he could afterwards but die. This last step was the convening of a general council.[1] Accordingly he addressed letters to all the European potentates. One of these, inscribed to Charles VIII., was dispatched, intercepted, and conveyed to Alexander. He wrote also to the Pope and warned him of his purpose. The termination of that epistle is noteworthy: 'I can thus have no longer any hope in your Holiness, but must turn to Christ alone, who chooses the weak of this world to confound the strong lions among the perverse generations. He will assist me to prove and sustain, in the face of the world, the holiness of the work for the sake of which I so greatly suffer: and He will inflict a just punishment on those who persecute me and would impede its progress. As for myself, I seek no earthly glory, but long eagerly for death. May your Holiness no longer delay but look to your salvation.'
[1] This scheme was by no means utterly unpractical. The Borgia had only just escaped deposition in 1495 by the gift of a Cardinal's hat to the Bishop of S. Malo. He was hated no less than feared through the length and breadth of Italy. But Savonarola had allowed the favorable moment to pass by.
But while girding on his armor for this singlehanded combat with the Primate of Christendom and the Princes of Italy, the martyrdom to which Savonarola now looked forward fell upon him. Growing yearly more confident in his visions and more willing to admit his supernatural powers, he had imperceptibly prepared the pit which finally ingulfed him. Often had he professed his readiness to prove his vocation by fire. Now came the moment when this defiance to an ordeal was answered.[1] A Franciscan of Apulia offered to meet him in the flames and see whether he were of God or not. Fra Domenico, Savonarola's devoted friend, took up the gauntlet and proposed himself as champion. The furnace was prepared: both monks stood ready to enter it: all Florence was assembled in the Piazza to witness what should happen. Various obstacles, however, arose; and after waiting a whole day for the friar's triumph, the people had to retire to their homes under a pelting shower of rain, unsatisfied, and with a dreary sense that after all their prophet was but a mere man. The Compagnacci got the upper hand. S. Mark's convent was besieged. Savonarola was led to prison, never to issue till the day of his execution by the rope and faggot. We may draw a veil over those last weeks. Little indeed is known about them, except that in his cell the Friar composed his meditations on the the 31st and 51st Psalms, the latter of which was published in Germany with a preface by Luther in 1573. Of the rest we hear only of prolonged torture before stupid and malignant judges, of falsified evidence and of contradictory confessions. What he really said and chose to stand by, what he retracted, what he shrieked out in the delirium of the rack, and what was falsely imputed to him, no one now can settle.[2] Though the spirit was strong, the flesh was weak; he had the will but not the nerve to be a martyr. At ten o'clock on the 23d of May 1498 he was led forth together with brother Salvestro, the confidant of his visions, and brother Domenico, his champion in the affair of the ordeal, to a stage prepared in the Piazza.[3] These two men were hanged first. Savonarola was left till the last. As the hangman tied the rope round his neck, a voice from the crowd shouted: 'Prophet, now is the time to perform a miracle!' The Bishop of Vasona, who conducted the execution, stripped his friar's frock from him, and said, 'I separate thee from the Church militant and triumphant.' Savonarola, firm and combative even at the point of death, replied, 'Militant yes: triumphant, no: that is not yours.' The last words he uttered were, 'The Lord has suffered as much for me.' Then the noose was tightened round his neck. The fire beneath was lighted. The flames did not reach his body while life was in it; but those who gazed intently thought they saw the right hand give the sign of benediction. A little child afterwards saw his heart still whole among the ashes cast into the Arno; and almost to this day flowers have been placed every morning of the 23d of May upon the slab of the Piazza where his body fell.
[1] There seems to be no doubt that this Ordeal by Fire was finally got up by the Compagnacci with the sanction of the Signory, who were anxious to relieve themselves by any means of Savonarola. The Franciscan chosen to enter the flames together with Fra Domenico was a certain Giuliano Rondinelli. Nardi calls him Andrea Rondinelli.
[2] Nardi, lib. ii. vol. i. p. 128, treats the whole matter of Savonarola's confessions under torture with good sense. He says: 'Avendo domandato il frate quello che diceva e affermava delle sue esamine fatte infino a quel di, rispose, che ciò ch' egli aveva ne' tempi passati detto e predetto era la pura verita, e che quello di che s'era ridetto e aveva ritratto, era tutto falso e era seguito per il dolor grande e per la paura che egli aveva de' tormenti, e che di nuovo si ridirebbe e ritratterebbe tante volte, quante ci fusse di nuovo tormentato, perciò che si conosceva molto debole e inconstante nel sopportare i supplicii.' Burchard, in his Diary, reports the childish, foul, malignant gossip current in Rome. This may be read in the 'Preuves et Observations' appended to the Memoirs of De Comines, vol. v. p. 512. See the Marchese Gino Capponi's Storia della Firenze (tom. ii. pp. 248–51) for a critical analysis of the depositions falsely ascribed to Savonarola.
[3] There is a curious old picture in the Pinacoteca of Perugia which represents the burning of the three friars. The whole Piazza della Signoria is shown, with the houses of the fifteenth century, and without the statues which afterwards adorned it. The spectator fronts the Palazzo, and has to his extreme right the Loggia de' Lanzi. The center of the square is occupied by a great circular pile of billets and fagots, to which a wooden bridge of scaffolding leads from the left angle of the Polazzo. From the middle of the pile rises a pole, to which the bodies of the friars in their white clothes are suspended. Sta Maria del Fiore, the Badia tower, and the distant hills above Fiesole complete a scene which is no doubt accurate in detail.
Thus died Savonarola: and immediately he became a saint. His sermons and other works were universally distributed. Medals in his honor were struck. Raphael painted him among the Doctors of the Church in the Camera della Segnatura of the Vatican. The Church, with strange inconsistency, proposed to canonize the man whom she had burned as a contumacious heretic and a corrupter of the people. This canonization never took place: but many Dominican Churches used a special office with his name and in his honor.[1] A legend similar to that of S. Francis in its wealth of mythical details embalmed the memory of even the smallest details of his life. But, above all, he lived in the hearts of the Florentines. For many years to come his name was the watchword of their freedom; his prophecies sustained their spirit during the siege of 1528;[2] and it was only by returning to his policy that Niccolo Capponi and Francesco Carducci ruled the people through those troublous times. The political action of Savonarola forms but a short episode in the history of Florence. His moral revival belongs to the history of popular enthusiasm. His philosophical and theological writings are chiefly interesting to the student of post-medæival scholasticism. His attitude as a monastic leader of the populace, attempting to play the old game whereby the factious warfare of a previous age had been suspended by appeals to piety, and politicians had looked for aid outside the nation, was anachronistic. But his prophecy, his insight into the coming of a new era for the Church and for Italy, is a main fact in the psychology of the Renaissance.
[1] Officio del Savonarola, with preface by Cesare Guasti. Firenze, 1863.
[2] Guicciardini, in his Ricordt, No. i., refers the incredible obstinacy of the Florentines at this period in hoping against all hope and reason to Savonarola: 'questa ostinazione ha causata in gran parte a fede di non potere perire, secondo le predicazioni di Fra Jeronirno da Ferrara.'