INDEPENDENCE OF S. MARK’S.
On his return to Florence in the spring of 1493, Savonarola found a worse state of things than he had left on his departure. The rule of Piero de’ Medici was rapidly becoming every day less tolerable, and the discontent of the people more marked and bitter. One thing, however, the people knew well. It was that Savonarola was their friend. Piero de’ Medici was also perfectly aware of it, and, as he had the power, might at any moment through his influence have the Dominican prior ordered away to Milan by his superiors in Lombardy or Rome, as the Tuscan convents formed one province with those of Lombardy. This union had been brought about some fifty years before by reason of the depopulation of the Tuscan convents from the plague. As this state of things had long ceased to exist, and the convents were again full, it occurred to Savonarola to seek the restoration of the Tuscan convents to their original condition of an independent province. In his management of this important and difficult piece of practical business, there was nothing whatever of the visionary monk, and he set to work with all his energy to carry out a measure in which he felt that the purity and elevation of his order and the liberties of the Florentine people were at stake. The authorization for the measure he desired must of course come from Rome, and, in order to obtain it, he sent thither two of his friars, Alessandro Rinuccini, a member of one of the most illustrious families of Florence, and Domenico da Pescia. The latter in particular was unreservedly devoted to his prior, ardent in his admiration of him, and fully persuaded that he was a prophet sent by God. On arriving at their destination, they encountered a formidable opposition. Not only the Lombards, but the King of Naples, the republic of Genoa, the Dukes of Milan and Ferrara, and Bentivoglio of Bologna, all joined in striving for the defeat of the petition. Strangely enough—and it is mentioned by historians as an evidence of his frivolous mind and inattention to serious matters—Piero de’ Medici had been persuaded to favor a measure of which the main object was to free S. Mark’s and its prior from his authority. In fact, Savonarola could not have advanced a step without obtaining his approbation, inasmuch as the application of the convent as made could not be allowed to be presented without the approbation of the Florentine government. In bringing about this important success, Savonarola had the assistance of Philip Valori, and John, Cardinal de’ Medici, a brother of Piero, who afterwards became Pope Leo X. While at Rome, the general of the Dominicans and Cardinal Caraffa of Naples warmly supported him. Nevertheless, the two friars of S. Mark’s who had been sent to Rome were dispirited by the formidable aspect of the opposition they there encountered, and wrote to their prior that success was impossible, and he must give up all hope of carrying his point. Savonarola’s reply was: “Away with doubts! Stand firm, and you will be victorious; the Lord scatters the councils of the nations, and casts the designs of princes to the ground.” In a consistory of the 22d of May, the Tuscan question came up, but the pope refused to approve the brief, and dismissed the consistory until the following day. All the cardinals departed with the exception of Caraffa, who took the liveliest interest in the success of the measure, and had a strong personal influence with Alexander VI. They entered into a friendly conversation, during which the cardinal produced the brief, and asked the pope to sign it. With a smile, he declined; when, presuming on his personal familiarity, and in a half-jesting manner, Caraffa took the pontifical ring from the pope’s finger, and sealed the brief. Just then, in hot haste, came in fresh and stronger remonstrances from Lombardy, but the pope replied that it was too late—“What is done is done”; and he would hear no more of it.
Savonarola’s first care was to reform and strengthen the discipline of his convent, and it was at this juncture that he brought it back to the original rule of poverty established by the founder of the order, as we have already stated. Then followed the enforcement of the strictest personal economy, the acquisition and practice of useful arts by the monks whereby to earn their livelihood, and the study of the oriental languages. In all his conventual reforms, the new prior taught by example as much as by precept. His monks saw that he inculcated no principle of which he was not a living model. Sober in his diet, ascetic in all his habits, of an application to study that seemed to know no fatigue, he inspired all by his labor and self-denial. In all the whole convent, the humblest monk was not more poorly clad than his prior. No cell so naked, no pallet so hard, as his. Rigid with others, he was severe with himself. Numerous candidates presented themselves for admission to the Convent of S. Mark, which was now the admiration of all Tuscany. The sons of the most distinguished families in Florence sought to become inmates of S. Mark’s, and the Rucellai, the Salviati, the Albizzi, the Strozzi, and even the Medici, pressed into the narrow limits of the crowded convent, in order to receive at the hands of Savonarola the robe of S. Dominic. Additional buildings were absolutely necessary, and those of the Sapienza were obtained—the same that were a few years since used for the stables of the grand duke.
