That night, and each following night during the French
occupation, Florence shone so with illuminations that it seemed mid-day;
every day was full of feasting and pageantry; but French and Florentines
alike were in arms. The royal "deliverer"--egged on by the ladies of
Piero's family and especially by Alfonsina, his young wife--talked
of restoring the Medici; the Swiss, rioting in the Borgo SS.
Apostoli, were severely handled by the populace, in a way that showed the
King that the Republic was not to be trifled with. On November 24th
the treaty was signed in the Medicean (now the Riccardi) palace, after
a scene never forgotten by the Florentines. Discontented with the
amount of the indemnity, the King exclaimed in a threatening voice, "I
will bid my trumpets sound" (_io faro dare nelle trombe_). Piero
Capponi thereupon snatched the treaty from the royal secretary, tore it
in half, and exclaiming, "And we will sound our bells" (_e noi faremo dare
nelle campane_), turned with his colleagues to leave the room. Charles, who
knew Capponi of old (he had been Florentine Ambassador in France), had the
good sense to laugh it off, and the Republic was saved. There was to be an
alliance between the Republic and the King, who was henceforth to be called
"Restorer and Protector of the Liberty of Florence." He was to receive a
substantial indemnity. Pisa and the fortresses were for the present to be
retained, but ultimately restored; the decree against the Medici was to be
revoked, but they were still banished from Tuscany. But the King would not
go. The tension every day grew greater, until at last Savonarola sought
the royal presence, solemnly warned him that God's anger would fall
upon him if he lingered, and sent him on his way. On November 28th
the French left Florence, everyone, from Charles himself
downwards, shamelessly carrying off everything of value that they could lay
hands on, including the greater part of the treasures and rarities
that Cosimo and Lorenzo had collected.
It was now that all Florence
turned to the voice that rang out from the Convent of San Marco and the
pulpit of the Duomo; and Savonarola became, in some measure, the pilot of the
State. Mainly through his influence, the government was remodelled somewhat
on the basis of the Venetian constitution with modifications. The supreme
authority was vested in the _Greater Council_, which created the magistrates
and approved the laws; and it elected the _Council of Eighty_, with
which the Signoria was bound to consult, which, together with the
Signoria and the Colleges, made appointments and discussed matters which
could not be debated in the Greater Council. A law was also passed, known
as the "law of the six beans," which gave citizens the right of
appeal from the decisions of the Signoria or the sentences of the _Otto
di guardia e balia_ (who could condemn even to death by six votes
or "beans")--not to a special council to be chosen from the
Greater Council, as Savonarola wished, but to the Greater Council
itself. There was further a general amnesty proclaimed (March 1495).
Finally, since the time-honoured calling of parliaments had been a mere
farce, an excuse for masking revolution under the pretence of legality,
and was the only means left by which the Medici could
constitutionally have overthrown the new regime, it was ordained (August)
that no parliament should ever again be held under pain of death. "The
only purpose of parliament," said Savonarola, "is to snatch the
sovereign power from the hands of the people." So enthusiastic--to use
no harsher term--did the Friar show himself, that he declared from
the pulpit that, if ever the Signoria should sound the bell for
a parliament, their houses should be sacked, and that they
themselves might be hacked to pieces by the crowd without any sin being
thereby incurred; and that the Consiglio Maggiore was the work of God and
not of man, and that whoever should attempt to change this
government should for ever be accursed of the Lord. It was now that the Sala
del Maggior Consiglio was built by Cronaca in the Priors' Palace,
to accommodate this new government of the people; and the Signoria set
up in the middle of the court and at their gate the two bronze statues
by Donatello, which they took from Piero's palace--the _David_, an
emblem of the triumphant young republic that had overthrown the giant
of tyranny, the _Judith_ as a warning of the punishment that the
State would inflict upon whoso should attempt its restoration;
_exemplum salutis publicae cives posuere_, 1495, ran the new inscription put
by these stern theocratic republicans upon its base.
But in the
meantime Charles had pursued his triumphant march, had entered Rome, had
conquered the kingdom of Naples almost without a blow. Then fortune turned
against him; Ludovico Sforza with the Pope formed an Italian league,
including Venice, with hope of Germany and Spain, to expel the French from
Italy--a league in which all but Florence and Ferrara joined. Charles was now
in full retreat to secure his return to France, and was said to be marching
on Florence with Piero dei Medici in his company--no reformation of the
Church accomplished, no restoration of Pisa to his ally. The Florentines
flew to arms. But Savonarola imagined that he had had a special Vision
of the Lilies vouchsafed to him by the Blessed Virgin, which pointed to an
alliance with France and the reacquisition of Pisa.[21] He went forth to meet
the King at Poggibonsi, June 1495, overawed the fickle monarch by his
prophetic exhortation, and at least kept the French out of Florence. A month
later, the battle of Fornovo secured Charles' retreat and occasioned (what
was more important to posterity) Mantegna's Madonna of the Victory. And of
the lost cities and fortresses, Leghorn alone was recovered.
[21]
When Savonarola entered upon the political arena, his spiritual sight was
often terribly dimmed. The cause of Pisa against Florence was every bit as
righteous as that of the Florentines themselves against the
Medici.
