DEATH
IN FLORENCE: THE MEDICI, SAVONAROLA AND THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE RENAISSANCE
CITY (IV)
6. The
Return of Savonarola
SAVONAROLA
TOOK UP the post of teaching master at the monastery of San Marco probably some
time in early June 1490, delivering lectures on logic to novices and other
members of the community. However, he also took to giving extra lectures on
Sundays after Vespers, beneath a damask rose-tree in the monastery gardens. In
these informal, almost intimate lectures to his fellow friars he began
explaining passages from the Bible, resorting to the quiet, intense manner that
had always attracted listeners during his more personal teaching. The beauty of
the gardens on those long summer evenings, combined with the atmosphere of
intense spirituality, soon began to attract devout listeners from beyond the
monastic community. He also began receiving regular visits in his cell from
Pico della Mirandola, who was now eager to receive religious instruction from
Savonarola. As Savonarola would later confess, during their previous meetings
he had done all he could to dissuade Pico from pursuing his ambition to create
a universal philosophy. Instead, he had tried his best to convince Pico that he
should follow his true calling and devote his life to Christianity and the one
true God, without further delay. Savonarola had warned him that:
for this delaye I threatened him … he
wolde be punished yf he forsook that purpose which our Lorde had put in his
mynde, and certainly I prayed to God my selfe (I will not lye therefore) that
he might be some what beaten: to compell him to take that waye whiche God had
from above shewed hyme.1
Now
Pico had indeed been ‘some what beaten’ and was a changed man. He had given
away his villa and his estate near Mirandola to his nephew Gianfrancesco, who
would later repay this gift by writing the first biography of his uncle.
According to Gianfrancesco, during the period around the summer of 1490 Pico
conceived the idea of following in the footsteps of St Francis of Assisi,
travelling barefoot through the towns and cities of Italy. He was preparing to
join the same order as Savonarola, the Dominicans, and devote his life to
preaching, but could not yet bring himself to renounce the world entirely, despite
the frequent urgings of Savonarola.
All
the indications are that Pico and Savonarola spent many hours discussing
philosophy. Although Savonarola was undeniably seeking to influence Pico, there
are indications that Pico also influenced Savonarola in the course of these
discussions. Savonarola was engaged in his lectures on logic, and it was around
this time that he conceived of his ‘Division of all the Sciences’.2 This
is the nearest he came to providing a purely philosophical underpinning to his
belief. Savonarola separated philosophy into two aspects: the rational, and the
positive. Positive philosophy included the real and the practical, embracing
the moral (ethics, economics[1], politics) and the
mechanical (the arts). Rational philosophy, on the other hand, embraced logic
and the speculative, which included physics, mathematics and metaphysics.
Physics was inseparable from matter, mathematics was abstracted from matter,
but metaphysics was absolutely free from material constraint, and was thus the
queen of the sciences; it strove to discover the highest truth, and in doing so
it elevated the human spirit. And as far as Savonarola was concerned, the only
metaphysics was theology – Christian theology, as derived from the Bible.
Savonarola’s
philosophy was neither original nor particularly clear. For him, philosophy was
not important – even so, it certainly illuminated the nature of his faith. The
spiritual quest of metaphysics was quite separate from ethics, economics and
politics. Yet these latter belonged to the real world, and as such could not be
ignored. Savonarola’s regard for his congregations would always involve a
deeply compassionate element. Besides being metaphysical, his message was also
moral, and as such included ethics, economics and politics. These were not
subjects that were open to free discusssion during this period: the Church laid
down the law on ethics, and economic life was strictly regulated by the
powerful guilds, whilst politics was a matter for rulers. But Savonarola saw
these as subsumed by morality, and thus in the realm of real and practical
philosophical debate. Society, which included ethics, economics and politics,
was moral or it was nothing. And as such, contemporary society was due for a
change.
In the
light of how many long hours Savonarola and Pico spent discussing philosophy,
it is worth comparing their different philosophies. Pico had wished to build a
universal philosophy-cum-religion upon 900 basic axioms: these would include
all belief systems and all manner of thought, and yet would retain an outlook
that was essentially humanistic. It left humanity free to choose what it wished
to become, yet urged the use of reason to achieve ‘the higher realms of the
divine’. By contrast, Savonarola’s basic axioms were contained in the Bible,
and faith alone (aided by the reason of metaphysics, the queen of the sciences)
could aspire to the divine. Once Savonarola had convinced Pico that it was
right for him to abandon his 900 theses and his reliance upon arguments derived
from all religions, the way was open for him to embrace an analogous mode of
thought using the Bible and faith. Yet although Pico discarded his philosophy,
he did not discard his intellectual powers. His traumatic clash with the pope
may have rendered him a changed man, but it had not broken him. He never lost
his compelling personal qualities and his supreme ability to reason: he could
still discuss philosophy with his intellectual equal, Savonarola. This much was
confirmed by Savonarola himself, who was hardly a man to be impressed by such
qualities: yet years later, on Pico’s death, the austere friar would pronounce
him ‘a man in whom God had heped many great gifts and singular graces, who is
an inestymable loss to the church’.3
Savonarola’s
first sermon on his return to Florence was delivered on 1 August 1490 in the
church at San Marco, just two months after his arrival. He had, it seems,
already gained a certain hearsay reputation as a result of his apocalyptic
sermons delivered in northern Italy; and this, together with the growing
audience for his evening talks in the monastery gardens, ensured an unusually
large crowd at San Marco that Sunday. According to Burlamacchi, who might even
have been present, some were left standing, while others clung to the iron gratings,
peering into the body of the church.
Savonarola
did not disappoint the spilling congregation beneath the delicate frescoes and
long, echoing nave. He returned to his favourite topic, the Apocalypse, and for
the first time in Florence articulated what would become his famous prophecies
regarding the Church: its reform, how it would be scourged, and the imminence
of these events. In later years he would fondly recall the effect of his sermon
with the words: ‘I am the hailstorm that shall smash the heads of those who do
not take cover.’4 Such was the popularity of this, and
of Savonarola’s ensuing sermons, that when he was chosen by the prior of San
Marco to give the Lenten sermons for the following year, it was decided that he
should deliver them in Florence’s main church, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del
Fiore (the Duomo).
By
now, word had reached Lorenzo the Magnificent of the disturbing tenor of
Savonarola’s preaching. The man brought to Florence to assist the spiritual
life of Lorenzo and his son Giovanni, to inspire a new orthodoxy within the
court and the populace, had started making subversive prophecies concerning the
Church. As a result Lorenzo sent word to Savonarola, by way of a group of
leading citizens, that in the forthcoming Lenten sermons it would be best if
‘he did not speak much about future events’.5 But this
was not the way to deal with Savonarola: threats only incited him to obstinacy,
and worse. He saw them as attempts to compromise his integrity, an element that
was central to his faith, his personality, indeed his very being.
Yet
Lorenzo the Magnificent was not the only one alarmed by Savonarola’s attitude,
and Savonarola himself admitted that he was approached ‘by all kinds of people’6who
warned him against being so reckless. Some of these were young monks at San
Marco, amongst whom he had begun to gather a devoted following. Unlike the
deputation from Lorenzo, these were not threats, but friendly advice from those
he knew to be sympathetic to his cause, and Savonarola decided to take heed of
their warning. He set about preparing a series of sermons on more orthodox
themes, which he would deliver in a less sensational manner. But he soon found
‘I was unable to do this, because everything that I read or studied was so
boring, and when I tried to preach in any other manner than the one I was used
to, I even bored myself.’7 He would recall how he had
heard a voice encouraging him to return to his former way of preaching: ‘You
fool, do you not understand that it is the will of God that you should preach
in this way?’8 This ‘voice’ soon persuaded him.
As
result, when Savonarola next stepped up to the lectern in the cathedral, he
delivered what even he would characterise as ‘a terrifying sermon’9.
