Nor did the monks themselves scruple to attack princes, governments, the clergy, or even their own order. A direct exhortation to overthrow a despotic house, like that uttered by Jacopo Bussolaro at Pavia in the fourteenth century,[1069] hardly occurs again in the following period; but there is no want of courageous reproofs, addressed even to the Pope in his own chapel ([p. 239], note 1), and of naïve political advice given in the presence of rulers who by no means held themselves in need of it.[1070] In the Piazza del Castello at Milan, a blind preacher from the Incoronata—consequently an Augustinian—ventured in 1494 to exhort Ludovico Moro from the pulpit: ‘My lord, beware of showing the French the way, else you will repent it.’[1071] There were further prophetic monks, who, without exactly preaching political sermons, drew such appalling pictures of the future that the hearers almost lost their senses. After the election of Leo X. in the year 1513, a whole association of these men, twelve Franciscan monks in all, journeyed through the various districts of Italy, of which one or other was assigned to each preacher. The one who appeared in Florence,[1072] Fra Francesco di Montepulciano, struck terror into the whole people. The alarm was not diminished by the exaggerated reports of his prophecies which reached those who were too far off to hear him. After one of his sermons he suddenly died ‘of pain in the chest.’ The people thronged in such numbers to kiss the feet of the corpse that it had to be secretly buried in the night. But the newly awakened spirit of prophecy, which seized upon even women and peasants, could not be controlled without great difficulty. ‘In order to restore to the people their cheerful humour, the Medici—Giuliano, Leo’s brother, and Lorenzo—gave on St. John’s Day, 1514, those splendid festivals, tournaments, processions, and hunting-parties, which were attended by many distinguished persons from Rome, and among them, though disguised, by no less than six cardinals.’
But the greatest of the prophets and apostles had been already burnt in Florence in the year 1498—Fra Giorolamo Savonarola of Ferrara. We must content ourselves with saying a few words respecting him.[1073]
The instrument by means of which he transformed and ruled the city of Florence (1494-8) was his eloquence. Of this the meagre reports that are left to us, which were taken down mostly on the spot, give us evidently a very imperfect notion. It was not that he possessed any striking outward advantages, for voice, accent, and rhetorical skill constituted precisely his weakest side; and those who required the preacher to be a stylist, went to his rival Fra Mariano da Genazzano. The eloquence of Savonarola was the expression of a lofty and commanding personality, the like of which was not seen again till the time of Luther. He himself held his own influence to be the result of a divine illumination, and could therefore, without presumption, assign a very high place to the office of the preacher, who, in the great hierarchy of spirits, occupies the next place below the angels.
This man, whose nature seemed made of fire, worked another and greater miracle than any of his oratorical triumphs. His own Dominican monastery of San Marco, and then all the Dominican monasteries of Tuscany, became like-minded with himself, and undertook voluntarily the work of inward reform. When we reflect what the monasteries then were, and what measureless difficulty attends the least change where monks are concerned, we are doubly astonished at so complete a revolution. While the reform was still in progress large numbers of Savonarola’s followers entered the Order, and thereby greatly facilitated his plans. Sons of the first houses in Florence entered San Marco as novices.
This reform of the Order in a particular province was the first step to a national Church, in which, had the reformer himself lived longer, it must infallibly have ended. Savonarola, indeed, desired the regeneration of the whole Church, and near the end of his career sent pressing exhortations to the great powers urging them to call together a Council. But in Tuscany his Order and party were the only organs of his spirit—the salt of the earth—while the neighbouring provinces remained in their old condition. Fancy and asceticism tended more and more to produce in him a state of mind to which Florence appeared as the scene of the kingdom of God upon earth.
The prophecies, whose partial fulfilment conferred on Savonarola a supernatural credit, were the means by which the ever-active Italian imagination seized control of the soundest and most cautious natures. At first the Franciscans of the Osservanza, trusting in the reputation which had been bequeathed to them by San Bernadino of Siena, fancied that they could compete with the great Dominican. They put one of their own men into the Cathedral pulpit, and outbid the Jeremiads of Savonarola by still more terrible warnings, till Pietro de’Medici, who then still ruled over Florence, forced them both to be silent. Soon after, when Charles VIII. came into Italy and the Medici were expelled, as Savonarola had clearly foretold, he alone was believed in.
It must be frankly confessed that he never judged his own premonitions and visions critically, as he did those of others. In the funeral oration on Pico della Mirandola, he deals somewhat harshly with his dead friend. Since Pico, notwithstanding an inner voice which came from God, would not enter the Order, he had himself prayed to God to chasten him for his disobedience. He certainly had not desired his death, and alms and prayers had obtained the favour that Pico’s soul was safe in Purgatory. With regard to a comforting vision which Pico had upon his sick-bed, in which the Virgin appeared and promised him that he should not die, Savonarola confessed that he had long regarded it as a deceit of the Devil, till it was revealed to him that the Madonna meant the second and eternal death.[1074] If these things and the like are proofs of presumption, it must be admitted that this great soul at all events paid a bitter penalty for his fault. In his last days Savonarola seems to have recognised the vanity of his visions and prophecies. And yet enough inward peace was left him to enable him to meet death like a Christian. His partisans held to his doctrine and predictions for thirty years longer.
He only undertook the reorganisation of the state for the reason that otherwise his enemies would have got the government into their own hands. It is unfair to judge him by the semi-democratic constitution ([p. 83], note 1) of the beginning of the year 1495. Nor is it either better or worse than other Florentine constitutions.[1075]
He was at bottom the most unsuitable man who could be found for such a work. His ideal was a theocracy, in which all men were to bow in blessed humility before the Unseen, and all conflicts of passion were not even to be able to arise. His whole mind is written in that inscription on the Palazzo della Signoria, the substance of which was his maxim[1076] as early as 1495, and which was solemnly renewed by his partisans in 1527: ‘Jesus Christus Rex populi Florentini S. P. Q. decreto creatus.’ He stood in no more relation to mundane affairs and their actual conditions than any other inhabitant of a monastery. Man, according to him, has only to attend to those things which make directly for his salvation.
This temper comes out clearly in his opinions on ancient literature: ‘The only good thing which we owe to Plato and Aristotle, is that they brought forward many arguments which we can use against the heretics. Yet they and other philosophers are now in Hell. An old woman knows more about the Faith than Plato. It would be good for religion if many books that seem useful were destroyed. When there were not so many books and not so many arguments (“ragioni naturali”) and disputes, religion grew more quickly than it has done since.’ He wished to limit the classical instruction of the schools to Homer, Virgil, and Cicero, and to supply the rest from Jerome and Augustine. Not only Ovid and Catullus, but Terence and Tibullus, were to be banished. This may be no more than the expression of a nervous morality, but elsewhere in a special work he admits that science as a whole is harmful. He holds that only a few people should have to do with it, in order that the tradition of human knowledge may not perish, and particularly that there may be no want of intellectual athletes to confute the sophisms of the heretics. For all others, grammar, morals, and religious teaching (‘litterae sacrae’) suffice. Culture and education would thus return wholly into the charge of the monks, and as, in his opinion, the ‘most learned and the most pious’ are to rule over the states and empires, these rulers would also be monks. Whether he really foresaw this conclusion, we need not inquire.