In

his subtle distinctions and ingenious or artful excuses. truth, he had but one alternative, as a good Catholic, to submit humbly and at once, or, like Luther, to burn the bull. He abstained indeed from preaching in the churches; but under the modest and specious name of conferences, and in more familiar language, he continued at St. Mark's to keep up his disciples to their fever heat. On Christmas-day the excommunicated Savonarola publicly administered the mass, and led a solemn procession through the cloisters.

On the 1st January, in the fatal year 1498, was chosen a Signory, mainly of the partisans of Savonarola. They pressed him again to preach in public. The magistracy attended a splendid divine service at St. Mark's on the Epiphany, and received the Eucharist from the excommunicated friar. On Septuagesima Sunday he mounted the pulpit of the cathedral Santa Maria dei Fiori; he commenced his last and not least striking course of sermons on Exodus. Though his disciple, almost his rival in popularity, Domenico Buonvicini, preached at St. Lorenzo, the concourse was so great, that they were obliged to replace the seats which had been erected to accommodate his countless hearers. The Arrabbiati beat drums around the cathedral; there were regular battles with stones or worse. In these sermons he sought not to avoid the perilous question, his resistance to the Pope. It was the old argnment in the same form, or in even bolder forms:

'I lay down this axiom, there is no man that may not deceive himself. The Pope himself may err. You are mad if you say the Pope cannot err! How many wicked Popes have there been who have erred; if they have not erred, should we do as they have done we should be saved. You say that the Pope may err as man, but not as Pope. But I say the Pope may err in his processes and in his sentences. How many constitutions have Popes issued, annulled by other Popes; how many opinions of Popes are contrary to those of other Popes. He may err by false persuasions; he may err by malice, and against his conscience: we ought indeed in this case to leave the judgment to God, and charitably to suppose that he has been deceived. Can a Pope do everything? Can he order a married man to leave his wife and marry another?

He said the briefs of Alexander were so full of contradictions, that they must have been drawn by heads with but little sense. He spoke of excommunications, as launched with such recklessness that they had lost all authority. The first sermon closes magnificently. He had before protested, that if he sought absolution, for that absolution he would that God might cast him down into hell :

'I should

'I should think myself guilty of mortal sin if I should seek absolution. Our doctrine has enforced good living, and so much fervour, and such perpetual prayer, yet are we the excommunicated, they the blessed. Yet their doctrine leads to all evil doings-to waste in eating and drinking, to avarice, to concubinage, to the sale of benefices, and to many lies, and to all wickedness. Christ! on which side wilt thou be? —on that of truth or of lies? of the excommunicated or of the blessed? The answer of Christ may be expected. . . . The Lord will be with the excommunicated, the Devil with the blessed.'

He exhorts them all, even women and children, to be prepared to die for Christ.

At the carnival there were processions more gorgeous, and more lavish in their fantastic religious symbolism, their images, their banners, than ever before; there was a second auto-da-fe, it should seem, of precious things, which had escaped hitherto the inquisitorial zeal of the boy-censors. Burlamacchi names marble busts of exquisite workmanship, some ancient (it is said by others, representing Lucretia, Faustina, Cleopatra); some of the well-known beauties of the day-the lovely Bencina, Lena Morella, the handsome Bina, Maria de Lenzi. There was a Petrarch inlaid with gold, adorned with illuminations valued at fifty crowns; Boccaccios of such beauty and rarity as would drive modern bibliographists out of their surviving senses. The Signory looked on from a balcony; guards were stationed to prevent unholy thefts; as the fire soared there was a burst of chaunts, lauds, and the Te Deum, to the sound of trumpets and the clanging of bells. Then another procession; and in the Piazza di San Marco dances of wilder extravagance, friar, and clergyman, and layman of every age whirling round in fantastic reel, to the passionate and profanely-sounding hymns of Jerome Beniviene.

