Girolamo Savonarola

Italian church reformer

• Born: September 21, 1452
• Birthplace: Ferrara, duchy of Ferrara (now in Italy)
• Died: May 23, 1498
• Place of death: Florence (now in Italy)

Savonarola set in motion the greatest religious revival of his day, turning a materialistic and worldly city Florence into a democratic theocracy. He inspired many Florentines with a new, simple faith, and he began the tide of Reformation soon to sweep over Europe.

Early Life

Girolamo Savonarola (jee-ROHL-ahm-oh sav-eh-neh-ROH-leh) was the third son of Niccolò di Michele della Savonarola and Elena Bonacossi. His mother was a descendant of the Bonacossi family who had been lords of Mantua. The Savonarolas were a merchant family with an aristocratic-military background. The boy’s grandfather, Michele, had been a well-known physician and teacher at the University of Padua, and had become personal physician to Niccolò III d’Este. This grandfather was the primary influence on the boy a pious, ascetic, aged, and scholarly man, he had much of the medieval schoolman in him and passed this characteristic along to his grandson, who became, partly because of this influence, somewhat out of his time.

Savonarola’s family intended that he become a doctor, but he studied many disciplines, including art, music, poetry, and philosophy (Aristotelian and Thomist). Savonarola did study the sciences and medicine, but he eventually turned instead to theology and close study of the Bible.

Pious and inflexible, from a very early age, Savonarola seemed wounded by the corruption of the time. On April 24, 1475, he left home and his medical studies, which he had begun after taking his degree in the liberal arts, and entered the Dominican Order at Bologna, which had a famous school of theology. At the monastery, Savonarola wished to live humbly as one of the brothers, to rid himself of his philosophy, and to be obedient and at peace. The superiors of the order, however, did not wish to waste such a fine education and wanted him to become a priest. His theological studies began in 1476. In 1479, he was sent to complete his studies in Ferrara. Sustaining a disputation there, Savonarola impressed his superiors sufficiently to be elected to the office of lecturer at the Convent of San Marco in Florence. He first arrived in that city on foot that May. Florence was at that time in the hands of Lorenzo de’ Medici, patron and poet of the Humanism so hated by Savonarola.

Life’s Work

Arriving at Florence in 1482, Savonarola took up his post of lecturer at San Marco. A great biblical scholar, he taught the Bible to novices at the monastery. The Old Testament was his specialty, especially the canonical books. He was a very learned teacher but was primarily concerned to move his students. He inspired a quiet religious revival at San Marco during his tenure there. His first sermons in Florence, preached at small churches such as the Murate and Orsanmichele, were not successful. His sermons were not to the sophisticated taste of the Florentines, who admired the art of rhetoric, and they also found his Ferrarese accent laughable. Nevertheless, in 1484, he preached at one of the main churches in the city, San Lorenzo, the parish church of the Medicis. He had no more success there.

It was not until he began preaching sermons based on his apocalyptic revelations, at the Church of San Gimignano during Lent of 1485 and 1486, that he began to wield influence as a preacher. Perhaps the reason for his success then was that the theme of his sermons the need for church reform, his prophecy that the Church would be scourged and renewed struck an urgent chord after the election of the pope with the ironical name of Innocent VIII . On August 12, 1484, Sixtus IV had died. He had not been a virtuous pope, but his successor was far worse.

In 1487, Savonarola left Florence, having been appointed master of studies at the Studium Generale of San Domenico in Bologna, his own illustrious school. After the year of his appointment was over, he was sent to preach in various cities. In 1488, he went to Ferrara to see his mother and sisters (his father had died during Lent in 1485); he stayed two years at the convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli in that city and traveled to other towns on foot preaching. By this time, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola , a famed scholar and linguist, had become a great admirer of Savonarola and requested of his patron and friend Lorenzo de’ Medici that he use his influence to bring Savonarola back to Florence. This Lorenzo did, and in 1490, Savonarola was back again in Florence, at the request of the very family to whom he was to be such a scourge.

