The three condemned men, barefoot and clad only in their thin white undershifts, were then led from the terrace in front of the palazzo by two black-robed Compagni de’ Neri, who accompanied them along the lengthy raised walkway that extended out into the piazza. At the end of this walkway was the circular platform with the gibbet, beneath which were heaped bundles of faggots and kindling wood in preparation for the bonfire. From the sea of faces beneath them on either side of the walkway arose angry jeers, and some mockingly called out, ‘Savonarola, now is the time to perform a miracle.’10 Evidence suggests that others, especially amongst the Piagnoni, were silently praying that he would do just this and would survive his execution.
The first to be led to the scaffold was Fra Silvestro. The hangman hurriedly ushered the condemned man up the steps to the top of the ladder leaning against the gibbet, placed the rope around his neck and then shoved him off the ladder so that he swung freely from the gibbet. The rope was too short, the noose not drawn tightly enough around his neck, and the iron chains wound around the condemned man’s waist to weigh him down were insufficiently heavy, so that the hanging man remained choking. Landucci, who witnessed these events, described Fra Silvestro’s fate: ‘there not being much of a drop, he suffered for some time, repeating “Jesu” again and again while he was hanging there, for the rope was not drawn tight enough to kill him’.11 All this was intentional, so that the other two could be hanged beside him, and all three would still be alive when the fire was lit beneath them. Part of their punishment was that they would be able to feel the pain of the flames burning their flesh before they died.
The second to be hanged was Fra Domenico, who is said to have literally scampered up the ladder with a joyous expression on his face, ready to meet his maker. According to Landucci, he ‘also kept saying “Jesu”’ as he endured his similarly lengthy strangulation. Finally:
the third was Savonarola, named as a heretic, who did not speak aloud, but to himself, and thus he was hanged. This all took place without final words being declaimed by any one of them. This was considered extraordinary, especially by good and thoughtful people, who were greatly disappointed, for everyone had been expecting some signs, and desired the glory of God, the beginning of the righteous life, the renovation of the Church, and the conversion of unbelievers. Yet not one of the condemned made any justification of their acts. As a result, many lost their faith.
Despite this disappointment, Guicciardini’s description makes it plain that some people still had misgivings. He recorded that Savonarola’s death:
which he suffered with unyielding fortitude without uttering a word either claiming his innocence or confessing his guilt. None of this altered anyone’s opinion – either for or against him, or the strength of their feelings on this matter. Many viewed him as a charlatan; whilst on the other hand many were of the opinion that his public confession was simply a forgery … or that it had been falsely extracted from him after his frail body had been broken by the extremities of torture.12
The execution did not end entirely without unexpected incident. Mention was made of the hangman sadistically jerking the rope around Savonarola’s neck, causing his body to dance in the air and attempting to make a mockery of him before the crowd. Presumably it was this buffoonery which meant that the hangman was personally unable to complete the gruesome ceremony as intended. On the evidence of the paintings of this scene, the ladder leading to the top of the gibbet must have reached up well over twenty feet; however, before the executioner could descend the ladder to complete his task, a spectator had beaten him to it. A man with a lighted torch burst forward out of the surrounding crowd and set fire to the brushwood, yelling, ‘Now at last I can burn the Friar who would have liked to burn me!’13
As the fire quickly spread through the dried kindling on the circular platform around the cross, others in the front of the crowd began tossing little packets of gunpowder into the conflagration, causing small explosions and cascades of sparks. Just as the flames began to leap up into the air towards the hanging figures, a sudden wind blew up, forcing the flames away from their bodies. The crowd immediately began to back away from the fire exclaiming, ‘A miracle! A miracle!’14 Yet the wind eventually dropped as suddenly as it had begun, and the crowd surged forward once more as the flames began to lick up around the bodies, sheathing them in fire. Burlamacchi, who certainly witnessed these events from a close vantage point, then goes on to describe how the fire burned through the rope securing Savonarola’s hands behind his back, letting his arms fall free. The upward current of the fire then caught his right arm, raising it into the air, his hand opening dramatically, as if from amidst the flames he was blessing those who stood gazing up at him. This caused consternation amongst the many who witnessed it: women began sobbing hysterically, some fell to their knees, believing that they were being blessed by the man whom many had secretly believed to be a saint. Others simply fled from the piazza in fright and panic.
