SAVONAROLA, GIROLAMO. - Born in Ferrara on 21 Sept. 1452, to Niccolò di Michele Savonarola and Elena Bonacossi, perhaps a descendant of the Bonacolsi, lords of Mantua. The Savonarola family originated from Padua, from where this branch of the family had transplanted itself to Ferrara in 1440, when Michele, a physician most celebrated in his day, was summoned there by Niccolò III. It was this Michele who took charge of G.'s education; nor is there any doubt that the old scholar, formed in the 14th century and therefore a participant in the Middle Ages, a man of exemplary piety and rigid morals, had a great influence on the formation and the life of his grandson. As for S.'s studies, it is known that, having pursued humanistic studies until the age of 17 years, perhaps at the school of Battista Guarino, he devoted himself to the "liberal arts". From a Platonist he soon became an Aristotelian, but "an Aristotelian insofar as he was a Thomist", as it was said. The long study and the great love that made him seek out the volumes of the Aquinate were part of the inheritance left to him by his grandfather, as was the cult of Holy Scripture, which, it is said, he soon learned entirely by heart.
Having obtained his doctorate in the liberal arts, and having begun medical studies, he persevered in them but little. In the adolescent S. one finds whole and perfect the feelings and thoughts that would make him "vir rixae et discordiae in universa terra". The humanistic paganism that contaminated life, art and religion itself was unbearable to him, unbearable was the corruption spreading through every station of men; and he saw its primary cause in the bad shepherds of the Church. This idea prostrated him and at the same time inexpressibly exalted him; in his youthful writings, in prose and in verse, the future reformer already appears fully armed: the canzone De ruina mundi (1472) might be said to have come from the pen of the S. twenty-five years later. And since "he could not endure the great malice of the blinded peoples of Italy" (as he would write to his father), "he continually offered a little prayer, saying to God: Notam fac mihi viam in qua ambulem quia ad te levavi animam meam". The way was the one he took on 24 April 1475, when, leaving his paternal home without farewell, he went to don the wool of the Guzman in S. Domenico in Bologna. On entering the cloister he would not have wished to be ordained a priest, but rather to attend to the humblest labors of the convent; yet he accommodated himself to the will of his superiors, who did not wish to leave his intellect idle. He pursued theological studies, first at Bologna and then at Ferrara, having returned to his native city in '79. He was still there in '82, when at the Chapter of Reggio he was entrusted with the office of lector at S. Marco in Florence. Here he soon won the hearts of his confreres and disciples, both through his marvelous expositions of Scripture and through the perfection of his life. Those who had him as a companion bore witness to his more than human virtues, to the great fruit he produced by word and example. The blessed Sebastiano Maggi related that he had confessed him countless times without finding in him a single venial sin. Less success attended, in '82 and '83 at the Murate, in '84 at S. Lorenzo, his first attempts at preaching; although the failure of these beginnings has been exaggerated by the old apologists in order to make his later triumphs appear more miraculous.
And meanwhile his secret anxieties grew, of which an echo is found in the canzone Oratio pro Ecclesia. It was a sudden revelation of the scourge and the renewal impending over the Church, received in the convent of S. Giorgio (1484), that showed him once again the way and gave rise to his prophetic preaching, begun at S. Gimignano in the Lents of the years 1485 and '86. In '87 he preached at Florence in S. Verdiana, but had to interrupt the Lenten course, having been elected Master of studies in the Studium generale of S. Domenico in Bologna. Having completed the year of his mastership, he was sent to Ferrara, and from there to preach "in many places of Lombardy".
The preaching of the Advent of 1489 at Brescia remained famous, where he prophesied the sack that the city would suffer in 1512. He preached the Lent of 1490 at Genoa; then he was again sent to Florence, having been requested by Lorenzo de' Medici himself, to gratify Giovanni Pico, who had fallen in love with the soul and the intellect of the S. ever since the Chapter of Reggio, and more so during his first Florentine sojourn.
