Pope Alexander's two ambitions were the advancement of his family and the strengthening of his temporal power. It was Alexander who, knowing that the Sultan had a rival in the person of the young Prince Djem, seized the young noble and put him in jail, on condition that forty thousand ducats yearly should be paid for his jail fee. It was to Alexander that, later, the Turk sent dispatches offering three hundred thousand ducats if he would do away with the youth. History has extenuated many of the crimes of Alexander, but this traffic in murder for the Turks can never be forgiven. It was Alexander also who made impossible liberty of the press, by forcing printers to submit their books to the control of archbishops. It was Alexander who maintained a harem in the Vatican. It was Alexander whose spies were in every inn, in every village. His secret agents were in all the audiences of Savonarola. Alexander looked upon the Prior as a traitor, disloyal and dangerous to the Papacy. At first he sent agents to Florence, and offered bribes to Savonarola, asked if he would accept a cardinal's hat, and invited him to Rome to visit the Vatican. Savonarola answered by redoubling his attacks. He called Rome a harlot church, till the Pope ordered his excommunication. And at length, becoming alarmed for their city, the magistrates of Florence forbade Savonarola's preaching, and closed the cathedral to his work.
Retiring to St. Mark's, the great leader wrote letters to the crowned heads of Europe, and called for a general council. He reviewed the crimes of which the Pope had been guilty, and the list of vices was long and black. His letters to various princes were intercepted, and taken to Alexander. Then agents, with large sums of money, were sent to Florence to organize a movement to destroy the Prior. Every conceivable plot was organized against him, but he escaped poison, the knife, and the assassin's club. His enemies challenged him to the ordeal by fire, and when he asked that he might be allowed to carry the crucifix and the sacrament in his hand they withdrew the challenge. Thrown into prison, the inquisitors subjected him to the most cruel torture. He was drawn up to the ceiling by a rope fourteen times, and then suddenly dropped, until muscles, tendons and bones were all but torn from their sockets. He was denied food and water and sleep. And finally his reason gave way. Bodily pain so injured and inflamed the brain that it refused its action. Among his last words were the words of the dying Saviour, "In thee, O Lord, have I trusted. Let me never be confounded."
When he was condemned to the flames, he appealed to the government of Florence, but the rulers hastened to support the papal decree, and insisted upon the execution of the sentence. On the morning upon which he was to die, the great public square in Florence was crowded with citizens. Multitudes who had wept during his sermons and whose lives had been changed by his teachings, stood in grief and trepidation around the funeral pyre, just as the multitudes in Jerusalem stood in fear about the cross of Christ. In pronouncing the sentence of death, the bishop of Verona, overwhelmed with fear and confusion, said, "I separate thee from the Church militant and the Church triumphant." To which Savonarola answered, "From the Church militant, yes, but from the Church triumphant, that is not given unto you." The soldiers pushed the lowest dregs of the city, thieves, drunkards, diseased criminals, close to his scaffold, and encouraged them to assail him with vile words and vile deeds. At ten o'clock of the 23d of May, 1498, his enemies achieved his death. Like Elijah he ascended unto heaven in a chariot of fire. But soon thereafter the guilty leaders of the Church discovered that his work had just begun. He had aroused the conscience of the people, who followed Luther in a revolt against the sale of indulgences that gave the right for the crime and sin. His assertion of personal liberty put strength into Luther's arm and faith into the heart of Calvin. Erasmus borrowed from Savonarola his teachings of reasonableness and light. In exalting the Bible as the final source of authority, he had enthroned that Book and the teachings of Jesus above all popes and cardinals and bishops. Practical men, Galileo, and Bacon, and Erasmus, and Tyndale, borrowed courage from his life and writings. And to this day the influence of this preacher, prophet, martyr, is still potent, not alone in Italy, but throughout the world.
III
WILLIAM THE SILENT
(1533–1584)
And Brave Little Holland
Be the reasons what they may, liberty owes much to little lands and confined peoples. Go back to any age and continent, place side by side a little nation and a large one, and if the first has made for liberty and progress, the second has often made for bondage and superstition. For the beginnings of morals and religion we go back, not to that widely extended state named Babylon, but to little Palestine, shut in between the desert and the deep sea. For the beginnings of art and culture we go not to the vast, rich plains of Asia Minor, but to that little rocky land named Greece. For the beginnings of the republic we go not to the sunny plains of Italy, but to the narrow valleys between the Alpine Mountains. What great contribution to civilization has Russia made to the world? But the little Swiss Republic has given us the international postal system, international arbitration and the referendum. Commerce owes a great debt to little Venice. Modern banking owes a great debt to little Scotland. Asia and Africa owe a great debt to little England. And though Holland was a narrow strip of land but twenty miles wide and one hundred miles long, yet the world can never repay the debt it owes to this mother of republics.
For lovers of liberty the most sacred spot in modern Europe is the square of the Binnenhof at The Hague. A tablet there records the words with which William the Silent challenged Philip II—words that were first made the foundation of the Dutch Republic, words that our pilgrim fathers took as the basis of their New England institutions.
"We declare to you that you have no right to interfere with the conscience of any one so long as he has done nothing to work injury to another person or public scandal."