RETURN TO FLORENCE.
In his convent he quietly resumed his functions of reader. There was no question of his preaching, for he had not forgotten the icy indifference of the Florentines. Devoting himself sedulously to the instruction of his novices, they became the objects of his tender care and of his fondest wishes. Meantime his powers had increased and his fame had spread. It was echoed from Northern Italy, and confirmed by Mirandola. Gradually the professed brothers of the convent joined the novices in listening to Savonarola’s lectures, and scholars and learned men of the city demanded permission to be admitted to them. Among those was his adviser Pico. The study-room in which he gave his lectures was no longer sufficient to hold the crowd. The garden of the convent was then taken possession of, and there, under the shade of a bush of damask roses, carefully renewed to this day by the brothers of the convent with religious veneration, he continued his lessons. His subject was the exposition of the Apocalypse. The crowd of his hearers still increased, and it was proposed to the Prior of S. Mark that Fra Hieronimo should continue his lectures in the church. This was accorded, and on Sunday, August 1, 1490, crowds flocked to hear the preacher, who, formerly so much despised in Florence, had gained such a reputation in other parts of Italy. From an account of it left by himself, he that day preached a terrible sermon. He continued his explanation of the Apocalypse. The walls rang with his terrible conclusions, he succeeded in communicating to the excited multitude the impetuosity of his own feelings, his voice seemed to them superhuman. The success of that day was complete. Nothing else was talked of in all Florence, and the literati for a short time forgot Plato to discuss the merits of the new Christian preacher. Here is his own account of the event:
“On the first day of August of this year, 1490, I began publicly to expound the Apocalypse in our church of S. Mark. During the course of the year, I continued to develop to the Florentines these three propositions 1. ‘That the church would be renewed in our time.’ 2. ‘Before that renovation, God would strike all Italy with a fearful chastisement.’ 3. ‘That these things would happen shortly.’ I labored to demonstrate these three points to my hearers, and to persuade them by probable arguments, by allegories drawn from sacred Scripture, by other similitudes and parables drawn from what was going on in the church. I insisted on reasons of this kind; and I dissembled the knowledge which God gave me of those things in other ways, because men’s spirits appeared to me not yet in a state fit to comprehend such mysteries.”
The reader will not fail to notice the portentous intimation conveyed in the last sentence of this remarkable record. Savonarola already believed himself the recipient of supernatural communications “the knowledge which God gave me of these things in other ways.” We shall find him presently boldly announcing his celestial visions and commands from heaven, and here may be discerned clearly and at once the point at which his noble mind and pure spirit, disturbed by the excitement of years of mental tension and meditation on Apocalyptic visions, lost its clearness and its balance, and fell into the gravest errors of judgment and doctrine.
THE FAMOUS SERMONS.
Crowds continued to press into the church of S. Mark to hear the preaching of Fra Girolamo, until the utmost capacity of the building no longer sufficed to hold them. For the Lent of 1491, his preaching was appointed to take place in the cathedral, and the walls of Santa Maria del Fiore for the first time echoed to his voice. From this moment he was lord of the pulpit and master of the people, who, increasing every day in number as hearers, redoubled in their enthusiasm for him. The pictures he drew charmed the fancy of the multitude, and the threats of future punishments exercised a magic influence upon all, for sinister forebodings appeared to rule the hour. All this was far from satisfactory or pleasing to the Magnificent Lorenzo, and naturally begat among his adherents a feeling of strong opposition to Savonarola. The result was that a deputation of five of the principal citizens (Domenico Bonsi, Guidantonio Vespucci, Paulo Antonio Soderini, Bernardo Rucallai, and Francesco Valori) waited upon him, with instructions to advise him that he was risking his own safety and that of his convent, and to admonish him to be more moderate in his tone when teaching or preaching. Savonarola abruptly cut short their discourse, saying: “I see that you come not of your own motion, but that you are sent by Lorenzo de’ Medici. Tell him to make haste to repent of his sins, for God is no respecter of persons, and has no fear of the great ones of this earth.” Proud of his independence as a priest, Savonarola desired thus to crush at the outset the established custom in S. Mark of continually bending and prostrating before the house of Medici. At this the deputation pointed out to him the danger he was in of being exiled; and he answered: “I have no fear of exile from your city, which is, after all, a mere grain of dust upon the face of the earth. But although I am only a stranger in it, and Lorenzo a citizen and its head, know ye that I shall remain, and ye shall depart.”
To this he added a few words concerning the actual condition of Florence, which made them wonder at the intimate knowledge he possessed of its affairs. Shortly afterward in the sacristy of S. Mark’s, in the presence of several persons, he said that the affairs of Italy would soon change, for that the Pope, the King of Naples, and Il Magnifico had not long to live.
The ill-will of the Mediceans was naturally strengthened by such an incident as this. Their murmurs increased, and, coming from a small but influential portion of the citizens, Savonarola took it into serious consideration whether he should not give up for the time the prophetic strain of his sermons, and confine himself to the inculcation of moral and religious precepts. There is but little doubt that he struggled earnestly and conscientiously to bring himself to this resolution, and he has himself left the record of it in his Compendio di Rivelazione. “I deliberated with myself,” he says, “as to suppressing the sermon on the visions I had prepared for the following Sunday’s cathedral service, and for the future to abstain from them. God is my witness that throughout the whole of Saturday and during the entire night I lay awake; and every other way, every doctrine but that, was taken from me. At daylight, fatigued and exhausted by my long vigil, while I prayed, I heard a voice which said to me, ‘Fool, seest thou not that God wills that thou shalt persevere in thy path?’ And that day, I preached a terrible sermon.”[124]
It was, doubtless, as he says, “una predica tremenda,” for, persuaded as he was of his divine mission, he no sooner entered the pulpit than, with his imagination excited, his senses in febrile agitation from the effect of vigils and fastings, his subject carried him away into bursts of denunciatory eloquence that frightened while they charmed his hearers. In his excitement he again sees the nocturnal visions of his cell, loses consciousness of his own personality, and confounds the words there heard with the language of Scripture, for in his sermons he frequently, in the rush of language, cites as passages from the Bible the phrases of his own visions. Among these was his famous Gladius Domini super terram cito et velociter.
THE NEW PRIOR.