"IN THE SCULPTOR'S WORKSHOP" (Nanni di Banco)"IN THE SCULPTOR'S WORKSHOP"By Nanni di Banco(For the Guild of Masters in Stone and Timber)View larger image
"IN THE SCULPTOR'S WORKSHOP"By Nanni di Banco(For the Guild of Masters in Stone and Timber)
With the work of the individual artists we shall become better acquainted in subsequent chapters. Here we can merely name their leaders. In architecture and sculpture respectively, Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and Donatello (1386-1466) are the ruling spirits of the age. Their mutual friendship and brotherly rivalry almost recall the loves of Dante and Cavalcanti in an earlier day. Although Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) justly won the competition for the second gates of the Baptistery, it is now thought that Filippo ran his successful rival much more closely than the critics of an earlier day supposed. Mr Perkins remarks that "indirectly Brunelleschi was the master of all the great painters and sculptors of his time, for he taught them how to apply science to art, and so far both Ghiberti and Donatello were his pupils, but the last was almost literally so, since the great architect was not only his friend, but also his counsellor and guide." Contemporaneous with these threespiriti magniin their earlier works, and even to some extent anticipating them, is Nanni di Banco (died in 1421), a most excellent master, both in large monumental statues and in bas-reliefs, whose works are to be seen and loved outside and inside the Duomo, and in the niches round San Michele in Orto. A pleasant friendship united him with Donatello, although to regard him as that supreme master's pupil andfollower, as Vasari does, is an anachronism. To this same earlier portion of the Quattrocento belong Leo Battista Alberti (1405-1472), a rare genius, but a wandering stone who, as an architect, accomplished comparatively little; Michelozzo Michelozzi (1396-1472), who worked as a sculptor with Ghiberti and Donatello, but is best known as the favoured architect of the Medici, for whom he built the palace so often mentioned in these pages, and now known as the Palazzo Riccardi, and the convent of San Marco; and Luca della Robbia (1399-1482), that beloved master of marble music, whose enamelled terra-cotta Madonnas are a perpetual fund of the purest delight. To Michelozzo and Luca in collaboration we owe the bronze gates of the Duomo sacristy, a work only inferior to Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise."
Slightly later come Donatello's great pupils, Desiderio da Settignano (1428-1464), Andrea Verrocchio (1435-1488), and Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429-1498). The two latter are almost equally famous as painters. Contemporaneous with them are Mino da Fiesole, Bernardo and Antonio Rossellino, Giuliano da San Gallo, Giuliano and Benedetto da Maiano, of whom the last-named was the first architect of the Strozzi Palace. The last great architect of the Quattrocento is Simone del Pollaiuolo, known as Cronaca (1457-1508); and its last great sculptor is Andrea della Robbia, Luca's nephew, who was born in 1435, and lived on until 1525. Andrea's best works–and they are very numerous indeed, in the same enamelled terra-cotta–hardly yield in charm and fascination to those of Luca himself; in some of them, devotional art seems to reach its last perfection in sculpture. Giovanni, Andrea's son, and others of the family carried on the tradition–with cruder colours and less delicate feeling.
Masaccio (1401-1428), one of "the inheritors ofunfulfilled renown," is the first great painter of the Renaissance, and bears much the same relation to the fifteenth as Giotto to the fourteenth century. Vasari's statement that Masaccio's master, Masolino, was Ghiberti's assistant appears to be incorrect; but it illustrates the dependence of the painting of this epoch upon sculpture. Masaccio's frescoes in the Carmine, which became the school of all Italian painting, were entirely executed before the Medicean regime. The Dominican, Fra Angelico da Fiesole (1387-1455), seems in his San Marco frescoes to bring the denizens of the Empyrean, of which the mediæval mystics dreamed, down to earth to dwell among the black and white robed children of St Dominic. The Carmelite, Fra Lippo Lippi (1406-1469), the favourite of Cosimo, inferior to the angelical painter in spiritual insight, had a keener eye for the beauty of the external world and a surer touch upon reality. His buoyant humour and excellent colouring make "the glad monk's gift" one of the most acceptable that the Quattrocento has to offer us. Andrea del Castagno (died in 1457) and Domenico Veneziano (died in 1461), together with Paolo Uccello (died in 1475), were all absorbed in scientific researches with an eye to the extension of the resources of their art; but the two former found time to paint a few masterpieces in their kind–especially a Cenacolo by Andrea in Santa Appollonia, which is the grandest representation of its sublime theme, until the time that Leonardo da Vinci painted on the walls of the Dominican convent at Milan. Problems of the anatomical construction of the human frame and the rendering of movement occupied Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429-1498) and Andrea Verrocchio (1435-1488); their work was taken up and completed a little later by two greater men, Luca Signorelli of Cortona and Leonardo daVinci.
The Florentine painting of this epoch culminates in the work of two men–Sandro di Mariano Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli (1447-1510), and Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494). If the greatest pictures were painted poems, as some have held, then Sandro Botticelli's masterpieces would be among the greatest of all time. In his rendering of religious themes, in his intensely poetic and strangely wistful attitude towards the fair myths of antiquity, and in his Neo-Platonic mingling of the two, he is the most complete and typical exponent of the finest spirit of the Quattrocento, to which, in spite of the date of his death, his art entirely belongs. Domenico's function, on the other hand, is to translate the external pomp and circumstance of his times into the most uninspired of painted prose, but with enormous technical skill and with considerable power of portraiture; this he effected above all in his ostensibly religious frescoes in Santa Maria Novella and Santa Trinità. Elsewhere he shows a certain pathetic sympathy with humbler life, as in his Santa Fina frescoes at San Gemignano, and in the admirable Adoration of the Shepherds in the Accademia; but this is a less characteristic vein. Filippino Lippi (1457-1504), the son of the Carmelite and the pupil of Botticelli, has a certain wayward charm, especially in his earlier works, but as a rule falls much below his master. He may be regarded as the last direct inheritor of the traditions of Masaccio. Associated with these are two lesser men, who lived considerably beyond the limits of the fifteenth century, but whose artistic methods never went past it; Piero di Cosimo (1462-1521) and Lorenzo di Credi (1459-1537). The former (called after Cosimo Rosselli, his master) was one of the most piquant personalities in the art world of Florence, as all readers ofRomolaknow. As a painter, he has been very much overestimated; at his best, he is a sort of Botticelli, with the Botticellian grace and the Botticellian poetry almost all left out. He was magnificent at designing pageants; and of one of his exploits in this kind, we shall hear more presently. Lorenzo di Credi, Verrocchio's favourite pupil, was later, like Botticelli and others, to fall under the spell of Fra Girolamo; his pictures breathe a true religious sentiment and are very carefully finished; but for the most part, though there are exceptions, they lack virility.