In August of that year, Savonarola began preaching his sermons on the Apocalypse, which continued until 1491. His rough style began to gain favor with the people, though his adherents were the pious, the poor, and the malcontents, not the city’s elite. His themes were based on real abuses: the confiscatory taxes and corruption of the Medicis, and their looting of the dowry foundations (the monte del doti) set up for the marriages of poor girls. In 1491, he preached the Lenten sermons at Santa Maria del Fiori, the principal church of the city.

Lorenzo began to awake to the danger that these revolutionary sermons posed and warned Savonarola not to prophesy or stir up unrest. Savonarola did not take this advice and continued to vilify Lorenzo and the city government for abuses. His popularity continued to increase as Lorenzo’s health failed. In 1491, Savonarola was elected prior of San Marco. He began to be seen as a saint. Poets, philosophers, and artists became his adherents at about this time. His Lenten sermons of 1492 had a more markedly prophetic tone than ever before. Soon after this, Lorenzo lay dying and sent for Savonarola to ask his blessing. Contrary to an apocryphal story, eyewitness accounts have it that Savonarola did indeed give his blessing to the dying man and that Lorenzo was greatly consoled by it. Medici rule did not long survive Lorenzo, largely because his son and successor, Piero, was not a competent leader.

In 1492, Pope Innocent VIII died, fulfilling one of Savonarola’s prophecies. His successor was the notorious Borgia pope Alexander VI , who was almost certainly an atheist, had droves of children whose fortunes he aggrandized, had reportedly committed incest with two of his daughters, and had openly purchased the Papacy. At this time, Savonarola had a vision: An arm with a sword appeared to him. A voice spoke, inviting conversion, speaking with “holy love,” and warning that a time was coming when conversion would no longer be possible. Clouds of angels appeared, dressed in white, carrying red crosses, offering the same accoutrements to all. Some accepted, some did not, and some prevented others from accepting. The sword then turned down, and thunder, lightning, darkness, plague, war, and famine began.

During this time, Savonarola had been engaged in the reform of cloistered life. He told his monks of San Marco that he had had a vision wherein it had been revealed to him that of the twenty-eight monks who had died in the last few years, twenty-five were eternally damned for love of possessions. The monks then brought him all their private goods, which were sold for the benefit of the poor. He changed the dress and diet of the monks, and wanted to found a new, very austere convent outside Florence. He also battled to separate San Marco from the Lombard Congregation and to start a new congregation along with the Convents of Fiesole and Pisa. Savonarola eventually accomplished this goal.

The French invasion of Italy, the event that proved the end, for the time, of Medici administration in Florence, occurred in 1494. The French were opposed by the Aragonese of Naples and the pope; Piero de’ Medici sided with them against Florence’s traditional ally, France. In 1492, Savonarola had predicted the French invasion and its success; now, with the approach of King Charles VIII and his army, Piero’s administration was imperiled. It did not help that he was arrogant, openly tyrannical, and a less-than-clever politician. Piero panicked when it became obvious that he could not raise funds for the defense of the city, and he went to treat directly, on his own authority and not that of the Signoria (the Florentine Senate), with the French king. He conceded all the Florentine strong points to the French, and the French entered the city and began to mark houses for the billeting of troops. The citizens were angry, and a group was appointed, among them Savonarola, to negotiate with Charles. All during this time, Savonarola had been preaching apocalyptic sermons on the theme of Noah’s Ark and invoking his earlier prophecy. He now played an important part in negotiations with Charles, hailing Charles as a prophesied deliverer, but warning him to be careful of Florence and admonishing him not to abuse the city.

When Piero de’ Medici returned to Florence after his disastrous private embassy, he was baited and ridiculed. He fled; Florence became a republic once more, with Savonarola as its de facto ruler. Savonarola advocated the republican form of government and was not personally ambitious. His goal was to found the City of God in Florence that would then act as a model for reform throughout Italy. In the difficult days after the end of Medici rule, with the French occupying the city and the citizens beginning to align along traditional factional lines, Savonarola’s constant preaching of moderation, forgiveness, and calm prevented any outbreaks that could have set off civil war. He rejected vengeance against Medici adherents and rebuked the people for executing a particularly hated tool of the Medicis, Antonio Bernardo. There were no more executions, and Savonarola’s government grew in popularity.