But all that Savonarola had done, or was to do, in the political
field was but the means to an end--the reformation and purification
of Florence. It was to be a united and consecrated State, with
Christ alone for King, adorned with all triumphs of Christian art and
sacred poetry, a fire of spiritual felicity to Italy and all the earth.
In Lent and Advent especially, his voice sounded from the
pulpit, denouncing vice, showing the beauty of righteousness, the efficacy
of the sacraments, and interpreting the Prophets, with special
reference to the needs of his times. And for a while Florence seemed verily
a new city. For the wild licence of the Carnival, for the Pagan pageantry
that the Medicean princes had loved, for the sensual songs that had once
floated up from every street of the City of Flowers--there were now bonfires
of the vanities in the public squares; holocausts of immoral books, indecent
pictures, all that ministered to luxury and wantonness (and much, too, that
was very precious!); there were processions in honour of Christ and His
Mother, there were new mystical lauds and hymns of divine love. A kind
of spiritual inebriation took possession of the people and their
rulers alike. Tonsured friars and grave citizens, with heads
garlanded, mingled with the children and danced like David before the
Ark, shouting, "_Viva Cristo e la Vergine Maria nostra regina._" They
had indeed, like the Apostle, become fools for Christ's sake. "It was
a holy time," writes good Luca Landucci, "but it was short. The
wicked have prevailed over the good. Praised be God that I saw that
short holy time. Wherefore I pray God that He may give it back to us,
that holy and pure living. It was indeed a blessed time." Above all,
the children of Florence were the Friar's chosen emissaries and agents
in the great work he had in hand; he organised them into bands,
with standard-bearers and officers like the time-honoured city
companies with their gonfaloniers, and sent them round the city to
seize vanities, forcibly to stop gambling, to collect alms for the poor,
and even to exercise a supervision over the ladies' dresses. _Ecco
i fanciugli del Frate_, was an instant signal for gamblers to take
to flight, and for the fair and frail ladies to be on their very
best behaviour. They proceeded with olive branches, like the children
of Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday; they made the churches ring
with their hymns to the Madonna, and even harangued the Signoria on
the best method of reforming the morals of the citizens. "Out of
the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise,"
quotes Landucci: "I have written these things because they are true, and
I have seen them and have felt their sweetness, and some of my
own children were among these pure and blessed bands."[22]
[22] This
Luca Landucci, whose diary we shall have occasion to quote more than once,
kept an apothecary's shop near the Strozzi Palace at the Canto de'
Tornaquinci. He was an ardent Piagnone, though he wavered at times. He died
in 1516, and was buried in Santa Maria Novella.
But the holy time
was short indeed. Factions were still only too much alive. The _Bigi_ or
_Palleschi_ were secretly ready to welcome the Medici back; the _Arrabbiati_,
the powerful section of the citizens who, to some extent, held the traditions
of the so-called _Ottimati_ or _nobili popolani_, whom the Medici had
overthrown, were even more bitter in their hatred to the _Frateschi_ or
_Piagnoni_, as the adherents of the Friar were called, though prepared to
make common cause with them on the least rumour of Piero dei Medici
approaching the walls. The _Compagnacci_, or "bad companions," dissolute
young men and evil livers, were banded together under Doffo Spini, and
would gladly have taken the life of the man who had curtailed
their opportunities for vice. And to these there were now added the
open hostility of Pope Alexander VI., and the secret machinations of
his worthy ally, the Duke of Milan. The Pope's hostility was at
first mainly political; he had no objection whatever to Savonarola
reforming faith and morals (so long as he did not ask Roderigo Borgia to
reform himself), but could not abide the Friar declaring that he had
a special mission from God and the Madonna to oppose the Italian
league against France. At the same time the Pope would undoubtedly have
been glad to see Piero dei Medici restored to power. But in the early
part of 1496, it became a war to the death between these two--the
Prophet of Righteousness and the Church's Caiaphas--a war which seemed at
one moment about to convulse all Christendom, but which ended in
the funeral pyre of the Piazza della Signoria.
On Ash Wednesday,
February 17th, Fra Girolamo, amidst the vastest audience that had yet flocked
to hear his words, ascended once more the pulpit of Santa Maria del Fiore. He
commenced by a profession of most absolute submission to the Church of Rome.
"I have ever believed, and do believe," he said, "all that is believed by the
Holy Roman Church, and have ever submitted, and do submit, myself to her....
I rely only on Christ and on the decisions of the Church of Rome."
But this was a prelude to the famous series of sermons on Amos
and Zechariah which he preached throughout this Lent, and which was
in effect a superb and inspired denunciation of the wickedness
of Alexander and his Court, of the shameless corruption of the Papal Curia
and the Church generally, which had made Rome, for a while, the sink of
Christendom. Nearly two hundred years before, St Peter had said the same
thing to Dante in the Heaven of the Fixed Stars:--
"Quegli ch'usurpa
in terra il loco mio, il loco mio, il loco mio, che vaca
nella presenza del Figliuol di Dio, fatto ha del cimitero mio
cloaca del sangue e della puzza, onde il perverso che cadde
di quassu, laggiu si placa."[23]
[23] "He who usurpeth upon earth my
place, my place, my place, which in the presence of the Son of God is
vacant,
"hath made my burial-ground a conduit for that blood and
filth, whereby the apostate one who fell from here above, is soothed
down there below."--_Paradiso_ xxvii. Wicksteed's
Translation.
These were, perhaps, the most terrible of all Savonarola's
sermons and prophecies. Chastisement was to come upon Rome; she was to be
girdled with steel, put to the sword, consumed with fire. Italy was to
be ravaged with pestilence and famine; from all sides the barbarian hordes
would sweep down upon her. Let them fly from this corrupted Rome, this new
Babylon of confusion, and come to repentance. And for himself, he asked and
hoped for nothing but the lot of the martyrs, when his work was done. These
sermons echoed through all Europe; and when the Friar, after a temporary
absence at Prato, returned to the pulpit in May with a new course of sermons
on Ruth and Micah, he was no less daring; as loudly as ever he rebuked the
hideous corruption of the times, the wickedness of the Roman Court, and
announced the scourge that was at hand:--
"I announce to thee, Italy
and Rome, that the Lord will come forth out of His place. He has awaited thee
so long that He can wait no more. I tell thee that God will draw forth the
sword from the sheath; He will send the foreign nations; He will come forth
out of His clemency and His mercy; and such bloodshed shall there be, so many
deaths, such cruelty, that thou shalt say: O Lord, Thou hast come forth out
of Thy place. Yea, the Lord shall come; He will come down and tread upon
the high places of the earth. I say to thee, Italy and Rome, that the
Lord will tread upon thee. I have bidden thee do penance; thou art
worse than ever. The feet of the Lord shall tread upon thee; His feet
shall be the horses, the armies of the foreign nations that shall
trample upon the great men of Italy; and soon shall priests, friars,
bishops, cardinals and great masters be trampled down....
"Trust not,
Rome, in saying: Here we have the relics, here we have St Peter and so many
bodies of martyrs. God will not suffer such iniquities! I warn thee that
their blood cries up to Christ to come and chastise thee."[24]
[24]
Sermon on May 29th, 1496. In Villari and Casanova, _Scelte di prediche e
scritti di Fra Girolamo Savonarola_.
But, in the meanwhile, the state of
Florence was dark and dismal in the extreme. Pestilence and famine ravaged
her streets; the war against Pisa seemed more hopeless every day; Piero
Capponi had fallen in the field in September; and the forces of the League
threatened her with destruction, unless she deserted the French alliance.
King Charles showed no disposition to return; the Emperor Maximilian,
with the Venetian fleet, was blockading her sole remaining port of
Leghorn. A gleam of light came in October, when, at the very moment that
the miraculous Madonna of the Impruneta was being borne through
the streets in procession by the Piagnoni, a messenger brought the
news that reinforcements and provisions had reached Leghorn
from Marseilles; and it was followed in November by the dispersion of
the imperial fleet by a tempest. At the opening of 1497 a Signory
devoted to Savonarola, and headed by Francesco Valori as Gonfaloniere,
was elected; and the following carnival witnessed an even more
emphatic burning of the vanities in the great Piazza, while the sweet voices
of the "children of the Friar" seemed to rise louder and louder
in intercession and in praise. Savonarola was at this time living more in
seclusion, broken in health, and entirely engaged upon his great theological
treatise, the _Triumphus Crucis_; but in Lent he resumed his pulpit crusade
against the corruption of the Church, the scandalous lives of her chief
pastors, in a series of sermons on Ezekiel; above all in one most tremendous
discourse on the text: "And in all thy abominations and thy fornications thou
hast not remembered the days of thy youth." In April, relying upon the
election of a new Signoria favourable to the Mediceans (and headed by
Bernardo del Nero as Gonfaloniere), Piero dei Medici--who had been leading a
most degraded life in Rome, and committing every turpitude
imaginable--made an attempt to surprise Florence, which merely resulted in
a contemptible fiasco. This threw the government into the hands of
the Arrabbiati, who hated Savonarola even more than the Palleschi did,
and who were intriguing with the Pope and the Duke of Milan. On
Ascension Day the Compagnacci raised a disgraceful riot in the
Duomo, interrupted Savonarola's sermon, and even attempted to take his
life. Then at last there came from Rome the long-expected bull
of excommunication, commencing, "We have heard from many persons worthy of
belief that a certain Fra Girolamo Savonarola, at this present said to be
vicar of San Marco in Florence, hath disseminated pernicious doctrines to the
scandal and great grief of simple souls." It was published on June 18th in
the Badia, the Annunziata, Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, and Santo
Spirito, with the usual solemn ceremonies of ringing bells and dashing out of
the lights--in the last-named church, especially, the monks "did the cursing
in the most orgulist wise that might be done," as the compiler of the
_Morte Darthur_ would put it.
The Arrabbiati and Compagnacci were
exultant, but the Signoria that entered office in July seemed disposed to
make Savonarola's cause their own. A fresh plot was discovered to betray
Florence to Piero dei Medici, and five of the noblest citizens in the
State--the aged Bernardo del Nero, who had merely known of the plot and not
divulged it, but who had been privy to Piero's coming in April
while Gonfaloniere, among them--were beheaded in the courtyard of
the Bargello's palace, adjoining the Palazzo Vecchio. In this
Savonarola took no share; he was absorbed in tending those who were dying on
all sides from the plague and famine, and in making the final revision
of his _Triumph of the Cross_, which was to show to the Pope and all
the world how steadfastly he held to the faith of the Church of
Rome.[25] The execution of these conspirators caused great indignation
among many in the city. They had been refused the right of appeal to
the Consiglio Maggiore, and it was held that Fra Girolamo might have
saved them, had he so chosen, and that his ally, Francesco Valori, who
had relentlessly hounded them to their deaths, had been actuated mainly
by personal hatred of Bernardo del Nero.
