Girolamo Savonarola (1452

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Girolamo Savonarola (14521498)
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Girolamo Savonarola

• Girolamo Savonarola (14521498) was an Italian
  Dominican friar and preacher in Florence.
• He is best known for his prophecies of civic
  glory for Florence and calls for Christian
  renewal.

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Teachings and prophecies

• He spoke out about corruption in the Church and
  the way in which the poor were exploited.
• He prophesied the coming of another biblical
  flood and a new ruler from the north who would
  reform the Church.

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Prophecy fulfilled?

• This was seen as coming true when Charles VIII of
  France invaded Italy and threatened Florence. The
  people of Florence expelled the ruling Medici
  family and established a republic.
• In 1495 Florence refused to join Pope Alexander
  VIs Holy League against the French and
  Savonarola was summoned to Rome.

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Torture and death

• Savonarola was tortured and admitted that he had
  invented his visions and prophecies.
• On 23 May 1498, he and his two lieutenants were
  condemned, hanged and burned in the main square
  of Florence.
• Their ashes were thrown in the River Arno so that
  people could not take them as relics.

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Piagnoni

• His followers, the Piagnoni, kept his cause of
  republican freedom and religious reform alive
  into the next century, although the Medici broke
  the movement when they were returned to power.

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The Prince

• Of Savonarola, Machiavelli wrote
• If Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been
  unarmed they could not have enforced their
  constitutions for long as happened in our time
  to Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with
  his new order of things immediately the multitude
  believed in him no longer, and he had no means of
  keeping steadfast those who believed or of making
  the unbelievers to believe.

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Other perspectives

• Martin Luther praised Savonarola as a martyr.
• In France he came to be regarded as a precursor
  of the Huguenot reform.
• In the Dominican Order Savonarola was presented
  as a harmless devotional figure the evolving
  image of a Counter-Reformation saintly prelate
  (Lorenzo Polizzotto, The Elect Nation, p. 443)
• The present-day Roman Catholic Church has
  considered his beatification.