Under the brief lately obtained from Rome, the Dominican convents of Fiesole, Prato, and Bibbiena, and the two hospices of the Maddalena, asked for reception into the Tuscan congregation under Savonarola’s authority, and were admitted. Even the friars of another order, the Camaldoli, were desirous of uniting themselves with S. Mark’s, in order to be under the rule of Savonarola; but he could not accede to their request, for want of authority. All this success and honor did not in the slightest degree affect his character. If, during his career, he manifested pride and daring, it was towards the great and powerful. In private life, and in the interior of his convent, he was to the end the same gentle and humble brother the monks had known as Fra Girolamo.
ADVENT, 1493.
It was natural, under the circumstances, that the Superior of the Tuscan Congregation of Dominicans, the preacher whose predictions had been so wonderfully verified, the exemplary monk who had been called to the bedside of the dying Lorenzo the Magnificent, should enter upon the delivery of his course of Advent sermons for 1493 with increased confidence and far greater freedom of speech than the comparatively unknown Fra Girolamo had ever manifested. His audiences grew daily more numerous, and crowds awaited for hours his coming. The twenty-five sermons of this course were on the Seventy-third Psalm (Quam Bonus). His principal topics were the unhappy and ruinous condition of the church, the immoral lives of the Italian princes and many of the higher clergy, approaching punishments, and the desire of all good men to stem the rising tide of depravity. We have already cited the passages (“They tickle the ears with Aristotle, etc.,” and “In the houses of the great prelates”) in which he denounces the clergy and hierarchy; and he thus describes the princes of Italy: “These wicked princes are sent as a punishment for the sins of their subjects; they are truly a great snare for souls; their palaces and halls are the refuge of all the beasts and monsters of the earth, and are a shelter for caitiffs and for every kind of wickedness. Such men resort to their courts because there they find the means and the excitements to give vent to all their evil passions. There we find the wicked counsellors who devise new burdens and new imposts for sucking the blood of the people; there we find the flattering philosophers and poets who, by a thousand stories and lies, trace the genealogy of those wicked princes from the gods; and, what is still worse, there we find priests who adopt the same language. That, my brethren, is the city of Babylon, the city of the foolish and the impious, the city which the Lord will destroy.”
And then, after speaking sharply of a superfluity of golden mitres and golden chalices, he adds: “But dost thou know what I would say? In the primitive church, there were wooden chalices and golden prelates; but now the church has golden chalices and wooden prelates....”
“What doest thou, O Lord? Why slumberest thou? Arise and take the church out of the hands of the devil, out of the hands of tyrants, out of the hands of wicked prelates. Hast thou forgotten thy church? Dost thou not love her? Hast thou no care for her? We are become, O Lord, the opprobrium of the nations. Turks are masters of Constantinople. We are become tributaries of infidels. O Lord God! thou hast dealt with us as an angry father; thou hast banished us from thee; hasten the punishment and the scourge, that there may be a speedy return to thee. Effunde iras tuas in gentes—’Pour out thy wrath upon the nations.’ Be not scandalized, my brethren, by these words; rather consider that, when the good wish for punishment, it is because they wish to see evil driven away, and the blessed reign of Jesus Christ triumphant throughout the world. We have now no other hope left us, unless the sword of the Lord threatens the earth.”
THE DELUGE.
In Lent, 1494, Savonarola resumed his preaching in a course of sermons which, as published, have been entitled Sermons on Noe’s Ark (Prediche sopra l’Arca di Noé). It was, in fact, a continuation of the expounding of Genesis begun in 1490. The impression produced by them upon his auditors was very great. All the biographers unite in describing how the people were carried away, the wonder he excited, and how marvellously all that was foretold came to pass. His Advent sermons had dwelt on the near approach of punishments—a coming deluge of calamities—and he now constructs a mystical ark in which all may take refuge. He prophesied the approach of a new Cyrus who should conquer Italy without resistance. At length, on Easter morning, his ark being completed, he invited all to hasten to enter it with the virtues which distinguish Christians: “The time will come when the ark will be closed, and many will repent that they had not entered therein.” Thus the short chapter of Genesis relating to the ark occupied the whole of Lent, and he resumed the subject in the month of September following. On the twenty-first day of that month, he was to expound the seventeenth verse, relating to the Deluge.