His voice rang out beneath Brunelleschi’s great dome as he spoke of the coming
of ‘a time such as none has ever heard of before’.10 He
launched into a long and explicit tirade against the city’s evils, denouncing
sodomites ‘who hide not what they are’, murderers ‘who are filled with evil’,
gamblers and blasphemers, all of whom were ‘abhorred by God’. He denounced
banking as ‘usury’, explained how the rich ‘will suffer great affliction’ and
condemned ‘the unjust taxes which are grinding down the poor’. He warned them
that ‘the time is nigh when you will be struck down with the sword’. The city
would no longer be known as Florence, but as ‘the great den of iniquity’.
The
large audience for Savonarola’s Lenten sermons of 1491 included all elements of
the city’s population, but especially the poor, who began to know him as ‘the
preacher for those in despair’.11 According to his
biographer Ridolfi, ‘as a result of this Lenten preaching, Savonarola started
to become master, if not of Florence itself, at least of the people of the
city’.12
In
accord with Florentine tradition, the preacher of the Lenten sermons at the
cathedral delivered a private sermon for the gonfaloniere and
his eight-man Signoria at the Palazzo della Signoria on the Wednesday after
Easter, which this year fell on 6 April. In practice, this would also have been
attended by a number of other senior government officials, advisers and
counsellors: even so, it would have been a small gathering compared with a
sermon in San Marco or the cathedral. We do not know precisely how Savonarola
spoke, but his notes for the sermon survive, giving a good indication. He must
have found the prospect of preaching in this more intimate atmosphere
intimidating. Beginning a little ineptly and provocatively, he compared himself
to Christ in the house of the Pharisee, ‘which forces me to be somewhat more
subtle and sophisticated than in Church’.13 Despite this, he
soon launched into a rather more explicit confrontation:
Everything that is good and everything
that is evil in this city depends upon the man who rules it. He is the one
responsible for all that is wrong with this city, for if he acted in the proper
manner the entire city would be sanctified. Tyrants never change their ways,
and this is because they are arrogant, they thrive on flattery, and refuse to
return what they have stolen from the people. They leave everything in the
hands of corrupt ministers, listen only to false praise, pay no attention to
the poor and only care about those who are wealthy. They require the poor and
the peasants to labour ceaselessly for them without being paid proper wages.
They expect their ministers to condone this, they corrupt the voters, employ
criminal tax-collectors, and thus make it even worse for the poor.
One
can but imagine the expressions of outrage on the faces of his distinguished
listeners. For many years now, during the years of the Medici ascendancy, the
leading citizens who governed Florence had grown unaccustomed to hearing such
downright democratic criticism. Savonarola was venturing into dangerous
political territory, yet such was his ever-increasing self-confidence that he
now went even further. He delivered his final Lenten sermons in the cathedral
to a packed congregation, his harsh voice with its homely Ferrarese intonations
ringing out over the sea of rapt upturned faces. They were hardly able to
believe what they were hearing, but Savonarola could now see beginning to
unfold before him the destiny of which he had dreamed. Filled with the Holy
Spirit, he felt empowered to inform the gathered citizens of Florence, ‘I
believe that Christ speaks through my mouth.’
Word
of these latest outrages soon reached Lorenzo the Magnificent, and he was
strongly advised to banish Savonarola. But he decided against such a drastic
step. There were several reasons for this. According to the contemporary
historian Guicciardini, Lorenzo retained ‘a certain respect for Fra Girolamo,
whom he considered to be genuinely holy’.15 At the same
time, there were other, more worldly reasons for Lorenzo’s lack of decisive
action. Just three years previously a preacher named Fra Bernardino da Feltre
had begun to gain a similar popular following in Florence. Fra Bernadino’s
simple innocent sermons, with their homilies on the sanctity of the poor, had
evoked widespread sympathy amongst the deprived sections of the population. In
this way, he had gained an almost saintly reputation, but his otherworldly
manner had not prevented him from making several very worldly observations. He
had begun to attack the bankers of Florence for charging such high interest on
their loans to the poor that entire families were often plunged into penury for
life. As a remedy for this he had suggested the establishment of a Monte
della Pietà (in effect, a ‘bank for the people’). Fra Bernardino’s
direct honesty had caused the people of Florence to see their rulers through
new eyes, and they had not liked what they saw. Lorenzo the Magnificent had
quickly sensed how the tide of public opinion was turning against him. Not only
amongst the poor, but also amongst the more educated classes, there was a
growing dissatisfaction with the Medici regime and the taxes that not only kept
the poor in their place, but could also be applied punitively in order to ruin
any factions that might be contemplating opposition to Medici rule. Lorenzo had
promptly banished Fra Bernardino into exile, but this had proved a highly
unpopular move, resulting in widespread dissatisfaction and grumblings, which
had taken some time and considerable expense (in the form of bribes and
entertainments) to dissipate. Lorenzo was not going to make the same mistake
again – especially in light of the irony that he had been responsible for
inviting Savonarola back to Florence in the first place. Such a decision would
have made him a laughing stock, and would have struck at the very heart of his
reputation for decisive action. The great protector of Florence against its
enemies could not be seen as a ditherer who went back on his word.
Instead,
Lorenzo decided that he would attempt to destroy Savonarola using a more subtle
method. He would undermine his reputation as a public speaker by demonstrating
that he was not only a dangerous rabble-rouser, but also blasphemous. How could
any mere friar claim to speak with the voice of Christ? If Savonarola could be
exposed as a charlatan, his following amongst the poor would soon evaporate.
More important still, his growing following amongst the humanists would also be
destroyed.
As far
as this last point was concerned, Lorenzo was at least in part working against
himself. His increasing inclination towards religion was grating with his
humanist beliefs; he too was attracted to Savonarola’s piety. Indeed, Lorenzo’s
latest writing was a religious verse drama about St John and St Paul.
Similarly, his close friend Pico had long since succumbed to Savonarola’s siren
song, and now even Poliziano was attending his sermons and was on the verge of
being won over. The poet would later describe Savonarola as ‘a man eminent both
in learning and in sanctity and a superb preacher of heavenly doctrine’.16 Poliziano’s
personality was both emotional and intellectual, and he seems to have responded
to what he saw as the poetic intensity in Savonarola’s style of preaching. Yet
paradoxically it was the friar’s very lack of style that appealed to the poor.
Savonarola appears to have been all things to all men. Where Pico had
recognised a great intellect, Poliziano recognised the ringing phrases of a
poet – and meanwhile the downtrodden were inspired to recognise a man who had
their cause at heart. Even the ardent Platonist Ficino was impressed, though at
this stage he still had reservations. There appeared to be little place in
Savonarola’s creed for much of the pagan philosophy of Plato, which saw the
world as the mere play of shadows cast by the distant brilliance of the
abstract ideas whose radiance constituted the ultimate reality. Such ethereal
Platonic idealism would have been of little consolation to the poor. Yet
curiously, Savonarola was in fact inspired by Plato, almost certainly through the
influence of Ficino’s writings, a fact that would not have escaped Ficino when
he read Savonarola’s words:
The
ultimate aim of man is beatitude. This does not consist, as the natural
philosophers would have us believe, in the contemplations of speculative
science. Nay, beatitude is the pure vision of God. In this life we are only
capable of seeing a distant image, a faint shadow of the beatitude. Only in the
next life can we enjoy this vision in all its radiant reality.17
Pico,
Poliziano and Ficino would all have recognised Savonarola’s philosophical
reference. Likewise, the power and clarity of this image would have been easily
understood by the less educated amongst his congregation. Savonarola’s words
seemed to fill some emptiness that lay at the heart of the society he was
addressing. For all the surface aesthetic changes which the Renaissance had
brought to the city – architecture, frescoes, festivals, humanism and its
discovery of the pagan classical world – this transformation had brought with
it a certain spiritual malaise; at the same time, perhaps inevitably, it had
also awoken dormant fears. It was this malaise, and these fears, that
Savonarola addressed.
Lorenzo
the Magnificent, increasingly racked by gout, sensed that he was now dying. The
mortal man faced with death responded to the absolutism of Savonarola’s call to
faith. But the man who had ruled Florence so successfully for more than two
decades knew that Savonarola posed a political threat – to the stability of the
city and all that it stood for as the leading cultural centre in Italy, as well
as to his own rule, the Medici family and all that they stood to achieve in
future generations.
Lorenzo’s
plan to undermine Savonarola was an ambitious and subtle one, which could only
have been achieved by one man: Fra Mariano da Genazzano, the superior of the
local Augustinian order. Where Savonarola harked back to a past era, Fra
Mariano was very much a man of the coming age – a preacher of considerable
sophistication and intellect.
Despite
Savonarola’s growing popularity, Fra Mariano held, and jealously guarded, the
title of the most celebrated preacher in Florence. Some twenty years previously
the monastery housing the Augustinians had burned down, whereupon Lorenzo the
Magnificent had commissioned Brunelleschi to design a new residence for them
just outside the city’s northern Porta San Gallo. The result was a resplendent
building with cells for 100 monks and a Renaissance-style church. Lorenzo was
particularly drawn to Fra Mariano, and had taken to visiting him at his
monastery, where they would discuss the cultural and theological issues of the
day. Fra Mariano was well versed in the new Renaissance learning, and saw no
contradiction between his role as a monk and his love of pagan classical poetry
and philosophy. When Lorenzo retired to one of his country villas during the
long, hot summer months, he was in the habit of inviting Fra Mariano to stay
with him, and here the Augustinian monk made a favourable impression on
Lorenzo’s intellectual companions. Poliziano’s opinion of Fra Mariano was
typical:
I have met Fra Mariano repeatedly at the
villa and entered into confidential talks with him. I never knew a man at once
more attractive and more cautious. He neither repels by immoderate severity nor
deceives and leads astray by exaggerated indulgence. Many preachers think
themselves masters of men’s life and death. While they are abusing their power
they always look gloomy and weary men by setting up as judges of morals. But
here is a man of moderation. In the pulpit he is a severe censor; but when he
descends from it he indulges in winning friendly discourse … I and my friend
Pico have much conversation with him and nothing refreshes us after our
literary labours as [sic]
relaxation in his company. Lorenzo de’ Medici, who understands men so well,
shows how highly he esteems him … preferring a conversation with him to any
other recreation.18
Poliziano
was equally impressed by his style of preaching, writing to a friend of Fra
Mariano’s ‘musical voice, his precisely chosen words, his grand sentences. Then
I become aware of his telling metaphors, the way he pauses for effect, and the
enchantment of his harmonious cadences’.19 Fra Mariano’s
sermons, with their wealth of classical and philosophical allusion, may have
owed much to Ficino’s erudite expositions before Lorenzo and his circle, but
there was no denying that he was above all else an actor. Besides his graceful
flourishes and gestures, he was not above resorting to more histrionic groans
and trembling cries to stir the emotions of his less-educated listeners. He too
had his following amongst the poor.
Even
some of the monks from San Marco went to hear Fra Mariano’s sermons.
Savonarola’s admirer and defender Domenico Benivieni could not refrain from
telling Savonarola: ‘Father, there is no denying that your doctrine is true,
useful and necessary, but your way of delivering it lacks grace, especially
when it is so frequently compared to that of Fra Mariano.’20 To
this, Savonarola is said to have replied bluntly, ‘Such verbal elegance must
soon make way for simple preaching of sound doctrine.’
Fra
Mariano had become aware of Savonarola’s growing reputation, and in the spring
of 1491 he visited him at San Marco, evidently with the aim of sizing up his
rival. He left, assuring Savonarola of his friendship. Around this time Lorenzo
the Magnificent suggested to Fra Mariano that he should take on his upstart
competitor, and deliver a devastating sermon that would demonstrate the
hollowness of his rival’s claims and prophecies, at the same time so
humiliating Savonarola that he would be eclipsed once and for all in the public
mind. Fra Mariano readily agreed to this, telling Lorenzo that he would deliver
his sermon at the Church of Santo Spirito, the priory church of the San Gallo
monastery, on Ascension Day, Thursday 12 May 1491. This was the first major
date in the religious calendar after Easter, falling forty days later; it
allowed sufficient time for the controversy over Savonarola’s Lenten sermons to
have died down, and also made it look as if Fra Mariano’s sermon was not some
hasty personal response to San Marco’s ‘preacher for those in despair’.
Word
of this coming attack was soon passed on to Savonarola, who merely responded by
predicting, ‘I shall wax, and he shall wane.’21 By
Ascension Day news of this ‘joust’ had spread through Florence, and the crowds
that gathered at the San Gallo monastery more than filled its sizeable church[2]. Poliziano and Pico
della Mirandola were also amongst the congregation, together with Lorenzo the
Magnificent himself – all of whom were now fully aware of the import of what
was taking place. Savonarola’s contemporary biographer and friend, Fra Placido
Cinozzi, has left an eyewitness account of what happened. Fra Mariano took as his
text Jesus’ reply to his disciples, when they asked him to tell them what would
come to pass in the future: ‘It is not for you to know the time, or the
seasons.’22 He went on to elaborate that it was sheer
nonsense for anyone to pretend to have knowledge of future events, and then
launched into a passionate personal attack on Savonarola, labelling him as a
false prophet who was responsible for spreading subversive sedition, with the
aim of stirring the people of Florence to rebellion. But Fra Mariano had evidently
misinterpreted what Lorenzo the Magnificent wished of him, for he soon became
so carried away with himself that he began mimicking Savonarola’s brusque
gestures and provincial accent, before unleashing a stream of intemperate
insults against Savonarola, calling him a worm, a snake, a clown who was
ignorant of the Bible, and an inept priest who was not even capable of
conducting a Mass in proper Latin. By the end of his sermon, Fra Mariano was
all but incoherent with rage and vitriolic condemnation. Lorenzo, Poliziano and
Pico were horrified at such an inappropriate and vulgar display, and the
congregation was deeply shocked. This was not the kind of behaviour Florentines
wished to see in church. Even those who had championed Fra Mariano against Savonarola
now began to have second thoughts.
Just
three days later, on the following Sunday, Savonarola gave his reply in a
sermon delivered at the cathedral. Fra Mariano had played into his rival’s
hands, and Savonarola intended to take full advantage of this. Using the
selfsame text as Fra Mariano had chosen, he proceeded to elucidate its true
meaning, disposing one by one of what he claimed were Fra Mariano’s specious
arguments against him. He then began a personal attack on Fra Mariano, but
unlike his rival’s attack, this was neither intemperate nor insulting. Instead,
‘in the most gentle manner’, he reminded Fra Mariano how just a few days
previously he had called at San Marco expressly to see him. Savonarola reminded
him how during the course of their meeting Fra Mariano had congratulated him on
his sermons, praising their biblical erudition, and assuring him that they
would do much good in Florence. Having prepared the ground, Savonarola then
began asking some devastating questions: ‘Who was it who made you change your
mind? Who was it who suggested that you should attack me?’ All present knew
precisely to whom Savonarola was alluding. Not only had his sermon rebutted Fra
Mariano, but it had also implicated Lorenzo the Magnificent.
The
people of Florence had witnessed the crushing defeat of their celebrated
preacher; and Fra Mariano, unable to bear the humiliation, packed his bags and
left for Rome, now a lifelong and dangerous enemy of Savonarola who would use
all his influence in the Vatican to wreak his revenge. Pico, who had been
worried by the turn of events, called upon Savonarola in his cell at San Marco
and warned him, ‘You will not fare well, if you continue jousting in this
fashion.’24
NOTES
1. ‘for
this delaye …’: cited in Giovanni Francesco Pico della
Mirandola, Vita … (trans. More), p.27
2. ‘Division
of all the Sciences’: see Villari, La Storia … Savonarola, Vol.
I, p.108
3. ‘a
man in whom God …’: cited in Giovanni Francesco Pico della
Mirandola, Vita … (trans. More), p.26
4. ‘I
am the hailstorm …’: Savonarola, Prediche sopra Ruth e Michea,
ed. V. Romano (Rome, 1962), Vol. II, p.91. These and other collections of
Savonarola’s sermons are part of the Collected Works (Edizione nazionale),
but as they are separate volumes and were issued at different dates, often with
different editors, I have referred to them by their individual titles.