Before this epoch closed, the two greatest heroes of Florentine art had appeared upon the scenes, but their great work lay still in the future. Leonardo da Vinci (born in 1452) had learned to paint in the school of Verrocchio; but painting was to occupy but a small portion of his time and labour. His mind roamed freely over every field of human activity, and plunged deeply into every sphere of human thought; nor is he adequately represented even by the greatest of the pictures that he has left. There is nothing of him now in Florence, save a few drawings in the Uffizi and an unfinished picture of the Epiphany. Leonardo finished little, and, with that little, time and man have dealt hardly. Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in the Casentino in 1475, and nurtured among the stone quarries of Settignano. At the age of thirteen, his father apprenticed him to the Ghirlandaii, Domenico and his brother David; and, with his friend and fellow-student, Francesco Granacci, the boy began to frequent the gardens of the Medici, near San Marco, where in the midst of a rich collection of antiquities Donatello's pupil and successor, Bertoldo, directed a kind of Academy. Here Michelangelo attracted the attention of Lorenzo himself, by the head of an old satyr which he had hammered out of a piece of marble that fell to hishand; and the Magnifico took him into his household. This youthful period in the great master's career was occupied in drinking in culture from the Medicean circle, in studying the antique and, of the moderns, especially the works of Donatello and Masaccio. But, with the exception of a few early fragments from his hand, Michelangelo's work commenced with his first visit to Rome, in 1496, and belongs to the following epoch.
Turning from art to letters, the Quattrocento is an intermediate period between the mainly Tuscan literary movement of the fourteenth century and the general Italian literature of the sixteenth. The first part of this century is the time of the discovery of the old authors, of the copying of manuscripts (printing was not introduced into Florence until 1471), of the eager search for classical relics and antiquities, the comparative neglect of Italian when Latinity became the test of all. Florence was the centre of the Humanism of the Renaissance, the revival of Grecian culture, the blending of Christianity and Paganism, the aping of antiquity in theory and in practice. In the pages of Vespasiano we are given a series of lifelike portraits of the scholars of this epoch, who thronged to Florence, served the State as Secretary of the Republic or occupied chairs in her newly reorganised university, or basked in the sun of Strozzian or Medicean patronage. Niccolò Niccoli, who died in 1437, is one of the most typical of these scholars; an ardent collector of ancient manuscripts, his library, purchased after his death by Cosimo dei Medici, forms the nucleus of the Biblioteca Laurenziana. His house was adorned with all that was held most choice and precious; he always wore long sweeping red robes, and had his table covered with ancient vases and precious Greek cups and the like. In fact he played the ancient sage tosuch perfection that simply to watch him eat his dinner was a liberal education in itself!A vederlo in tavola, così antico come era, era una gentilezza.
Vespasiano tells a delightful yarn of how one fine day this Niccolò Niccoli, "who was another Socrates or another Cato for continence and virtue," was taking a constitutional round the Palazzo del Podestà, when he chanced to espy a youth of most comely aspect, one who was entirely devoted to worldly pleasures and delights, young Piero Pazzi. Calling him and learning his name, Niccolò proceeded to question him as to his profession. "Having a high old time," answered the ingenuous youth:attendo a darmi buon tempo. "Being thy father's son and so handsome," said the Sage severely, "it is a shame that thou dost not set thyself to learn the Latin language, which would be a great ornament to thee; and if thou dost not learn it, thou wilt be esteemed of no account; yea, when the flower of thy youth is past, thou shalt find thyself without anyvirtù." Messer Piero was converted on the spot; Niccolò straightway found him a master and provided him with books; and the pleasure-loving youth became a scholar and a patron of scholars. Vespasiano assures us that, if he had lived,lo inconveniente che seguitò–so he euphoniously terms the Pazzi conspiracy–would never have happened.
Leonardo Bruni is the nearest approach to a really great figure in the Florentine literary world of the first half of the century. His translations of Plato and Aristotle, especially the former, mark an epoch. His Latin history of Florence shows genuine critical insight; but he is, perhaps, best known at the present day by his little Life of Dante in Italian, a charming and valuable sketch, which has preserved for us some fragments of Dantesque letters and several bits of really precious information about the divine poet,which seem to be authentic and which we do not find elsewhere. Leonardo appears to have undertaken it as a kind of holiday task, for recreation after the work of composing his more ponderous history. As Secretary of the Republic he exercised considerable political influence; his fame was so great that people came to Florence only to look at him; on his death in 1444, he was solemnly crowned on the bier as poet laureate, and buried in Santa Croce with stately pomp and applauded funeral orations. Leonardo's successors, Carlo Marsuppini (like him, an Aretine by birth) and Poggio Bracciolini–the one noted for his frank paganism, the other for the foulness of his literary invective–are less attractive figures; though the latter was no less famous and influential in his day. Giannozzo Manetti, who pronounced Bruni's funeral oration, was noted for his eloquence and incorruptibility, and stands out prominently amidst the scholars and humanists by virtue of his nobleness of character; like that other hero of the new learning, Palla Strozzi, he was driven into exile and persecuted by the Mediceans.
Far more interesting are the men of light and learning who gathered round Lorenzo dei Medici in the latter half of the century. This is the epoch of the Platonic Academy, which Marsilio Ficino had founded under the auspices of Cosimo. The discussions held in the convent retreat among the forests of Camaldoli, the meetings in the Badia at the foot of Fiesole, the mystical banquets celebrated in Lorenzo's villa at Careggi in honour of the anniversary of Plato's birth and death, may have added little to the sum of man's philosophic thought; but the Neo-Platonic religion of love and beauty, which was there proclaimed to the modern world, has left eternal traces in the poetic literature both of Italy and of England.Spenser and Shelley might have sat with the nine guests, whose number honoured the nine Muses, at the famous Platonic banquet at Careggi, of which Marsilio Ficino himself has left us an account in his commentary on theSymposium. You may read a later Italian echo of it, when Marsilio Ficino had passed away and his academy was a thing of the past, in the impassioned and rapturous discourse on love and beauty poured forth by Pietro Bembo, at that wonderful daybreak which ends the discussions of Urbino's courtiers in Castiglione's treatise. In a creed that could find one formula to cover both the reception of the Stigmata by St Francis and the mystical flights of the Platonic Socrates and Plotinus; that could unite the Sibyls and Diotima with the Magdalene and the Virgin Martyrs; many a perplexed Italian of that epoch might find more than temporary rest for his soul.
Simultaneously with this new Platonic movement there came a great revival of Italian literature, alike in poetry and in prose; what Carducci callsil rinascimento della vita italiana nella forma classica. The earlier humanists had scorned, or at least neglected the language of Dante; and the circle that surrounded Lorenzo was undoubtedly instrumental in this Italian reaction. Cristoforo Landini, one of the principal members of the Platonic Academy, now wrote the first Renaissance commentary upon theDivina Commedia; Leo Battista Alberti, also a leader in these Platonic disputations, defended the dignity of the Italian language, as Dante himself had done in an earlier day. Lorenzo himself compiled the so-calledRaccolta Aragoneseof early Italian lyrics, and sent them to Frederick of Aragon, together with a letter full of enthusiasm for the Tuscan tongue, and with critical remarks on the individual poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Upon the popular poetry ofTuscany Lorenzo himself, and his favourite Angelo Ambrogini of Montepulciano, better known as Poliziano, founded a new school of Italian song. Luigi Pulci, the gay scoffer and cynical sceptic, entertained the festive gatherings in the Medicean palace with his wild tales, and, in hisMorgante Maggiore, was practically the first to work up the popular legends of Orlando and the Paladins into a noteworthy poem–a poem of which Savonarola and his followers were afterwards to burn every copy that fell into their hands.
