DEATH
IN FLORENCE: THE MEDICI, SAVONAROLA AND THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE RENAISSANCE
CITY (II)
1. ‘BLIND
WICKEDNESS’
GIROLAMO
SAVONAROLA HAILED from the northern provincial city state of Ferrara, whose
territory straddled the Po delta and its hinterland south of Venice. He was
born on 21 September 1452, making him just three years younger than Lorenzo the
Magnificent. He too had been exposed to genius at an early age, in the form of
his paternal grandfather Michele Savonarola, who had been employed at the
flamboyant court of the d’Este family, the rulers of Ferrara. Michele was one
of the leading physicians of his age, and wrote numerous works, including The
Practice of Medicine from Head to Toe, a comprehensive study that claimed
to include all medical knowledge extant at that period. He also made a study of
children and childcare that was way ahead of its time. In the light of such
knowledge, Michele Savonarola could well be regarded as a pioneer of humanistic
thought. Ironically, in real life he was very much the opposite. Spiritually he
remained strictly a man of the era in which he had grown up – namely, the late
1300s. In this respect, Michele was a dyed-in-the-wool medievalist, and
‘certain of the minor works he wrote in his old age have the quality of being
written by a learned anchorite rather than a doctor of the d’Este court, being
as they are so full of pedantry and moralising’.1 Such
was the dominant personality who, on his retirement, would devote himself to
educating the five-year-old Savonarola, instilling in his eager pupil all the
rigid principles of an age that in parts of Italy was already passing into
history. Indeed, this was very much the case in Ferrara, which was ruled by the
sophisticated Duke Borso d’Este, scion of one of Europe’s most aristocratic
families, who as patrons of the arts would during this period become second
only to the Medici.fn1
At the
age of seven Savonarola would witness a formative historical event, when the
new pope, Pius II, passed through Ferrara on his triumphal procession across
northern Italy. (It was earlier on this very journey that the pope had been
entertained in Florence by a pageant featuring the ten-year-old Lorenzo de’
Medici.) Pius II was accompanied by:
a cortège of incredible pomp, with ten cardinals, sixty
bishops and many secular princes in his train … At Ferrara the Pope made his
entrance under a canopy of gold brocade; the streets through which he passed
were carpeted with cloth and sprinkled with flowers; rich tapestries hung from
the windows, and the city echoed with music and song. On reaching the cathedral,
Guarino [a renowned humanist scholar] read him a long Latin oration, crammed
with learned allusions and praise of the Holy Father. For a whole week Pius II
was detained in Ferrara by a succession of festivities.2
During
his visit the worldly Pius II’s penchant for fine dining and entertainment by
courtesans would certainly have been indulged by his generous host. Although
this would have taken place amidst circumstances of the strictest privacy,
gossip concerning such events would have spread amongst families who retained
close court connections, such as the Savonarolas. Even after the retirement of
Michele Savonarola, his son Niccolò continued to hold an unspecified minor post
at the d’Este court.
Pius
II may have been flattered by the magnificent welcome accorded him in Ferrara,
but he had few illusions about his host, recording in his memoirs: ‘Borso was a
man of fine physique and more than average height with beautiful hair and
pleasing countenance. He was eloquent and garrulous and listened to himself
talking as if he pleased himself more than his hearers. His talk was full of
blandishments mingled with lies.’3 Borso was a
homosexual and his frivolous squandering had hardly endeared him to Michele
Savonarola, who secretly voiced the opinion that ‘the giving of robes, horses,
possessions and money to buffoons and unworthy men diminishes the love of the
people’.4 Such opinions were best kept to oneself, as
anyone who had attended Borso’s court knew only too well, for beneath the castello were:
subterranean dungeons guarded by seven
gratings from the light of day. They were full of immured victims, and the
clanking of chains and groans of human beings in pain could be heard from their
depths, mingling with the strains of music and ceaseless revelry going on
above, the ringing of silver plate, the clatter of majolica dishes, and
clinking of Venetian glass.5
Despite
the need for secrecy, Michele Savonarola’s views on such matters would
certainly have been passed on to his grandson, who was said to have been taken
to court only once, by his father, and to have sworn never to repeat the
experience.
Michele
Savonarola would die around 1468, when his grandson was sixteen.fn2 By
now young Girolamo Savonarola was exhibiting the precocious mental brilliance
that his grandfather had doubtless detected at an early age, causing him to be
singled out from his six siblings. By this time he had already learned by heart
entire books of the Bible, and had absorbed as the Holy Writ the oft-repeated
maxims of his ascetic grandfather, such as ‘That which God has ordered, the
Popes and their Vicars cannot rule otherwise.’6 Such
sentiments were not unusual at the time; there was indeed a widespread
understanding throughout the secular educated classes in Italy that the Church
was corrupt, and many discerning Italians maintained a sincere religious belief
that remained separate and personal, paying little more than lip-service (and
unavoidable financial contributions) to the hierarchy that claimed to represent
their religion on Earth.
However,
Michele Savonarola had not seen life this way, and had instilled in his
grandson a more unaccommodating attitude. As a result, young Girolamo was
filled with outrage at what he saw, and such laxity and corruption only served
to spur him to a more urgent conception of life. Either religion meant saving
one’s soul – the most overriding and vital task on Earth – or it meant nothing
at all.
But
Girolamo’s grandfather had also instructed him in philosophy – and here he
learned to embrace Aristotelianism, rather than the fashionable new Platonism
so favoured by the humanists. Savonarola took to heart the ideas of Aristotle
as interpreted by St Thomas Aquinas, which over the years had become the
orthodoxy of medieval scholasticism. This applied some Ancient Greek philosophy
and Aristotelian logic to the Bible in order to explain the doctrine and
mysteries of the Christian religion. It was an attempt to give religious belief
and theology a more philosophical foundation, though over the years this had ossified
into something of a rigid orthodoxy. Religious and philosophical argument had
to proceed by appealing to the authority of the Bible or Aristotle. The
recently rediscovered works of Plato, which had come to western Europe after
the fall of Constantinople, as well as the classical works of Ancient Greece
and Rome now so favoured by the humanists, were dismissed as pagan heresies.
All
this the young Savonarola had taken to heart, and he spent many hours in
precocious reading on such matters. During his adolescent years, it was said of
him that ‘he was in the habit of speaking little with others, and was always
withdrawn and solitary’.7Despite this, it seems that at some
stage following his grandfather’s death Savonarola did in fact embark upon a
course of liberal studies under Battista Guarino at the University of Ferrara.
Savonarola’s father Niccolò persuaded him to embark upon this course so that he
could obtain a Master of Arts degree, as a prerequisite for studying medicine.
Niccolò placed great hopes in his son’s future, which he believed would bring
the boy fame and fortune like that of his grandfather Michele. But Niccolò also
had other motives for persuading his son to try and emulate his famous
grandfather. Niccolò had come into a generous inheritance from his father, and
in order to supplement his income as a minor functionary at the d’Este court he
had used his inheritance to finance a sideline as a banker. Possibly in the
attempt to raise his status at court, he had stood surety for loans to various
courtiers who had then defaulted. Niccolò Savonarola was desperate for money,
and the pressure he exerted on Girolamo to enter the university must have been
considerable:when he became a successful doctor he would be expected to provide
for the entire family, as well as help his father maintain appearances at
court.
Girolamo’s
studies under Guarino gave him a wide knowledge of humanism and the classical
philosophers from whom it derived its ideas. As a result, when Savonarola later
attacked humanism so vehemently, his adversaries would often be surprised at
how well informed he was about their ideas and the attitude that they
encouraged. Indeed, at some stage Savonarola himself even succumbed to the
excitement of this new outlook on life, going so far as to learn how to play
the lute and write poetry. Yet even here, amidst the melancholy so natural to
any young poet, he often focused on the deeper concerns imbued in him by his
grandfather:
In the sadness of my heart I spoke8
With the ancient Mother who never changes,fn3
And weeping, her eyes modestly lowered,
She led me to her beggar’s cave.
With
his verse exhibiting such Freudian undertones, it comes as no surprise that
around this time the young poet fell in love. The object of his intense
affections was a girl called Laodamia, an illegitimate daughter of the
distinguished Strozzi family, then in exile from Florence, whose house was next
door to the Savonarola family home. A narrow alleyway separated the two houses,
making it possible to converse between them from the opened windows of the
overhanging upper storeys, and it seems that Savonarola and Laodamia got to
know each other in this way. Soon he was serenading his inamorata with his
lute. However, Savonarola evidently misjudged the situation, for when he asked
Laodamia to marry him she scornfully turned down his proposal, telling him that
no Strozzi would ever stoop to marry a mere Savonarola. Stung by this
rejection, Savonarola at once retorted that no legitimate male Savonarola would
ever condescend to marry a Strozzi bastard.
This
story only came to light some three centuries later, amongst the papers of Fra
Benedetto of Florence, Savonarola’s colleague and early biographer.9 Even
so, the story was dismissed as a legend. However, subsequent research has
revealed that the Savonarola house in Ferrara did indeed stand next door to the
Strozzi mansion; and that according to the records, Roberto Strozzi had an
illegitimate daughter called Laodamia, who lived in Ferrara at the time. Fra
Benedetto received most of his information at first hand from Savonarola
himself, indicating that this incident must have lodged in Savonarola’s mind
long after he foreswore the ways of the world. Such a sexual rejection,
especially with its social overtones, may well have been formative. Some years
after this incident, Savonarola would write that even before he took holy
orders he had ‘not had desire for a woman’. Given his passion for
truth-telling, Savonarola must consciously have believed this at the time.10 Yet
according to Fra Benedetto’s account, in his later years Savonarola would
recall the story of his rejection by Laodamia. The sexual and social
implications of this incident may have become all the stronger as a result of
this memory being repressed during the intervening years. His detestation of
‘lustfulness [and the] lusts of the flesh’11 and his
hatred of class privilege would become integral to his religious drive.
Such
inclinations were now to be reinforced in the raw. In 1471 Duke Borso d’Este
fell mortally ill, either as a result of his dissipation or by poisoning. As he
lay at death’s door in his residence at Belfiore, forty miles north of Ferrara,
civil war broke out in the city between his younger brother Ercole and his
nephew Niccolò, who – in the absence of any declared succession – both claimed
to be his rightful heir. Niccolò took over the castello, appealing
to Milan and Mantua to back his claim; meanwhile Ercole called on nearby Venice
for support. Opposing groups of supporters took to the streets, and the result
was what Savonarola would later refer to as ‘the bloody Saturnalia of Ferrara’.12 Desperately
barricaded into their house on one of the main streets leading to the castello,
the Savonarola family could only watch terrified as:
the partisans, intoxicated by the fumes of
blood, fought a veritable war of extermination. The wives and daughters of the
leaders of the opposing factions were dragged from their homes to be publicly
dishonoured by the lowest plebs. People were pitched from the roofs of their
houses where they had fled for refuge to be hacked to pieces in the streets
below. Dwellings were set on fire and the inhabitants, prevented from coming
out by their beleaguerers, perished in the smoke and flames.13
The
mob supporting Ercole eventually prevailed; yet according to one source, the
aftermath was almost as bad: ‘Caleffini reports that the bodies of two hundred
of the leading citizens, after being stripped and mutilated, were nailed to the
eaves of the ducal palace.’14 The young and impressionable
Savonarola could hardly have avoided this grotesque sight, which was less than
half a mile down the road from his house and the nearby university.
Soon
after this, Savonarola obtained his Master of Arts degree and began to study
medicine. The intimate involvement with the flesh required of such studies must
soon have begun to repel him, awakening in him an intense spiritual yearning.
He was disgusted by all he saw around him, and abhorred the sordid world in
which he found himself. As he would write in a poem entitled ‘On the Ruin of
the World’:
Now those who live from theft are all
content,15
And those who feed the most on others’
blood …
He
goes on to rail against those who mock Our Lord in Heaven, and how Rome is so
filled with vice that it can never return to the days of its great past, and
how ‘usury is now called philosophy’.
Amidst
all his castigating it is possible to detect a growing sense of the injustice
of it all. The rich clambered over the poor in an attempt to gain more riches;
instead of compassion and theology, men concentrated their minds on making
money. Instead of discovering God, they discovered how to make a fortune by
means of usury. It is difficult to avoid seeing his father’s role in all this:
prompted by avarice, Niccolò had lost the family fortune by resorting to usury.
And because of this, Savonarola had been forced to go against all his
inclinations and study medicine – until early in 1474 things finally came to a
crisis. To celebrate the May holiday, Savonarola walked the forty miles to
Faenza. Away from his Bible and his medical books, crossing the humid terrain
of the Po delta, pacing along the road between the flat green fields, he was
alone with his nagging thoughts. Having reached Faenza, he explored the streets
amidst the throng of the May Day crowds. But the sight of such blatant godless
enjoyment amidst the market stalls, street hawkers and puppet booths drove him
to seek sanctuary in the Church of Santo Agostino, where a friar was delivering
the day’s sermon, his distant voice echoing through the dim stillness. His text
was taken from Genesis, where God speaks to Abraham, telling him: ‘Get thee out
of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house …’16 As
Savonarola would later recount in his own sermons, he at once recognised that
this was the voice of God speaking directly to him. From that day on he knew
that he would have to leave his home, abandon his family and forsake everything
to follow God. He returned to Ferrara firm in the conviction that he would
renounce the world and become a priest.
Yet it
would be almost a year before Savonarola could bring himself to act upon this
resolution. He had no wish to provoke a hysterical scene, in which he would
have been confronted by the tears and entreaties of the various members of his
family, for ‘truly this would have broken my heart, and I should have renounced
my purpose’.17Instead, he waited until 24 April the following
year, choosing to slip away from his home whilst the family were in the midst
of the St George’s Day celebrations. Hastily he set off to walk the thirty
miles to Bologna, where he made his way to the Dominican monastery, rapped on
the door and asked to be taken in as a novitiate monk. The following day the
twenty-three-year-old wrote a long letter addressed ‘To the noble and
illustrious man Niccolò Savonarola, a most excellent parent’. In this he
attempted to comfort his family, who were ‘doubtless suffering greatly because
of my departure, and especially because I departed secretly from you’. He went
on:
I thus beg you, my dear father, to put an
end to your weeping and spare me any further sadness and pain than I suffer
already. However, you must understand that I do not suffer because of regret at
what I have done, for I would not undo this even if such a choice would make me
greater than Caesar himself, but instead my suffering is because I too am flesh
and blood, just like you, and our senses quarrel with our reason. I must
constantly battle to prevent the Devil from leaping onto my shoulders, and all
the more so when I feel for you.
And
why had he chosen such a life? After cataloguing ‘the great wretchedness of the
world, the evil of men, rapes, adulteries’ and so on, he sums up his reason for
taking holy orders: ‘I did this because of the blind wickedness of the people
of Italy.’
Either
Savonarola had fled from this ‘blind wickedness’, or his intention was to do
something about it. Despite fleeing from his family, the former course of
action ran contrary to his nature. Thus from the very outset it would seem that
his aim was more than merely the saving of his own soul. Indeed, in a second
letter, addressed to his family (the first had been very badly received by his
father), he ends by haughtily informing them that they should ‘rejoice that God
made me a doctor of souls, rather than a doctor of bodies’.18 He
would cure the spiritual ills of the world rather than its physical ailments.
Other
evidence tends to contradict this somewhat exalted view of himself. When he
first entered the monastery he is said to have done so not with the intention
of becoming a priest, but instead to serve out a penance for his sins. He
wished to be assigned only the humblest tasks: to become the monastery drudge,
sewing the brothers’ clothes, digging the garden, working in humility and
peace. As he put it, he had no intention of ‘exchanging the Aristotelianism of
the world for that of the monastery’. Yet it is not necessary to choose between
such contradictory evidence. Far from it. Such contradictions hint at the deep
conflicts that remained unresolved in his complex and driven character. Only
intense pride craves such extreme humiliation; only an intellectual dreams of
losing himself in mindless drudgery. Such a drudge would have been regarded as
an almost subhuman serf; worse still, sewing was considered women’s work. A
monk, for all his chastity, remained nonetheless a man in the Italy of this
period, and was proud to be regarded as such. In his letter to his father,
Savonarola specifically contrasted ‘a strong man who spurns transitory things
to follow truth’19 with the ‘passion of a simple woman’.
In view of his constant strictures against women, it is worth bearing in mind
that Savonarola’s view of the female sex was for the most part informed by the
passionate and angry misogyny of the Old Testament prophets, as well as the
prejudices of his time and his country – along with his experiences of Laodamia
and of his mother Elena, of whom little is known during this period beyond one
salient, undermining fact. On the night before he fled the family home, his
mother heard him strumming on his lute, whose melancholy tones caused her to
pause from what she was doing. In a flash of intuition she realised what was
going to happen and said to him: ‘My son, what you are playing today is a sign
that you are parting from us.’20 It had been a ‘simple
woman’ who had seen through him.
In
fact, we know little of Savonarola’s early life in the monastery; as his
biographer Roberto Ridolfi put it, ‘the silence which enveloped him through
these seven long years seems symbolic of the silence in which as a young man he
entered the cloister, intent upon building, in humility and contemplation, his
new life’.21 The Dominican order had been founded in
1216 by St Dominic, a scholarly Spanish monk who gave up his possessions to aid
the poor. He established the Dominicans as a preaching order of mendicant
friars, who took a vow of poverty and depended upon charity for their
livelihood. Much like its founder, the order tended to attract men of high
intellectual calibre who sought to preach and alleviate the sufferings of the
poor. It also produced many lecturers in the universities, and was later put in
charge of the Inquisition (which accounts for why the inquisitors were known as
‘Hounds of God’: in Latin domini canes). However, more generally
they were known as the ‘Black Friars’, on account of the distinctive hooded
black cloaks, which they wore over their white woollen habits.
Savonarola
would later look back on his novitiate year in the Dominican monastery at
Bologna as the happiest in his life, ‘where I found liberty, and did all that I
wanted, because I wanted nothing else, desired nothing else, than to do all
that I was told or commanded to do’.22 He welcomed the
self-denial that was required of the monks, and rejoiced in the further
abstinence he was able to impose upon himself. From the outset, Savonarola was
excused the usual lessons in Latin because he had already learned this at
university. Instead, he spent much of his time studying the great medieval
philosopher St Thomas Aquinas, whose interpretations of Aristotelian thought
had by now become his favourite reading. Savonarola probably took his vows in
May 1476, and thereupon immersed himself in the monastic life. His zeal for abstinence
and self-denial soon became apparent to all. So too did his enthusiasm for the
customary course of theological studies at the celebrated Dominican Studium
generale in Bologna. This was one of the most distinguished
theological colleges in Italy, with many eminent scholars amongst its teaching
staff. Savonarola soon began to shine amongst his fellow pupils. Indeed, such
was his exemplary aptitude for both the ascetic and the theological aspects of
monastic life that within a few years he was considered ready for a teaching
post. In 1479, just four years after leaving home, the twenty-seven-year-old
Savonarola returned to Ferrara, where he took up a post as teaching master for
the novices at the local Dominican monastery. By now his father had been forced
to sell their home to the next-door Strozzi, and the young priest is said to
have seen little of his family during this time.
Meanwhile,
Italy had entered yet another volatile political period. Three years
previously, in 1476, Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan had been assassinated
in church. In the same year, Niccolò d’Este led an armed invasion of Ferrara in
another attempt to wrest the dukedom from his uncle, but this was defeated and
Niccolò was beheaded (before his head was sewn on again and he was buried in
the family vault). Just two years later, news of the Pazzi family’s attempted
assassination of Lorenzo de’ Medici, backed by Sixtus IV and King Ferrante of
Naples, rocked Italy. The fact that his would-be assassin was a priest, and the
murder was backed by the pope himself, merely gave public confirmation to what
so many had privately known: the Church hierarchy, especially in its upper
echelons, had become all but irredeemably corrupt. In his poem ‘On the Ruin of
the World’ Savonarola had written despairingly:
The sceptre has fallen into the hands of a
pirate;23
Saint Peter is overthrown;
Here lust and greed are everywhere …fn4
Even
so, Savonarola remained unwavering in his faith – as, for the most part, did
the pope’s flock throughout Christendom. The new Duke Ercole of Ferrara was
particularly renowned for his church-going, unfailingly attending Mass and
Vespers every day. He also lavished considerable sums on the building of
churches and religious institutions in Ferrara, making the Renaissance a golden
age for the city. The great historian Jacob Burckhardt was in no doubt as to
Ferrara’s eminence:
If the
rapid increase of the population be a measure of prosperity actually attained,
it is certainly a fact of importance that in the year 1497, notwithstanding the
wonderful extension of the capital, no houses were to be let. Ferrara is the
first really modern city in Europe; large and well-built quarters sprang up at
the bidding of the ruler: here, by the concentration of the official classes and
the active promotion of trade, was formed for the first time a true capital.24
The
population of Ferrara rose to around 25,000 during this period; by comparison
the population of London was around 50,000, and that of Florence probably
around 90,000. Even so, the architecture of Ferrara certainly rivalled that of
its Tuscan counterpart – when Savonarola first arrived in Florence he would be
no overawed provincial, despite being regarded as such by many Florentines.fn5
But in
1482 Ferrara was once again directly disturbed by the volatility of the Italian
political scene. In the aftermath of the failed Pazzi conspiracy, and Lorenzo’s
courageous dash to Naples, which had secured a peace treaty with King Ferrante,
Sixtus IV had been forced to join this treaty. This new alliance, and
Christianity as a whole, now faced peril. The threat came from the distant
East. Since taking Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror had
gradually expanded the Ottoman Empire across Greece and the Balkans, eventually
reaching the Adriatic shore opposite Italy. In August 1480, Ottoman forces had
landed in the heel of Italy, taking the port of Otranto. 12,000 of the
inhabitants were slaughtered, a similar number shipped into slavery; 800
remaining inhabitants were then beheaded for refusing to convert to Islam,
their skulls piled into a pyramid. Christendom itself had stood in danger, and
Sixtus IV had rallied Italy for the defence of the faith. Then in May 1481
Mehmet the Conqueror had died, most of the Ottoman forces had been withdrawn
and Otranto was retaken.
With
the passing of the Ottoman threat, Sixtus IV thought better of launching
another attack on Florence, which would only have brought Ferrante I of Naples
into the field against him. Instead, he decided to move against Ferrara, which
had long been claimed as a papal possession. Venice had supported Ercole d’Este
in his claim to the dukedom, and Ferrara continued to rely for its protection
on its powerful northern neighbour. But Sixtus IV now secretly induced Venice to
switch to an alliegance with the papacy, promising the Venetians the valuable
Ferrarese salt-pans of the Po delta if they aided his ‘nephew’ Girolamo Riario
in taking Ferrara. Sixtus IV intended that Ferrara should be added to the papal
territory already ruled by Riario. Consequently, in the spring of 1482 Ferrara
found itself under threat, with Venetian forces poised to cross the Po and
mount an invasion.
At the
time, Savonarola was not in fact present in Ferrara. He had been selected as
representative for Ferrara at the Chapter General of the Dominicans of Lombardy
– an indication of his growing regard within the order. The Chapter General was
the annual congress that debated the theological policy of the order, and was
being held at Reggio, sixty miles west of Ferrara, attracting clerical and lay
delegates from far and wide, as well as a number of leading philosophical and
literary figures. Here Savonarola listened to the debates conducted by
distinguished Dominican theologians. As part of these debates, Savonarola
himself delivered a passionate attack on the corruption of the Church, which
was heard by the precocious nineteen-year-old philosopher Pico della Mirandola,
who was so impressed by Savonarola’s evident intellectual powers and deep
theological learning that he sought him out afterwards. The two established a
rapport that was as immediate as it was unlikely.
Count
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, to give him his full title, was a prodigy of
impeccable aristocratic descent, with links to the d’Este family, the Sforzas
of Milan and the distinguished House of Gonzaga, which ruled nearby Mantua.
Pico had spent his early years in the tiny independent city state of Mirandola,
which was ruled by his family and was under the protection of Ferrara, whose capital
city lay just thirty miles to the east. Pico’s appearance was very much the
polar opposite of the raw-featured Savonarola in his plain monk’s robes.