Nevertheless, there were opponents. The Arrabbiata (the enraged), the opposition faction, began to ally themselves with the opponents of the king of France: the duke of Milan, the pope, and the other members of the Holy League, the Italian anti-French alliance. The Holy League saw Savonarola as the main obstacle preventing Florence’s joining them, and the pope began to use his authority over Savonarola as head of the Church to bring him to heel. He summoned Savonarola to Rome, praising him for his wonderful works; Savonarola was justly suspicious and pleaded illness as an excuse for not going. Alexander sent a second brief vilifying him and ordered him to Bologna under threat of excommunication. Savonarola replied respectfully to this brief but did not comply, pointing out mistakes in its formulation. A third brief arrived a month later, forbidding him to preach. Several months later, admitting the political reason behind the ban on Savonarola’s preaching, which Savonarola had obeyed, Alexander gave a Florentine embassy a verbal revocation of the ban. Savonarola then preached his 1496 Lenten sermons on Amos, in which he continued to criticize the Church and vilified Alexander’s private life. Despite this impolitic behavior, a college of theologians convened to examine the propriety of Savonarola’s preaching found nothing to criticize in it. He was allowed to continue.

The pope, however, tried other angles: He offered a cardinal’s hat as a bribe and tried to incorporate San Marco into another congregation, in which Savonarola would have no authority. The incorporation was ordered on pain of excommunication. Savonarola protested but obeyed and the order was not put into effect; he could continue his course. Just before Lent in 1497, during carnival season, Savonarola’s authority and popularity reached a kind of peak with “the burning of the vanities,” when bonfires were made of those possessions deemed sinful by the new regime. Bands of children went about the city encouraging the destruction of these “vain things.” Soon afterward, Savonarola’s grip on the city began to fail. His own faction, the Frateschi, or brothers (termed pejoratively the Piagnoni or the weepers), lost control of the government to the Arrabbiata, who bought a bull of excommunication from Alexander VI. It was secret, and marred by errors; the pope himself disowned it. Nevertheless, it was not withdrawn. The Arrabbiata began to foment riots against Savonarola. The Florentine government tried to get the bull of excommunication revoked; Rome offered to do it if Florence joined the Holy League. At this point, Savonarola took a hand in his own defense and began to preach on Exodus; these Lenten sermons of 1498 were to be his last. The city was threatened with an interdict, and Savonarola was forced to stop preaching.

His final downfall was caused, indirectly, by one of his own supporters in a rather ludicrous episode of failed heroism. A Franciscan monk had challenged to an ordeal by fire anyone who maintained that the pope was not correct in excommunicating Savonarola. A loyal adherent, Fra Domenico da Pescia, took up this challenge. The Franciscan did not show up. Even though, by the terms of the trial, this meant that Savonarola’s team had won, the city was disappointed in the lack of a miracle, and the following day, Savonarola and two followers were arrested.

His trial for heresy was marked by confessions extracted under torture. His testimony is very touching in its frankness, and it is evident that the verdict was unjust. He was found guilty by the papal commissioners and was hanged and burned by the civil authorities. He received the pope’s absolution and plenary indulgence before his death. A cult soon grew up around him, and until the nineteenth century, flowers were found on the spot of his execution every May 23, left by devotees in the night. Miracles that he performed were recorded, and occasionally his name was brought up as a candidate for sainthood.

Significance

Savonarola’s primary importance was as a reformer. In a time that had become corrupt, he reawakened the possibility of virtue, both in religion and in civic life. His remarkably direct and simple approach to right action brought together the life of the spirit and the life of the body, religious life and civil life, in a time when these aspects of life were becoming more separate when life was becoming, actually, what one would recognize as modern.

That, after all, is the oddity of his life. He was a reformer, a voice of the new, a revolutionary even; yet the source of his ideas was archaic. In living out perhaps the last medieval life in Renaissance Italy, in resisting the alienation of personal life from the eternal that marked the beginning of the modern, he opened the door to attacks on the centralized authority of the Church.