Having returned to his fateful city, the S. was, shortly afterward, elected prior of S. Marco. While attending to the duties of his new office and to preaching, he published several ascetic works, such as the treatises Della vita viduale, Della umiltà, Dell'amore di Gesù Cristo and works of philosophical popularization. But his preferred field of battle was the pulpit. A cycle of lectures begun for the friars in the garden immediately after his return to Florence drew such a concourse, including of seculars, that he had to continue it in church, where he began to expound the Apocalypse. In the Lenten courses of 1491 and '92 his voice rose still higher in tone, prophesying the scourging and the renewal of the Church no longer on the sole foundation of natural reasons, but also with the opening of some vision. He predicted the imminent invasion of foreign armies that would take the fortresses "with the meluzze", a prophecy fulfilled with the easy expedition of Charles VIII; just as he then predicted his own excommunication, his imprisonment, his martyrdom. These prophecies, his manner of preaching "in the apostolic way", so different from the humanistic manner, procured him contradictions among the great and the learned, but an immense following among the people. He thundered against the vices of the seculars and of the clergy, against Lorenzo himself, who finally became aware of the mistake he had made in recalling that indomitable friar and hastened to take remedies, first with threats, then with blandishments; but in vain: it was by then too late, his life was declining and the S.'s following was growing. Fulfilling what the latter had obscurely predicted in the sermon of 17 May 1492, three weeks later the S. was summoned by Lorenzo to his deathbed. That he denied him sacramental absolution was asserted by a piagnone legend, documentedly rejected as false.
In the Lent of 1493 he preached at Bologna, where it is said he dared to reproach harshly from the pulpit the Bentivoglio, wife of the lord of the city; in the Lent of '94, at Florence, where, Lorenzo being dead, the greatest obstacle to the great work he had dreamed of was removed: to make of S. Marco a model of religious life in which the fervor of the primitive Church would flourish again, so that a great fire of faith and charity might blaze up in Florence, "heart of Italy", and thence spread to all Christendom. To acquire independence from the Lombard Congregation was the first step to be taken on this road, and to this they were directed the efforts of S. Having succeeded, and thus become certain that his work could be neither impeded nor interrupted, he advanced along the path of reforms, applying himself, according to a chronicler, "to introducing into studies and into life an almost divine order." When Charles VIII descended into Italy, the expulsion of the Medici followed, while S. was in Pisa, sent by the Republic as ambassador to Charles; to whom he spoke boldly and frankly. And he did likewise in Florence, after the King had entered it with ill intentions: whence it is probable that the city owed its salvation to him, no less than to the generous impetuosity of Pier Capponi.
With the separation of S. Marco (22 May '93), later constituted along with other convents into a congregation, there thus coincided the liberation of the city from Medicean lordship; so (and it seemed miraculous) all doors suddenly opened wide to the work designed by S. He did not like to involve himself in matters of State, and if he labored to establish in Florence not a hierarchy or a theocracy, but a republic well ordered in Christian and civil terms, it was in order to make of it the "city of God," so that from it might issue, as he said, "the reformation of all Italy." Preaching the Advent sopra Aggeo, he not only succeeded in quelling factional hatreds and in halting the outbursts of civil discord, but, while the city seemed about to fall back under an oligarchy, he succeeded in making prevail a wise democratic order that owed much to the Venetian government. Once the new popular state was founded, S. proposed in a sermon that Christ be elected King. Continuing in his apostolate, with the sermons sopra ai Salus (feasts of 1493) and more with those sopra Giobbe (Lent of '95), he strove to promote the religious and moral renewal of the city, which proved even greater than the civil renewal already accomplished. The skeptical and pleasure-loving city of the Magnificent soon appeared transformed; everywhere there were manifestations of piety and simplicity of life: noble citizens and men distinguished for learning hastened to S. Marco to ask for the Dominican habit. But the suddenness and greatness of the success, if on the one hand it increased faith in S., on the other aroused hatred and suspicions against him; and all those who feared his power formed that sect which was well named the Arrabbiati, while the followers of the Friar were called Piagnoni. Even outside Florence the great following of S. was hateful to those potentates who, having confederated against Charles VIII in the Holy League, saw in him the most formidable instrument for keeping the Florentines firm in their traditional friendship with the King. Very soon, therefore, the Arrabbiati from within, and princes such as Sforza from without, began to incite the Pope against him. Under such influences and following the urgings made to him by Alberto da Orvieto, sent to Florence to obtain its entry into the League, Alexander VI wrote that singular brief of 21 July 1495, in which, after heaping S. with the rarest praises, he ordered him to present himself before him, desiring to hear from his own voice, in order to profit from them, his prophecies. The trap was too obvious for S. to fall into it. Had he set out, he would perhaps not have reached Rome; certainly he would not have returned to Florence. For his life he cared little, but much for the work that he had cherished in his adolescent dreams and now saw miraculously flourishing. Warned by the physicians to abstain from preaching and even from study, and plotted against by his enemies, he replied that because of the infirmity of his body, the manifest danger to his life, and the harm that would come to his work, he asked to be able to defer his coming.
