Girolamo Savonarola
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Girolamo Savonarola (September 21, 1452 – May 23, 1498), also translated as Jerome Savonarola or Hieronymus Savonarola, was an Italian Dominican priest and leader of Florence from 1494 until his execution in 1498. He was known for religious reformation, anti-Renaissance preaching, book burning, and destruction of art. He vehemently preached against what he saw as the moral corruption of the clergy, and his main opponent was Pope Alexander VI. He is sometimes seen as a precursor of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, though he remained a devout and pious Roman Catholic his whole life.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early years
Savonarola was born in Ferrara, then capital of an independent Duchy.
In his youth he was preoccupied with religion, studying the Bible, Aquinas, and Aristotle. Savonarola initially studied at the University of Ferrara, where he appears to have taken an advanced Arts degree. His anti-clerical stance 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'.
[edit] Florence
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. Such fiery preachings were 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's family weakening grip on power due to French Italian wars. The flowering of 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. Thus for many people the Last Days had arrived and Savonarola was the prophet of the day.
His Church of St. Mark was always crowded to excess. Savonarola was not a theologian. He did not proclaim doctrines. Instead, he preached that Christian life involved being good 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 its transgressions.
Lorenzo de Medici, the previous ruler of Florence and patron of many Renaissance artists, was also a former patron of Savonarola. It has been said Lorenzo called for Savonarola on his death bed in 1492. Eventually, Lorenzo and his son Piero de Medici became one of the targets of Savonarola's preaching.
After Charles VIII of France had invaded Florence in 1494, the ruling Medici were overthrown and Savonarola emerged as the leader of the city. 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. 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, sculptures, gaming tables, chess pieces, lutes and other musical instruments, fine dresses, women's hats, and the works of immoral poets, and burnt them all in a large pile in the Piazza della Signoria of Florence. [1] Many fine Florentine Renaissance artworks were lost in Savonarola's notorious bonfires, including paintings by Sandro Botticelli and Michelangelo Buonarroti which were thrown on the pyres by the artists themselves.
Florence soon became tired of Savonarola because of the city's continual political and economic miseries, where God did not seem to intervene, and the Last Days did not seem to come about. During his Ascension Day sermon on May 4, 1497, bands of youths rioted, and the riot became a revolt: taverns reopened, and men gambled publicly.
[edit] Excommunication and execution
On May 13, 1497 he 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 supporters were killed: he surrendered along with Fra Domenico da Pescia and Fra Silvestro, his two closest associates. Savonarola was charged with heresy, uttering prophecies, sedition, and religious error.
During the next several 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, Psalm 51, 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.[2]
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 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 was lit, and in the same manner that he had condemned others. 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. The ashes of the three were afterwards thrown in the Arno beside the Ponte Vecchio. [3]
Niccolò Machiavelli, author of The Prince, also witnessed and wrote about the execution. The Medici subsequently regained control of Florence.
[edit] Character and influence
Savonarola was supposedly intense, fervent, and electrical in personal appearance. He can be compared to Luther in his denunciation of sin but was unlike the German monk in following out divisive conclusions. It can be speculated that had he lived a generation later he might have achieved a revolution in the Church as great as that of Luther. However, Savonarola was convinced of the truth of Catholic doctrine, and unlike Luther, concentrated on purging the Church from immorality, not from supposedly unsound doctrine.
After Savonarola's death a group known as the Piagnoni sprang up in Florence to preserve his memory, organized into a sort of guild. Franciscan Friars were prominent among the Piagnoni, and they briefly re-appeared in 1527 when they once again overthrew the Medici, but their rule was a sadistic tyranny and came to an end in 1530 at the Battle of Gavinana.
Savonarola left many admirers throughout Europe, in particular among religiously pious humanists who valued his deep spiritual convictions and who could overlook his nightmarish years of ruling Florence.
In the twentieth century, a movement for the canonization of 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 Jesuits. [1]
[edit] References
- Deeper Experiences Of Famous Christians by James Lawson, Warner Press, (c)1911, p.73-84
- Bonfire Songs: Savonarola's Musical Legacy (1998), by Patrick Macey, Clarendon Press, Oxford
- New York Times, Savonarola, Second Lecture of the Course by Dr. Lord at Association Hall, January 10, 1871, Page 2 and 3.
[edit] Further reading
- Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola in IV volumes (1888) by Pasquale Villari
- Scourge and Fire: Savonarola and Renaissance Florence (2006) by Lauro Martines, ISBN 0224072528
- Savonarola and Florence (1970) by Donald Weinstein
- The Life of Girolamo Savonarola (1959) by Roberto Ridolfi
- The Meddlesome Friar (1957) by Michael de la Bedoyere
- Savonarola (1930) by Piero Misciattelli (trans. by M. Peters-Roberts)
- Savonarola: A Biography in Dramatic Episodes (1927) by William Van Wyck. (A play.)
- The Renaissance (1953) by Will Durant
- The Florentine Monk (1869) by Charles Spurgeon
- The history of the popes, from the close of the Middle Ages : drawn from the secret archives of the Vatican and other original sources, 40 vols. (1891) by Ludwig von Pastor. See vol. V, 171ff., Corruption of the Italian Clergy of all Ranks, and 181ff., Fra Girolama Savonarola.
- Savonarola: his Contest with Paganism (1851) by Orestes Brownson
[edit] Fictionalizations
- 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.
- The Burning of Girolamo Savonarola a film by Nathan Coombs 2006 in which 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.