Yet not all were so overcome. The Arrabbiati had been determined to avoid any devotional scenes, and had hired groups of urchins to jeer and dance about the leaping flames. Some flung stones, which hit the dangling bodies being consumed by the flames, causing bits to fall from them down into the roaring heart of the fire. On orders from the Signoria, armed guards now formed a ring around the bonfire, forcing back the crowd, preventing spectators from gathering up any relics that might be removed. They were determined that Savonarola’s execution should not be the beginning of a cult perpetuating his name and religious ideas. At the same time, further bundles of sticks were tossed into the fire, increasing its size and intensity.
The chains wrapped around the bodies were secured to the gibbet and kept them suspended, even as the fire burned through the ropes around their necks. While the flames consumed the bodies and organs of the condemned men, their limbs began to fall into the central inferno, leaving only glimpses of the blackened remains of their ragged torsos visible amidst the increasing conflagration. To make doubly sure that no relics could be obtained, Remolino took it upon himself to order the gibbet itself to be pushed over so that it fell into the fire, crashing down and carrying the blackened bodies with it. Remolino was in this instance acting beyond his jurisdiction: having passed on responsibility for the death-penalty to the civil authorities, these matters were now under the command of the Signoria. However, it seems that all in power were equally determined that Savonarola’s death should put an end to both the man and all he stood for.
By this time the piazza had been cleared, and after the fire had cooled down the ashes were shovelled up into carts. When these had been filled, they were pushed down the street some 200 yards to the nearby Ponte Vecchio, with the official mace-bearers lining either side of the carts to prevent any further attempts to secure relics. Here the cartloads of ashes were unceremoniously dumped into the waters of the Arno, their remnant dust-clouds gradually settling onto the surface, where they were carried off downstream by the current, over the weir and beyond the city walls, through the green Tuscan countryside towards the river mouth, where the waters dispersed into the sea.
fn1 The Church Fathers were the spiritual leaders of the Christian Church during the first five centuries or so after the death of Christ, many of whom lived exemplary lives, some enduring martydom with great spiritual fortitude.
fn2 The main contemporary source for the ensuing events remains the pro-Savonarolan Burlamacchi, whose descriptions, perhaps inevitably, stray at times into hagiography. Yet there were others who left a record of these times. Landucci describes the later events as he saw them. Sources such as Parenti, Nardi and Cerretani also gave descriptions that for the most part tally with the main outline of the facts. Guicciardini, regarded by many as the father of modern history, who grew up in Florence and was fifteen years old at the time, would begin his considered description of these events just ten years later. I have at points made use of all these sources.
fn3 That is, the Church in heaven
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br /> fn4 The two earliest printed Italian versions of Landucci (1865 and 1883, both Florence) refer to ‘radendo loro el capo e mano’ – that is, shaving the head and hands – thus specifically including their priestly tonsures.
Aftermath
SAVONAROLA’S PASSING was greeted with widespread relief, which soon gave way to hectic celebrations. The following month Landucci recorded how:
everyone had begun indulging in degenerate behaviour, and at night-time one saw halberds or naked swords all over the city, with men gambling by candlelight in the Mercato Nuovo [New Market] and elsewhere without any shame. Hell seemed to have opened; and woe betide anyone who had the temerity to rebuke vice!1
At the same time, the authorities launched a concerted attempt to extirpate Savonarola’s teachings. Immediately after his execution, Bishop Remolino announced that anyone in possession of writings by Savonarola was to surrender them within four days or face excommunication. He then returned to Rome to deliver his official papal report, taking with him the beautiful young prostitute he had been given. The grateful Alexander VI would later reward Remolino by making him a cardinal.
