Chapter VI. Humanism And Reformation.[105]
§ 1. Savonarola.
When the Italian Humanism seemed about to become a mere revival of ancient Paganism, with its accompaniments of a cynical sensualism on the one hand, and the blindest trust in the occult sciences on the other, a great preacher arose in Florence who recalled men to Christianity and to Christian virtue.
Girolamo Savonarola was an Italian, a countryman of Giaocchino di Fiore, of Arnold of Brescia, of Francis of Assisi, of John of Parma, and, like them, he believed himself to be favoured with visions apocalyptic and other. He belonged to a land over which, all down through the Middle Ages, had swept popular religious revivals, sudden, consuming, and transient as prairie fires. When a boy, he [pg 159] had quivered at seeing the pain in the world around him; he had shuddered as he passed the great grim palaces of the Italian despots, where the banqueting hall was separated from the dungeon by a floor so thin that the groans of the prisoners mingled with the tinkle of the silver dishes and the wanton conversation of the guests. He had been destined by his family for the medical profession, and the lad was set to master the writings of Thomas Aquinas and the Arabian commentaries on Aristotle—the gateway in those days to a knowledge of the art of healing. The Summa of the great Schoolman entranced him, and insensibly drew him towards theology; but outwardly he did not rebel against the lot in life marked out for him. A glimpse of a quiet resting-place in this world of pain and evil had come to him, but it vanished, swallowed up in the universal gloom, when Roberto Strozzi refused to permit him to marry his daughter Laodamia. There remained only rest on God, study of His word, and such slight solace as music and sonnet-writing could bring. His devotion to Thomas Aquinas impelled him to seek within a Dominican convent that refuge which he passionately yearned for, from a corrupt world and a corrupt Church. There he remained buried for long years, reading and re-reading the Scriptures, poring over the Summa, drinking in the New Learning, almost unconsciously creating for himself a philosophy which blended the teachings of Aquinas with the Neo-Platonism of Marsiglio Ficino and of the Academy, and planning how he could best represent the doctrines of the Christian religion in harmony with the natural reason of man.
When at last he became a great preacher, able to sway heart and conscience, it should not be forgotten that he was mediæval to the core. His doctrinal teaching was based firmly on the theology of Thomas Aquinas. His intellectual conception of faith, his strong belief in the divine predestination and his way of expressing it, his view of Scripture as possessing manifold meanings, were all defined for him by the great Dominican Schoolman. [pg 160] He held strongly the mediæval idea that the Church was an external political unity, ruled by the Bishop of Rome, to whom every human soul must be subject, and whom everyone must obey save only when commands were issued contrary to a plain statement of the evangelical law. He expounded the fulness of and the slight limitations to the authority of the Pope exactly as Thomas and the great Schoolmen of the thirteenth century had done, though in terms very different from the canonists of the Roman Curia at the close of the Middle Ages. Even his appreciation of the Neo-Platonist side of Humanism could be traced back to mediæval authorities; for at all times the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius had been a source of inspiration to the greater Schoolmen.
His scholarship brought him into relation with the Humanist leaders in Florence, the earnest tone of his teaching and the saintliness of his character attracted them, his deep personal piety made them feel that he possessed something which they lacked; while no Neo-Platonist could be repelled by his claim to be the recipient of visions from on high.
The celebrated Humanists of Florence became the disciples of the great preacher. Marsiglio Ficino himself, the head of the Florentine Academy, who kept one lamp burning before the bust of Plato and another before an image of the Virgin, was for a time completely under his spell. Young Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's whole inner life was changed through his conversations with the Prior of San Marco. He reformed his earlier careless habits. He burnt five books of wanton love-songs which he had composed before his conversion.[106] He prayed daily at fixed hours, and he wrote earnestly to his nephew on the importance of prayer for a godly life: