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BOOK REVIEW
Martinez, Lauro. Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence. Oxford University Press, 2007.
If you think the political climate is a little bit nuts these days, just check out late 15th century Florence with its power struggles, secret societies, inquisitions, and torture. Then add to the mix a little Dominican friar from Ferrara who claimed to be a prophet, told the city’s citizens to burn their valuables in a bonfire, and (spoiler alert) ended up getting burned himself! I guess 21st century America ain’t so bad after all.
Lauro Martines, former professor of European History at UCLA, has written this wonderful history of Girolamo Savonarola, which reads like a novel you can’t put down. Martines begins with the serpentine labyrinth of factions and government councils that made up perhaps the most democratic system of government in the world at the time. But the Florentines had a bigger problem than bureaucracy, one that would plague them for centuries, and that was the Medici family. But the city was enjoying a respite: the family had been expelled from the city and the Great Council (now representing the populo, the city’s middle-class citizens) was restored to its proper place in the government.
And yet shortly after the Medici’s demise, Florence had even a bigger problem: an advancing French army. Savonarola’s role in negotiating a settlement with Charles VIII saved the city from destruction and solidified his position as the Florence’s kingmaker. An energetic advocate of the Great Council, he worked through intermediaries to defend the newly restored republican form of government. He also leveraged the power of the printing press: publishing his letters, sermons, and doctrinal works in Latin (and at times, perhaps more importantly for its impact on the populace, in Italian). He was the most published Italian author of the late 15th century.
In the decades before, Savonarola had made a name for himself as an A-list preacher who was invited to preside in many of the great cities of Italy. Lorenzo the Magnificent, still in power, was convinced by a friend to invite the friar to move to Florence permanently. Preaching first at his Dominican church of San Marco during Advent 1490, he was then invited the following year to preach at the city’s famous Duomo. Savonarola used these sermons as an opportunity to rail against the corruptions of the church: pluralism, simony, concubinage, and even sodomy. Martines describes the engaging style that the friar used, often entertaining, and then refuting an imaginary opponent’s accusations. For instance, in one sermon he counseled, “Do what I’ve said. Carry out the reform of morals or Christ will do it for you.” The imaginary opponent replies, “O friar, are you supposed to command us?” Savonarola responds, “No I am not here to command you, but Christ is king of this city, and I am his ambassador.” If this were the extent of his messages, one might commend him on his wit and the power of his persuasion. But sadly, Savonarola went even further, claiming that he was indeed a prophet: “Christ speaks through my mouth,” he asserted.
But where Savonarola succeeded, at least for time, was in cleaning up public morals. He reorganized of the city’s confraternities for boys, organizing them under the four municipal districts and then allotting them a major role in turning Florence into a city of God. Part of this effort involved changing the festival of Carnival into a Christian celebration. During the week before Ash Wednesday, the boys went door to door asking residents for “vanities,” such as playing cards, cosmetics, or dirty books that would then be thrown upon the bonfire during the festivities.
Surprisingly, all these efforts only raised Savonarola’s popularity, and Machiavelli, who lived in the city during these years, later wrote that most of city did indeed believe that he was a prophet. And yet as Savonarola’s disciples multiplied, so did his detractors, which including perhaps the most corrupt pope of all time, Alexander VI. A member of the notorious Borgia family, Alexander was rumored to have assassinated the bishop of Cefalù in 1484, and he openly recognized his mistresses and illegitimate children at the papal palace.
The pope had a number of beefs with the friar. First, he was disappointed that Savonarolan Florence would not align itself with other Italian states in the Holy League fighting against the hegemony of France. Secondly, he sought to reorganize the Dominican houses, a program that would place San Marco under Roman control, a move Savonarola and his friars vehemently opposed. And thirdly, and perhaps most legitimately, the pope was concerned with Savonarola’s claim that God actually spoke to him, and he ordered him to stop preaching. The friar’s disobedience resulted in his excommunication on May 13, 1497.
Think all this sounds a little chaotic? Well, just wait because guess who’s at the city gate – its Piero de’ Medici, and he’s brought an army! But due to torrential rains and mixed signals with his conspirators inside the walls, the coup fails, and he must retreat back to Siena.
Now things calm down slightly when Savonarola briefly obeys the pope’s order to cease preaching, but by January of 1498 he is back in the Duomo flinging thinly veiled attacks against the pope and his local detractors. By early March, the Signory, Florence’s nine-member governing cabinet, feeling the pinch of the excommunication and a threatened papal interdict (which could have ended Florentine foreign commerce), moves him back to San Marco, and on March 17th, they silence him altogether. Perhaps thinking he had nothing to lose, Savonarola makes things worse by writing a letter to the pope warning him about the eternal destiny of his soul.
But the event which finally broke the camel’s back came at the hands of his Franciscan opponents. The Franciscan friar, Francesco da Puglia, challenged anyone who claimed that Savonarola’s excommunication was invalid to be tested by fire. He proposed that he and his opponent both enter a raging fire, believing that the one telling the truth might be saved through a miracle of God. One of Savonarola’s top assistants, Fr. Buonvicini de Pescia, took up the challenge, and a platform was erected in the governmental square, readied with wood anointed with oil, pitch, and gunpowder to ensure a formidable inferno. But de Pescia planned to bring a monstrance with the sacrament in it to protect himself as he entered the fire. The Franciscans protested, saying the Dominicans were blaspheming the very body and blood of Christ. A theological debate ensued, but ultimately the Franciscans didn’t even show up for the challenge. Everyone was sent home, but the Franciscans had won the battle: turning popular opinion against Savonarola because of the blasphemy accusation and out of a feeling that Savonarola had somehow deceived them about his being a prophet. The situation devolved into an all-out siege of San Marco, but the friars were ready for the mob. Armed with enough weapons and gunpowder to repel a limited attack, they fought bravely. But in the end, the crowd prevailed, and Savonarola was arrested. In his inquisition trial, the friar was tortured using a “drop and jerk” technique, where his arms were pulled behind his back and he was then lifted up by his wrists - a maneuver which resulted in excruciating pain and often would jerk a shoulder out of joint. In this state a forced confession was extracted, rendering the inquisition minutes almost completely useless for historical use today. Finally, on May 22nd, Savonarola, along with two other Dominican friars, was hung in the governmental square. Their bodies were then burned, and their ashes were poured into the Arno so that no relics would be left for the faithful to venerate.
So ends the life of this controversial champion of the kingdom of God and the power of the populo. And despite the fact that Martines’ detailed descriptions of political machinations were a little confusing at times, he has, without a doubt, fashioned a fast-paced and historically accurate narrative of the four years in which Savonarola “ruled” Florence.
But since the theme of this edition of SIMUL is “Pre-Reformation Theologians,” we must ask the question: how does Savonarola’s “reformation” compare with those of the 16th Reformers?
Well, let’s start with theology. First and foremost, Savonarola was not seeking changes in Christian doctrine. Unlike the 16th century reformers, he was not concerned with hot-button topics such as justification, holy orders, or ecclesiology, nor did he seek to change the accepted interpretation of the Bible. Indeed, he was quite comfortable living in a theological world that emphasized penance and purgatory. So, while Savonarola could be accurately described as being disobedient to Church authority, and might even be accused of being a schismatic, it is also clear that he was no heretic.
But like the later reformers, he was concerned with the decline of morals, the ubiquitous church corruptions, and the decadent papacy that was tearing at the heart of the faith. Savonarola believed that changing Florence into a city of God required cleansing the souls of its citizens. In his preaching and in the efforts of his army of young people, Savonarola urged every Florentine to search his or her own heart, root out its pride and avarice, to then toss its dross on a holy bonfire. And then like his Lutheran and Reformed successors, he sought to eliminate the simony and the plurality of benefices that plagued the body of Christ. He, like those a half century later, would use the printing press to his advantage, and would seek the assistance of secular government in advancing his reforms, calling repeatedly for a universal council which would finally reform the Church.
Rev. Dr. Dennis R. Di Mauro serves as Pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church (NALC) in Warrenton, VA, and is the editor of SIMUL.
