intact.

  Such an argument may appear far-fetched, but its force is confirmed by Savonarola’s attitude towards the rest of Italy in these sermons, a political theme that he returned to again and again. Indeed, Florence appears to have been the only major power in the land that escaped his censure during the course of these sermons. Delivering his regular Advent sermons had certainly taken a heavy toll on Savonarola’s physical, mental and imaginative powers, and it was now, at the end of 1492, that the prolonged strain of this ordeal caused him to experience the third of his major ‘revelations’.fn2 Alone and sleepless in his cell during the long, cold winter night, Savonarola racked his brains, seeking inspiration for the final Advent sermon that he was due to deliver the next day. But nothing came to him. Then suddenly he had a vision of a hand brandishing a sword, which was inscribed with the words ‘Gladius Domini super terram, cito et velociter’5 (‘The sword of God above the Earth, striking and swift’). Later, he heard a great booming voice, which proclaimed itself as the voice of the Lord and announced to him:

  The time is nigh when I shall unsheath my sword. Repent before my wrath is vented upon you. For when the day of my judgement comes you may seek to hide but you will find no refuge.

  As Savonarola’s vision continued, he saw that amidst the roar of thunder the hand in the sky turned the sword towards the Earth, as if to smite it, whilst the air was filled with flames, burning arrows and other omens, which indicated that the Earth was soon to be overwhelmed by war, famine and plague.

  The sword in the sky, signifying God’s imminent wrath, was to become a central preoccupation with Savonarola, and a regular feature of his visions. Such were the horrific scenes that Savonarola witnessed in this ‘revelation’ that he refrained from revealing all of them in his sermon next day. Three years later, when he came to write his ‘Compendium of Revelations’, he would confess his reason for withholding what he had seen. He feared that telling of such outlandish things would merely make him a subject of ridicule amongst the people of Florence. Once again the full text of this sermon has not come down to us, but contemporary sources concur that, far from turning him into a laughing stock, this sermon in fact terrified a large section of his congregation, who had never before heard of such things as he predicted. All the indications are that this was the occasion when Savonarola warned that Italy was to be invaded by a new Cyrus,fn3 whose conquering army would cross the mountains, sweeping all before it. Because this invasion would be fulfilling God’s will, this army led by ‘Cyrus’ would prove invincible, and ‘he shall take cities and fortresses with great ease’.6 In support of his chilling prophecy, Savonarola quoted the words of the Lord as they had been inscribed by the Old Testament prophet in the Book of Isaiah: ‘I will go before thee and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron.’7

  However, not all were terrified by Savonarola’s words. Despite the precautions that Savonarola had taken, many came away from his sermon convinced that this time he had gone too far: he had revealed himself to be nothing more than a deranged publicity-seeker. His claims to prophecy, far from revealing him to be a saint, were no more than hallucinations, the symptoms of incipient mental illness or simply imaginative ravings. But such opinions were in the minority, and over time this sermon would come to be seen as perhaps the most significant evidence supporting Savonarola’s assertion to be a prophet. Here, undeniably, he claimed to see the future. And it would soon become clear what he had in mind. The westward expansion of the Ottoman Empire remained a constant threat to western Europe, from Hungary to the Balkans. It had only been twelve years since Ottoman troops had actually landed on the Italian mainland and occupied Otranto in the heel of Italy for two years, before withdrawing: it seemed only a matter of time before they would return. Indeed, in one of his sermons Savonarola seemed to welcome this prospect:

  O Lord, we have become despised by all nations: the Turks are masters of Constantinople, we have lost Asia, we have lost Greece, and we pay tribute to the Infidel.fn4 O Lord God, Thou hast punished us in the manner of an angry father, Thou hast banished us from Thy presence. Make haste with the punishment and the scourge, so that we may be returned to Thee. Effunde iras tuas in gentes [‘Unleash Thy wrath upon our people’].8

  Savonarola found himself uncomfortable in his new position as prior of San Marco. During his earlier years at the monastery, the lax and often luxurious existence indulged in by the more senior members of the community, who belonged to important Florentine families and were often personal friends of Lorenzo, had brought him close to despair. But now that he had been elected prior, and Lorenzo was dead, he was determined that all this should change, and that San Marco should return to the austerity intended by the founder of the Dominican order. At the end of the twelth century, St Dominic had travelled the highways and byways barefoot, preaching the original gospel of Jesus and living off the meagre charity provided by his listeners. After founding his order, he had insisted that its friars follow his example, taking strict vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Yet despite taking these vows, Savonarola now found himself at San Marco, living amidst the many luxuries and beautiful frescoes donated over the years by the Medici family and other wealthy patrons. He was distressed by the apparent hypocrisy of his position, and longed for his community to live according to the austerity that he so enthusiastically preached in his sermons.

  This preyed on his mind to such an extent that one night it caused him to have a dream.fn5 During the course of this, Savonarola saw living in the afterlife the twenty-eight friars of San Marco who had died during the previous years. To his consternation he saw that all but three of these friars had been damned to spend all eternity in hell for breaking their monastic vows, especially with regard to poverty. During their life in San Marco they had all fallen prey to the desire for luxuries and a life of comfort. This dream confirmed Savonarola’s resolve to embark upon his reform of San Marco. Indeed, he decided, it would probably be better for all concerned if the community moved out of San Marco altogether, for it was already becoming too crowded, thou
gh such a move would obviously involve protracted negotiations with higher authorities.

  Savonarola’s reputation for piety had spread, and was already beginning to attract to San Marco a stream of earnest young visitors intent upon returning to the simple Christianity of Jesus that Savonarola advocated in his sermons. These visitors came from far and wide and were not all young men; they included a number of scholars and artists, inspired by Savonarola’s intellect and personality in much the same way as he had attracted Pico della Mirandola and Poliziano. Amongst these was the Jewish scholar Mithridates, who had instructed Pico and Ficino some years previously in the mysteries of the Kabbala. Both Mithridates and Ficino were striving to reconcile their essentially heretical knowledge with the simple Christianity of Jesus.

  Amongst the artists, Botticelli appears to have had no qualms about surrendering himself altogether into the hands of Savonarola, although the suggestion by Giorgio Vasari that ‘he gave up painting’9 during this period, in order to devote himself to God, has since been shown to be almost certainly false. Instead, his art now returned to the depiction of religious scenes, especially of a sorrowful nature; and Botticelli’s colourful temperament, which had previously celebrated the pagan symbolism of the classical era with such serene beauty, now began to darken, taking on a more profound psychological depth. The case of Michelangelo, the other major artist so attracted to Savonarola and his teachings, is more problematic. Michelangelo’s temperament had always had a deep religious strain. This was undoubtedly encouraged by Savonarola’s teaching, but there is no evidence that the ‘little friar’ in any significant way influenced his art – which, although religious in a profound sense, retained a surface muscular sensuality that drew on essentially secular influences such as humanism and classical art.