5. ‘he
did not speak …’: Francesco Guicciardini, Storie fiorentine,
ed. R. Palmarocchi (Bari, 1931), p.108
6. ‘by
all kinds of people’: see Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola, Vol.
I, p.57, citing Girolamo Savonarola, Compendio di rivelazioni, ed
A. Crucitti (Florence, 1933)
7. ‘I
was unable …’: ibid., p.58
8. ‘You
fool …’: ibid.
9. ‘a
terrifying …’: ibid.
10. ‘a
time such as …’ et seq.: see Seward, Savonarola,
p.53, and Villari, La Storia … Savonarola, Vol. I, p.133 et
seq., both of whom cite their source as the autograph document by
Savonarola known as Compendium Revelationum (for details of
this, see Villari, La Storia … Savonarola, Vol. I, p.135 n.1)
11. ‘the
preacher for …’: see Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola, Vol. I,
p.56, citing Savonarola, Compendio di rivelazioni, an Italian
translation from the original Latin of some of the sheets contained in the
above Compendium
12. ‘as
a result …’: ibid, p.55
13. ‘which
forces me …’: et seq.: Villari, La Storia …
Savonarola, Vol. I, pp.136–7, citing Documento VIII, p.xxxiii, which
includes the entire sermon and is at the end of Vol. I
14. ‘I
believe that Christ …’: cited in Martines, Savonarola,
p.27
15. ‘a
certain respect …’: Guicciardini, Storie, p.108
16. ‘a
man eminent …’: see Poliziano Letters [Latin and
English], Book IV, Letter 2, p.237
17. ‘The
ultimate aim …’: see Villari, La Storia … Savonarola, Vol.
I, p.106, citing Girolamo Savonarola, Compendium totius philosopiae tam
… moralis (Venice, 1542), Book 1, p.25
18. ‘I
have met …’: Poliziano, cited in Ross Williamson, Lorenzo,
pp.238–9
19. ‘musical
voice …’: Poliziano, letter to Tristano Calco, cited in Villari, La
Storia … Savonarola, Vol. I, p.80
20. ‘Father,
there is …’ et seq.: in a letter by his brother, the poet
Girolamo Benivieni, to Clement VII, cited in Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola,
Vol. I, pp.51–2
21. ‘I
shall wax …: cited in Latin in several sources: see Ridolfi, Vita
… Savonarola, Vol. I, p.65, citing as one of his sources Roberto Ubaldini,
‘the future chronicler of San Marco’
22. ‘It
is not for you …’: Acts, Ch. 1, vv.7–8
23.
For the details and circumstances of Fra Mariano’s sermon I have drawn on a
variety of sources, including Villari, La Storia … Savonarola, Vol.
I, p.79 et seq., Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola, Vol. I,
pp.64–5, and Seward, Savonarola, pp.55–6, as well as the two
original sources from which they draw – namely, Burlamacchi, Savonarola,
p.23 et seq., and Placido Cinozzi, Epistola de vita et
moribus Ieronimo Savonarola, which can be found in P. Villari and E.
Casanova, Scelta di prediche e scritti di fra Girolamo Savonarola etc.
(Florence, 1887).
24. ‘You
will not …’: see Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola, Vol. I, p.50,
who cites the original Latin document reproduced in Villari, La Storia
… Savonarola, Vol. I, p. xxxiii, which pertains to ‘after Easter 1491’. I
have chosen a broad interpretation of this dating, which seems appropriate.
Savoranola
7. CAT AND MOUSE
SUCH
WAS SAVONAROLA’S popularity amongst his fellow friars at San Marco that in July
1491 they elected him prior of the monastery. As the Medici family had been
responsible for the rebuilding of San Marco, and continued to be its
benefactors (to the extent that they even referred to it as ‘our’ monastery),
it was customary for any newly elected friar to pay a courtesy visit to the
Palazzo Medici, a short walk down the Via Larga. However, when Savonarola’s
fellow monks urged him to fulfil this obligation, he demanded of them: ‘Who
made me prior – God or Lorenzo?’1 When they replied,
‘God’, Savonarola declared, ‘Thus it is the Lord God who I will thank’, and
then returned to his cell to continue with his habitual regime of prayer and
fasting.
When
word of Savonarola’s refusal reached the Palazzo Medici, Lorenzo remarked
irritatedly, ‘A foreign monk has come to live in my house and he does not even
deign to come and see me.’2 Lorenzo’s illness was giving
him increasing pain, and this time he decided against any confrontation with
Savonarola. Instead, he chose to take a conciliatory course of action which
would give the new prior the chance to make amends without either of them
losing face before the people of Florence. Lorenzo began attending the church
of San Marco on Sundays to hear Mass, and afterwards he would walk in the
garden, or in the cloisters, in the hope of encountering Savonarola, engaging
him in conversation and exerting his famous charm upon the new prior. On
earlier occasions when Lorenzo had strolled in the monastery gardens after Mass
he had been joined by the previous prior, along with several of the more senior
monks, who were still pleased to join the man they regarded as their
benefactor. When Savonarola’s fellow monks came to inform him of what Lorenzo
was doing, he said to them, ‘Is he asking for me?’3 When
they replied that he was not, Savonarola told them, ‘Then let him walk as he
pleases.’
This
made Lorenzo even more determined to gain the confidence of the man whose
holiness he viewed with increasing respect, yet whose opposition he knew it was
politically dangerous to tolerate. By this stage Lorenzo’s illness was causing
him to lose his grasp of affairs and cloud his judgement – a fact that became
evident in the way he now misjudged Savonarola. Lorenzo ordered gifts to be
sent to San Marco, but these were simply returned to the Palazzo Medici. In a
public allusion from the pulpit to this turn of events, Savonarola likened a
true preacher to a loyal watchdog who is not distracted when a thief throws him
a bone or a lump of meat; instead, he ignores these gifts and continues
barking.
As a
last resort, Lorenzo ordered his chancellor, Piero da Bibbiena, to deposit
anonymously gold coins to the value of 300 florins in the alms chest of San
Marco. This chest was the chief source of public financial support for the
monastery, and would accumulate a collection of largely copper coins, plus the
occasional silver one, through the week. When Savonarola was informed of this
hugely generous anonymous gift, he knew at once that it came from Lorenzo. He
decreed that the silver and bronze coins deposited by the good citizens of the
city should be set aside as usual for the running costs of the monastery.
However, the gold coins were to be taken to the brotherhood of St Martin, who
distributed alms amongst the deserving poor. When Bibbiena heard of what
Savonarola had done, he reported back to Lorenzo, declaring, ‘This is a
slippery customer we are dealing with.’4
It
was evident that Savonarola was unwilling to make any accommodation with
Lorenzo’s authority. There would be no compromise on his behalf, and Lorenzo
was forced to the realisation that although he respected Savonarola, he could
not allow him any further concessions. It was time to assert his authority.
Lorenzo could still have banished Savonarola without further ado, as he had Fra
Bernardino three years previously; and he was certainly capable of savage
reprisal when he felt his political power was under threat. A decade or so
earlier, Lorenzo had become suspicious that a pilgrim begging for food at the
gate of his country villa was in fact a hired assassin. The pilgrim had been
arrested and interrogated, the soles of his feet held over a fire until the fat
dribbled, spitting in the flames. When still no confession was forthcoming, the
pilgrim was made to walk on his charred, bloodied feet over coarse salt, an
excruciating ordeal that resulted in his death. As Machiavelli, who lived
through these events, would later write in his characteristically sardonic
fashion of Lorenzo, ‘all his enemies met with an unhappy end’.5
Yet
once again Lorenzo hesitated from taking an absolute and final step against
Savonarola: he would exercise his authority indirectly. Some days later, five
of Florence’s leading citizens arrived at San Marco and demanded to see
Savonarola. This delegation consisted of members of some of the most respected
families in the city: Guidantonio Vespucci, Paolantonio Soderini, Francesco
Valori, Domenico Bonsi and Bernardo Rucellai.
