SAVONABOLA, JEROME, the celebrated preacher and political as well as religious reformer of Florence, was b. of a noble family at Ferrara, September 21, 1452. Ile was educated at home, and, at a very early age, became deeply versed both in the philosophy of the SchooIR and in the old Greek philosophy, which at that time lied become popular in Italy; but his disposition from the first was strongly timed with religious asceticism, and, in 1474, he formally withdrew from secular affairs, and entered the Dominican order at Bologna. Having completed his novitiate and the studies of the order, his frst public appearance as a preacher seems to have been in 1482 at Florence where lie lied entered the celebrated convent of his order, San Marco, and where lie preached the Lent in that year. Ills first trial, however, was a signal failure. His voice was harsh and unmusical, and he so utterly failed to interest his hearers, that, after a time, the course of lectures was entirely deserted. Some time afterward Savonarola was sent to a convent of his order at Brescia, where, by degrees, his earnestness and zeal began to attract notice, and even tually, the disadvantages of manner and address, which had told against the effect of his early efforts, either were overcome through practice, or ceased to be felt nailer the influence of his sterling genius and irresistible enthusiasm. ID 1489 he was once more recalled to the convent of San Marco at Florence. His second appearance in the pulpit of San Marco was a complete success. The great subject of his was the sinfulness and apostasy of thetime; and in his denunciation of the vicesand crimes of his age, he took as his theme what has been the topic of enthusiasts in almost every age, the mystical visions of the apocalypse, which he applied with terrible directness to the actual evils with which, as with a moral deluge, the age was inundated; and in these half-expositions, half-prophetical outpourings, his followers claimed for him tLe char acter of an inspired prophet. Under the rule of the great fourder of the family of the Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent, art, literature, and philosophy, had all followed the common direction of that elegant but semi-pagan revival, which the scholars of the 15th c. had inaugurated; and the whole spirit of the social as well as intellectual movement of which Florence, under the Medici, was the center, was utterly at variance with the lofty Christian spirituality and severe asceticism in which Savonarola placed the very first conditions of the restoration of true religion and morality. His preaching, there fore, in its spirit, as well as in its direct allusions, was no less antagonistic to the estab lished system of the government, than to the worldly and irreligious manners of the age: the visions and predictions ascribed to him had quite as much of political applicability as of religious significance; and thus, to the aristocratic adherents of the Medici, Savona rola early became an object of suspicion, if not of antipathy and dread. It is said by Pico de Mirandola, that he refused to grant absolution to Lorenzo, when the latter lay dying in 1492; but the statement does not accord with Poliziauo's account of his patron's death. Through all this time, however, Savonarola's relations with the church were, if not of harmony, at least not of antagonism; and when, in the year 1493, a reform of the Dominican order in Tuscany was proposed under his auspices, it was approved by the pope, and Savonarola was named the first general vicar. About this time, however, his' preaching had assumed a directly political character, and the predictions and denuncia tions which formed the staple of many of his discourses, pointed plainly to a political revolution in Florence and in Italy, as the divinely ordained means for the regeneration of religion and morality. In one of his disecurses he pointed plainly to the advent of the French under Charles VIII.; and when this prediction was fulfilled by the trium phant appearance of the French expedition, Savonarola was one of a deputation of Florentines to welcome Charles VIII. as the savior of Italy, and to invite him to Flo-. reuce. Very soon, however, the French were compelled to leave Florence, and a republic' was established, of which Savonarola became, although without political functions, the guiding and animating spirit, his party, who were popularly called Peuguoni, or " Weep ers," from the penitential character which they professed, being completely in the ascendant. It was during this brief tenure of influence that Savonarola displayed to the fullest extent, both Are extraordinary powers of his genius, and the full extravagance of the theories to which his, enthusiastic asceticism impelled him. The republic of Flor ence was to be the model of a Christian commonwealth, of which God himself was the chief ruler, and his gospel the sovereign law; and thus the most stringent enactmen•s were made for the repression of vice, and of all the sinful follies by which it is foment( d and maintained. All the haunts of debauchery were suppressed; gambling in ;11 its forms was prohibited; the vanities of dress were restrained by sumptuary enactn.ents; and, under the impulse of the popular enthusiasm which the enthusiasm of the engendered, women flocked in troops to the public square to fling down their costliest ornaments; and gay gallants and grave scholars destroyed, in one common abta da fe before the gates of the cathedral, whole hecatombs of the amatory poetry or licentious fiction of the day, in conjunction with the elegant paganism or unconcealed immorality of the classic period. Meanwhile, the extremes of his rigorism; the violence of his
denunciations, which did not spare even the pope himself; the assumption by him, or attribution to him, of a supernatural gift of prophecy; and the extravagant interpreta tion of the Scripture, and especially o: the apocalypse, by which be sought to maintain his views, drew upon him the displeasure of Rome. He was cited, in the year 1495, to answer a charge of heresy at Rome; and on his failing to appear, he was forbidden to preach; the brief by which the Florentine branch of his order had been made inde pendent was revoked, and he was again summoned to Rome. Once again Savonan la disregarded this order. But his domestic difficulties now began to deepen. The measures of the new republic proved impracticable. The party of the Medici, called "Arrabbiati" (enraged), began to recover ground. A conspiracy for the recall of the exiled house was formed; and although for the time it failed of success, and six of the conspirators were condemned and executed, yet this very rigor served to hasten the reac tion. The execution of these conspirators was a direct violation of one of Savonarola's own laws, and it tended to direct the popular sympathy in their favor. At the critical point of the struggle of parties came, in 1497, a sentence of excommunication from Rome against Savonarola. Savonarola openly declared the censure invalid, because unjust, and refused to hold himself bound by it. In the following year, however, 1498, when the new elections took place, the party opposed to Savonarola, the Arrabbiati, came into power. He was ordered to desist from preaching, and the struggle was brought to a crisis by the counter-denunciations of a preacher of the Franciscan order. long an antagonist of Savonarola, Francesco da Puglia. In the excited state of the popular mind thus produced, an appeal was made by both of the contending parties to the interposition of divine providence by the ordeal of lire. But at, the moment when the trial was to have come off, difficulties were originated by the party of Savonarola, and nothing was acttially done. The result of this was to destroytwith the populace the prestige of Savonarola's reputation, audio produce a complete revulsion of public feeling. In the midst of this reaction he was cited before the council, and brought to trial for misleading the people by false prophecies. He denied the charge; but being threafened with torture he is said to have made a confession, which, however, his friends say Wee garbled, if not utterly falsified. He was declared guilty of heresy and of sedi tious teaching. The acts of the trial were sent to Rome, where the sentence was con firmed, and he with two others of his order were given up to the eecular power. An effort was made to procure a remission of the capital sentence whicu was passed upon them, but in vain; and on May 23, 1498, this extraordinary man, with his two com panions, F. Domenico da Pescia and Silvestro Marufli, were executed, and their bodies burned by the executioner. They died professing their adherence to the Catholic church, and humbly accepting the last absolution 'from the papal commissary; and it is still a question among Catholics whether Savonarola is to be regarded in the light of a confessor of the truth, or of a fanatical forerunner of the movement which so soon reached its fall development in the reformation. The works of Savonarola are very numerous. They were all written either in Latin or in Italian, but have for the most part been translated into French, German, Spanish, and other His works in Latin are: (1) On the Simplicity of the Human Soul; (2) The Triumph of the Cross; (3) A Dialogue of the Spirit and the Soul; (4) A Plowfold Exposition of the Lord's Prayer; (5) On the Pe?feetWn of the Spiritual Life. Most of them were translated contemporane ously into Italian, and some even by Savonarola' himself. His principal Italian works are: A Treatise on Humility; On the Love of Jesus Christ; On the State of Widowhood; 'Two Treatises on Prayer; Rules of Christian Living (together with a work of a title ahnost.the sante which he wrote while in prison, and at the desire of his jailer): the Mysteries of the Mass; and several 'other doctrinal and ascetical treatises. No collected edition of his sermons has been published, and his correspondence also has, for the most part, disappeared; but the works which survive sufficiently illustrate the peculiarities of his genius, and the stern and almost fierce enthusiasm which was the secret of his intlu •ence on that corrupted but yet cultivated age.—See Madden's Life of Savonarola (2 vols. 8vo, 1854); 81)14 Can de Fra Hieron Savonarola (Paris, 1842); Revere's Piagnoni e gli Arrab5iati at Temp ode Savonarola (2 vols. Milan, 1843).
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