The Pope seemed content with these reasons, but the most immediate enemies of the Friar were not content with them; and he, out of prudence and because he truly needed rest, abstained from preaching. In mid-September, however, with the date of the 8th, another brief arrived in Florence which referred the cause of S. to the Vicar of the Lombard Congregation; S. Marco was reunited to that congregation; S. and certain of his friars were ordered to transfer to Bologna; this under penalty of excommunication. The brief was made at the instigation of those who had an interest in silencing the Friar while the Medici was preparing to march against his homeland. Without being dismayed, S. replied point by point, so that the Pope had to acknowledge also this time the soundness of the reasons put before him; so much so that the brief of Sept. 8 was promptly annulled by another of Oct. 16, much softened, which nevertheless reaffirmed that the S. must, until further notice, abstain from preaching. He, before the brief arrived, had time to reanimate the city with three sermons. Once the brief arrived, obeying it, he shut himself up in silence and prayer.
Such silence, however, opened the way to his adversaries, who perhaps aimed at this through the papal briefs; nor can it therefore be surprising that his supporters strove so that his voice might ring out freely, while his enemies strove to silence it. The Signoria insisted that the S. be granted permission to preach during Advent, and their efforts were redoubled as Lent approached. Alexander VI, pressed by political suggestions, resisted; nor did he scruple to say candidly to the Florentine ambassador that the League did not wish him to grant the Friar permission to preach. In the end, however, while refusing a formal revocation of the brief of Oct. 16, he verbally permitted the S. to return to the pulpit. On Feb. 17, '96 he thus began the sermons on Amos, which are among his finest and most powerful. If it had been hoped that he would adopt a more cautious language, he had given no assurance of it; he was not a man to come to terms or to fail in his office, nor did he fail in it. At times he seemed to allude to the scandalous life of the Pope himself. The latter began to make bitter complaints about it; but once again he was moved above all by political considerations. Thunderbolts were threatened. A council of theologians expressly assembled could conclude nothing against the S. For this reason, but more out of fear of a new passage of the king, the curial wrath subsided. The fruits of these sermons were superabundant; it suffices to mention the reform of the children; according to a contemporary testimony, Florence seemed to have become "a pledge of paradise." On May 8 he began the sermons on Micah, without any complaint coming from Rome. By now the parabola of the fame of the S. had reached its zenith, and not only in Florence. From this time date certain of his letters to the princes of Italy, who turned to him for counsel, or to whom he freely addressed himself to exhort and correct them. The Pope too then sought to win him over, having the cardinal's hat offered to him on certain conditions. He replied in the sermon of Aug. 20: "I do not want hats, great or small mitres; I want nothing but what you gave to your saints: death. A red hat, a hat of blood, this I desire."
