The direction Savonarola had taken soon led him further than he calculated upon or perhaps intended. The effect produced by his discourses is quite intelligible when one compares their character with that of the ordinary preaching of the day, and takes the prevailing temper into consideration. In both cases one meets with strange contrasts. Artificial, wordy discourses, that people were accustomed to hear in the sermons of the followers of Bernardino of Siena; besides the simple, often impressive moral, there was a mixture of abstruse scholasticism, asceticism, and anecdotes intended for the multitude, on whom, however, part of their meaning was lost, and who laughed and cried by turns, and were confirmed in their views of devotional practices and works, in which too much stress was apt to be laid on externals. Still the supremacy gained over the people by the moral and political tendencies favoured by the Medici was by no means so complete as to leave no room for opposing views, whose inward strength was only increased by the outward resistance they encountered. The Dominican’s subject-matter, his mode of demonstration, his whole manner, were such as to make an impression upon opponents. To most preachers as well as hearers, the Bible was a sealed book. When it was opened its word became a living well springing up into a mighty fertilising stream, and disclosing that wondrous power which has never failed wherever it has been heard. Savonarola well knew that power. If he failed it was from a defect exactly contrary to those of the others. They lacked the true perception and feeling for that which alone could give their teachings a meaning true, deep, and sound for all time. He lacked moderation and the power to control his perceptions, his acquirements, and himself. This was the rock on which he was ultimately wrecked. Guicciardini, who was ten years old at Lorenzo’s death, whose youth was passed in the midst of Fra Girolamo’s most strenuous activity, and whose eyes were early open to all that went on around him, speaks of the natural unstudied elegance of the sermons he heard and read, and remarks that never had there been seen a man so versed in Holy Scripture, never had such abundant discourse been united with such a lasting impression.[546] In after years, when Savonarola’s attacks on the corruption in the Church sought and found a personal object in that Church’s unworthy head, he encountered in the enmity of other religious societies a stumbling-block which contributed not a little to his fall. But even in these earlier days he had long ago roused opposition, some of which, proceeding from purely inward grounds, was unavoidable; but a nature less rugged in its enthusiasm might have broken the force of some of it.
Fra Girolamo’s great day was yet far distant. But this activity and the effects produced on moral life by his preaching, by his instructions in the convent, and by his and his pupils’ influence on all classes, were already beginning to strike root that year when he gathered around him the more serious-minded men and youths in San Marco, and set himself to counteract the dominant pursuit of sensual enjoyment which threatened to paralyse the energies of the people. This activity and influence, when its chief source and originator had personally succumbed, though his work was only apparently destroyed, was described in glowing words by the great historian, though he is not quite consistent in his views of Savonarola’s character. ‘What he did for the amendment of morals was wonderful and holy. Never did such order and such fear of God reign in Florence as in his time; and the deterioration which set in after his death proves how entirely everything was his work and the fruit of his labours. There was no more gaming in public, people only played with trepidation and in private; the taverns, the accustomed scenes of the wild doings of degenerate youth, were closed; the worst vices were suppressed in consequence of the abhorrence excited against them. Most women laid aside their objectionable garments; the young people were rescued from their wild ways and led back to a moral life, and visited the churches in companies. Gamesters, blasphemers, and dissolute women were in danger of being pursued and stoned. At the Carnaval, playing-cards, dice, indecent pictures and books were collected and burnt on the square of the Signoria; and on the day formerly given up to all kinds of excesses, a great church procession took place. The elder people took up a religious life, went diligently to mass, vespers, and sermons, received the sacraments and distinguished themselves by doing good. Many youths of the first families and some men of riper years entered the Predicant Order. In all Italy was never seen a convent like that of San Marco, where the excellent instruction given in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages and literature promised to furnish fresh ornaments to the Order.’
This activity, which produced such a change and passed sentence of condemnation on a system that had been carried out for years with equal skill and perseverance, was only beginning in the last years of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s life; but its very beginnings could not fail to furnish matter for reflection to that keen thinker. Even before 1490 similar symptoms had shown themselves, whether connected with Savonarola’s earliest labours is not certain, but it is highly probable. Poliziano’s prologue to the Menæchmi of Plautus, written in May 1488, contains a vehement diatribe against the opponents of these scenic representations—those who protested against the employment of young people in reciting the too often objectionable verses of classical plays.[547] Monks are the objects of the poet’s attack; monks who were not like his friend Mariano.
Sed qui nos damnant, histriones sunt maxumi,
Nam Curios simulant, vivunt bacchanalia.
Hi sunt præcipuè, quidam clamosi, leves,
Cucullati, lignipedes, cincti funibus,
Superciliosum, in curvi cervicum pecus.
Qui quòd ab aliis et habitu et cultu dissentiunt,
Tristesque vultu vendunt sanctimonias,
Censuram sibi quandam et tyrranidem occupant.