Reared in the aura of his grandfather’s fourteenth century education and finding his own time too relativistic, too “advanced,” he revolutionized his society in the attempt to archaize it. The life of Savonarola shows the difficulty, for interpreters of history, in the consistent application of the idea of progress. He is remembered now for his incorruptibility and for his championing of the humble against the great, for his devotion to the Church and his opposition to its human incarnation, and for his effect on certain of the thinkers and artists of his day, such as Michelangelo and Pico della Mirandola.

Bibliography

Butters, H. C. Governors and Government in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence, 1502-1519. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1985. A thorough examination of the political aftermath of Savonarola’s rule of Florence. Chapter 1, “Florentine Politics and Society at the End of the Fifteenth Century,” covers the period of transition and reorganization. The details of political and economic life ignored by nineteenth century Romantic historians are included. Good index and an appendix of principal actors in the various aspects of the state.

Fletcher, Stella, and Christine Shaw, eds. The World of Savonarola: Italian Elites and Perceptions of Crisis. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2000. Anthology of essays presented at a conference in Warwick to mark the five hundredth anniversary of Savonarola’s death. Contains sections on Savonarola and Florence, the crisis of the church at the end of the fifteenth century, Italian states and their elites, and the cultural changes following Savonarola’s execution. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Kottman, Karl A., ed. Catholic Millenarianism: From Savonarola to the Abbé Grégoire. Vol. 2 in Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture. Boston: Kluwer, 2001. Discusses Savonarola’s contributions to Millenarianism and to messianic thought. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Lucas, Herbert. Fra Girolamo Savonarola. 2d rev. ed. St. Louis, Mo.: B. Herder, 1906. An account of Savonarola’s life, copious but rather dry, in which special attention is paid by its Jesuit author to points of theology and canon law. The author takes great pains to present a balanced view of both Savonarola and his enemies. Contains an index.

Macey, Patrick. Bonfire Songs: Savonarola’s Musical Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Detailed study of the underground sacred music (laude) composed by Savonarola as an alternative to what he saw as the elitist tradition of the formal motet. This is followed by an analysis of the many musical compositions created by others after Savonarola’s death to provide backgrounds for his meditations on Psalms 30 and 50. Includes a compact disc with more than seventy-five minutes of music, illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Popkin, Richard. The History of Skepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle. Rev. and expanded ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Analyzes Savonarola’s thought and his relationship to the skeptical tradition. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Ridolfi, Roberto. The Life of Girolamo Savonarola. Translated by Cecil Grayson. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959. Probably the best general biography of Savonarola, written with grace and scope, and an account that strives for balance. The author has a wide, cultured grasp of the Florentine spirit and Florentine history.

Rowdon, Maurice. Lorenzo the Magnificent. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1974. A heavily illustrated look at the Florence of Lorenzo, which includes material on Savonarola’s career. His earlier life as a prophet and reformer of influence in the days of Lorenzo is fairly well covered, but his three-year period of rule is cursorily dismissed. Offers a sound introduction to the period. An index is provided, as well as a bibliography for further study, a list of illustrations, and maps, paintings, and photographs.

Savonarola, Girolamo. A Guide to Righteous Living, and Other Works. Translated by Konrad Eisenbichler. Toronto, Canada: Centre for Restoration and Renaissance Studies, 2003. Collection of a broad range of Savonarola’s writings, designed to provide an introduction to his thought and work. Includes sermons, poetry, pastoral works, and correspondence. Illustrated, with bibliographic references and index.

Villari, Pasquale. Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola. Translated by Linda Villari. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888. This is the commonly cited authoritative biography before the Ridolfi work. A copious treatment but outdated. A sort of apology for Savonarola, and the classic account of his life, heroicizing it in opposition to the wickedness of the times. A thorough index is provided.

Weinstein, Donald. “The Prophet as Physician of Souls: Savonarola’s Manual for Confessors.” In Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence, edited by William J. Connell. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Discussion of Savonarola’s understanding of confession and his theoretical and practical influence on other theologians. Includes bibliographic references and index.