In those days his treatise De simplicitate christianae vitae was being printed, and meanwhile he was working on the Triumphus Crucis. In order to attend to these works, and to rest, he had left the pulpit; but on Oct. 28 he had to return to it, the Florentines being terrified by the coming of Maximilian, king of the Romans, who was besieging Livorno by land and by sea. The S. promised the people that God would deliver them, and great was the enthusiasm of the city when, its fleet having been wrecked by a storm, Maximilian abandoned the enterprise. But the political vicissitudes of Italy were turning against the S. Alexander VI was constantly pressed by the League and by the Arrabbiati, who urged him to finish once and for all with the Friar. The best way still seemed to be to deprive him of the independence acquired through the separation from the Lombards: and this the Pope was induced to do with the brief of Nov. 7, by which many convents were united to those of S. Marco in a new congregation, in which the S. would have lost all authority. It was asserted that the purpose was to propagate the observance introduced by the S., whereas the effect would have been entirely the opposite. The hidden purpose, revealed moreover in later briefs, was that the S., by obeying, would lose himself and his work; by not obeying, would fall under the excommunication threatened in the brief against anyone who opposed it; and therefore would equally be brought to certain ruin. If he did not remain silent in his Apologia della Congregazione di S. Marco, which would have been contrary to charity, it cannot be said that he disobeyed or opposed that brief; because no superior came forward to him to carry out the papal orders, none to remove him from his office of Vicar.
The S. therefore continued on his way, the way of charity. In Advent he began the sermons on Ezekiel, continued in Lent 1497: as the choice of so terrible a prophet made one foresee, it was a terrible preaching. The machinations of his enemies, far from making him cautious, kindled his indignation and moved him to cry out more loudly, until Lazarus, the corrupt body of the Church, should rise again. But his fortunes, which until then, even amid alternating vicissitudes, had been growing, and had had a symbolic triumph on Feb. 7, '97 in the first "burning of the vanities," begin to decline. The famine, the prolongation of the war of Pisa, the truce of Charles VIII with the League, the gathering of papal wrath, were so many causes alienating from him the minds of the fickle Florentines. Among the unfavorable circumstances must be added the decline of his health, reduced to the point of forcing him to shorten and at times to interrupt the sermons. But the worst came to him from two Signorie hostile to him. The first was headed by gonfaloniere Bernardo del Nero, leader of the Medicean faction, under which there occurred Piero de' Medici's enterprise against the city, dangerous because of the quality of the gonfaloniere, but miserably failed as the S. had predicted. The second was led by Piero degli Alberti, the principal man of the Arrabbiati; who thus for two months lorded it over the city, running to excesses of every sort. On the day of the Ascension they provoked a tumult during the sermon in order to cause scandal and, had they succeeded, to kill the preacher. Having failed in the design, they set about inciting the Pope so that the excommunication, solicited several times, might finally be promulgated. The principal argument in this work of agitation was again, more than the calumny of contempt for the Supreme Keys, the refusal of the Florentines to enter the League, imputed to the S. To such arguments the money of two rich Florentines added strength, who persuaded certain prelates to cut off with the worst suggestions the last resistances. Thus Alexander VI, though against his will, as he himself later confessed, was induced to sign, under date of May 13, the fatal brief. This brief, drawn up in an unusual form and, apart from its surreptitious origin, vitiated in substance, reached Florence only on June 17, because the courier did not dare to enter Florentine territory and in the end gave the task to others. The brief was read in five churches only, the others having refused to do so for lack of the due forms.