Rome was furious; the two first sermons upon Exodus had been laid before the Pope;* new briefs arrived threatening the most extreme measures; Florence was menaced with interdict, the Ambassador with difficulty obtained a short delay. There were sinister rumours that the new Signory would be hostile to the Piagnoni. Yet on the day of their election to their office, Savonarola outdid himself. There are briefs arrived from Rome,

* Lettera di Bonsi, Marchese, p. 167. Not only had the Pope heard that the Friar declared that he would go to hell before he would ask absolution, but that he had reproached the Pope about the death of his son.' This was no calumny of his enemies, the allusion was patent (see Marchese, Note). See also the 22nd Sermon, more furious than ever against Rome: Vanno hora in S. Pietro le meretrici, ogni prete ha la sua concubina.' He warns the Frati solemnly not to go to Rome: Vuoi tu viver bene, non andare a Roma, non star con prelati,' &c.P. 144.

is it not so? They call me the son of perdition. He whom you so call, has neither catamites nor concubines, he preaches the faith of Christ; his spiritual daughters and sons, those who listen to his doctrines, pass not their time in perpetrating such wickednesses; they confess, communicate, live godly lives. This friar would build up the Church of Christ, which you destroy. Leave me to. answer the letters from Rome: time will open the casket, one turn of the key and such infection, such filth shall arise from the city of Rome, that it will spread throughout Christendom, and corrupt the whole atmosphere.' But Savonarola thought it prudent now to withdraw into St. Mark's; there he still preached to the men during the week, to the women who would not be excluded, on Saturday. The Signory endeavoured to propitiate the Pope; they represented the wonderful effects of the preaching of Savonarola, and entreated his Holiness to mitigate his strong measures. remarkable answer of Pope Alexander is published for the first time by M. Perrens, who writes, "It is very hard in form, in substance very conciliatory.' Of its rigid impenetrable hardness: there can be no doubt; but all that is conciliatory, the faint hope held out that, after her humiliation, Florence was again to be permitted to hear her beloved preacher, sounds to us no more than diplomatic delusion addressed to a Signory in which the Pope has many voices, and hoped to induce them either to take the strong step of silencing, or still better of sending the friar to Rome.

The

At this juncture Savonarola threw away the scabbard, and boldly and resolutely appealed to Christendom, against the wicked Pope. He wrote letters to all the great sovereigns of Europe, to the Emperor, the King of France, the King and Queen of Spain, the King of England, the King of Hungary: he called upon them with the deepest solemnity to call a Council to depose a Pope who was no Pope. The words of his denunciation vary; their significance is the same. Alexander was no Pope, because he had notoriously bought the pontifical mitre by sacrilegious simony; because he was guilty of monstrous vices at which the world would shudder, and which Savonarola was prepared to prove at fit time and place; because he was no Christian, but an absolute atheist. The language of Savonarola had long bordered †

*

on,

* M. Perrens has printed the original Latin of two of these letters, which were before known only in Italian. Of their authenticity there can be no doubt; the fact of Savonarola's appeal is attested by all the best historians, Nardi and others. It is alluded to more than once in the trial.

† Scitote enim hune Alexandrum VI. minime pontificem esse, qui non potest non modo ob simoniacam sacrilegamque pontificatus usurpationem et manifesta ejus scelera; sed propter secreta facinora a nobis loco et tempore proferenda quæ universus mirabitur et ob (ex) secrabitur orbis. Ad Reg. Hisp. Affirmo ipse non

esse

on, or rather been the same with that of Wycliffe and John Huss, that a wicked priest, bishop, or pope, was no priest, bishop, or pope. The Council of Constance and the deposal of John XXIII. were still fresh in the memory of the world. Of these fatal letters one was intercepted by the Duke of Milan and transmitted to Rome.

