One more tale of Florentine history ere we depart from Florence, and I tell it without remorse, having spared you the tourist’s usual criticism of her statues and paintings, and description of churches. I have even passed over that of the Palazzo Vecchio, and our wanderings therein one day, when in search of a guide, and bidden to go whither we pleased by the sentinel below, we mounted stair after stair, and roamed through long suites of apartments till chance brought us to a corridor whose tribunes look down on the noble council chamber, ornamented by Cosmo the First’s order when, in 1540, he came to inhabit the palace, and painted in oils and fresco by Vasari and other artists. It is a pity that this fine hall should be crooked, which it is so excessively as to injure its effect to the most careless eyes. Round it are fine groups and statues by John of Bologna and Bandinelli; among the former that by Michael Angelo, destined for the mausoleum of Pope Julius the Second, and left unfinished when the artist died; and among the last the statue of John of the Black Bands, the invincible father of Duke Cosmo, the same whose pedestal still remains in an angle of the place of San Lorenzo, which it was destined to occupy. I spare you a lengthened account of this and of the saloons of Cosmo the Ancient—of Lorenzo the Magnificent—of John the Invincible—of the Pontiffs Leo the Tenth and Clement the Seventh, on whose walls are painted by Vasari the principal events of the reigns or lives of each. I even pass over the small chamber in the Torre della Vacca, which was the prison of Cosmo, Pater Patriæ, when Rinaldo of Albizzi, his rival, conspired against him, but could not obtain his condemnation, and whence he departed to pass a year in exile at Venice—a short reverse, forerunner of a constant prosperity, lasting even as it was deserved, till he died, aged seventy-five years.
The extraordinary man whose story I would recall to you is Savonarola, who was born at Ferrara in 1452, and who Nicolo ended his life on the gibbet in the old piazza at Florence. When very young he was remarkable for his austere habits and singular character. The theological works of St. Thomas of Acquin were his habitual study, and one which he seldom quitted, save for poetical composition, a pastime of which he was passionately fond. A vision seen or fancied by him decided his vocation when two and twenty, though he had before refused to take orders, not choosing, he said, to clothe himself with ecclesiastical dignities, and belong to the world when he had affected to quit it. He took the habit of Dominican and repaired to Bologna, where his talents were soon recognised.
By the advice of Pic de la Mirandole he was recalled to Florence by Lorenzo de’ Medici, and arrived there he preached publicly against the scandalous conduct of layman and ecclesiastic, for Alexander the Sixth at this time occupied the papal chair, and his example had been but too accurately followed. A republican in principles, inflexible in his proud independence, he gave a proof of it in 1490, when he was named prior of San Marco. It was the custom that one so promoted should present himself before Lorenzo, recognizing him as chief of the republic, and asking favour and protection. Though the Dominicans implored, and Lorenzo demanded, Savonarola refused this mark of condescension; he said that God, not Lorenzo, had elected him prior. At another period Lorenzo requested him, through the medium of some Florentine citizens, to forbear the announcement of coming misfortune to Florence, where such prediction ever created troubles and aroused the disaffected; but Savonarola, far from obeying, foretold on the contrary, that Lorenzo himself would shortly die. This prophecy was verified the 9th of April, 1492; and it is said that Lorenzo, feeling himself dying, chose the prior for confessor, notwithstanding the slight respect he had shown him hitherto, and Savonarola, having heard his penitent, on three conditions promised him absolution: first, that he should make oath that he was a true believer, which Lorenzo did; secondly, that he should restitute all which he might have acquired unfairly; he answered he would consider of it; and lastly, that he should restore to Florence her liberty, and to the Florentine government its popular form; and to this third condition Lorenzo the Magnificent made no reply, but turned in his bed with his back to Savonarola.
After the death of Lorenzo and the exile of Pietro his son, the prior, more and more violent in his attacks on the church, and particularly on its chief, the infamous Borgia, drew down on himself the latter’s excommunication, which however his nuncio, fearful of entering the town, posted without the walls at San Miniato. Savonarola despised his censure, declared its non-validity, and published his famous work entitled the “Triumph of Faith,” which conduct, acting on the inflammable city, divided it into two factions, the one for democracy and Savonarola, the other devoted to the house and policy of the Medici.
