Savonarola, Girolamo

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SAVONAROLA, GIROLAMO

SAVONAROLA, GIROLAMO (1452–1498), was a Dominican preacher, reformer, and prophet. Savonarola was born in Ferrara, Italy, and under the eye of his grandfather, the distinguished court physician Michele Savonarola, was educated in religious and liberal studies before going on to medicine. A story that he was disappointed in love, and his early poem De ruina mundi give some insight into his decision to enter the Order of Friars Preachers in 1475. In Bologna he completed his novitiate and attended the Dominican Studium Generale. In 1482 he went to Florence as reader in the Observant Dominican convent of San Marco. The recently rediscovered Borromeo Codex, containing Savonarola's sermon notes, poetry, and other writings from this period, shows a young reformer in process of development rather than the born prophet portrayed by his hagiographers. The moralizing, ascetic sermon drafts contain none of the spectacular visionary themes, still less the millenarian themes, of Savonarola's later preaching. Still under the influence of Scholastic homiletics with its labored, allegorical exegesis, he was just beginning to find a more personal and direct, if as yet unflamboyant, style.

In 1484, ruminating on the wickedness of the world, he conceived "on the basis of scripture" that the church had imminently to be scourged and reformed, and he announced his new apocalyptic reading of scripture in his Lenten sermons in San Gimignano in 1485 and again in 1486. He was appointed magister studiorum in Bologna in 1487, and in the next few years he gained attention as a preacher in various north Italian cities. In 1490 he was reassigned to San Marco at the request of Lorenzo de' Medici, unofficial ruler of Florence, who may have been prompted by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, one of the friar's admirers. Elected prior, he briefly considered taking his friars into the woods of a nearby mountain valley, but instead he concentrated upon reforming San Marco and preaching in the city. He began to criticize tyrants as corrupters of the people, and he warned of coming tribulations. He was aware that he might share the fate of other preachers, most recently Bernardino da Feltre, who had been expelled from Florence for stirring up unrest; but the city's rulers made no effort to pluck this latest thorn from the flesh of the body politic, perhaps because they were pleased by Savonarola's fruitful efforts to create a new Tuscan congregation of Dominican houses with San Marco at its center, perhaps because they knew it would be difficult to dislodge him without scandal among his widespread following. With Piero de' Medici, who succeeded Lorenzo in 1492, he seems to have been on good terms.

By the 1490s rumbles of the earthquake that was to destroy Italy's facade of collective security were beginning to be heard. Charles VIII (1483–1498) was heralded as the new Charlemagne, who would restore French imperial glory, cross the sea to conquer "the Infidel," and convert the world into a single sheepfold under one shepherd. To Savonarola he was the flagellum Dei who would scourge the church and carry the children of Israel into captivity. Florence, that den of iniquity, would suffer with the rest. In the fall of 1494 Charles invaded Italy, and his opposition melted away as he marched to the frontiers of Tuscany. A frightened Piero de' Medici hurried to the king's camp and surrendered the key Florentine strongholds. Returning to Florence, Piero encountered a city in revolt, and he fled. After sixty years of Medici domination Florence had recovered its liberty.

Savonarola's standing as a popular champion and prophet gave him unrivaled authority. Holding no civic office, he exercised his influence through preaching (now supported by visions), through meetings with civic leaders, and through political allies in the city's councils. He charted a course between direct democracy and narrow oligarchic reaction, the chief feature of which was a new Great Council with hereditary qualifications for admission and sovereign powers on the model of Venice. In the city's religious institutions he changed little, but he sought to introduce a spiritual revolution through moral reform. Ascetic conduct was urged from pulpits and enjoined by new laws and by youthful vigilantes organized from San Marco. Religious processions replaced secular festivals; bonfires of "vanities" consumed the tokens of "worldliness"; specially written lauds celebrated the millennial glories of a spiritually revitalized Florence. The Jews, tolerated by the Medici regime, were expelled, and a public loan fund (Monte di Pietà), advocated by Franciscan preachers, was set up. Ignoring his earlier warnings of tribulation and doom, Savonarola now envisioned Florence as the New Jerusalem, center of liberty and virtue, from which would radiate the new era, when Florence would be "richer, greater, more powerful than ever."

Inevitably, however, Savonarola's insistence that the French king was Florence's divinely elected champion led to the city's political isolation in Italy, and the longer Charles put off his return, the lower Savonarola's credit dropped. His avoidance of the pope's summons to Rome and his disobedience to a command of silence led to his excommunication, and a papal interdict for harboring him threatened the city. All this created a situation that Savonarola's enemies could exploit. He was unable to block a Franciscan's challenge to a trial by fire, and he bore the brunt of the blame when this eagerly awaited test failed to take place. A mob attacked San Marco, and Savonarola and two other friars were imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured. Altered versions of Savonarola's confession to false prophecy and political conspiracy were published. On May 23, 1498 the three friars were hanged and burned on a specially constructed scaffold in Florence's main civic square.

The Savonarolan republic survived until 1512, when the Medici were restored by Spanish troops. It was revived by a revolt in 1527, in which piagnone, or Savonarolan, ideology played a fundamental role. Once again revolutionary millenarianism and puritanical republicanism flowed from San Marco. Once again the Jews were expelled. Prostitutes were banned. Pro-Medicean utterances were made a capital offense. Enemies of the regime were exiled. Blasphemers and sodomites were put to death. Such uncompromising fanaticism alienated republican moderates and strengthened the hand of the Medici, who came back to the city in 1530. As a political movement "piagnonism" was finished, although the cult of Savonarola thrived and has been revived periodically up to the present day. Its traces can be discerned in the Risorgimento biography by Pasquale Villari, the Catholic modernist life by Joseph Schnitzer, and the cinquecentennial biography by Roberto Ridolfi. Hagiography apart, Savonarola's sermons and devotional works continued to be printed and read in Italy, Spain, France, and Germany. Savonarolan piety, with its emphasis upon individual religious experience, charity, and the way of the cross of Christ, was admired by Martin Luther. A statue of the Dominican was erected in Wittenberg, although Savonarola surely belongs more to the Catholic than to the Protestant reformation.