Pavidamque plebem territant minaciis.
These lines, recited in Lorenzo’s presence, are witnesses to the existence of the opposition which increased in strength every year, and from whose influence many, even of those who sided with the ruling party, seem not to have been free. In Lent 1491 Fra Girolamo began to preach in Sta. Maria del Fiore, the crowd having now become too great for the conventual church; the number of hearers increased daily, the impression made by his predictions of the punishment and evil to come became more vivid, till Lorenzo thought it advisable to try to stem the tide of growing excitement which threatened to endanger his work and his influence. For these prophecies of approaching judgment contained something more than indirect attacks on the present state of affairs, and the serious turn of mind encouraged by the preacher most necessarily deprive of their force many of the means which served to maintain that state of affairs.
Five chief citizens of the dominant party—men who all, with one exception, later on personally fell under the mighty influence of Savonarola—Domenico Bonsi, Guid’Antonio Vespucci, Paol’Antonio Soderini, Bernardo Rucellai, and Francesco Valori, went to San Marco to exhort the preacher to moderation. He answered that they had better exhort Lorenzo, who had sent them, to repent of his sins: God would spare no one. To the warning that he might be exiled, he replied that Lorenzo was a Florentine citizen and he a stranger; but the former would go and he would remain. He predicted the speedy death of Lorenzo, the Pope, and King Ferrante. The increasing and very intelligible discontent among the Medicean partisans, of which he could not but be aware, led him, however, to try and moderate his too frequent and exciting prophecies and confine himself more to moral and theological lectures. But his restless spirit carried him away. It would have been well for him could he have known moderation. But as his imagery, at once brilliant and irregular, is confusing and bewildering rather than elevating; as the terrors of his curse are weakened by repetition; as his precepts for Christian life rise to a pitch of asceticism, whose very exaggeration contains its own contradiction; as his teaching, so truly that of the Gospel in its principles and right application, loses its impressive force by straying to unsuitable ground; even so was it with his conduct in life. He irritated needlessly and aimlessly. The benefactions of the Medici to the convent and to the whole order had founded a relation of clientship, in which there was nothing offensive so long as both parties observed the moderation which had once been guaranteed by Cosimo’s cautiousness and was continued by Lorenzo’s tact and discretion. It was customary that when a new prior was appointed he should make a visit to the head of the family. Fra Girolamo, on being chosen prior in July 1491, refused to do this. ‘I hold my election from God alone,’ said he; ‘to Him alone I owe obedience.’ It may easily be conceived that Lorenzo took this amiss, and, in his turn, spoke out freely. ‘A stranger has come into my house, and does not deign to visit me.’ However, he made no change in his conduct towards the convent; he sent gifts and money as before. Once some gold florins were found in the alms-box of the church. Fra Girolamo, who had previously made some personal remarks from the pulpit, caused the money to be given to the Buonuomini of San Martino, saying that silver and copper was enough for the convent. When Lorenzo came to walk in the convent garden, according to his custom, the prior never showed himself. His admirers praise his conduct towards a man from whom he was separated by a deep inward gulf. If, instead of trying to work upon that man and so introduce a different state of things, he intended to cause a violent conflict, he acted rightly.
Lorenzo’s own conduct towards Savonarola was always prudent. The Dominican’s biographers relate that the great man, being repulsed by him, incited Fra Mariano to attack him from the pulpit; but such incitement was probably not needed. The breach between the two preachers was older than themselves; the antagonism of the two orders was but personified in these men, so radically different from each other. In a sermon preached on Ascension-Day, on the text: ‘It is not for you to know the times or the seasons,’ the Augustinian accused the prior of San Marco of being a false prophet, an instigator of sedition among the people, a stirrer-up of strife and disorder. It is said that his vehemence and exaggerated personalities gave offence to his numerous hearers, and ruined his fame as an orator. Seven years later, when the Roman court was in the greatest excitement on account of events in Florence, when Savonarola lay under the ban of the Church, when his safety and his very life depended only on the momentary preponderance of one party or another in the excited city, already stained with the blood of noble citizens—then this same Fra Mariano preached in Sant’Agostino at Rome in such immoderate terms, and applied to his hated rival such coarse expressions, that even to unlearned hearers his gifts of eloquence seemed to have been swallowed up by party-spirit; and the cardinals who were present turned their backs upon him. They had expected a refutation of the Dominican’s teaching, and they heard nothing but raging accusations accompanied by vulgar gestures.[548] ‘If you want to understand a monk, ask a monk about him,’ so said the Augustinian. After his personal attack at Florence, it is said that Fra Mariano, apparently regardless of his discomfiture, invited his rival to San Gallo, where they celebrated a solemn mass together and exchanged civilities; but the story does not agree with Savonarola’s character and the frankness so much praised by his biographers in his relations with Lorenzo.