Meanwhile a humble letter had reached Alexander, which Savonarola, warned of the dispatch of the brief, had written to him on May 20, protesting that he had no other aim than that of reawakening the Christian faith in human hearts. But this letter, and the one that Savonarola wrote to him on June 25, consoling him for the killing of his son and exhorting him to aid the work of the faith, could now do nothing but increase the Pope's belated repentance; and he, having them read in Consistory, praised them and went so far as to say that the censure "displeased him and was omnino praeter mentem suam." Shortly thereafter a signoria favorable to Savonarola was elected, which immediately set about pressing to obtain the absolution: a desperate undertaking because Alexander, after the first bewilderment following the tragic death of his son, had gone back to doing worse than before. Meanwhile, to the other evils afflicting Florence the plague had been added; and on that occasion the Christian virtues of Savonarola shone forth again. In those same days he was revising the proofs of the Triumphus Crucis and attending to other minor writings: the Trattato contro gli astrologi, the dialogue De Veritate prophetica, perhaps the second redaction of the Solutium itineris mei. While the Signoria continued to insist with the Pope for the revocation of the censures, Savonarola for his part, unjustly accused by posterity of proud and obstinate conduct, wished to make a solemn act of submission to the Roman Pontiff. And so on Oct. 13, '97 he wrote him a manfully humble letter, asking him for absolution. But it availed him nothing.
Though urged by the people to preach, the Friar persevered in his sorrowful silence, in deference to the papal commands. Finally, when it became clear that not even through powerful intercessions would he regain the right to preach, and that therefore his work was condemned to certain ruin, he decided to follow that voice which so many times had shown him the way. His determination, and certainly his indignation, were strengthened by the bargain proposed to the Signoria, of subordinating his absolution to the entry of the Florentines into the League. He therefore returned to the pulpit of the Cathedral on Feb. 11, 1498, to begin those sermons on Exodus which were to mark his exodus from the pulpit, from his great work, from life. From the very first sermon it was clear that Savonarola was resolved to achieve either an arduous victory over the evil forces opposing him or that crown of blood which he had so many times requested and which that morning he invoked once again, offering himself in sacrifice. In the same style he continued in the subsequent sermons, reiterating that the Pope had been circumvented, the brief ill-made and therefore the excommunication invalid. And, while continuing to preach, he composed at the request of the gonfaloniere Salviati the Trattato del reggimento e governo della città di Firenze. On the day of carnival the second burning of the vanities was celebrated. But from Rome the city was threatened with interdict if it did not hand over Savonarola or at least reduce him to silence. And so the Signoria, which, though predominantly opposed to Savonarola, had firmly replied to the papal briefs, ordered the Friar, who had meanwhile confined himself to preaching in St. Mark's, to cease preaching: which he immediately did, after a heartfelt farewell to his people. Having thus lost his most powerful weapon, there remained for him no other way of defending himself and his work than a Council, where his voice would be raised once again, more solemnly, to denounce and to admonish. But although the conditions for a convocation were not lacking, against the will of the Pope, although the idea of a Council was already widely diffused among princes and good prelates, in the end his great Christian heart could not bear to stir up the Church, even for a holy end; and he burned the letters he had already begun to write. This renunciation closed the last way for him; nothing remained but the way of martyrdom. The untimely ardor of his most faithful disciple, Fra Domenico da Pescia, brought events to a head.
On 25 March the Minorite Francesco da Puglia, while preaching, challenged to the trial by fire anyone who maintained that Savonarola's excommunication was not valid. Fra Domenico was ready to take up the challenge, and the Signoria itself, in which the Arrabbiati now prevailed, and to whom this seemed an excellent opportunity to rid themselves of Savonarola, saw to it that the parties could no longer withdraw, inviting them to subscribe, on the 29th, to the propositions to be proved by fire: these concerned in sum the flagellation and the renewal of the Church and of Florence, and the invalidity of Savonarola's excommunication. When the definitive act had been stipulated on 6 April in the presence of the Signoria and of the archbishop's vicar, establishing that the party which refused or even merely temporized would be understood to be the loser, on the morning of the 7th the contest took place. But no trial was made other than of words and endless discussions. Though by the terms of the subscribed agreement he was the winner, since the refusals and temporizations had come from the opposing side, Savonarola nevertheless appeared the loser to a great part of the people, solely because against everything and everyone he had not performed the miracle that was expected of him. This the multitude did not forgive him; and of this the Arrabbiati took advantage to deal him the death blow. On the following day, Palm Sunday, Savonarola delivered a brief sermon, in which, foreseeing his approaching end, he said he was content that the Lord, in the days of His Passion, should wish to make him like unto Himself. That afternoon, as one of his friars was preparing to preach in the Duomo, a tumult was stirred up there. Suddenly, as had been prearranged, everything was filled with rabble and armed citizens, maneuvered by the Arrabbiati, rushing to San Marco. Savonarola would have wished to prevent any defense and made to surrender himself to the assistants; but his own men blocked his way. He went to pray in the choir, where he remained for six hours, while some citizens and a few friars defended the convent and the church from the besiegers. Having risen from prayer and being informed of the order to present himself at the Palazzo, he surrendered, together with Fra Domenico, into the hands of his enemies.
