For to have been in Italy while Colet was in Italy was to have come face to face with Rome at the time when the scandals of Alexander VI. and Cæsar Borgia were in everyone’s mouth; to have been brought into contact with the very worst scandals which had ever blackened the ecclesiastical system of Europe, at the very moment when they reached their culminating point.
On the other hand, to have been in Italy when Colet was in Italy was to have come into contact with the first rising efforts at Reform.
Savonarola.
If Colet visited Florence as Grocyn and Linacre had done before him, he must have come into direct contact with Savonarola while as yet his fire was holy and his star had not entered the mists in which it set in later years.
Savonarola’s preaching.
Recollecting what the great Prior of San Marco was—what his fiery and all but prophetic preaching was—how day after day his burning words went forth against the sins of high and low; against tyranny in Church or State; against idolatry of philosophy and neglect of the Bible in the pulpit; recollecting how they told their tale upon the conscience of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and of his courtiers as well as upon the crowds of Florence;—can the English student, it may well be asked, have passed through all this uninfluenced? If he visited Florence at all he must have heard the story of Savonarola’s interview with the dying Lorenzo; he must have heard the common talk of the people, how Politian and Pico, bosom friends of Lorenzo, had died with the request that they might be buried in the habit of the order, and under the shadow of the convent of San Marco;[44] above all, he must again and again have joined, one would think, with the crowd daily pressing to hear the wonderful preacher. Lorenzo de’ Medici had died before Colet set foot upon Italian soil: probably also Pico and Politian.[45] And the death of these men had added to the grandeur of Savonarola’s position. He was still preaching those wonderful sermons, all of them in exposition of Scripture, to which allusion has been made, and exerting that influence upon his hearers to which so many great minds had yielded.
Savonarola’s influence on Pico and Ficino.
The man who had religion—the one requisite for teaching it—had arisen. And at the touch of his torch other hearts had caught fire. The influence of Savonarola had made itself felt even within the circle of the Platonic Academy. Pico had become a devoted student of the Scriptures and had died an earnest Christian. Ficino himself, without ceasing to be a Neo-Platonic philosopher, had also, it would seem, been profoundly influenced for a time by the enthusiasm the great reformer.[46] And in the light of Colet’s return to Oxford from Italy, a lover of Dionysius and to lecture on St. Paul’s Epistles, it is curious to observe that, shortly before Colet’s visit to Italy, Ficino himself had published translations of some of the Dionysian writings,[47] and that apparently about the time of Colet’s visit he was himself lecturing on St. Paul.[48]
Their influence on Colet.
If therefore Colet visited Florence, it may well be believed that he came into direct contact with Savonarola and Ficino. Whilst even if he did not visit Florence at all (and there appears to be no direct evidence that he did),[49] there remains abundant evidence, which will turn up in future chapters, that Colet had studied the writings of Pico,[50] of Ficino,[51] and of the authors most often quoted in their pages. He thus at least came directly under Florentine influence, at a time when the fire of religious zeal, kindled into a flame by the enthusiasm of the great Florentine Reformer, and fed by the scandals of Rome, was scattering its sparks abroad.