It is related that in 1429, when Brother Richard, a Franciscan, returned from Jerusalem, he delivered so stirring a sermon that the people of Paris kindled hundreds of fires, in which men burned card and billiard tables, and the women their extravagant and gaudy ornaments. So at the preaching of Friar Jerome at Florence, the friars during the carnival incited a numerous flock of children to go round in all districts and in a spirit of humility and devotion beg people to deliver up all the profane books and pictures that were kept by them. These were freely given; and the devout women yielded humbly to these innocent preachers, suffered themselves to be despoiled of their dearest personal ornaments, and of everything that was used to give them a fictitious beauty. On the last day of the carnival, after having heard Mass, clothed in white, carrying on their heads garlands of olive, and red crosses in their hands, the children made a procession, singing psalms to the Piazzo dei Signori, where a pyramidal scaffold had been erected, upon which these instruments of pleasure and profane luxury were deposited. The children mounted the rostrum, and after having sung spiritual hymns the four deputies came down with lighted torches and set fire to the pile, and watched it as it was consumed amidst voices of joy and the sound of trumpets. Another saint of the Franciscan order, named Bernardine of Sienna, born in 1380, undertook a reform which was styled of the strict observance, and was the means of founding five hundred convents in Italy. He was a most famous preacher, and shone in his denunciations of the then prevailing weaknesses, which were the vices of gaming and divination and magic. His power over his contemporaries was supreme as a reconciler of long-standing enmities. He distinguished himself by collecting on the Capitoline Hill an immense assemblage of pictures, musical instruments, implements of gaming, false hair, and extravagant female dresses, of which he made an enormous bonfire. This saint was said to work miracles, but at last was charged with heresy and idolatry, on account of his using an ornament which he invented as a help to devotion. The Pope pronounced against this ornament, and the saint dutifully gave it up. He died in 1444, and at the jubilee in 1450 was canonised at the instance of Pope Nicolas V.
AN ELOQUENT FRIAR ON THE FASHIONABLE VICES.
John Capistran, a Franciscan friar of the fifteenth century, was noted for his eloquence. At Nuremberg, where he went to preach in 1452, he caused a pulpit to be set up in the middle of the great square, and there preached for some days in so forcible a manner against vice that he led the inhabitants to make a pile of their cards and dice, and afterwards set fire to them; which being done, he exhorted them to take up arms against the Turks. The year after, he went to Breslau, in Silesia, and there inveighed strongly against cards and dice; and commanding a pile to be made of them all, he set fire to it. But the power of his eloquence was not confined to inanimate things; for exerting his eloquence in a most intolerant manner against the Jews, he caused a great number of these people to be burnt in all parts of Silesia, upon pretence of their behaving with irreverence towards the consecrated bread.
A MONK DENOUNCING FEMALE HEAD-DRESSES.
Thomas Conecte, a Carmelite monk, born in Brittany in 1434, was the greatest preacher of his time. When in Flanders, he drew vast crowds and discoursed vehemently on the vices of the clergy, the luxury and extravagance of women’s head-dresses, which were of prodigious height, called hennins. These were high and broad horns an ell long, having on each side ears so large that they could not get through doors. The preacher not only denounced these, but gave presents to little children to cry and hoot at them, and even throw stones at the wearers. The ladies at last durst not appear, except in disguise, to listen to Brother Thomas’s fervent appeals. For a time the excess was reduced; but when he left the country the head-dresses were put on again, with still higher toppings than before, as if to redeem the lost time. As Paradin relates: “After Thomas’s departure the ladies lifted their horns again, and did like the snails, which, when they hear any noise, pull in their horns, but when the noise is over suddenly lift them higher than before.” Wherever Thomas went his zeal against the senseless ornaments and crying vices of the day led to many superfluous clothes, tables, dice, cards, and frivolities being burned. He passed triumphantly from the Netherlands to Italy, exciting great attention and awakening no small jealousy. At last the Pope was moved to put him on his trial, when he was found guilty of the dangerous heresy of denouncing the vices of the clergy and the gluttony of the monks. He met an appropriate fate by refusing to retract, and then by being burnt, as being far too advanced a reformer for his times.
SAVONAROLA, THE MARTYRED PREACHER (A.D. 1498).
Savonarola at an early age chose the study of theology for a profession, and devoted himself to the Holy Scriptures, and at the age of twenty-two was greatly impressed by the preaching of a friar. He became member of a Dominican convent at Bologna. He was removed to Florence, then became friar, and saw great need of reform in the lax and worldly ways of the monks. He soon developed great gifts as a preacher, and had a rapt and impassioned style of oratory; and his early study of the Apocalypse led him into mystical language, which heightened the effect. His denunciations of the current vices made him a formidable censor, and even gave him political influence, and excited enmities. Like some of his near contemporaries, his influence over the ardent youths caused them at the carnival of 1497 to go the round of the city and collect all the rich and extravagant dresses, pictures, musical instruments, books of sorcery, and false hair into a large pile; and then, amid singing of hymns, sounding of bells and trumpets, the heap was fired amid great enthusiasm. His attacks on the vices of the period led the Pope to excommunicate him. But his preaching was a constant attraction and kept up the excitement. Shorthand writers took the sermons down, printed and dispersed them all over Italy. Once he was challenged by a bitter enemy to walk through a burning pile forty yards long, in order to test which of two opposing doctrines was true; and he felt bound to accept the challenge, though ultimately this mode of trial was prohibited by the magistrates. He was, like other advanced reformers, charged with heresy, tortured, and ultimately sentenced to be burnt alive, after being degraded. The sentence was carried out in 1498, and his ashes were thrown into the river, under the idle notion that his name and influence would perish. Some have denounced him as a fanatic, and others as a reformer too far advanced for his age, though Luther was only a few years his junior. In Germany also three noted reformers appeared between 1450 and 1489—namely, John of Goch, John of Wesel, and John Wessel, whose teaching tended towards Lutheranism, then in the bud and soon about to flower.