THE SERMONS AGAIN.
The great questions of government which then agitated Florence did not for a moment distract Savonarola’s attention from the duty of preaching practical Christian duties. After the course of sermons on Aggeus, he preached on the Psalms, for the Lenten course of 1495 on Job, resuming the Psalms after Lent. Solid teaching and vehement admonition were never absent, and the sermons of 1494 were quite as strongly marked by those features as those of the first course at the Duomo, in one of which he tells his hearers: “How have you renounced the devil and his pomps—you who every day do his works? You do not attend to the laws of Christ, but to the literature of the Gentiles. Behold, the Magi have abandoned paganism, and come to Christ, and you, having abandoned Christ, run to paganism. You have left the manna and the bread of angels, and you have sought to satiate your appetite with the food that is fit for swine. Every day avarice augments, and the vortex of usury is enlarged. Luxury has contaminated everything; pride ascends even to the clouds; blasphemies pierce the ears of Heaven; and scoffing takes place in the very face of God. You (who act thus) are of the devil, who is your father, and you seek to do the will of your father. Behold those who are worse than the Jews; and yet to us belong the sacred Scriptures, which speak against them.... Many are the blind who say our times are more felicitous than the past ages, but I think, if the Holy Scriptures are true, our lives are not only not like those of our fathers of former times, but they are at variance with them.... Cast your eyes on Rome, which is the chief city of the world, and lower your gaze to all her members, and, lo! from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, no health is there.
“We are in the midst of Christians, we converse with Christians, but they are not Christians who are so only in name; far better would it be in the midst of pagans.... For now men have become lovers of themselves; covetous, haughty, proud, profane, disobedient, ungrateful, given to ribaldry, without love, without peace, censorious, incontinent, spiteful, without benignity, treacherous persons, deceivers, puffed-up, lovers of voluptuousness more than that of God, who have the form of righteousness, but who deny the value of it.”
More than ever the people hung upon his words. Numbers came from Pisa, Leghorn, and the neighboring cities to hear him; many also from as far as Bologna, to remain in Florence during Lent. Residents of the neighboring villages and hamlets, and mountaineers from the Apennines, filled the roads to Florence on Saturdays and the eves of feast days; and, when the city gates were opened at dawn of day on Sunday morning, crowds were there waiting entrance. Strangers thus coming were received with brotherly charity, and the duties of Christian hospitality were observed. Even in winter, the people of Florence rose from their beds after midnight, in order to reach the Duomo in time to secure a place, and then waited in church, taper in hand, praying, singing hymns, or reciting the office, for hours together. The cathedral could not contain his audience. Seats were put up in an amphitheatre to increase the space. Men and boys swarmed on the pillars and every point where it was possible to obtain a position. Even the piazza was full.
All these remarkable manifestations were not without results. Florence became a changed city. Not only were churches assiduously attended, but alms were freely given. Women laid aside their rich ornaments and expensive jewels, and dressed with simplicity. Light and careless carriage or demeanor was rare. Habits of prayer and spiritual reading in the houses of the Florentines became the rule rather than the exception. The obscene carnival songs of the Medicean period were no longer heard in the streets, but, in their place, lauds or hymns. At the hour of mid-day rest, the artisan or tradesman might be seen reading the Bible or some pamphlet by Savonarola, and young men of noted licentious or frivolous habits became models of good conduct. Fast days were observed with such rigor that, in justice to the butchers, the tax on their calling was lowered. Men and women of disedifying or tepid life became religious—among them men of mature age, distinguished in letters, science, and public affairs. Such young men as the Strozzi, the Salviati, the Gondi, and the Accaiuoli joined the friars of S. Mark and other religious orders. Restitution of ill-gotten gains or property was common. But the most wonderful thing of all, says a historian, was to find bankers and merchants refunding, from scruples of conscience, sums of money, amounting sometimes to thousands of florins, which they had unrighteously acquired.
PROPHESIES HIS OWN DEATH.
Still Savonarola pressed on in his work of conversion as though it had just begun. His followers had prepared themselves for a joyful tone of victory in his sermons by reason of his brilliant civic triumphs, and were ready to rend the air with their alleluias. But he, on the contrary, seemed more serious, more sad, than ever, and, in his first discourse after the events we have just related, opened with an allegory full of sorrowful forebodings, and the prophecy of his own violent death:
“A young man, leaving his father’s house, went to fish in the sea; and the master of the vessel took him, while he was fishing, far into the deep sea, whence he could no longer discern the port; whereupon the youth began to lament aloud. O Florence! that sorrowful youth thus lamenting is before you in this pulpit. I left my father’s house to find the harbor of religion, departing when I was twenty-three years old in pursuit only of liberty and a life of quiet—two things I loved beyond all others. But then I looked upon the waters of this world, and began, by preaching, to gain some courage; and, finding pleasure therein, the Lord led me upon the sea, and has carried me far away into the great deep, where I now am, and can no longer descry the harbor. Undique sunt angustiæ--shoals are on every side. I see before me the threatening tribulations and tempests, the harbor of refuge left behind, the wind carrying me forward into the great deep. On my right, the elect calling upon me for help; on my left, demons and the wicked tormenting and raging. Over, above me, I see everlasting goodness, and hope encourages me thitherward; hell I see beneath me, which, from human frailty, I must dread, and into which, without the help of God, I must inevitably fall. O Lord, Lord! whither hast thou led me? That I might save some souls to thee, I am myself so placed that I can no more return to the quiet I left. Why hast thou created me to live among the contentions and discords of the earth? I once was free, and now I am the slave of every one. I see war and discord coming upon me from every side. But do you, O my friends! you the elect of God, have pity upon me. Give me flowers; for, as is said in the Canticle, quia amore langueo—because I languish through love. Flowers are good works, and I wish for nothing more than that you should do that which is acceptable to God, and save your own souls.”
Here his agitation was so great that he was obliged to pause, saying: “Now let me have some rest in this tempest.” Then resuming his discourse:
“But what, what, O Lord! will be the reward in the life to come to be given to those who have come victorious out of such a fight? It will be that which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard—eternal beatitude. And what is to be the reward in the present life? The servant will not be greater than his master, is the answer of our Lord. Thou knowest that, after I had taught, I was crucified, and thus thou wilt suffer martyrdom. O Lord, Lord!” he then exclaimed, with a loud voice that echoed throughout the church, “grant me this martyrdom, and let me die quickly for thy sake, as thou diedst for me. Already I see the axe sharpened. But the Lord says to me: Wait yet awhile, until that be finished which is to come to pass, and then thou shalt show that strength of mind which will be given unto thee.”