Of the two monks who defended his opinions, and who perished beside him, the most ardent was Domenico of Pescia, who at one period took his place as preacher during the days which preceded the carnival, and those which ushered in Lent. Though less eloquent than his master, he yet, by his energetic preaching, persuaded his hearers to seek and sacrifice among their possessions such as to these ascetics seemed too worldly, and calculated to withdraw them from a severe and religious life. Domenico formed into regiments the little boys of the several districts, ordering that they should march from house to house to make a collection for the poor, at the same time with that for the Anathema, so he styled the objects of luxury, or works of art, which, according to him, lay under the curse of God. During three days the young boys gathered their harvest of faded gala dresses and female ornaments, of cards, dice and musical instruments, and on the first day of the carnival, formed of them a pile in the shape of a pyramid before the Palazzo Vecchio. This ceremony completed, there being among the devoted objects many precious manuscripts and the works of Boccaccio, the children were conducted to the cathedral where they heard mass, and after their meal, being attired in white garments and crowned with olive, and bearing small red crosses in their hands, they sought the church once more, deposed there the money collected for the poor, and again forming in procession, arrived on the Piazza del Palazzo Vecchio, lisping Italian hymns; and when the chant was ended, the four children who headed the four troops advanced with lighted torches and solemnly fired the pyramid, whose flame ascended to the sound of trumpets. The next year (1498) Savonarola in person headed the procession, and this time the pile was composed of objects so valuable, marble statues and precious paintings, and illuminated manuscripts, among the latter one of Petrarch, that a military guard was posted round to keep off robbers. These unusual ceremonies exasperated the Florentine clergy; a Franciscan at Santa Croce preached to prove the prior’s excommunication valid; Domenico from his pulpit loudly contradicted him, asserting the necessity of reform in the church, and offering himself (by submitting to trial by fire) to prove the truth against their adversary.
The Franciscan accepted the challenge: the 7th of April, 1498, was the day appointed, and the burning pile was raised opposite the old palace. Domenico arrived wearing priestly robes and ornaments and carrying the cross, preceded and followed by long files of Dominicans chanting psalms as they advanced, Savonarola marching before them. The Franciscans, on the contrary, approached without pomp and in silence, headed by the lay brother, whom Domenico’s adversary, losing courage when the day of judgment came, had substituted to go (in his place) through the trial of fire. The parties in presence, a dispute arose; the Franciscans not choosing that Domenico should enter the flames wearing his priestly habit, or carrying the holy sacrament, as was the will of Savonarola. The contest growing angry, an hour passed without ending it, and evening closing there fell a heavy rain, which put to flight the two champions and disappointed the multitude assembled there to be amused by their torture. The next day, however, Savonarola’s enemies, who felt themselves protected by the Florentine government, took up arms and attacked the convent of San Marco, in which Savonarola and his two disciples were. The monks defended themselves stoutly, for the attack commenced during vespers, and not till dark did the assailants get possession of their persons and drag them to the public prisons. The government now took the affair into its own hands; and Savonarola, accused of uttering prophecies not inspired, but founded on private opinions and interpretations of the Scriptures, and with a view to force the convocation of a council general, which should reform the church, was tortured and tried by delegates of the monster Pope Alexander, and condemned with the two brethren to be hanged on the Piazza del Palazzo Vecchio, now del Gran Duca, their bodies burned and their ashes scattered. The gibbet was planted opposite the palace, in the precise place where some months before they had held their strange carnival. Brought thither, their firmness did not for a moment forsake them; they looked on, while the preparations were made, in silence; when their bodies were consumed, their remains were collected in a cart and flung into the Arno.
Montecarelli.
Left Florence this morning to come hither. The weather has been cold since our passage, and last night the snow fell heavily. The air is a contrast to that of the city, whose burning sun and biting musquitoes I am however glad to turn my back on. The Appennines appear to less advantage beneath the grey sky than when we crossed them in sunshine, and the Villa Borghese more sad in its desolate grandeur, and saddest of all looked the public cemetery, where the grave-diggers were occupied in opening the deep fosses to which each night brings inmates: it is a large open space, without tomb or tree, saving the few cypress, which outside the wall shade the priests’ melancholy dwelling.
We paused to take a last look of Florence and also of Fiesole, which on our right, as we ascended, crowns its hill, more ancient than Florence, and most interesting as the birthplace of the parvenue Leonora Galigai Maréchale d’Ancre, whose fate and fortunes have been celebrated by the first writer of France, the radiance of whose fancy has shone over history without falsifying its colours.
We saw and passed the Tre Maschere, having received unfavourable accounts of its hosts, and returned here to our former inn with the evergoing pump beneath our bedroom, and the stable with fern for litter, and horned cattle for inmates. Notwithstanding bribes, which, like other instigators to action, fail in Italy, our horses were neglected so long, that in my quality of interpreter, I proceeded to scold the inattentive groom, and so found favour in the eyes of the master, the two personages being comprehended in one, and his attachment to his own, which inhabited another stable, having made him postpone the care of ours. Among his favourites he showed me a horse from whose long white tail one lock had been severed, the Italian said in malice, by some person who had thus chosen to annoy him, and whom, could he have discovered, he would have punished with his knife. I assure you his look and gesture were sufficiently expressive to guard the hair of his horse’s head henceforward. Having looked in on ours in their uneasy sleeping chamber, in and out of which the oxen seemed to be all night driven, and from whose roof swung, above the dry fern, the lamp at which all the carters our fellow travellers came to light their pipes, proving their reliance on the care of Providence, as they take none themselves, the safety of these places being a miracle, I passed an hour walking up and down before the door, under a moon which sailed in skies whose blue certainly does not belong to our climates, lighting the lone inn and chestnut trees surrounding it, till she predicted bad weather by taking to herself a halo.