The
ensuing meeting took place in the sacristy, and was reported by a number of
contemporary sources, each of whom left a remarkably similar account of
Savonarola’s sensational behaviour. To begin with, the citizens explained to
Savonarola that they had come of their own accord to warn him against
persisting in his current behaviour, which was putting both himself and his
monastery in some danger. But Savonarola soon cut them short, interjecting: ‘I
know that you have not come of your own free will, but have been sent by
Lorenzo. Bid him to do penance for his sins, for the Lord is no respecter of
persons, and does not even spare the princes of this earth from his judgement.’6 The
citizens then repeated their warning, insisting that if he continued to behave
in this fashion he was liable to be banished from Florence.
Savonarola
replied: ‘Only people like you, who have wives and children, are afraid of
banishment. I have no such fear, for if I did have to leave, this city would
become no more than a speck of dust to me, compared with the rest of the world.
I am not frightened, let him do as he pleases. But let him realise this:
although I am a mere stranger to this city, and Lorenzo is the most powerful
man in Florence, it is I who will remain here, and he who will depart. He will
be gone, long before me.’
The
citizens were amazed; they realised that Savonarola was in fact predicting that
Lorenzo was going to die. Collating the contemporary reports, Savonarola’s
biographer Pasquale Villari described what happened next: ‘[Savonarola] began
to speak about the city of Florence and the political state of Italy,
displaying a depth of knowledge in these matters which astonished his
listeners. It was then that he predicted, in front of the many witnesses who
were present in the sacristy of San Marco, that great changes would soon take
place in Italy. He then specifically prophesied that Lorenzo the Magnificent,
Pope Innocent VIII and King Ferrante of Naples would all soon die.’ Whispers of
these sensational prophecies soon began to spread around Florence[3].
Lorenzo
the Magnificent was aware of the vital power slipping from his grasp.
Physically he was reduced, and as a consequence he could no longer stand
centre-stage politically. Yet he was not one to make excuses for his
misfortunes. As he had written on an earlier occasion:
So great was the persecution I endured at that time,
from both Fortune and from men. Even so, I am inclined by nature to rise above
such things, to mention them but briefly, in order to avoid the charge of being
proud and vain, since reporting one’s own serious dangers cannot be done
without the presumption of vainglory.7
Congenital
gout was reducing his charismatic physical presence to a shell. The champion
jouster and insatiable lover, filled with such inspirational physical and
intellectual joie de vivre, who had so enchanted Poliziano and Pico
della Mirandola, whose charm had won over King Ferrante of Naples and Innocent
VIII, was now a crabbed, irritable and weak forty-two-year-old invalid, his
mind clouded with pain. A ghost of his former self, he would spend hours on end
shivering in his cloak by the fire, attempting to melt the icy crystalline
needles of pain in his joints. By this stage he had become desperate, willing
to resort to all manner of quack remedies. Even his famous collection of jewels
was brought to bear on the problem. The physician Petrus Bonus Avogarius wrote
advising him:
To prevent the return of these pains, you must get a
stone called sapphire, and have it set in gold, so that it should touch the
skin. This must be worn on the third finger of the left hand. If this is done
the pains in the joints, or gouty pains, will cease, because that stone has
occult virtues, and the specific one of preventing evil humours going to the
joints.8
Lorenzo’s
jewels remained his pride and joy – it was, after all, on them that he had left
evidence of his deepest, most secret ambition: LAU.R.MED, Lorenzo de’ Medici –
king, or the father of future kings. This was his prediction, far more likely
than the prophecies of some ranting priest. His oldest son Piero would succeed
him as ruler of Florence. All this had been settled with the leading Medici
lieutenants – the likes of Soderini, Vespucci and Valori, who could be relied
upon to do his bidding. Lorenzo himself had only been invited by the Signoria
to take over the reins of power out of respect for his father Piero, but during
the twenty-two years of Lorenzo’s rule things had changed: from now on the
succession would be a Medici right.
At
the same time, the Medici family would extend its power beyond Florence and
into the Church, by means of Giovanni’s rich benefices and his coming
cardinalate. But Innocent VIII had driven a hard bargain for the cardinalate,
leaving Lorenzo’s finances under strain and only adding to his overall debt.
A
portion of this debt had been to cover the education of Giovanni, who in 1490
had been sent to study at the celebrated university that Lorenzo had recently
re-established at Pisa. It had quickly become clear to Lorenzo that Giovanni
should not be exposed to Savonarola’s inflammatory sermons, and he hoped that a
scholastic university education would give him a more suitable theological
grounding. However, Giovanni’s education had proved rather more costly than his
father had anticipated. Although he had shown high intelligence, combined with
a certain indolence, the chubby, likeable teenager had at the same time
inherited his father’s inclination towards hedonistic extravagance. As a
result, the cash-strapped Lorenzo had been obliged to order the Medici bank to
cover Giovanni’s debts in Pisa. According to some sources, these amounted to
the astonishing sum of 7,000 florins.9
As
if all this were not enough, some time towards the end of 1491 Lorenzo had
received a request from Innocent VIII for the equivalent of 10,000 florins as a
‘final’ down payment on Giovanni’s cardinalate, which was due to be confirmed
and made public in a few months’ time. Lorenzo knew that he could not refuse
this ‘request’ if he wished the pope to confirm Giovanni’s appointment. He had
been forced once again to turn to Miniati and his underhand manipulations of
the Florentine exchequer. This was a desperate last resort, as the latest
financial reform undertaken by Lorenzo – with the connivance of Miniati – had
provoked considerable unrest. During the previous year there had arisen a
problem over the coinage circulating in Florence. The city’s role as a centre
of trade, especially in commodities such as wool, alum and fine cloth, had
resulted in a large number of foreign coins entering circulation. These coins
mostly originated from nearby cities that issued their own currency, such as
Bologna, Siena or Lucca, and were similar to the Florentine quattrini (or
pennies), for which they were frequently exchanged. The foreign coins were
known as ‘blackquattrini’. In order to resolve this anomaly, Lorenzo set
up a committee, which decided to call in the ‘black quattrini’ and
replace the old Florentine quattrini with similar new
‘white quattrini’, which were worth 25 per cent more. The old coins
would be melted down, and only the ‘whitequattrini’ would be accepted
for payment of taxes, duties and other contributions to the city exchequer.
This caused little complaint amongst the citizens, until it was discovered that
instead of melting down the old Florentine quattrini, the
authorities were reintroducing these selfsame coins as equivalent to
‘white quattrini’, thus making 25 per cent on any transaction
involving these old coins (which could not then be used to pay taxes, and thus
effectively reverted to their old call-in rate).
To
exacerbate the problem, Lorenzo’s sudden unexpected need for the equivalent of
10,000 florins to pay Innocent VIII led him to a rash embezzlement, which would
not be exposed until after his death. This involved the public fund known as
the Monte delle Doti, a public deposit account that had been
established in 1424 by Cosimo de’ Medici for the provision of dowries for the
daughters of the poor, who would otherwise not have been able to get married.
Anyone paying into this fund received a 5 per cent interest on their savings,
which could all be withdrawn after an agreed number of years to become a
daughter’s dowry. The establishment of the Monte delle Doti (Dowry
Fund) had proved a highly popular move, and it had soon accumulated a
considerable sum, as payments into the fund greatly exceeded withdrawals. Thus
when the Florentine exchequer found itself short of assets, instead of
repayments it would issue the citizen with shares in the Dowry Fund, which also
rose by 5 per cent annually and could be withdrawn at a future date to provide
a dowry. This enforced form of saving was not popular, but was tolerated. Even
this measure only made small inroads into the Dowry Fund, which had continued
to increase over the years.
However,
by 1485 a downturn in trade had cut the tax revenue, leaving the Florentine
exchequer heavily indebted. In an effort to rescue the city’s finances, and his
own, Lorenzo had ordered Miniati to expropriate a sizeable sum from the Dowry
Fund. (The precise figure remains unclear, owing to the Medici family’s
subsequent destruction of all ledgers relating to these years, but this too may
be a candidate for at least part of the 74,948 florins later demanded from the
Medici family in compensation for money taken by Lorenzo ‘without the sanction
of any law and without authority’.) In order to cover this embezzlement,
Lorenzo had issued Miniati with orders to explain that, owing to the harshness
of the economic downturn, only one-fifth of anyone’s savings could be withdrawn
from the Dowry Fund at one time, but in compensation the interest on the
remaining savings would be increased to 7 per cent. Inevitably this restriction
proved highly unpopular. For three generations the poorer families of Florence
had taken to depositing their meagre savings in the Dowry Fund. Indeed, over
the decades the fund had proved so popular that by now a majority of the
population had stakes in it. In mitigation for Lorenzo, this raid on the Dowry
Fund may well have been his only hope for restoring the city’s finances. Had
the city gone bankrupt, this would probably have meant the end of Medici rule;
yet as far as the populace was concerned, the city’s bankruptcy would also have
resulted in considerable hardship – starvation even – and the inevitable civil
strife would have torn it apart. Under such circumstances, Florence would
inevitably have lost its independence to one of the other major powers in
Italy.
Lorenzo
would certainly have been mindful of such dangers, lending an altruistic, or at
least pragmatic, element to this appropriation. On the other hand, he almost
certainly used some of this appropriation to cover his own expenses. Yet the
distinction between Medici expenses (often for civil entertainments and such)
and the city’s exchequer had by now become hopelessly blurred. This makes it
difficult to assess the rights and wrongs of the preceding restriction on Dowry
Fund payouts. As it was, Lorenzo’s embezzlement may well have played a
significant role in saving the city, and more. During the ensuing years there
was a boom in trade from which Florence was well placed, financially, to
benefit.
However,
there would seem to be no mitigating circumstances with regard to Lorenzo’s
later dealings with the Dowry Fund. Faced with Innocent VIII’s request for
10,000 florins before Giovanni could be confirmed as a cardinal, Lorenzo once
again turned to Miniati, and this time the Dowry Fund was ransacked to the tune
of 10,000 florins purely for Lorenzo’s use, leaving it seriously depleted. To
cover this, it was announced that the interest accruing to deposits would be
reduced from 7 to 3 per cent. Not unnaturally, this move too proved highly
unpopular.
Savonarola
tapped into this unpopularity when he preached during the period, and was well
aware of what he was doing. Indeed, some later commentators go so far as to
claim that he specifically mentioned this appropriation from the Dowry Fund
during his Lenten sermons in 1492, ‘accusing Lorenzo of stealing the dowries of
poor girls to line his own pocket’.10 Savonarola kept
himself well informed about what was taking place in Florence, and would
certainly have heard the rumours about Lorenzo dipping into the Dowry Fund that
began circulating at this time. Whether he took the inflammatory step of
actually mentioning this is less clear. However, we do know from the Latin
notes that Savonarola made for his 1492 Lenten sermons that he certainly
denounced Lorenzo in more general terms: ‘These great men, as if unaware that
they are just men like anyone else, want to be praised and blessed by everyone.
But he who preaches the truth must attack these vices …’11 Did
he elaborate on this theme when he actually spoke? Either way, Savonarola’s
congregation would have known in their own minds, from their own experience, a
good part of what these ‘vices’ involved.
At
long last, in March 1492, the news came through from Rome, confirming the
sixteen-year-old Giovanni’s appointment as a cardinal. This event was marked by
a solemn ceremony on 10 March in the Badia (the eleventh-century abbey) at
Fiesole, outside Florence, during which Giovanni received his cardinal’s red
hat. The following day Cardinal Giovanni, accompanied by his older brother
Piero, entered Florence in a grand procession. A contemporary chronicler
described the scene:
the whole city, nay, the whole territory, was
gathered together, as one man, from which it may be judged how earnestly this
dignity had been desired for one of the citizens of Florence.12
Following
the celebration of high Mass in the cathedral, Cardinal Giovanni proceeded with
all due ceremony through the streets to visit the Signoria, where he received
gifts of more than ceremonial value, which the contemporary diarist Luca
Landucci detailed as:
30 loads of gifts carried by porters. These included
silver plate, bowls, jugs, and dishes, and all kinds of silver utensils which
can possibly be of use to a great lord. So everyone said, all this must have
cost over 20 thousand florins, though this hardly seems possible to me. But
this is what people were saying, so I wrote it down. There is no doubt that it
was an expensive magnificent gift. Praise be to God!13
Rumour
may indeed have exaggerated the value of the gift, but its sheer size must have
been impressive, and there is no denying that this was seen by the watching
citizens of Florence as Cardinal Giovanni proceeded across the centre of the
city from the Palazzo della Signoria to the Palazzo Medici on the Via Larga.
All this would seem to indicate that although rumours of Lorenzo’s financial
chicanery fomented a certain unrest in the city, which was further augmented by
Savonarola’s sermons, the Medici still remained to a certain extent popular as
rulers. The chubby young Giovanni was undoubtedly likeable, and the citizenry
spontaneously responded to him and his great parade, as well as to the honour
that he brought to the city.
However,
by the time of Giovanni’s installation as a cardinal, Lorenzo had become too
incapacitated with gout to attend any of the ceremonies, let alone appear in
reflected glory at his son’s side as he paraded through the streets. Yet he
certainly saw Giovanni when he arrived back at the Palazzo Medici that day.
Here the new cardinal presided over a ceremonial banquet in the main hall
attended by sixty guests, consisting of foreign ambassadors and leading citizens.
Whether Lorenzo actually put in an appearance at this banquet remains
uncertain. Some suggest that at one stage he came, or was at least assisted,
into the hall, where his crippled body and gaunt features shocked the guests.
They had not realised that he was so ill, and only now understood that he was
dying. Other reports suggest that Lorenzo had himself carried on a litter onto
a balcony overlooking the hall, where – unseen – he gazed down at his son, who
in the eyes of his proud father had assumed a new maturity with his office and
seemed ‘to have changed since yesterday’.14 Despite
this, Lorenzo remained worried about his son’s character; and next day, after
Cardinal Giovanni had set off to take up his post in Rome, Lorenzo began
writing a letter of advice to his son. The composing of this long letter must
have taken considerable effort for Lorenzo, but he was determined that the
Medici legacy should prosper, so that one day the family would fulfil his
dream. Like father, like son: just as Lorenzo’s father Piero, when he was
incapacitated with gout, had worried about Lorenzo’s ‘exuberance’ when he had
sent him abroad to represent him at the courts of Italy, so in turn Lorenzo had
worried about the behaviour of his oldest son Piero, and would now worry about
his son Giovanni’s ‘extravagance’:
I recommend that on feast days you should celebrate
less than others, rather than more … In keeping with your position, be sparing
when wearing jewels and fine silks. Far better to have a few fine antiques and
learned books … Eat plain food and take regular exercise, for those who wear
the habit are prone to illness if they are not mindful of their health.15
After
this homely advice, evidently so necessary in Giovanni’s case, his father moved
on to more serious matters. It is clear that Lorenzo shared at least some of
Savonarola’s views of the Church, for he refers to Rome as a ‘sink of all
iniquities’ where Giovanni will be regarded with great envy by ‘enemies that
had striven to prevent your appointment, who will do their best to denigrate
little by little, your public reputation, attempting to drag you down into the
very ditch into which they themselves have fallen’. But unlike Savonarola,
Lorenzo believed that the city had its redeeming features, containing ‘many good
and learned men who lead exemplary lives’, and he advised his son to behave
likewise. Moving on to more practical matters, he advised Giovanni to:
be sure that your conversation with all people
avoids giving offence … As this is your first visit to Rome, I think it would
be much better for you to use your ears more than your tongue … devote yourself
entirely to the interests of the Church, and in doing so you will not find it
difficult to aid the cause of Florence and that of our house … Remain close to the
pope, but ask of him as few favours as possible.
Despite
advice on such weighty matters, the anxious Lorenzo could not refrain from
returning to his original theme, admonishing the lazy Giovanni that whatever
else he did: ‘One rule above all others I urge you to observe most
rigorously: Get up early in the morning.’[4]
There
is nothing exceptional in this advice from father to son, yet it is its very
lack of originality or insight that makes it interesting. Lorenzo’s mind may
have been dulled by pain when he was writing (or, more likely, dictating) this
letter, but the fact remains that he was one of the finest intellects of his
time, he felt that he was nearing death, and he was passing on his final advice
to the young man he believed to be his most talented son. (Of Piero and
Giovanni, Lorenzo had said: ‘one is foolish, one is clever’.16)
Lorenzo was passing on the fruits of a lifetime of statesmanship, the wisdom
gained by ‘the needle of the Italian compass’, no less. Yet his most insistent
advice to Giovanni was with regard to his behaviour, his personality. Lorenzo
had perhaps tried to follow the commonplace wisdom that he passed on; it had
probably been the guidance passed on to him by his own father. Yet for the most
part he had surpassed this advice, if not simply contravened it. His greatness
as a statesman, and his flaws, had come about through his seemingly rash
decisions, his impulsiveness, his belief in his own brilliance: the dash to
King Ferrante in Naples, the catastrophe at Ferrara, his decision to raid the
Dowry Fund in order to further the Medici cause, his insistence on giving
refuge to his friend Pico after he had fallen foul of Innocent VIII, his
gesture in allowing Pico to write in his name to Savonarola inviting him back
to Florence. Lorenzo knew that Giovanni too was possessed of such qualities –
the precocious young cardinal well understood how to conduct himself, knew how
to charm others, how to win over the crowd. He needed little advice here. What
he had to be protected from was the one flaw that might destroy these
qualities: sloth. Get up early in the morning – and the rest would follow. How
Lorenzo must have been aware of the irony of this, now that he (never the
sluggard) was confined to his bed.
Writing
this letter to Giovanni had been a heroic effort. By now Lorenzo had become so
ill that he was unable to conduct the business of running the state. The
Milanese ambassador, representative of Florence’s most powerful ally, was
forced to wait a fortnight for an audience with him. His personal physician
Piero Leoni had exhausted all the remedies he knew, and it was at this stage
that the Milanese ambassador conveyed to his master Ludovico Sforza of Milan
the gravity of Lorenzo’s condition, causing him to order the famous physician Lazaro
da Ticino to travel to Florence at once to treat his friend. Despite such
measures, the physician Leoni still insisted that there was no cause for alarm.
Lorenzo may have been ill, but his complaint was far from being fatal, so he
assured Lorenzo’s oldest son Piero, who was becoming highly agitated at his
father’s incapacity and Leoni’s unwillingness to inflict any further painful
remedies on the old man. Part of Piero’s agitation appears to have been caused
by the prospect of taking over the reins of power. Now just twenty years old,
he had developed into an arrogant young man, but growing up under the shadow of
his father’s dominant personality had left him with deep inner uncertainties as
to his own abilities.
On
21 March, some days after Lorenzo completed his letter to his son Cardinal
Giovanni, he was carried on a litter from Florence to his villa at Careggi, in
the countryside a couple of miles north of the city walls. This seemed to many
an ominous sign: it was here that both Lorenzo’s grandfather and his father had
retired to die.
On 5
April 1492 news reached the Medici villa at Careggi that two of the city’s
famous lions had mauled each other to death in their cage. This was taken as an
extremely bad omen by all who heard of it. These mascots were the living emblem
of the city’s heraldic symbol, the lion. The significance appeared obvious:
evil events lay in store for Florence. The Florentine apothecary Luca Landucci,
who kept a diary covering these years, would record the event that took place in
the city that night:
5th April.17 At about 3 at
night (11 p.m.)fn2 the lantern on top of the dome of
Florence Cathedral was struck by a thunderbolt and was split almost in two. As
a result, one of the marble niches and many other pieces of marble on the side
by the door leading to the Servi [that
is, on the north of the building], were broken off in a miraculous way. No one
had ever seen lightning have such an effect before … Many pieces of marble fell
around the building, outside the door leading to the Servi; one piece even fell on the
paving-stones of the street, split the stone, and buried itself underground.
Amidst
such a climate, even the great humanist Lorenzo the Magnificent found himself
succumbing to the old superstitions. When he heard news of the lightning bolt
striking the cathedral, he immediately demanded to know which side of the
cathedral the shattered marble had fallen. As soon as he was told that it had
fallen on the north side, he is said to have declared: ‘That is the side facing
this house. It means that I shall die.’
Another
commonly reported story connected with the lightning incident concerns
Savonarola, whose biographer Ridolfi reports: ‘That night Savonarola was not
able to sleep, and stayed up late trying without success to prepare the sermon
he was to deliver next day.’18 Savonarola had then
experienced a striking vision of how the world was to be scourged by God. Next
morning he had included this vision of God’s scourge in his sermon, and the
congregation had immediately associated it with the thunderbolt. However,
Savonarola’s original texts in his Compendio di Rivelazioni (‘Compendiom
of Revelations’) make it clear that he had this vision ‘on the night before the
last of my Advent sermons’.19 This would place
Savonarola’s vision just before Christmas 1492, around nine months later,
giving it no reinforcing coincidence with the thunderbolt.
Despite
Leoni’s protestations to the contrary, it was now evident to all in attendance
on Lorenzo the Magnificent that he was dying. The celebrated physician Lazaro
da Ticino, recently arrived from Milan, took over from the ineffective Leoni,
administering his elixirs of ground pearls and the like. At some point Lorenzo
called in Piero, and in accordance with the family tradition passed on to him
the secret of the Medici ambitions. The enormity of these ambitions must have
seemed staggering at the time: the plans laid for them to become royalty and
ascend to the papal throne. These were indeed unprecedented aspirations – yet,
astonishingly, all of them would take place within fifty years. Such momentous
events do not happen by accident: the precise details of how they would come
about must have been relayed during this deathbed exchange.
Lorenzo
was also to have another fateful encounter on his deathbed. Amazingly, this
would prove to be of even greater significance to the city of Florence in the
immediate future. This meeting would be the only known face-to-face encounter
between Lorenzo the Magnificent and Savonarola.
Precisely
how and why Lorenzo invited Savonarola to his bedside at Careggio is not known.
All we do know is that he extended this personal invitation to the man he
regarded as the only ‘honest friar’, and that Pico della Mirandola may well
have encouraged him in this. Exactly how and why Savonarola accepted this
invitation is also unclear. It seems likely that Pico della Mirandola, or maybe
Poliziano, acted as messenger. Both are known to have been at Careggio during
these last days, and either could easily have travelled across the fields to
the city walls and in to San Marco. Either one’s known admiration for
Savonarola could well have proved the deciding factor that persuaded him to
visit Lorenzo.
There
are several contemporary accounts of this personal encounter between Savonarola
and Lorenzo the Magnificent. The most vivid is that of Poliziano:
Pico arrived to see Lorenzo and sat down beside his
bed, while I sank to my knees nearby so that I could hear what Lorenzo was
saying, for his voice was by now so frail that it could hardly be heard … Pico
had only just left when Savonarola came into the bedroom. He exhorted Lorenzo
to keep the faith (to which Lorenzo replied that he held firmly to his belief),
he must live a blameless life from now on (Lorenzo replied resolutely that he
would be sure to do this), he must endure death, if this should now prove
unavoidable, with due equanimity. To which Lorenzo replied, ‘Nothing would be
more pleasant, if God has decreed that this must happen.’ Just as Savonarola
was leaving, Lorenzo called to him, ‘Father, give us your benediction before
you depart.’ After simultaneously bowing his head and composing his features in
an attitude of suitable piety, he gave the responses to the preacher’s words
and prayers, replying each time correctly and from memory, not at all disturbed
by all the weeping and wailing of his family and close friends which could no
longer be contained.20
Poliziano’s
description was written down just over a month later, on 18 May, in a long
letter to his friend Jacopo Antiquari in Milan. There is no doubt that
Poliziano was deeply distressed during his attendance at Lorenzo’s bedside on
these last days. He speaks of ‘turning away from [Lorenzo] and trying to hide
my emotions’, and how on occasion he would ‘rush to the nearby inner chamber
where I could give vent to my grief without restraint’. Poliziano’s emotional
state may account for his version of Savonarola’s three demands differing in
detail from the version described in the Prologue at the opening of this book,
which came down to us from Savonarola’s followers (who probably heard the story
from Savonarola himself). As we have seen, according to this version Savonarola
asked Lorenzo whether he repented of his sins and believed in the one true God
– to which Lorenzo replied that he did. Next, he demanded that if Lorenzo’s
soul was to be saved, he would have to renounce his ill-gotten wealth ‘and
restore what has wrongfully been taken’.21 To this,
Lorenzo replied, ‘Father, I will do so, or I will cause my heirs to do it if I
cannot.’ Finally, Savonarola demanded that he should restore to the people of
Florence their liberty, which Savonarola believed could only be guaranteed by a
truly republican government. To this last demand Lorenzo refused to reply,
finally turning his face away. This version of events would seem to be more
appropriate to the characters of the two protagonists.