Poliziano is at once the truest classical scholar, and, with the possible exception of Boiardo (who belongs to Ferrara, and does not come within the scope of the present volume), the greatest Italian poet of the fifteenth century. He is, indeed, the last and most perfect fruit of Florentine Humanism. His father, Benedetto Ambrogini, had been murdered in Montepulciano by the faction hostile to the Medici; and the boy Angelo, coming to Florence, and studying under Ficino and his colleagues, was received into Lorenzo's household as tutor to the younger Piero. His lectures at the Studio attracted students from all Europe, and his labours in the field of textual criticism won a fame that has lasted to the present day. In Italian he wrote theOrfeoin two days for performance at Mantua, when he was eighteen, a lyrical tragedy which stamps him as the father of Italian dramatic opera; the scene of the descent of Orpheus into Hades contains lyrical passages of great melodiousness. Shortly before the Pazzi conspiracy, he composed his famousStanzein celebration of a tournament given by Giuliano dei Medici, and in honour of thebella Simonetta. There is absolutely no "fundamental brain work" about these exquisitely finished stanzas; but they are full of dainty mythological pictures quite in the Botticellian style, overladen, perhaps, with adulation of the reigninghouse and itsben nato Lauro. In his lyrics he gave artistic form to therispettiandstrambottiof the people, and wrote exceedingly musicalballate, orcanzoni a ballo, which are the best of their kind in the whole range of Italian poetry. There is, however, little genuine passion in his love poems for his lady, Madonna Ippolita Leoncina of Prato; though in all that he wrote there is, as Villari puts it, "a fineness of taste that was almost Greek."
Lorenzo dei Medici stands second to his friend as a poet; but he is a good second. His early affection for the fair Lucrezia Donati, with its inevitable sonnets and a commentary somewhat in the manner of Dante'sVita Nuova, is more fanciful than earnest, although Poliziano assures us of
"La lunga fedeltà del franco Lauro."
But Lorenzo's intense love of external nature, his power of close observation and graphic description, are more clearly shown in such poems as theCaccia col Falconeand theAmbra, written among the woods and hills in the country round his new villa of Poggio a Caiano. Elsewhere he gives free scope to the animal side of his sensual nature, and in his famousCanti carnascialeschi, songs to be sung at carnival and in masquerades, he at times revelled in pruriency, less for its own sake than for the deliberate corruption of the Florentines. And, for a time, their music drowned the impassioned voice of Savonarola, whose stern cry of warning and exhortation to repentance had for the nonce passed unheeded.
There is extant a miracle play from Lorenzo's hand, the acts of the martyrs Giovanni and Paolo, who suffered in the days of the emperor Julian. Two sides of Lorenzo's nature are ever in conflict–the Lorenzo of the ballate and the carnival songs–the Lorenzo ofthelaudeand spiritual poems, many of which have the unmistakable ring of sincerity. And, in the story of his last days and the summoning of Savonarola to his bed-side, the triumph of the man's spiritual side is seen at the end; he is, indeed, in the position of the dying Julian of his own play:–
"Fallace vita! O nostra vana cura!Lo spirto è già fuor del mio petto spinto:O Cristo Galileo, tu hai vinto."
Such was likewise the attitude of several members of the Medicean circle, when the crash came. Poliziano followed his friend and patron to the grave, in September 1494; his last hours received the consolations of religion from Savonarola's most devoted follower, Fra Domenico da Pescia (of whom more anon); after death, he was robed in the habit of St Dominic and buried in San Marco. Pico della Mirandola, too, had been present at the Magnifico's death-bed, though not there when the end actually came; he too, in 1494, received the Dominican habit in death, and was buried by Savonarola's friars in San Marco. Marsilio Ficino outlived his friends and denied Fra Girolamo; he died in 1499, and lies at rest in the Duomo.
Of all these Medicean Platonists, Pico della Mirandola is the most fascinating. A young Lombard noble of almost feminine beauty, full of the pride of having mastered all the knowledge of his day, he first came to Florence in 1480 or 1482, almost at the very moment in which Marsilio Ficino finished his translation of Plato. He became at once the chosen friend of all the choicest spirits of Lorenzo's circle. Not only classical learning, but the mysterious East and the sacred lore of the Jews had rendered up their treasures for his intellectual feast; his mysticism shot far beyond even Ficino; all knowledge and all religions were tohim a revelation of the Deity. Not only to Lorenzo and his associates did young Pico seem a phœnix of earthly and celestial wisdom,uomo quasi divinoas Machiavelli puts it; but even Savonarola in hisTriumphus Crucis, written after Pico's death, declares that, by reason of his loftiness of intellect and the sublimity of his doctrine, he should be numbered amongst the miracles of God and Nature. Pico had been much beloved of many women, and not always a Platonic lover, but, towards the close of his short flower-like life, he burnt "fyve bokes that in his youthe of wanton versis of love with other lyke fantasies he had made," and all else seemed absorbed in the vision of love Divine. "The substance that I have left," he told his nephew, "I intend to give out to poor people, and, fencing myself with the crucifix, barefoot walking about the world, in every town and castle I purpose to preach of Christ." Savonarola, to whom he had confided all the secrets of his heart, was not the only martyr who revered the memory of the man whom Lorenzo the Magnificent had loved. Thomas More translated his life and letters, and reckoned him a saint. He would die at the time of the lilies, so a lady had told Pico; and he died indeed on the very day that the golden lilies on the royal standard of France were borne into Florence through the Porta San Frediano–consoled with wondrous visions of the Queen of Heaven, and speaking as though he beheld the heavens opened.
A month or two earlier, the pen had dropped from the hand of Matteo Maria Boiardo, as he watched the French army descending the Alps; and he brought his unfinishedOrlando Innamoratoto an abrupt close, too sick at heart to sing of the vain love of Fiordespina for Brandiamante:–
"Mentre che io canto, o Dio Redentore,Vedo l'Italia tutta a fiamma e foco,Per questi Galli, che con gran valoreVengon, per disertar non so che loco."
"Whilst I sing, Oh my God, I see all Italy in flame and fire, through these Gauls, who with great valour come, to lay waste I know not what place." On this note of vague terror, in the onrush of the barbarian hosts, the Quattrocento closes.
ARMS OF THE PAZZIARMS OF THE PAZZIView larger image
ARMS OF THE PAZZI
"Vedendo lo omnipotente Dio multiplicare li peccati della Italia, maxime nelli capi così ecclesiastici come seculari, non potendo più sostenere, determinò purgare la Chiesa sua per uno gran flagello. Et perchè come è scripto in Amos propheta, Non faciet Dominus Deus verbum nisi revelaverit secretum suum ad servos suos prophetas: volse per la salute delli suoi electi acciò che inanzi al flagello si preparassino ad sofferire, che nella Italia questo flagello fussi prenuntiato. Et essendo Firenze in mezzo la Italia come il core in mezzo il corpo, s'è dignato di eleggere questa città; nella quale siano tale cose prenuntiate: acciò che per lei si sparghino negli altri luoghi."–Savonarola.
