The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [50]
In Florence, beginning in 1490, the frenzied preaching of a Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, prior of San Marco, was a voice of religious distress which Alexander managed to ignore for seven years while it took control of an entire city and aroused echoes throughout Italy. Savonarola was not so much a forerunner of Luther as the type of zealot and scourge of sin that can arise in any disturbed time and sway mobs by his fanaticism. He represented his own time in that his impulse came from revulsion at the low estate and corruption of the Church and in his espousal of reform as necessary to reopen the way to Heaven through a purified clergy. His prophecy that reform would be followed by a period of happiness and well-being for all Christendom exerted a strong appeal. Preaching neither doctrinal reform nor separation from Rome, he poured wrath upon the sins of the people and clergy, whose source he traced to the wickedness of popes and hierarchy. His scoldings and apocalyptic prophesies, according to Pico della Mirandola, “caused such terror, alarm, sobbing and tears that everybody went about the city bewildered, more dead than alive.” His prophecy that Lorenzo the Magnificent and Innocent VIII would both die in 1492, which they shortly did, endowed him with awesome power. He inspired bonfires into which crowds with sobs and hysteria threw their luxuries and valuables, their paintings, fine garments and jewelry. He roused bands of children to scour the city for “vanities” to be burned. He called upon his followers to reform their own lives, to renounce profane festivals and games, usury and vendettas, and to restore religious observance.
It was when he castigated the Church that Savonarola’s outrage rang fiercest. “Popes and prelates speak against pride and ambition and they are plunged in it up to their ears. They preach chastity and keep mistresses.… They think only of the world and worldly things; they care nothing for souls.” They have made the Church “a house of ill-fame … a prostitute who sits upon the throne of Solomon and signals to the passers-by. Whoever can pay enters and does what he wishes, but he who wishes for good is thrown out. Thus, O prostituted Church, you have unveiled your abuse before the eyes of the entire world and your poisoned breath rises to the heavens.”
That there was some truth in this verbiage did not excite Rome, long accustomed to censorious zealots. Savonarola became politically dangerous, however, when he hailed Charles VIII as the instrument of reform sent by the Lord, “as I have long predicted,” to cure the ills of Italy and reform the Church. Championship of the French was his fatal move, for it made him a threat to the new rulers of Florence and brought him unpleasantly to the notice of the Pope. The former demanded his suppression, but Alexander, anxious to avoid a popular outcry, took action only when Savonarola’s denunciations of himself and the hierarchy became too pointed to ignore, most especially when Savonarola called for a Council to remove the Pope on grounds of simony.
At first, Alexander attempted to silence Savonarola quietly by simply forbidding him to preach, but prophets filled with the voice of God are not easily silenced. Savonarola defied the order on the ground that Alexander, by his crimes, had lost his authority as Holy Father and “is no longer a Christian. He is an infidel, a heretic and as such has ceased to be Pope.” Alexander’s answer was excommunication, which Savonarola promptly defied by giving communion and celebrating Mass. Alexander then ordered the Florentine authorities to silence the preacher themselves under pain of excommunicating the whole city. Public sentiment had by now turned against Savonarola owing to a test by fire into which he was drawn by his enemies and could not sustain. Imprisoned by the authorities of Florence and tortured to extract a confession of fraud, tortured again by papal examiners for a confession