[25] Professor Villari
justly remarks that "Savonarola's attacks were never directed in the
slightest degree against the dogmas of the Roman Church, but solely against
those who corrupted them." The _Triumph of the Cross_ was intended to do
for the Renaissance what St Thomas Aquinas had accomplished for the Middle
Ages in his _Summa contra Gentiles_. As this book is the fullest expression
of Savonarola's creed, it is much to be regretted that more than one of its
English translators have omitted some of its most characteristic and
important passages bearing upon Catholic practice and doctrine, without
the slightest indication that any such process of "expurgation" has
been carried out.
But Savonarola could not long keep silence, and in
the following February, 1498, on Septuagesima Sunday, he again ascended the
pulpit of the Duomo. Many of his adherents, Landucci tells us, kept away
for fear of the excommunication: "I was one of those who did not
go there." Not faith, but charity it is that justifies and
perfects man--such was the burden of the Friar's sermons now: if the Pope
gives commands which are contrary to charity, he is no instrument of
the Lord, but a broken tool. The excommunication is invalid, the Lord
will work a miracle through His servant when His time comes, and his
only prayer is that he may die in defence of the truth. On the last day
of the Carnival, after communicating his friars and a vast throng of
the laity, Savonarola addressed the people in the Piazza of San
Marco, and, holding on high the Host, prayed that Christ would send fire
from heaven upon him that should swallow him up into hell, if he
were deceiving himself, and if his words were not from God. There was
a more gorgeous burning of the Vanities than ever; but all during Lent the
unequal conflict went on, and the Friar began to talk of a future Council.
This was the last straw. An interdict would ruin the commerce of Florence;
and on the 17th of March the Signoria bowed before the storm, and forbade
Savonarola to preach again. On the following morning, the third Sunday in
Lent, he delivered his last sermon:--
"If I am deceived, Christ, Thou
hast deceived me, Thou. Holy Trinity, if I am deceived, Thou hast deceived
me. Angels, if I am deceived, ye have deceived me. Saints of Paradise, if I
am deceived, ye have deceived me. But all that God has said, or His angels or
His saints have said, is most true, and it is impossible that they should
lie; and, therefore, it is impossible that, when I repeat what they
have told me, I should lie. O Rome, do all that thou wilt, for I
assure thee of this, that the Lord is with me. O Rome, it is hard for thee
to kick against the pricks. Thou shalt be purified yet.... Italy,
Italy, the Lord is with me. Thou wilt not be able to do aught.
Florence, Florence, that is, ye evil citizens of Florence, arm yourselves as
ye will, ye shall be conquered this time, and ye shall not be able to kick
against the pricks, for the Lord is with me, as a strong warrior." "Let us
leave all to the Lord; He has been the Master of all the Prophets, and of all
the holy men. He is the Master who wieldeth the hammer, and, when He hath
used it for His purpose, putteth it not back into the chest, but casteth it
aside. So did He unto Jeremiah, for when He had used him as much as He
wished, He cast him aside and had him stoned. So will it be also with this
hammer; when He shall have used it in His own way, He will cast it aside.
Yea, we are content, let the Lord's will be done; and by the more suffering
that shall be ours here below, so much the greater shall the crown
be hereafter, there on high."
"We will do with our prayers what we had
to do with our preaching. O Lord, I commend to Thee the good and the pure of
heart; and I pray Thee, look not at the negligence of the good, because human
frailty is great, yea, their frailty is great. Bless, Lord, the good and pure
of heart. Lord, I pray Thee that Thou delay no longer in fulfilling
Thy promises."
It was now, in the silence of his cell, that Savonarola
prepared his last move. He would appeal to the princes of Christendom--the
Emperor, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Henry VII. of England, the King
of Hungary, and above all, that "most Christian King" Charles VIII.
of France--to summon a general council, depose the simoniacal usurper
who was polluting the chair of Peter, and reform the Church. He
was prepared to promise miracles from God to confirm his words.
These letters were written, but never sent; a preliminary message
was forwarded from trustworthy friends in Florence to influential
persons in each court to prepare them for what was coming; and the
despatch to the Florentine ambassador in France was intercepted by the
agents of the Duke of Milan. It was at once placed in the hands of
Cardinal Ascanio Sforza in Rome, and the end was now a matter of days.
The Signoria was hostile, and the famous ordeal by fire lit
the conflagration that freed the martyr and patriot. On Sunday,
March 25th, the Franciscan Francesco da Puglia, preaching in Santa Croce
and denouncing Savonarola, challenged him to prove his doctrines by
a miracle, to pass unscathed through the fire. He was himself prepared to
enter the flames with him, or at least said that he was. Against Savonarola's
will his lieutenant, Fra Domenico, who had taken his place in the pulpit,
drew up a series of conclusions (epitomising Savonarola's teaching and
declaring the nullity of the excommunication), and declared himself ready to
enter the fire to prove their truth.
Huge was the delight of the
Compagnacci at the prospect of such sport, and the Signoria seized upon it as
a chance of ending the matter once for all. Whether the Franciscans were
sincere, or whether it was a mere plot to enable the Arrabbiati and
Compagnacci to destroy Savonarola, is still a matter of dispute. The Piagnoni
were confident in the coming triumph of their prophet; champions came forward
from both sides, professedly eager to enter the flames--although it
was muttered that the Compagnacci and their Doffo Spini had promised
the Franciscans that no harm should befall them. Savonarola misliked
it, but took every precaution that, if the ordeal really came off,
there should be no possibility of fraud or evasion. Of the amazing scene
in the Piazza on April 7th, I will speak in the following chapter; suffice
it to say here that it ended in a complete fiasco, and that Savonarola and
his friars would never have reached their convent alive, but for the
protection of the armed soldiery of the Signoria. Hounded home under the
showers of stones and filth from the infuriated crowd, whose howls of
execration echoed through San Marco, Fra Girolamo had the _Te Deum_ sung, but
knew in his heart that all was lost. That very same day his Cyrus, the
champion of his prophetic dreams, Charles VIII. of France, was struck down by
an apoplectic stroke at Amboise; and, as though in judgment for his
abandonment of what the prophet had told him was the work of the Lord,
breathed his last in the utmost misery and ignominy.
The next morning,
Palm Sunday, April 8th, Savonarola preached a very short sermon in the church
of San Marco, in which he offered himself in sacrifice to God and was
prepared to suffer death for his flock. _Tanto fu sempre questo uomo simile a
se stesso_, says Jacopo Nardi. Hell had broken loose by the evening, and the
Arrabbiati and Compagnacci, stabbing and hewing as they came, surged round
the church and convent. In spite of Savonarola and Fra Domenico, the friars
had weapons and ammunition in their cells, and there was a small band
of devout laymen with them, prepared to hold by the prophet to the
end. From vespers till past midnight the attack and defence went on; in
the Piazza, in the church, and through the cloisters raged the
fight, while riot and murder wantoned through the streets of the
city. Francesco Valori, who had escaped from the convent in the hope
of bringing reinforcements, was brutally murdered before his own door. The
great bell of the convent tolled and tolled, animating both besieged and
besiegers to fresh efforts, but bringing no relief from without. Savonarola,
who had been prevented from following the impulses of his heart and
delivering himself up to the infernal crew that thirsted for his blood in the
Piazza, at last gathered his friars round him before the Blessed Sacrament,
in the great hall of the Greek library, solemnly confirmed his doctrine,
exhorted them to embrace the Cross alone, and then, together with Fra
Domenico, gave himself into the hands of the forces of the Signoria. The
entire cloisters were already swarming with his exultant foes. "The work
of the Lord shall go forward without cease," he said, as the
mace-bearers bound him and Domenico, "my death will but hasten it on."
Buffeted and insulted by the Compagnacci and the populace, amidst the
deafening uproar, the two Dominicans were brought to the Palazzo Vecchio.
It seemed to the excited imaginations of the Piagnoni that the scenes
of the first Passiontide at Jerusalem were now being repeated in
the streets of fifteenth century Florence.
The Signoria had no
intention of handing over their captives to Rome, but appointed a commission
of seventeen--including Doffo Spini and several of Savonarola's bitterest
foes--to conduct the examination of the three friars. The third, Fra
Silvestro, a weak and foolish visionary, had hid himself on the fatal night,
but had been given up on the following day. Again and again were they most
cruelly tortured--but in all essentials, though ever and anon they wrung
some sort of agonised denial from his lips, Savonarola's testimony as
to his divine mission was unshaken. Fra Domenico, the lion-hearted
soul whom the children of Florence had loved, and to whom poets
like Poliziano had turned on their death-beds, was as heroic on the rack
or under the torment of the boot as he had been throughout his career. Out
of Fra Silvestro the examiners could naturally extort almost anything they
pleased. And a number of laymen and others, supposed to have been in their
counsels, were similarly "examined," and their shrieks rang through the
Bargello; but with little profit to the Friar's foes. So they falsified the
confessions, and read the falsification aloud in the Sala del Maggior
Consiglio, to the bewilderment of all Savonarola's quondam disciples who were
there. "We had believed him to be a prophet," writes Landucci in his diary,
"and he confessed that he was not a prophet, and that he had not
received from God the things that he preached; and he confessed that
many things in his sermons were the contrary to what he had given us
to understand. And I was there when this process was read, whereat I
was astounded, stupified, and amazed. Grief pierced my soul, when I saw
so great an edifice fall to the ground, through being sadly based upon
a single lie. I expected Florence to be a new Jerusalem, whence
should proceed the laws and splendour and example of goodly living, and
to see the renovation of the Church, the conversion of the infidels
and the consolation of the good. And I heard the very contrary, and
indeed took the medicine: _In voluntate tua, Domine, omnia sunt
posita._"
A packed election produced a new Signoria, crueller than the
last. They still refused to send the friars to Rome, but invited the
Pope's commissioners to Florence. These arrived on May 19th--the
Dominican General, Torriani, a well-intentioned man, and the future
Cardinal Romolino, a typical creature of the Borgias and a most
infamous fellow. It was said that they meant to put Savonarola to death,
even if he were a second St John the Baptist. The torture was
renewed without result; the three friars were sentenced to be hanged and
then burnt. Fra Domenico implored that he might be cast alive into
the fire, in order that he might suffer more grievous torments for
Christ, and desired only that the friars of Fiesole, of which convent he
was prior, might bury him in some lowly spot, and be loyal to
the teachings of Fra Girolamo. On the morning of May 23rd, Savonarola
said his last Mass in the Chapel of the Priors, and communicated
his companions. Then they were led out on to the Ringhiera overlooking
the Piazza, from which a temporary _palchetto_ ran out towards the
centre of the square to serve as scaffold. Here, the evening before,
the gallows had been erected, beam across beam; but a cry had arisen
among the crowd, _They are going to crucify him._ So it had been
hacked about, in order that it might not seem even remotely to resemble
a cross. But in spite of all their efforts, Jacopo Nardi tells us,
that gallows still seemed to represent the figure of the
Cross.