Examined in the following days and cruelly tortured, he held firm with courage until, in the end, his delicate constitution gave way under the torments, so that he dislocated a limb and his flesh was torn open; afterward the torture was continued. Thus it was possible, in two consecutive trials, if not to make him say what they wanted, at least to make him renounce his prophetic mission. Not content with this, after his subscription they interpolated certain clauses at the end of the paragraphs and introduced some marginal notes that poisoned the context. These trial records were read in public, but they did not dare to have the presumed accused attend, as was customary; for fear that he, before his people, would proclaim the truth. The gonfaloniere himself said in a consulta that Savonarola must not leave Florence, to avoid his saying such things again; "since the trials have been conducted as they have been conducted, for the quiet of the city." Left undisturbed for some days, he was able to compose the admirable meditation on the Miserere, in which he comforted with the example of Peter his sorrow for the renunciation extorted from him under torture; then he began that on the psalm In te Domine speravi. But on 20 May a third trial began, conducted by the apostolic commissioners. Tortured anew, at intervals his great soul overcame the infirm flesh, retracting the forced retractions and reaffirming with moving words his prophetic mission.
Even historians hostile to Savonarola are agreed on the iniquity and falsity of this trial, no less than of the preceding ones. Upon it the commissioners pronounced the sentence condemning Savonarola and his companions, Fra Domenico and Fra Silvestro Maruffi, as "heretics and schismatics," to be handed over to the secular arm which, as had been decided some time before, would hang them and then burn them. The infamous sentence, communicated to the condemned on 22 May, the last day of the trial, was carried out on the following morning. Savonarola's words and acts during the funeral vigil were exemplary, nor can they be read without deep emotion. His death was a wonderful example of Christian virtues, as his life had been: nor could there have been a more worthy seal upon it. Communing before the execution, he pronounced aloud a brief prayer that is a beautiful profession of the Catholic faith. Other moving words he spoke when his Dominican habit was taken from him. Having received from the apostolic commissioners plenary indulgence, he ascended the scaffold reciting the Apostles' Creed. When the pyre was lit beneath the bodies of the hanged men, and the corpses consumed, their ashes were collected to withdraw them from popular veneration and thrown into the Arno. Thus was verified the prophecy that Savonarola had uttered as early as 1491: "The wicked shall go to the sanctuary, with axes and fire they shall break down and burn the doors, and they shall seize the just men and in the principal place of the city they shall burn them; and what the fire does not consume and the wind does not carry away, they shall throw into the water."
After the first bewilderment that the false trials, the persecutions of adversaries, and the understandable severities of superiors had caused in the minds of many devout persons, there began not only the rehabilitation but the cult of Savonarola, which soon entered the liturgy of certain Tuscan convents, which already in 1499 celebrated his solemn feast. Alexander VI himself is said to have regretted his death, excusing himself by saying that he had been misinformed. Julius II declared that he would gladly have canonized him. At the beginning of the 16th century three distinct collections of miracles attributed to him were compiled, and in the drafting of one of them the blessed Maria Bagnesi took part; St. Catherine de' Ricci, who twice attributed her healing to him, recited the Office to him and celebrated his feast annually in her convent at Prato: which practices were the object of disputes but not an impediment in the process of beatification. Nor did St. Philip Neri, the blessed Colomba da Rieti, the blessed Caterina da Racconigi, and the blessed Maddalena del Paradiso have less devotion for him. A canonization of Savonarola was spoken of under Clement VIII, who was indeed much devoted to him; so much so that the general of the Order, Sisto Fabbri, had three different proper Offices composed for him. In the Acta Sanctorum his name is included among the praetermissi of 23 May.