GLADIUS Domini super terram cito et velociter, "the Sword of the Lord upon the earth soon and speedily." These words rang ever in the ears of the Dominican friar who was now to eclipse the Medicean rulers of Florence. Girolamo Savonarola, the grandson of a famous Paduan physician who had settled at the court of Ferrara, had entered the order of St Dominic at Bologna in 1474, moved by the great misery of the world and the wickedness of men, and in 1481 had been sent to the convent of San Marco at Florence. The corruption of the Church, the vicious lives of her chief pastors, the growing immorality of the people, the tyranny and oppression of their rulers, had entered into his very soul–had found utterance in allegorical poetry, in an odeDe Ruina Mundi, written whilst still in the world, in another,De Ruina Ecclesiae, composed in the silence of his Bolognese cloister–that cloister which, in betterdays, had been hallowed by the presence of St Dominic and the Angelical Doctor, Thomas Aquinas. And he believed himself set by God as a watchman in the centre of Italy, to announce to the people and princes that the sword was to fall upon them: "If the sword come, and thou hast not announced it," said the spirit voice that spoke to him in the silence as the dæmon to Socrates, "and they perish unwarned, I will require their blood at thy hands and thou shalt bear the penalty."
But at first the Florentines would not hear him; the gay dancings and the wild carnival songs of their rulers drowned his voice; courtly preachers like the Augustinian of Santo Spirito, Fra Mariano da Gennazano, laid more flattering unction to their souls. Other cities were more ready; San Gemignano first heard the word of prophecy that was soon to resound beneath the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, even as, some two hundred years before, she had listened to the speech of Dante Alighieri. At the beginning of 1490, the Friar returned to Florence and San Marco; and, on Sunday, August 1st, expounding the Apocalypse in the Church of San Marco, he first set forth to the Florentines the three cardinal points of his doctrine; first, the Church was to be renovated; secondly, before this renovation, God would send a great scourge upon all Italy; thirdly, these things would come speedily. He preached the following Lent in the Duomo; and thenceforth his great work of reforming Florence, and announcing the impending judgments of God, went on its inspired way. "Go to Lorenzo dei Medici," he said to the five citizens who came to him, at the Magnifico's instigation, to urge him to let the future alone in his sermons, "and bid him do penance for his sins, for God intends to punish him and his"; and when elected Prior of San Marco in this same year, 1491, he would neitherenter Lorenzo's palace to salute the patron of the convent, nor welcome him when he walked among the friars in the garden.
Fra Girolamo was preaching the Lent in San Lorenzo, when the Magnifico died; and, a few days later, he saw a wondrous vision, as he himself tells us in theCompendium Revelationum. "In 1492," he says, "while I was preaching the Lent in San Lorenzo at Florence, I saw, on the night of Good Friday, two crosses. First, a black cross in the midst of Rome, whereof the head touched the heaven and the arms stretched forth over all the earth; and above it were written these words,Crux irae Dei. After I had beheld it, suddenly I saw the sky grow dark, and clouds fly through the air; winds, flashes of lightning and thunderbolts drove across, hail, fire and swords rained down, and slew a vast multitude of folk, so that few remained on the earth. And after this, there came a sky right calm and bright, and I saw another cross, of the same greatness as the first but of gold, rise up over Jerusalem; the which was so resplendent that it illumined all the world, and filled it all with flowers and joy; and above it was written,Crux misericordiae Dei. And I saw all generations of men and women come from all parts of the world, to adore it and embrace it."
In the following August came the simoniacal election of Roderigo Borgia to the Papacy, as Alexander VI.; and in Advent another vision appeared to the prophet in his cell, which can only be told in Fra Girolamo's own words:–
"I saw then in the year 1492, the night before the last sermon which I gave that Advent in Santa Reparata, a hand in Heaven with a sword, upon the which was written:The sword of the Lord upon the earth, soon and speedily; and over the hand was written,True and just are the judgments of the Lord.And it seemed that the arm of that hand proceeded from three faces in one light, of which the first said:The iniquity of my sanctuary crieth to me from the earth.The second replied:Therefore will I visit with a rod their iniquities, and with stripes their sins.The third said:My mercy will I not remove from it, nor will I harm it in my truth, and I will have mercy upon the poor and the needy.In like manner the first answered:My people have forgotten my commandments days without number.The second replied:Therefore will I grind and break in pieces and will not have mercy.The third said:I will be mindful of those who walk in my precepts.And straightway there came a great voice from all the three faces, over all the world, and it said:Hearken, all ye dwellers on the earth; thus saith the Lord: I, the Lord, am speaking in my holy zeal. Behold, the days shall come and I will unsheath my sword upon you. Be ye converted therefore unto me, before my fury be accomplished; for when the destruction cometh, ye shall seek peace and there shall be none.After these words it seemed to me that I saw the whole world, and that the Angels descended from Heaven to earth, arrayed in white, with a multitude of spotless stoles on their shoulders and red crosses in their hands; and they went through the world, offering to each man a white robe and a cross. Some men accepted them and robed themselves with them. Some would not accept them, although they did not impede the others who accepted them. Others would neither accept them nor permit that the others should accept them; and these were the tepid and the sapient of this world, who made mock of them and strove to persuade the contrary. After this, the hand turned the sword down towards the earth; and suddenly it seemed that all the air grew dark with clouds, and that it raineddown swords and hail with great thunder and lightning and fire; and there came upon the earth pestilence and famine and great tribulation. And I saw the Angels go through the midst of the people, and give to those who had the white robe and the cross in their hands a clear wine to drink; and they drank and said:How sweet in our mouths are thy words, O Lord.And the dregs at the bottom of the chalice they gave to drink to the others, and they would not drink; and it seemed that these would fain have been converted to penitence and could not, and they said:Wherefore dost thou forget us, Lord?And they wished to lift up their eyes and look up to God, but they could not, so weighed down were they with tribulations; for they were as though drunk, and it seemed that their hearts had left their breasts, and they went seeking the lusts of this world and found them not. And they walked like senseless beings without heart. After this was done, I heard a very great voice from those three faces, which said:Hear ye then the word of the Lord: for this have I waited for you, that I may have mercy upon you. Come ye therefore to me, for I am kind and merciful, extending mercy to all who call upon me. But if you will not, I will turn my eyes from you for ever.And it turned then to the just, and said:But rejoice, ye just, and exult, for when my short anger shall have passed, I will break the horns of sinners, and the horns of the just shall be exalted.And suddenly everything disappeared, and it was said to me:Son, if sinners had eyes, they would surely see how grievous and hard is this pestilence, and how sharp the sword."[20]
The French army, terrible beyond any that theItalians had seen, and rendered even more terrible by the universal dread that filled all men's minds at this moment, entered Italy. On September 9th, 1494, Charles VIII. arrived at Asti, where he was received by Ludovico and his court, while the Swiss sacked and massacred at Rapallo. Here was the new Cyrus whom Savonarola had foretold, the leader chosen by God to chastise Italy and reform the Church. While the vague terror throughout the land was at its height, Savonarola, on September 21st, ascended the pulpit of the Duomo, and poured forth so terrible a flood of words on the textEcce ego adducam aquas diluvii super terram, that the densely packed audience were overwhelmed in agonised panic. The bloodless mercenary conflicts of a century had reduced Italy to helplessness; the Aragonese resistance collapsed, and, sacking and slaughtering as they came, the French marched unopposed through Lunigiana upon Tuscany. Piero dei Medici, who had favoured the Aragonese in a half-hearted way, went to meet the French King, surrendered Sarzana and Pietrasanta, the fortresses which his father had won back for Florence, promised to cede Pisa and Leghorn, and made an absolute submission. "Behold," cried Savonarola, a few days later, "the sword has descended, the scourge has fallen, the prophecies are being fulfilled; behold, it is the Lord who is leading on these armies." And he bade the citizens fast and pray throughout the city: it was for the sins of Italy and of Florence that these things had happened; for the corruption of the Church, this tempest had arisen.
It was the republican hero, Piero Capponi, who now gave utterance to the voice of the people. "Piero dei Medici," he said in the Council of the Seventy called by the Signoria on November 4th, "is no longer fit to rule the State: the Republic must provide foritself: the moment has come to shake off this baby government." They prepared for defence, but at the same time sent ambassadors to the "most Christian King," and amongst these ambassadors was Savonarola. In the meantime Piero dei Medici returned to Florence to find his government at an end; the Signoria refused him admittance into the palace; the people assailed him in the Piazza. He made a vain attempt to regain the State by arms, but the despairing shouts ofPalle, Palle,which his adherents and mercenaries raised, were drowned in the cries ofPopolo e Libertà, as the citizens, as in the old days of the Republic, heard the great bell of the Palace tolling and saw the burghers once more in arms. On the 9th of November Piero and Giuliano fled through the Porta di San Gallo; the Cardinal Giovanni, who had shown more courage and resource, soon followed, disguised as a friar. There was some pillage done, but little bloodshed. The same day Pisa received the French troops, and shook off the Florentine yoke–an example shortly followed by other Tuscan cities. Florence had regained her liberty, but lost her empire. But the King had listened to the words of Savonarola–words preserved to us by the Friar himself in hisCompendium Revelationum–who had hailed him as the Minister of Christ, but warned him sternly and fearlessly that, if he abused his power over Florence, the strength which God had given him would be shattered.
On November 17th Charles, clad in black velvet with mantle of gold brocade and splendidly mounted, rode into Florence, as though into a conquered city, with lance levelled, through the Porta di San Frediano. With him was that priestly Mars, the terrible Cardinal della Rovere (afterwards Julius II.), now bent upon the deposition of Alexander VI. as a simoniacal usurper; and he was followed by all the gorgeous chivalry ofFrance, with the fierce Swiss infantry, the light Gascon skirmishers, the gigantic Scottish bowmen–uomini bestialias the Florentines called them–in all about 12,000 men. The procession swept through the gaily decked streets over the Ponte Vecchio, wound round the Piazza della Signoria, and then round the Duomo, amidst deafening cries ofViva Franciafrom the enthusiastic people. But when the King descended and entered the Cathedral, there was a sad disillusion–parve al popolo un poco diminuta la fama, as the good apothecary Luca Landucci tells us–for, when off his horse, he appeared a most insignificant little man, almost deformed, and with an idiotic expression of countenance, as his bust portrait in the Bargello still shows. This was not quite the sort of Cyrus that they had expected from Savonarola's discourses; but still, within and without Santa Maria del Fiore, the thunderous shouts ofViva Franciacontinued, until he was solemnly escorted to the Medicean palace which had been prepared for his reception.
That night, and each following night during the French occupation, Florence shone so with illuminations that it seemed mid-day; every day was full of feasting and pageantry; but French and Florentines alike were in arms. The royal "deliverer"–egged on by the ladies of Piero's family and especially by Alfonsina, his young wife–talked of restoring the Medici; the Swiss, rioting in the Borgo SS. Apostoli, were severely handled by the populace, in a way that showed the King that the Republic was not to be trifled with. On November 24th the treaty was signed in the Medicean (now the Riccardi) palace, after a scene never forgotten by the Florentines. Discontented with the amount of the indemnity, the King exclaimed in a threatening voice, "I will bid my trumpets sound" (io farò dare nelle trombe). PieroCapponi thereupon snatched the treaty from the royal secretary, tore it in half, and exclaiming, "And we will sound our bells" (e noi faremo dare nelle campane), turned with his colleagues to leave the room. Charles, who knew Capponi of old (he had been Florentine Ambassador in France), had the good sense to laugh it off, and the Republic was saved. There was to be an alliance between the Republic and the King, who was henceforth to be called "Restorer and Protector of the Liberty of Florence." He was to receive a substantial indemnity. Pisa and the fortresses were for the present to be retained, but ultimately restored; the decree against the Medici was to be revoked, but they were still banished from Tuscany. But the King would not go. The tension every day grew greater, until at last Savonarola sought the royal presence, solemnly warned him that God's anger would fall upon him if he lingered, and sent him on his way. On November 28th the French left Florence, everyone, from Charles himself downwards, shamelessly carrying off everything of value that they could lay hands on, including the greater part of the treasures and rarities that Cosimo and Lorenzo had collected.
It was now that all Florence turned to the voice that rang out from the Convent of San Marco and the pulpit of the Duomo; and Savonarola became, in some measure, the pilot of the State. Mainly through his influence, the government was remodelled somewhat on the basis of the Venetian constitution with modifications. The supreme authority was vested in theGreater Council, which created the magistrates and approved the laws; and it elected theCouncil of Eighty, with which the Signoria was bound to consult, which, together with the Signoria and the Colleges, made appointments and discussed matters which could notbe debated in the Greater Council. A law was also passed, known as the "law of the six beans," which gave citizens the right of appeal from the decisions of the Signoria or the sentences of theOtto di guardia e balìa(who could condemn even to death by six votes or "beans")–not to a special council to be chosen from the Greater Council, as Savonarola wished, but to the Greater Council itself. There was further a general amnesty proclaimed (March 1495). Finally, since the time-honoured calling of parliaments had been a mere farce, an excuse for masking revolution under the pretence of legality, and was the only means left by which the Medici could constitutionally have overthrown the new regime, it was ordained (August) that no parliament should ever again be held under pain of death. "The only purpose of parliament," said Savonarola, "is to snatch the sovereign power from the hands of the people." So enthusiastic–to use no harsher term–did the Friar show himself, that he declared from the pulpit that, if ever the Signoria should sound the bell for a parliament, their houses should be sacked, and that they themselves might be hacked to pieces by the crowd without any sin being thereby incurred; and that the Consiglio Maggiore was the work of God and not of man, and that whoever should attempt to change this government should for ever be accursed of the Lord. It was now that the Sala del Maggior Consiglio was built by Cronaca in the Priors' Palace, to accommodate this new government of the people; and the Signoria set up in the middle of the court and at their gate the two bronze statues by Donatello, which they took from Piero's palace–theDavid, an emblem of the triumphant young republic that had overthrown the giant of tyranny, theJudithas a warning of the punishment that the State would inflict upon whoso should attempt itsrestoration;exemplum salutis publicae cives posuere, 1495, ran the new inscription put by these stern theocratic republicans upon its base.