The secular administration of Florence was purged of any remnant Piagnoni sympathisers. A number of other leading Savonarola supporters fled the city, though at least one remained. As much as any, Botticelli had found himself plunged into psychological turmoil by the struggle that had originated between Lorenzo the Magnificent and Savonarola. Vasari gave a last glimpse of the effect this had wreaked upon the genius whose radiant philosophical works had so enlightened the early Renaissance:
As an old man, he became so poor that … but for the support of friends he might have died of hunger … Finally, having become old and useless, hobbling about supported by two sticks because he could no longer stand upright, he died infirm and decrepit.2
Although the Piagnoni may have been humiliated, the citizens of Florence had no wish for a return to Medici rule. The more democratic Great Council, which Savonarola had done so much to instigate, had become a popular and respected element of the republican government, and Medici supporters too now found themselves out of favour. Such a clear-out of the old guard on both sides made way for a generation of talented new administrators. This included the young Machiavelli, who was voted into a senior post and proved so able that he was soon being sent abroad as a Florentine envoy.
Florence would remain militarily weak, under threat from Alexander VI and especially the army of his ruthless son, Cesare Borgia. In an attempt to remedy the situation, Machiavelli was hurriedly despatched as an envoy to the French court. Here he played a role in skilfully re-establishing Florence’s close ties with the powerful new French king, Louis XII, thus continuing the policy advocated by Savonarola. This protected the city from invasion until the death of Alexander VI in 1503. Piero de’ Medici died in the same year, but Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici had long cultivated the friendship of Alexander VI’s rival, Cardinal della Rovere, who soon afterwards became the new pope, Julius II, and allowed Cardinal Giovanni to use the papal forces to retake Florence. However, within a few years the reinstated Medici rule proved so corrupt and unpopular that in 1527 it was overthrown in favour of a republic, which soon saw a re-emergence of Savonarolan fundamentalism, declaring itself the ‘Republic of Christ’. This was eventually overthrown after a lengthy siege of the city by forces loyal to the Medici pope, Clement VII, which began in the fateful year of 1529, just as Savonarola is said to have predicted.
Lorenzo the Magnificent may have made the mistake of inviting Savonarola to return to Florence, yet the outcome of this invitation would not disrupt his secret long-term plans for extending Medici power far beyond the limits of the city state – plans that would see their fruition in later generations, when the Medici would become popes, and even rulers of France. The behaviour of two Medici popes – Leo X (the former Cardinal Giovanni) and Clement VII – would lead directly to the Reformation, which tore Christendom in two and changed the face of Europe for ever. The controversial policies of the two Medici queens of France – Catherine and Marie de Médicis – would be instrumental in preserving the French nation as the single sovereign entity that consequently flourished as the most powerful country in Europe under the ‘Sun King’, Louis XIV. If it had not been for Lorenzo the Magnificent and his ambitious plans for his descendants, none of this might have happened. Indeed, the history of Europe might well have taken an entirely different course.
In less than forty years the opposition between a quasi-benign but corrupt capitalist system run by the leader of a family of powerful bankers and an opposing fundamentalist who fulfilled a public longing for the moral certainties of an earlier age, as well as for a more democratic egalitarian society, had moved far beyond the struggle between the Medici and Savonarola within the city of Florence. By the time of Pope Clement VII (1523–34) the Reformation was already well under way, and the reforms that Savonarola advocated had split the unity of Christendom. Whilst leading the Reformation, Martin Luther marked his admiration for Savonarola by writing an introduction to his final ‘Exposition’, clearly regarding him as a forerunner. Yet there were profound differences between Savonarola and Luther. Savonarola believed in reforming the Church from within, and would have viewed Luther as the worst form of heretical priest, especially in the light of his marriage to a nun.