Yet
this was not all. Later evidence suggests that there may have been an even more
sensational element to the exchange between the two men. This is mentioned in
no sources, and would appear on the surface to be utterly unlikely, were it not
for the fact that what was agreed on this occasion would play an unmistakable
role in ensuing events, its details gradually emerging as these events
unfolded. Astonishingly, it would seem that Lorenzo asked Savonarola to back
the succession of his son Piero, and to support his rule over Florence. And
even more astonishingly, this was precisely what Savonarola must have agreed to
do. Lorenzo’s reasons for this request are evident; Savonarola’s motives were
at the time less clear. Yet why did no source mention this pact? Those of
Lorenzo’s circle who were at his bedside, including Poliziano, may well have
connived to keep this agreement secret – understanding that if it came out,
Savonarola would certainly repudiate it, leading him to a more vigorous
opposition to Medici rule. Yet why should Savonarola agree to support the
continuance of Medici rule, when his preachings had been so opposed to it?
Ironically, his motive was his wish to increase his power, and that of his
monastery, within the city. As prior of San Marco, Savonarola was beginning to
understand that not everything could be accomplished by straightforward
preaching, even when this was reinforced with prophetic visions. If he was to
achieve his aims, there would have to be a political element to his strategy:
the achieving of power could not be done by spiritual means alone. For the time
being, power remained inextricably linked with politics, and without power he
would achieve nothing.
This
was the first clear indication of Savonarola’s conscious ruthlessness in his
pursuit of his theological ambitions. It is possible to view this as
unscrupulous, hypocritical or simply pragmatic. Previously Savonarola’s will to
impose himself, and his theological vision, on the people of Florence had not
strayed from the path of determined righteousness – at least not in his own
eyes, and not in any conscious form. Even so, this ruthlessness had certainly
expressed itself in an unconscious form. Savonarola was not aware of what drove
him to his prophetic visions; he neither questioned them, nor their motive.
Here there was no unscrupulousness, no hypocrisy: he believed in what he
experienced in his mind and saw before his mind’s eye. There seems little doubt
that he did indeed ‘see’ his visions, and was utterly sure of their
‘prophecies’. Convinced that they were not his doing, he felt that they came
from outside him, and they came with such force – so where else could they have
come from, but from God?
Now,
in pursuance of God’s will, he was prepared to sacrifice even his integrity. If
he was required to seek accommodation with the Devil, this too he would do.
Like Lorenzo the Magnificent, he too had his secret long-term agenda. And for
the time being it so happened that these two agendas were the same: focusing on
the need for a Medici to succeed as ruler of Florence.
NOTES
1. ‘Who made me …’ et seq.:
Burlamacchi, Savonarola, p.24 et seq.
2. ‘A foreign monk …’: ibid.
3. ‘Is he asking …’: see
Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola, Vol. I, p.67, where he is paraphrasing
Burlamacchi, Savonarola, p.24 et seq.
4. ‘This is …’: my loose translation
of the idiomatic Italian. See Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola, Vol. I,
p.68, citing Burlamacchi op. cit., p.25, and Cinozzi op. cit., p.13
5. ‘all his enemies met …’:
Machiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine, Book VIII, Sec. 36
6. ‘I know that you have …’ et
seq: this meeting is reported in the main biographies: see, for instance,
Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola, Vol. I, p.59, and especially
Villari, La Storia … Savonarola, Vol. I, p.139, where note 3 gives
a list of the many contemporary sources, which include Burlamacchi, Cinozzi and
Benivieni op. cit.
7. ‘So great was the persecution …’:
see The Autobiography of Lorenzo de’ Medici: A commentary on my sonnets,
ed. & trans. James Wyatt Cook (Binghampton, 1995), Sonnet X, p.104. This
has the Italian and English versions on facing pages; I have not adhered to
Cook’s translation.
8. ‘To prevent the …’: see
Ross, Early Medici, p.302
9. According to some sources … : see
Parks, Medici Money, p.240. There is no doubt that Giovanni’s
education involved Lorenzo in considerable debts; however, there remains a
suspicion that the particular sum mentioned here may in fact be Giovanni’s debt
of 7,500 florins with the Medici bank, referred to in de Roover, Medici
Bank, p.370, which was outstanding two years later in 1494.
10. ‘accusing Lorenzo of …’: see Ross
Williamson, Lorenzo, p.261
11. These great men …’: see Roberto
Ridolfi, Studi Savonaroliani (Florence, 1935), p.100; a note
identifies this sermon as having been preached on the Saturday after the second
Sunday in Lent.
12. ‘the whole city …’: cited in Ross
Williamson, Lorenzo, p.209
13. ‘30 loads of gifts …’: Luca
Landucci, Diario Fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516, ed. I del Badia
(Florence, 1883), p.63
14. ‘to have changed …’: ibid, p.209
15. ‘I recommend that …’ et
seq.: letter from Lorenzo de’ Medici, March 1493, in Laurentii Medicis
Magnifici Vita (Adnotationes et Monumento), 2 vols (Pisa, 1784), Vol. II,
p.308 et seq. A more readily available complete English version can
be found in Ross, Early Medici, pp.332–5.
16. ‘one is foolish …’: cited in de
Roover, Medici Bank, p.370
17. ‘5th April …’: Landucci, Diario,
p.63
18. ‘That night Savonarola …’:
Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola, Vol. I, pp.73–4
19. ‘on the night …’ and following
footnote: see Girolamo Savonarola, Compendium Revelationum, in
Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola, Vita R.P.Fr. Hieronimi
Savonarolae Ferrarensis Ord. Predicatorum, ed. J. Quétif (Paris, 1674),
Vol. I, p.231, and Girolamo Savonarola, Compendio di rivelazioni,
ed. F. Buzzi (Casale Monferrato, 1996), p.47. For Villari’s argument, see
his La Storia … Savonarola, Vol. I, pp.154–6; for his vision date,
see ibid., p.165.
20. ‘Pico arrived to see …’ et
seq.: Poliziano, Letters, pp.236–8
21. ‘and restore what has …’ et
seq.: see note to p.8
[1] Economics as such had not yet come into being:
Savonarola’s concern was more with the social effects of commercial activity.
[2] Neither the San Gallo Augustinian monastery nor the
attached church of Santo Spirito exists any longer, for reasons that will
become clear in a later chapter
[3] fn1 Ridolfi even goes so far
as to claim: ‘With such words he prophesied that Lorenzo would soon die, and to
those closest to him he even went so far as to predict the very date.’ The
latter claim was certainly made around this time, but after the event. This was
typical of the mythologising that grew up around Savonarola’s name, even during
his lifetime. The celebrated claims regarding Italy, together with the deaths
of Lorenzo, Innocent VIII and King Ferrante, are more definitely verifiable,
and their grounds will be examined later.
[4] The hours of the Florentine day were counted from the
ringing of the Angelus bell at sunset, which at this time of year would have
been around 8 p.m. our time.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario