Savonarola
sa-vo-na-ro'la (1452-1498), an Italian ecclesiastic, statesman, and reformer. He is considered by some a forerunner of the Reformation. The best informed writers say, however, that he was merely a reformer, and that he never lost faith in the doctrines or organization of the Catholic church. He was a native of Ferrara, Italy. He was a grave, precocious child with a fondness for books. His parents educated him for the practice of medicine. A disappointment in love, together with a natural bent for serious matters, caused him to leave his studies and home and to enroll himself in a monastery of St. Dominic at Bologna. After various missions, he was sent to the Dominican monastery in Florence, where he won by degrees a reputation as a preacher.
His spirit was weighed down with the ribald songs of the streets and the general laxness of morals. He developed wonderful power as a pulpit orator. He shook men's souls by his terrible threats of the wrath to come, and drew tears from their eyes by the tender pathos of his assurances of divine mercy. In 1491, just a year before the discovery of America, he was elected prior of the Convent of St. Mark's. Lorenzo de Medici, the Magnificent, was at the height of his popularity. Savonarola attacked him bitterly on the score of an immoral influence. Lorenzo tried at first to appease the monk, but without avail. On his death bed, however, he sent for Savonarola to absolve him. The priest is said to have laid down three conditions. First, "You must repent and feel true faith in God's mercy." Lorenzo assented. Second, "You must give up your ill-gotten wealth." This Lorenzo promised to do. Third, "You must restore the liberties of Florence." At this Lorenzo turned his face to the wall without reply. Savonarola left, Lorenzo died unabsolved.
Compressing the work of a lifetime into a few lines, it may be said that Savonarola drove the Medici out of Florence, established a republican form of government, and was for a few years, by virtue of his prominent position in the church, practically dictator of Florence. He turned the gay, licentious city into a Puritan common-wealth. Cards and other means of amusement were barred. The city was searched from garret to cellar for licentious literature and indecent pictures, and the churches were filled with penitents. The witty, changeable citizens of Florence, accustomed to gaiety were not, however, made of stuff like the followers of Cromwell and the founders of New England. A reaction came. Complaint was rife. Savonarola, unwisely it would seem, began to attack certain practices of the papal court. He was excommunicated. The city of Florence was warned not to harbor him under penalty of being placed under a ban. Within a few months the former all-powerful leader of the people was tried for heresy, convicted, put to the torture, hanged, burned at the stake, and his ashes scattered to the four winds. He was a man of wonderful power and intellectuality, a sincere patriot, and an incorruptible churchman. His career is one of the strangest recorded on the pages of Italian history. George Eliot has drawn Savonarola with a master hand in her powerful novel, Romola.