Following the Reformation, the dichotomy between a progressive materialism and the rule of spirituality would continue to underlie a number of major revolutionary upheavals. In this, Savonarola had been ahead of his time. Politically, his emphasis on democracy was undeniably modern. Yet he was also arguably the first in modern Europe to face the problems of leading a revolution where the euphoria of liberty was followed by repression – in the name of maintaining the purity of the revolution, as well as protecting it against its enemies. In the centuries following Savonarola, this would become a virtually inevitable historical process, visible in one form or another from the beheading of Charles I by the Puritans in England, through to the French Revolution and Robespierre. This trend was still recognisable in the twentieth century, from Lenin and the Bolsheviks in Russia to the Ayatollahs in Iran. In the early years of the present century, just as the struggle had spread beyond late fifteenth-century Florence to embrace the whole of Europe, the modern variant of this clash between fundamentalism and materialism has spread beyond the nation state to become a worldwide phenomenon.
There was death in Florence – of Lorenzo the Magnificent, of citizens (from plotters to plague victims), of Savonarola. At the same time an entire era was dying, that of the Middle Ages. And as this old order died in Florence, it gave birth to the new: the full flourishing of the Renaissance and the modern political state.
Notes
The notes in this text refer to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the notes please use the search feature of your ebook reader.
Prologue: ‘The needle of the Italian compass’
1. ‘a fever [that] gradually …’ et seq.: see Angelo Poliziano, Letters (in the original Latin and facing English), trans. & ed. Shane Butler (London, 2006), Book IV, Letter 2, p.231, 5. I have not adhered to Shane Butler’s translation.
2. Lazaro da Ticino: appears in some sources as Lazzaro of Pavia, leading some people to confuse him with the renowned physiologist Lazzaro Spallanzani of Pavia, who lived in the eighteenth century.
3. ‘museum of mummies’: see Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of Renaissance Italy, trans. Middlemore (London, 1990), p.41
4. ‘begat eight boys …’: epigram by the contemporary poet Marullus, cited in Latin in F. Ludwig von Pastor, The History of the Popes, ed. & trans. F. I. Antrobus, 40 vols (London, 1950 edn), Vol. V, p.240n.
5. ‘Lorenzo was loved …’: Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, Book VIII, Sec. 36
6. ‘so gentle it …’: cited in Christopher Hibbert, The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici (London, 1985), p.172
&nb
sp; 7. ‘His great virtues …’ et seq.: Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, Book VIII, Sec. 36
8. ‘the needle of …’: this celebrated phrase is quoted in a wide number of sources. The actual Italian phrase is ago di balancia, which literally translates as ‘the needle of the balancing scales’, but the more poetic version referring to a compass has become the popularly accepted English translation, presumably because it is so apt. See, for instance, the entry on the Medici family in the celebrated 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. XVIII p.33, by the renowned Italian Renaissance scholar Pasquale Villari.
9. ‘the little friar’: most sources mention Savonarola using this phrase; see, for instance, his latest biographer Lauro Martines, Scourge and Fire: Savonarola and Renaissance Italy (London, 2006), p.2
10. ‘using these very words …’ et seq.: Fra Silvestro, the close adherent of Savonarola, is believed to have heard them from Savonarola himself; see Lives of the Early Medici: As told in their correspondence, trans. & ed. Janet Ross (London, 1910), p.340
11. ‘and restore …’ et sea.: this meeting between Savonarola and the dying Lorenzo is discussed in varying detail by many authorities. See in particular William Roscoe, The Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici (London, 1865), pp. 354–5, and Pasquale Villari, La Storia di Girolamo Savonarola e de’ suoi tempi, 2 vols (Florence, 1887), Vol. I, pp.157–60, 182–6, who both refer to the original contemporary sources, as well as discussing their reliability.
12. ‘Lightning flies …’: cited in Latin and English in Roscoe, Lorenzo, pp.368–9. I have not used Roscoe’s translation.
1: A Prince in All but Name
1. In contemporary reports the year of Lorenzo’s birth is given as 1448; this is because the Florentine New Year did not begin until the Feast of the Annunciation on 25 March. In this matter I have adhered to modern usage throughout.
Death in Florence: the Medici, Savonarola and the Battle for the Soul of the Renaissance City Page 44