Necessarily the dramatic vicissitudes of his life, the very injustice he suffered, the character of the times, and the salutary severities of the Counter-Reformation prolonged the war over Savonarola beyond the pyre. His doctrine, rigorously examined in the Florentine Synod of 1516, in the Fifth Lateran Council, and in the Congregation of the Index (1558), always emerged unshaken. In this last body a few things were indeed suspended, not because they contained error, but because, to be understood by the common people, they needed some declaration. In truth such doctrine, imbued with Thomism, could not be more immaculately Catholic; and this is today recognized without dispute even by those Protestants who with manifest perversity had at first attempted to appropriate the great name of Savonarola; nor could a greater injury be done to one who lived laboriously for the Catholic faith and in it died exemplarily. If there were conflicts between Savonarola and Borgia, his position toward the Roman Pontiff was always devout and reverent; nor did he tire of professing such devotion and reverence up to his last moments.
Of this his life, his preaching and his works bear witness. The principal of these is the Triumphus Crucis, which he wrote in Latin and immediately rewrote in the vernacular: a lucid and closely argued apologetic treatise on the Christian faith, which was in use until the decline of the 17th century in the schools of Propaganda Fide, by whose care it was reprinted in execution of the will of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, brother of Urban VIII. Nor can the De simplicitate christianae vitae be overlooked, in five books, of which the first treats of Catholic doctrine, the others of simplicity of heart and of outward simplicity. Of the other works, some are of an exegetical character, some on ascetic subjects: a limpid mirror, in the frame of a candid style, of that spiritual perfection which he had known how to build up in himself. Of his youthful canzoni something has been said; his other poems are for the most part laudi, which for force of feeling and for originality rank among the best of the time. Antiquated humanistic prejudices branded S. as an enemy of poetry; perhaps it is true instead that, feeling himself too strongly drawn to it, and deeming it useless, if not harmful, to the attainment of the ultimate end, as he set forth in his Apologeticae de ratione poeticae artis, he sought to repress it in his own heart, as he had first rigidly repressed there his family affections. Clarity, simplicity and effectiveness were the principal qualities of S. as a writer; and the same may be repeated of those of the preacher. His sermons have passages of great effectiveness and beauty, even in the text that has come down to us, certainly very imperfect (cfr. R. Ridolfi, Studi savonaroliani, Florence 1935), even stripped of the charm of the voice and the person, which was without doubt very great. Prejudices of the same sort as those which depicted him as an enemy of poetry sought to make him believed an enemy of art, of which he nobly felt the worth; but neither the too rhetorically defamed "burnings of the vanities", nor the things said by him against certain pagan deviations, can cancel the debt that art owes to one who inspired a Michelangelo, a Botticelli, a Simone del Pollaiolo.
Editions. - Of the works of S., many times reprinted in the 15th-16th centuries, but always separately (many ascetic opuscules were collected in the Additiones of Quétif to G. F. Pico, Vita... H. Savonarolae, Paris 1674), a comprehensive modern edition is lacking; this lack the Edizione nazionale intends to remedy, of which the first 2 vols. (Prediche sopra Ezechiele, edited by R. Ridolfi) are in press. Nor are there modern critical editions even of the individual works, except of the Epistolario (Le Lettere di G. S., edited by R. Ridolfi, Florence 1933). In the collection, not very happily conducted, Prediche italiane ai Fiorentini, Florence 1930-35, there were published the sermons sopra Aggeo (vol. I) and sopra i Salmi (vol. II) edited by Cognasso (with many errors); the sermons sopra Amos edited by Palmarocchi (vols. III-IV). Of all the other sermons and works there are only ancient editions, or modern ones entirely negligible.