But in the meantime Charles had pursued his triumphant march, had entered Rome, had conquered the kingdom of Naples almost without a blow. Then fortune turned against him; Ludovico Sforza with the Pope formed an Italian league, including Venice, with hope of Germany and Spain, to expel the French from Italy–a league in which all but Florence and Ferrara joined. Charles was now in full retreat to secure his return to France, and was said to be marching on Florence with Piero dei Medici in his company–no reformation of the Church accomplished, no restoration of Pisa to his ally. The Florentines flew to arms. But Savonarola imagined that he had had a special Vision of the Lilies vouchsafed to him by the Blessed Virgin, which pointed to an alliance with France and the reacquisition of Pisa.[21]He went forth to meet the King at Poggibonsi, June 1495, overawed the fickle monarch by his prophetic exhortation, and at least kept the French out of Florence. A month later, the battle of Fornovo secured Charles' retreat and occasioned (what was more important to posterity) Mantegna's Madonna of the Victory. And of the lost cities and fortresses, Leghorn alone was recovered.
But all that Savonarola had done, or was to do, in the political field was but the means to an end–the reformation and purification of Florence. It was to be a united and consecrated State, with Christ alone for King, adorned with all triumphs of Christian art andsacred poetry, a fire of spiritual felicity to Italy and all the earth. In Lent and Advent especially, his voice sounded from the pulpit, denouncing vice, showing the beauty of righteousness, the efficacy of the sacraments, and interpreting the Prophets, with special reference to the needs of his times. And for a while Florence seemed verily a new city. For the wild licence of the Carnival, for the Pagan pageantry that the Medicean princes had loved, for the sensual songs that had once floated up from every street of the City of Flowers–there were now bonfires of the vanities in the public squares; holocausts of immoral books, indecent pictures, all that ministered to luxury and wantonness (and much, too, that was very precious!); there were processions in honour of Christ and His Mother, there were new mystical lauds and hymns of divine love. A kind of spiritual inebriation took possession of the people and their rulers alike. Tonsured friars and grave citizens, with heads garlanded, mingled with the children and danced like David before the Ark, shouting, "Viva Cristo e la Vergine Maria nostra regina." They had indeed, like the Apostle, become fools for Christ's sake. "It was a holy time," writes good Luca Landucci, "but it was short. The wicked have prevailed over the good. Praised be God that I saw that short holy time. Wherefore I pray God that He may give it back to us, that holy and pure living. It was indeed a blessed time." Above all, the children of Florence were the Friar's chosen emissaries and agents in the great work he had in hand; he organised them into bands, with standard-bearers and officers like the time-honoured city companies with their gonfaloniers, and sent them round the city to seize vanities, forcibly to stop gambling, to collect alms for the poor, and even to exercise a supervision over the ladies' dresses.Ecco i fanciugli del Frate, was aninstant signal for gamblers to take to flight, and for the fair and frail ladies to be on their very best behaviour. They proceeded with olive branches, like the children of Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday; they made the churches ring with their hymns to the Madonna, and even harangued the Signoria on the best method of reforming the morals of the citizens. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise," quotes Landucci: "I have written these things because they are true, and I have seen them and have felt their sweetness, and some of my own children were among these pure and blessed bands."[22]
But the holy time was short indeed. Factions were still only too much alive. TheBigiorPalleschiwere secretly ready to welcome the Medici back; theArrabbiati, the powerful section of the citizens who, to some extent, held the traditions of the so-calledOttimatiornobili popolani, whom the Medici had overthrown, were even more bitter in their hatred to theFrateschiorPiagnoni, as the adherents of the Friar were called, though prepared to make common cause with them on the least rumour of Piero dei Medici approaching the walls. TheCompagnacci, or "bad companions," dissolute young men and evil livers, were banded together under Doffo Spini, and would gladly have taken the life of the man who had curtailed their opportunities for vice. And to these there were now added the open hostility of Pope Alexander VI., and the secret machinations of his worthy ally, the Duke of Milan. The Pope's hostility was at first mainlypolitical; he had no objection whatever to Savonarola reforming faith and morals (so long as he did not ask Roderigo Borgia to reform himself), but could not abide the Friar declaring that he had a special mission from God and the Madonna to oppose the Italian league against France. At the same time the Pope would undoubtedly have been glad to see Piero dei Medici restored to power. But in the early part of 1496, it became a war to the death between these two–the Prophet of Righteousness and the Church's Caiaphas–a war which seemed at one moment about to convulse all Christendom, but which ended in the funeral pyre of the Piazza della Signoria.
On Ash Wednesday, February 17th, Fra Girolamo, amidst the vastest audience that had yet flocked to hear his words, ascended once more the pulpit of Santa Maria del Fiore. He commenced by a profession of most absolute submission to the Church of Rome. "I have ever believed, and do believe," he said, "all that is believed by the Holy Roman Church, and have ever submitted, and do submit, myself to her.... I rely only on Christ and on the decisions of the Church of Rome." But this was a prelude to the famous series of sermons on Amos and Zechariah which he preached throughout this Lent, and which was in effect a superb and inspired denunciation of the wickedness of Alexander and his Court, of the shameless corruption of the Papal Curia and the Church generally, which had made Rome, for a while, the sink of Christendom. Nearly two hundred years before, St Peter had said the same thing to Dante in the Heaven of the Fixed Stars:–
"Quegli ch'usurpa in terra il loco mio,il loco mio, il loco mio, che vacanella presenza del Figliuol di Dio,fatto ha del cimitero mio cloacadel sangue e della puzza, onde il perversoche cadde di quassù, laggiù si placa."[23]
These were, perhaps, the most terrible of allSavonarola's sermons and prophecies. Chastisement was to come upon Rome; she was to be girdled with steel, put to the sword, consumed with fire. Italy was to be ravaged with pestilence and famine; from all sides the barbarian hordes would sweep down upon her. Let them fly from this corrupted Rome, this new Babylon of confusion, and come to repentance. And for himself, he asked and hoped for nothing but the lot of the martyrs, when his work was done. These sermons echoed through all Europe; and when the Friar, after a temporary absence at Prato, returned to the pulpit in May with a new course of sermons on Ruth and Micah, he was no less daring; as loudly as ever he rebuked the hideous corruption of the times, the wickedness of the Roman Court, and announced the scourge that was at hand:–
"I announce to thee, Italy and Rome, that the Lord will come forth out of His place. He has awaited thee so long that He can wait no more. I tell thee that God will draw forth the sword from the sheath; He will send the foreign nations; He will come forth out of His clemency and His mercy; and such bloodshed shall there be, so many deaths, such cruelty, that thou shalt say: O Lord, Thou hast come forth out of Thy place. Yea, the Lord shall come; He will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth. I say to thee, Italy and Rome, that the Lord will tread upon thee. I have bidden thee do penance; thou art worse than ever. The feet of the Lord shall tread upon thee; His feet shall be the horses, the armies ofthe foreign nations that shall trample upon the great men of Italy; and soon shall priests, friars, bishops, cardinals and great masters be trampled down....