[Illustration: THE DEATH OF SAVONAROLA (From an old, but
quite contemporary, representation)]
The guards of the Signoria kept back
the crowds that pressed thicker and thicker round the scaffold, most of them
bitterly hostile to the Friars and heaping every insult upon them. When
Savonarola was stripped of the habit of Saint Dominic, he said, "Holy dress,
how much did I long to wear thee; thou wast granted to me by the grace of
God, and to this day I have kept thee spotless. I do not now leave
thee, thou art taken from me." They were now degraded by the Bishop
of Vasona, who had loved Fra Girolamo in better days; then in the
same breath sentenced and absolved by Romolino, and finally condemned
by the Eight--or the seven of them who were present--as representing
the secular arm. The Bishop, in degrading Savonarola, stammered
out: _Separo te ab Ecclesia militante atque triumphante_; to which
the Friar calmly answered, in words which have become famous:
_Militante, non triumphante; hoc enim tuum non est._ Silvestro suffered
first, then Domenico. There was a pause before Savonarola followed; and
in the sudden silence, as he looked his last upon the people, a
voice cried: "Now, prophet, is the time for a miracle." And then
another voice: "Now can I burn the man who would have burnt me"; and
a ruffian, who had been waiting since dawn at the foot of the
scaffold, fired the pile before the executioner could descend from his
ladder. The bodies were burnt to ashes amidst the ferocious yells of
the populace, and thrown into the Arno from the Ponte Vecchio. "Many
fell from their faith," writes Landucci. A faithful few, including
some noble Florentine ladies, gathered up relics, in spite of the crowd
and the Signory, and collected what floated on the water. It was the
vigil of Ascension Day.
* * * *
*
Savonarola's martyrdom ends the story of mediæval Florence. The
last man of the Middle Ages--born out of his due time--had perished.
A portion of the prophecy was fulfilled at once. The people of Italy
and their rulers alike were trampled into the dust beneath the feet of
the foreigners--the Frenchmen, the Switzers, the Spaniards, the
Germans. The new King of France, Louis XII., who claimed both the Duchy
of Milan and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, entered Milan in 1499;
and, after a brief restoration, Ludovico Sforza expiated his treasons
by being sold by the Swiss to a lingering life-in-death in a
French dungeon. The Spaniards followed; and in 1501 the troops of
Ferdinand the Catholic occupied Naples. Like the dragon and the lion
in Leonardo's drawing, Spain and France now fell upon each other for
the possession of the spoils of conquered Italy; the Emperor
Maximilian and Pope Julius II. joined in the fray; fresh hordes of Swiss
poured into Lombardy. The battle of Pavia in 1525 gave the final victory
to Spain; and, in 1527, the judgment foretold by Savonarola fell
upon Rome, when the Eternal City was devastated by the Spaniards
and Germans, nominally the armies of the Emperor Charles V. The treaty
of Cateau-Cambresis in 1559 finally forged the Austrian and
Spanish fetters with which Italy was henceforth bound.
The death of
Savonarola did not materially alter the affairs of the Republic. The Greater
Council kept its hold upon the people and city, and in 1502 Piero di Tommaso
Soderini was elected Gonfaloniere for life. The new head of the State was a
sincere Republican and a genuine whole-hearted patriot; a man of blameless
life and noble character, but simple-minded almost to a fault, and of
abilities hardly more than mediocre. Niccolo Machiavelli, who was born in
1469 and had entered political life in 1498, shortly after Savonarola's
death, as Secretary to the Ten (the Dieci di Balia), was much employed by the
Gonfaloniere both in war and peace, especially on foreign legations; and,
although he sneered at Soderini after his death for his simplicity,
he co-operated faithfully and ably with him during his administration.
It was under Soderini that Machiavelli organised the Florentine
militia. Pisa was finally reconquered for Florence in 1509; and,
although Machiavelli cruelly told the Pisan envoys that the
Florentines required only their obedience, and cared nothing for their
lives, their property, nor their honour, the conquerors showed
unusual magnanimity and generosity in their triumph.
These last years
of the Republic are very glorious in the history of Florentine art. In 1498,
just before the French entered Milan, Leonardo da Vinci had finished his Last
Supper for Ludovico Sforza; in the same year, Michelangelo commenced his
Pieta in Rome which is now in St Peter's; in 1499, Baccio della Porta began a
fresco of the Last Judgment in Santa Maria Nuova, a fresco which, when he
entered the Dominican order at San Marco and became henceforth known as
Fra Bartolommeo, was finished by his friend, Mariotto Albertinelli.
These three works, though in very different degrees, represent the
opening of the Cinquecento in painting and sculpture. While Soderini
ruled, both Leonardo and Michelangelo were working in Florence, for the
Sala del Maggior Consiglio, and Michelangelo's gigantic David--the
Republic preparing to meet its foes--was finished in 1504. This was the
epoch in which Leonardo was studying those strange women of the
Renaissance, whose mysterious smiles and wonderful hair still live for us in
his drawings; and it was now that he painted here in Florence his
Monna Lisa, "the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the
modern idea." At the close of 1504 the young Raphael came to Florence
(as Perugino had done before him), and his art henceforth shows
how profoundly he felt the Florentine influence. We know how he
sketched the newly finished David, studied Masaccio's frescoes, copied bits
of Leonardo's cartoon, was impressed by Bartolommeo's Last
Judgment. Although it was especially Leonardo that he took for a model,
Raphael found his most congenial friend and adviser in the artist friar of
San Marco; and there is a pleasant tradition that he was
himself influential in persuading Fra Bartolommeo to resume the
brush. Leonardo soon went off to serve King Francis I. in France; Pope
Julius summoned both Michelangelo and Raphael to Rome. These men were
the masters of the world in painting and sculpture, and cannot really
be confined to one school. Purely Florentine painting in the
Cinquecento now culminated in the work of Fra Bartolommeo (1475-1517) and
Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531), who had both been the pupils of Piero
di Cosimo, although they felt other and greater influences later.
After Angelico, Fra Bartolommeo is the most purely religious of all
the Florentine masters; and, with the solitary exception of Andrea
del Sarto, he is their only really great colourist. Two pictures of his
at Lucca--one in the Cathedral, the other now in the Palazzo Pubblico--are
among the greatest works of the Renaissance. In the latter especially, "Our
Lady of Mercy," he shows himself the heir in painting of the traditions of
Savonarola. Many of Bartolommeo's altar-pieces have grown very black, and
have lost much of their effect by being removed from the churches for which
they were painted; but enough is left in Florence to show his greatness. With
him was associated that gay Bohemian and wild liver, Mariotto
Albertinelli (1474-1515), who deserted painting to become an innkeeper, and
who frequently worked in partnership with the friar. Andrea del Sarto,
the tailor's son who loved not wisely but too well, is the last of a
noble line of heroic craftsmen. Although his work lacks all inspiration,
he is one of the greatest of colourists. "Andrea del Sarto," writes
Mr Berenson, "approached, perhaps, as closely to a Giorgione or a
Titian as could a Florentine, ill at ease in the neighbourhood of
Leonardo and Michelangelo." He entirely belongs to these closing days of
the Republic; his earliest frescoes were painted during
Soderini's gonfalonierate; his latest just before the great siege.
In
the Carnival of 1511 a wonderfully grim pageant was shown to the Florentines,
and it was ominous of coming events. It was known as the _Carro della Morte_,
and had been designed with much secrecy by Piero di Cosimo. Drawn by
buffaloes, a gigantic black chariot, all painted over with dead men's bones
and white crosses, slowly passed through the streets. Upon the top of it,
there stood a large figure of Death with a scythe in her hand; all round her,
on the chariot, were closed coffins. When at intervals the Triumph paused,
harsh and hoarse trumpet-blasts sounded; the coffins opened, and horrible
figures, attired like skeletons, half issued forth. "We are dead," they
sang, "as you see. So shall we see you dead. Once we were even as you
are, soon shall you be as we." Before and after the chariot, rode a
great band of what seemed to be mounted deaths, on the sorriest steeds
that could be found. Each bore a great black banner with skull
and cross-bones upon it, and each ghastly cavalier was attended by
four skeletons with black torches. Ten black standards followed
the Triumph; and, as it slowly moved on, the whole procession chanted
the _Miserere_. Vasari tells us that this spectacle, which filled the
city with terror and wonder, was supposed to signify the return of
the Medici to Florence, which was to be "as it were, a resurrection
from death to life."
And, sure enough, in the following year the
Spaniards under Raimondo da Cardona fell upon Tuscany, and, after the
horrible sack and massacre of Prato, reinstated the Cardinal Giovanni dei
Medici and Giuliano in Florence--their elder brother, Piero, had been drowned
in the Garigliano eight years before. Piero Soderini went into exile,
the Greater Council was abolished, and, while the city was held by
their foreign troops, the Medici renewed the old pretence of summoning
a parliament to grant a balia to reform the State. At the beginning
of 1513 two young disciples of Savonarola, Pietro Paolo Boscoli
and Agostino Capponi, resolved to imitate Brutus and Cassius, and
to liberate Florence by the death of the Cardinal and his brother.
Their plot was discovered, and they died on the scaffold. "Get this
Brutus out of my head for me," said Boscoli to Luca della Robbia, kinsman
of the great sculptor, "that I may meet my last end like a
Christian"; and, to the Dominican friar who confessed him, he said, "Father,
the philosophers have taught me how to bear death manfully; do you help me
to bear it out of love for Christ." In this same year the Cardinal Giovanni
was elected Pope, and entered upon his splendid and scandalous pontificate as
Leo X. "Let us enjoy the Papacy," was his maxim, "since God has given it to
us."
Although Machiavelli was ready to serve the Medici, he had
been deprived of his posts at the restoration, imprisoned and tortured
on suspicion of being concerned in Boscoli's conspiracy, and now, released
in the amnesty granted by the newly elected Pope, was living in poverty and
enforced retirement at his villa near San Casciano. It was now that he wrote
his great books, the _Principe_ and the _Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito
Livio_. Florence was ruled by the Pope's nephew, the younger Lorenzo, son of
Piero by Alfonsina Orsini. The government was practically what it had been
under the Magnificent, save that this new Lorenzo, who had married a
French princess, discarded the republican appearances which his
grandfather had maintained, and surrounded himself with courtiers and
soldiers. For him and for Giuliano, the Pope cherished designs of carving
out large princedoms in Italy; and Machiavelli, in dedicating
his _Principe_ first to Giuliano, who died in 1516, and then to
Lorenzo, probably dreamed that some such prince as he described might drive
out the foreigner and unify the nation. In his nobler moments Leo X.,
too, seems to have aspired to establish the independence of Italy.
When Lorenzo died in 1519, leaving one daughter, who was afterwards to
be the notorious Queen of France, there was no direct legitimate
male descendant of Cosimo the elder left; and the Cardinal Giulio, son
of the elder Giuliano, governed Florence with considerable mildness,
and even seemed disposed to favour a genuine republican government,
until a plot against his life hardened his heart. It was to him
that Machiavelli, who was now to some extent received back into
favour, afterwards dedicated his _Istorie Fiorentine_. In 1523 the
Cardinal Giulio, in spite of his illegitimate birth, became Pope Clement
VII., that most hapless of Pontiffs, whose reign was so
surpassingly disastrous to Italy. In Florence the Medici were now represented
by two young bastards, Ippolito and Alessandro, the reputed children
of the younger Giuliano and the younger Lorenzo respectively; while
the Cardinal Passerini misruled the State in the name of the Pope.
But more of the true Medicean spirit had passed into the person of
a woman, Clarice, the daughter of Piero (and therefore the sister of
the Duke Lorenzo), who was married to the younger Filippo Strozzi,
and could ill bear to see her house end in these two base-born lads.
And elsewhere in Italy Giovanni delle Bande Nere (as he was
afterwards called, from the mourning of his soldiers for his death) was
winning renown as a captain; he was the son of that Giovanni dei Medici
with whom Piero had quarrelled, by Caterina Sforza, the Lady of Forli,
and had married Maria Salviati, a grand-daughter of Lorenzo
the Magnificent. But the Pope would rather have lost Florence than that
it should fall into the hands of the younger line.
But the Florentine
Republic was to have a more glorious sunset. In 1527, while the imperial
troops sacked Rome, the Florentines for the third time expelled the Medici
and re-established the Republic, with first Niccolo Capponi and then
Francesco Carducci as Gonfaloniere. In this sunset Machiavelli died; Andrea
del Sarto painted the last great Florentine fresco; Michelangelo returned to
serve the State in her hour of need. The voices of the Piagnoni were heard
again from San Marco, and Niccolo Capponi in the Greater Council carried
a resolution electing Jesus Christ king of Florence. But the plague
fell upon the city; and her liberty was the price of the reconciliation
of Pope and Emperor. From October 1529 until August 1530, their
united forces--first under the Prince of Orange and then under
Ferrante Gonzaga--beleaguered Florence. Francesco Ferrucci, the last hope
of the Republic, was defeated and slain by the imperialists near
San Marcello; and then, betrayed by her own infamous general
Malatesta Baglioni, the city capitulated on the understanding that, although
the form of the government was to be regulated and established by
the Emperor, her liberty was preserved. The sun had indeed set of the
most noble Republic in all history.
Alessandro dei Medici, the reputed
son of Lorenzo by a mulatto woman, was now made hereditary ruler of Florence
by the Emperor, whose illegitimate daughter he married, and by the Pope. For
a time, the Duke behaved with some decency; but after the death of Clement
in 1534, he showed himself in his true light as a most abominable
tyrant, and would even have murdered Michelangelo, who had been working
upon the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo. "It was certainly by God's
aid," writes Condivi, "that he happened to be away from Florence
when Clement died." Alessandro appears to have poisoned his kinsman,
the Cardinal Ippolito, the other illegitimate remnant of the
elder Medicean line, in whom he dreaded a possible rival. Associated
with him in his worst excesses was a legitimate scion of the younger
branch of the house, Lorenzino--the _Lorenzaccio_ of Alfred de
Musset's drama--who was the grandson of the Lorenzo di Pier Francesco
mentioned in the previous chapter.[26] On January 5th, 1537, this young
man--a reckless libertine, half scholar and half madman--stabbed the Duke
Alessandro to death with the aid of a bravo, and fled, only to find a
dishonourable grave some ten years later in Venice.
[26] See the
Genealogical Table of the Medici. |
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