No wonder that on the 13th March arrived at Florence a new and more furious Bull imperatively commanding the Signory to proceed to the execution of the former decrees. The same day Savonarola replied in a letter of calm yet defiant expostulation, asserting his power of prophesying the future, remonstrating at the too easy audience given by the Pope to the enemies of himself and of God; and in a brief concluding sentence, exhorting the Pope not to delay, but to look well after his own salvation. The Signory were in alarm: the Council was divided: the Piagnoni and the Arrabbiati contested every point. Was the question of the guilt or innocence of the friar to be debated in the Great Council, the Council of 80, or by chosen delegates? A commission of 12 was appointed. They entreated Savonarola, for the sake of the peace of Florence, to cease from preaching. For once Savonarola listened to the voice of prudence, but with sullen reserve. would cease at least for a time: he would cease till the Lord, no doubt he would, should compel him to preach again.' He took a tender farewell of his hearers: he closed with a kind of awful blessing: he thought not, as he descended from the pulpit, that he would never ascend it again. The Signory communicated the result of their deliberations to the Pope; and the Pope seemed to acquiesce in the silence of his redoubted adversary.

as

*

'He

It was the folly of Savonarola's disciples and not his own magnanimity or rashness which precipitated his fate. The Franciscans throughout the career of Savonarola had been his most implacable adversaries, and their own conscious inferiority as preachers was not likely to soothe their jealous hatred. It was an ancient and perpetual feud; the Dominicans of old had scoffed at the preaching and the wonders of the famous Franciscan John of Vicenza. Either from some incautious words of Savonarola himself that he would go through the fire to attest the truth of his prophetic gifts, or from some rash defiance of his followers, or from the no less blind fanaticism of incredulity in the Franciscans as to the inspiration of a Dominican friar, mutual provocations and challenges had passed,

esse Christianum qui nullum prorsus putans Deum esse, omne infidelitatis et impietatis culmen excessit. Ad Imperat., p. 486.

* Letter of the Signory to the Pope. Marchese; Doc. xxiii.

two

1

two years before, between the two Orders, thus to submit. the momentous question to the judgment of God. This was no new ordeal: there was a famous instance of such a trial in the near neighbourhood of Florence, when the great debate on the celibacy of the clergy was actually submitted to the ordeal of fire, and the monks of Vallombrosa triumphed over the gentle and holy archbishop of Florence.* It is said that Savonarola proposed other miraculous tests, that the two parties should ascend some height, each with the Host in his hands, and implore the Almighty with fervent prayer to send down fire, as in the days of Elijah, to burn up his adversaries: that they should meet, and whichever should raise a dead body, should be held worthy of all belief. To this it is added that Pico of Mirandola had such faith in his adored Savonarola, that he entreated that, for the benefit of letters as well as of the true faith, the dead man raised to life might be his famous uncle, Pico of Mirandola. The Franciscans, it might seem, shrunk from these tests; but one of them, Fra Francesco di Puglia, who was preaching in the church of Santa Croce, was either maddened by his ill-success, or goaded by the Arrabbiati to accept the challenge of passing through the fire. The challenge was eagerly accepted by Buonvicino as the champion of St. Mark's and of Savonarola.

We cannot enter into the long dispute as to the acceptance, and the terms of this challenge to the ordeal of fire; nor into the seeming vacillations, almost the tergiversations of Savonarola, who manifestly saw its folly, though we doubt if he had much sense of its presumptuous impiety. The difficulty on both sides was, not who should, but who should not, share this glorious peril. The pride of either Order was at stake; the long-cherished, sometimes mitigated, yet ever out-flaming jealousy of Franciscanism and Dominicanism was at its height. Savonarola himself declined the perilous appeal to heaven: the original challenger, Fra Francesco, would not deign to confront an humbler adversary. The championship devolved on Fra Dominico Buonvicini, and a Franciscan convert, Giuliano di Rondinelli. Buonvicini vowed to maintain, by the trial of fire, these propositions of his master :1. The Church of God must needs be reformed. 2. It shall be scourged (flagellato). 3. It will be reformed. 4. After these visitations, Florence, like the church, will revive to great prosperity. 5. The infidels will be converted to Christianity. 6. These things will take place in our days. 7. The Papal excommunication of Savonarola is null and void. 8. Those who do not re

* See quotation in Perrens, p. 326. Milman's Latin Christianity,' iii.

p. 91.

VOL. XCIX. NO. CXCVII.

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