"Trust not, Rome, in saying: Here we have the relics, here we have St Peter and so many bodies of martyrs. God will not suffer such iniquities! I warn thee that their blood cries up to Christ to come and chastise thee."[24]
But, in the meanwhile, the state of Florence was dark and dismal in the extreme. Pestilence and famine ravaged her streets; the war against Pisa seemed more hopeless every day; Piero Capponi had fallen in the field in September; and the forces of the League threatened her with destruction, unless she deserted the French alliance. King Charles showed no disposition to return; the Emperor Maximilian, with the Venetian fleet, was blockading her sole remaining port of Leghorn. A gleam of light came in October, when, at the very moment that the miraculous Madonna of the Impruneta was being borne through the streets in procession by the Piagnoni, a messenger brought the news that reinforcements and provisions had reached Leghorn from Marseilles; and it was followed in November by the dispersion of the imperial fleet by a tempest. At the opening of 1497 a Signory devoted to Savonarola, and headed by Francesco Valori as Gonfaloniere, was elected; and the following carnival witnessed an even more emphatic burning of the vanities in the great Piazza, while the sweet voices of the "children of the Friar" seemed to rise louder and louder in intercession and in praise. Savonarola was at this time living more in seclusion,broken in health, and entirely engaged upon his great theological treatise, theTriumphus Crucis; but in Lent he resumed his pulpit crusade against the corruption of the Church, the scandalous lives of her chief pastors, in a series of sermons on Ezekiel; above all in one most tremendous discourse on the text: "And in all thy abominations and thy fornications thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth." In April, relying upon the election of a new Signoria favourable to the Mediceans (and headed by Bernardo del Nero as Gonfaloniere), Piero dei Medici–who had been leading a most degraded life in Rome, and committing every turpitude imaginable–made an attempt to surprise Florence, which merely resulted in a contemptible fiasco. This threw the government into the hands of the Arrabbiati, who hated Savonarola even more than the Palleschi did, and who were intriguing with the Pope and the Duke of Milan. On Ascension Day the Compagnacci raised a disgraceful riot in the Duomo, interrupted Savonarola's sermon, and even attempted to take his life. Then at last there came from Rome the long-expected bull of excommunication, commencing, "We have heard from many persons worthy of belief that a certain Fra Girolamo Savonarola, at this present said to be vicar of San Marco in Florence, hath disseminated pernicious doctrines to the scandal and great grief of simple souls." It was published on June 18th in the Badia, the Annunziata, Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, and Santo Spirito, with the usual solemn ceremonies of ringing bells and dashing out of the lights–in the last-named church, especially, the monks "did the cursing in the most orgulist wise that might be done," as the compiler of theMorte Darthurwould put it.
The Arrabbiati and Compagnacci were exultant, but the Signoria that entered office in July seemed disposedto make Savonarola's cause their own. A fresh plot was discovered to betray Florence to Piero dei Medici, and five of the noblest citizens in the State–the aged Bernardo del Nero, who had merely known of the plot and not divulged it, but who had been privy to Piero's coming in April while Gonfaloniere, among them–were beheaded in the courtyard of the Bargello's palace, adjoining the Palazzo Vecchio. In this Savonarola took no share; he was absorbed in tending those who were dying on all sides from the plague and famine, and in making the final revision of hisTriumph of the Cross, which was to show to the Pope and all the world how steadfastly he held to the faith of the Church of Rome.[25]The execution of these conspirators caused great indignation among many in the city. They had been refused the right of appeal to the Consiglio Maggiore, and it was held that Fra Girolamo might have saved them, had he so chosen, and that his ally, Francesco Valori, who had relentlessly hounded them to their deaths, had been actuated mainly by personal hatred of Bernardo del Nero.
But Savonarola could not long keep silence, and in the following February, 1498, on Septuagesima Sunday, he again ascended the pulpit of the Duomo. Many of his adherents, Landucci tells us, kept away for fear of the excommunication: "I was one ofthose who did not go there." Not faith, but charity it is that justifies and perfects man–such was the burden of the Friar's sermons now: if the Pope gives commands which are contrary to charity, he is no instrument of the Lord, but a broken tool. The excommunication is invalid, the Lord will work a miracle through His servant when His time comes, and his only prayer is that he may die in defence of the truth. On the last day of the Carnival, after communicating his friars and a vast throng of the laity, Savonarola addressed the people in the Piazza of San Marco, and, holding on high the Host, prayed that Christ would send fire from heaven upon him that should swallow him up into hell, if he were deceiving himself, and if his words were not from God. There was a more gorgeous burning of the Vanities than ever; but all during Lent the unequal conflict went on, and the Friar began to talk of a future Council. This was the last straw. An interdict would ruin the commerce of Florence; and on the 17th of March the Signoria bowed before the storm, and forbade Savonarola to preach again. On the following morning, the third Sunday in Lent, he delivered his last sermon:–
"If I am deceived, Christ, Thou hast deceived me, Thou. Holy Trinity, if I am deceived, Thou hast deceived me. Angels, if I am deceived, ye have deceived me. Saints of Paradise, if I am deceived, ye have deceived me. But all that God has said, or His angels or His saints have said, is most true, and it is impossible that they should lie; and, therefore, it is impossible that, when I repeat what they have told me, I should lie. O Rome, do all that thou wilt, for I assure thee of this, that the Lord is with me. O Rome, it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. Thou shalt be purified yet.... Italy, Italy, the Lord is with me. Thou wilt not be able to do aught.Florence, Florence, that is, ye evil citizens of Florence, arm yourselves as ye will, ye shall be conquered this time, and ye shall not be able to kick against the pricks, for the Lord is with me, as a strong warrior." "Let us leave all to the Lord; He has been the Master of all the Prophets, and of all the holy men. He is the Master who wieldeth the hammer, and, when He hath used it for His purpose, putteth it not back into the chest, but casteth it aside. So did He unto Jeremiah, for when He had used him as much as He wished, He cast him aside and had him stoned. So will it be also with this hammer; when He shall have used it in His own way, He will cast it aside. Yea, we are content, let the Lord's will be done; and by the more suffering that shall be ours here below, so much the greater shall the crown be hereafter, there on high."
"We will do with our prayers what we had to do with our preaching. O Lord, I commend to Thee the good and the pure of heart; and I pray Thee, look not at the negligence of the good, because human frailty is great, yea, their frailty is great. Bless, Lord, the good and pure of heart. Lord, I pray Thee that Thou delay no longer in fulfilling Thy promises."
It was now, in the silence of his cell, that Savonarola prepared his last move. He would appeal to the princes of Christendom–the Emperor, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Henry VII. of England, the King of Hungary, and above all, that "most Christian King" Charles VIII. of France–to summon a general council, depose the simoniacal usurper who was polluting the chair of Peter, and reform the Church. He was prepared to promise miracles from God to confirm his words. These letters were written, but never sent; a preliminary message was forwarded from trustworthy friends in Florence to influential persons in each court to prepare them for what was coming; and the despatchto the Florentine ambassador in France was intercepted by the agents of the Duke of Milan. It was at once placed in the hands of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza in Rome, and the end was now a matter of days. The Signoria was hostile, and the famous ordeal by fire lit the conflagration that freed the martyr and patriot. On Sunday, March 25th, the Franciscan Francesco da Puglia, preaching in Santa Croce and denouncing Savonarola, challenged him to prove his doctrines by a miracle, to pass unscathed through the fire. He was himself prepared to enter the flames with him, or at least said that he was. Against Savonarola's will his lieutenant, Fra Domenico, who had taken his place in the pulpit, drew up a series of conclusions (epitomising Savonarola's teaching and declaring the nullity of the excommunication), and declared himself ready to enter the fire to prove their truth.
Huge was the delight of the Compagnacci at the prospect of such sport, and the Signoria seized upon it as a chance of ending the matter once for all. Whether the Franciscans were sincere, or whether it was a mere plot to enable the Arrabbiati and Compagnacci to destroy Savonarola, is still a matter of dispute. The Piagnoni were confident in the coming triumph of their prophet; champions came forward from both sides, professedly eager to enter the flames–although it was muttered that the Compagnacci and their Doffo Spini had promised the Franciscans that no harm should befall them. Savonarola misliked it, but took every precaution that, if the ordeal really came off, there should be no possibility of fraud or evasion. Of the amazing scene in the Piazza on April 7th, I will speak in the following chapter; suffice it to say here that it ended in a complete fiasco, and that Savonarola and his friars would never have reached their convent alive, but for the protection ofthe armed soldiery of the Signoria. Hounded home under the showers of stones and filth from the infuriated crowd, whose howls of execration echoed through San Marco, Fra Girolamo had theTe Deumsung, but knew in his heart that all was lost. That very same day his Cyrus, the champion of his prophetic dreams, Charles VIII. of France, was struck down by an apoplectic stroke at Amboise; and, as though in judgment for his abandonment of what the prophet had told him was the work of the Lord, breathed his last in the utmost misery and ignominy.
The next morning, Palm Sunday, April 8th, Savonarola preached a very short sermon in the church of San Marco, in which he offered himself in sacrifice to God and was prepared to suffer death for his flock.Tanto fu sempre questo uomo simile a sè stesso, says Jacopo Nardi. Hell had broken loose by the evening, and the Arrabbiati and Compagnacci, stabbing and hewing as they came, surged round the church and convent. In spite of Savonarola and Fra Domenico, the friars had weapons and ammunition in their cells, and there was a small band of devout laymen with them, prepared to hold by the prophet to the end. From vespers till past midnight the attack and defence went on; in the Piazza, in the church, and through the cloisters raged the fight, while riot and murder wantoned through the streets of the city. Francesco Valori, who had escaped from the convent in the hope of bringing reinforcements, was brutally murdered before his own door. The great bell of the convent tolled and tolled, animating both besieged and besiegers to fresh efforts, but bringing no relief from without. Savonarola, who had been prevented from following the impulses of his heart and delivering himself up to the infernal crew that thirsted for his blood in the Piazza, at last gathered his friars roundhim before the Blessed Sacrament, in the great hall of the Greek library, solemnly confirmed his doctrine, exhorted them to embrace the Cross alone, and then, together with Fra Domenico, gave himself into the hands of the forces of the Signoria. The entire cloisters were already swarming with his exultant foes. "The work of the Lord shall go forward without cease," he said, as the mace-bearers bound him and Domenico, "my death will but hasten it on." Buffeted and insulted by the Compagnacci and the populace, amidst the deafening uproar, the two Dominicans were brought to the Palazzo Vecchio. It seemed to the excited imaginations of the Piagnoni that the scenes of the first Passiontide at Jerusalem were now being repeated in the streets of fifteenth century Florence.
The Signoria had no intention of handing over their captives to Rome, but appointed a commission of seventeen–including Doffo Spini and several of Savonarola's bitterest foes–to conduct the examination of the three friars. The third, Fra Silvestro, a weak and foolish visionary, had hid himself on the fatal night, but had been given up on the following day. Again and again were they most cruelly tortured–but in all essentials, though ever and anon they wrung some sort of agonised denial from his lips, Savonarola's testimony as to his divine mission was unshaken. Fra Domenico, the lion-hearted soul whom the children of Florence had loved, and to whom poets like Poliziano had turned on their death-beds, was as heroic on the rack or under the torment of the boot as he had been throughout his career. Out of Fra Silvestro the examiners could naturally extort almost anything they pleased. And a number of laymen and others, supposed to have been in their counsels, were similarly "examined," and their shrieks rang through the Bargello;but with little profit to the Friar's foes. So they falsified the confessions, and read the falsification aloud in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, to the bewilderment of all Savonarola's quondam disciples who were there. "We had believed him to be a prophet," writes Landucci in his diary, "and he confessed that he was not a prophet, and that he had not received from God the things that he preached; and he confessed that many things in his sermons were the contrary to what he had given us to understand. And I was there when this process was read, whereat I was astounded, stupified, and amazed. Grief pierced my soul, when I saw so great an edifice fall to the ground, through being sadly based upon a single lie. I expected Florence to be a new Jerusalem, whence should proceed the laws and splendour and example of goodly living, and to see the renovation of the Church, the conversion of the infidels and the consolation of the good. And I heard the very contrary, and indeed took the medicine:In voluntate tua, Domine, omnia sunt posita."
A packed election produced a new Signoria, crueller than the last. They still refused to send the friars to Rome, but invited the Pope's commissioners to Florence. These arrived on May 19th–the Dominican General, Torriani, a well-intentioned man, and the future Cardinal Romolino, a typical creature of the Borgias and a most infamous fellow. It was said that they meant to put Savonarola to death, even if he were a second St John the Baptist. The torture was renewed without result; the three friars were sentenced to be hanged and then burnt. Fra Domenico implored that he might be cast alive into the fire, in order that he might suffer more grievous torments for Christ, and desired only that the friars of Fiesole, of which convent he was prior, might bury him in some lowly spot, and be loyal to the teachings of FraGirolamo. On the morning of May 23rd, Savonarola said his last Mass in the Chapel of the Priors, and communicated his companions. Then they were led out on to the Ringhiera overlooking the Piazza, from which a temporarypalchettoran out towards the centre of the square to serve as scaffold. Here, the evening before, the gallows had been erected, beam across beam; but a cry had arisen among the crowd,They are going to crucify him.So it had been hacked about, in order that it might not seem even remotely to resemble a cross. But in spite of all their efforts, Jacopo Nardi tells us, that gallows still seemed to represent the figure of the Cross.