Indeed, Pico was something of a peacock, who dressed in fashionable
Renaissance-style attire, his long auburn locks flowing over his shoulders, his
delicate face exhibiting an almost feminine sensitivity and beauty. His
astonishing learning had by now begun to attract widespread attention: he had
already mastered Latin and Ancient Greek, and had launched into studies of
Hebrew and Arabic. Later he would be one of the few men in Europe who could
understand Aramaic and Babylonian texts in Chaldean script. Yet Pico’s
intellectual achievements were more than just an exhibition of dazzling
brilliance. His studies were driven by a deep theological-philosophical impulse
– a pressing need to understand the religions from which Christianity had
sprung, combined with a dedicated quest for the common philosophical ideas that
enlightened these religions. Indeed, what drew Savonarola and Pico della
Mirandola together more than anything was probably their shared deep
understanding of the ancient Judaic texts that formed the Old Testament, and
thus informed the Christianity of the New Testament. Savonarola may even have seen
Pico some three years previously, when the then sixteen-year-old philosopher
had taken part in a public theological debate in Ferrara, which had attracted
much attention at the time. Pico had also attended lectures given at the
University of Ferrara by Battista Guarino, where he too had found Guarino’s
humanist ideas unsatisfactory. However, Pico’s reservations had not been
through any dislike for humanism – far from it – but more on account of the
narrowness of the classical ideas upon which Guarino’s humanism was based. For
Pico, these took no account of the earlier and wider sources that had initially
informed classical learning.
Although
Pico and Savonarola cannot have realised it at the time, their meeting in 1482
at the Chapter General of the Dominicans of Lombardy in Reggio was to have
far-reaching effects for both of them. Despite the fact that this encounter
between the nineteen-year-old aristocrat-scholar and the twenty-nine-year-old
friar can only have been fleeting, there is no denying that it produced a
meeting of minds. Their interpretation of the Christian faith, to say nothing
of their individual philosophical outlooks, may have been widely disparate, but
they certainly respected one another. Perhaps for the first time, each found
himself encountering a man of his own generation who was his intellectual
equal.
There
was, however, to be a more immediate consequence of Savonarola’s attendance at
the Chapter General in Reggio. And this too would prove momentous. As many had
feared, in May Venetian troops eventually invaded Ferrarese territory, and it
appeared too dangerous for Savonarola to make his way back to the Dominican
monastery in his home town. In consequence, he was posted as a lecturer on
biblical exegesis at the monastery of San Marco in Florence. In May 1482
Savonarola set out to walk the ninety miles south across the pass over the
Apennine mountains to the city ruled by Lorenzo the Magnificent. Clad in his
hooded black cloak, his bare feet shod in sandals, he carried with him his sole
worldly possessions: a well-worn breviary, its margins filled with his many
annotations beside the hymns and prayers for the daily services, and the Bible
that he had inherited from his grandfather Michele.
fn1 The
d’Este were a widespread aristocratic family, branches of which had already
provided a thirteenth-century German king, as well as rulers of Bavaria and
Carinthia. Later they would produce the Elector of Hanover, who in the
eighteenth century became King George I of Great Britain.
fn2 Some
sources claim this event took place in 1466, others that it was even earlier.
At any event, its effect on his youthful grandson was profound.
fn3 That
is, the eternal Mother Church, as distinct from the corrupted contemporary
Church.
fn4 The
sceptre of course represented the papacy, which traced its lineage back to St
Peter; Sixtus IV was widely said to have made his fortune as a pirate in his
younger days, using this to enable his rapid advance in the Church hierarchy.
fn5 In
1570 Ferrrara would be struck by a devastating earthquake, which demolished
many of its fine buildings, a disaster from which it would not recover. Never
again would it bear comparison with Florence. When Charles Dickens visited
Ferrara in 1846 he wrote of its ‘long silent streets and the dismantled
palaces, where ivy waves in lieu of banners, where rank weeds are creeping up
the long-untrodden stairs’.25
NOTES
1. ‘certain
of the minor …’: see Roberto Ridolfi, Vita di Girolamo Savonarola, 2
vols. (Florence, 1974), Vol. I, p.14.
2. ‘a cortège of…’:
Villari, La Storia … Savonarola Vol. I, p.9–10, drawing on
descriptions by contemporary chroniclers. Although the citation is from the
original Italian version, I have here, and in some following instances, made
use of the English translation undertaken with the author’s supervision by his
daughter Linda Villari. See Pasquale Villari, trans. Linda Villari (London,
1888), 2 vols.
3. ‘Borso
was a …’: Pius II, Memoirs of a Renaissance Pope, trans.
F. Gragg (New York, 1959), p.114
4. ‘the
giving of robes …’: Michele Savonarola, De Nuptiis Battibecco
et Serrabocca, cited in Edmund Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara (London,
1904), p.81
5. ‘subterranean
dungeons …’: Villari, La Storia … Savonarola, Vol. I, p.14
6. ‘That
which God …’: cited in Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola, Vol. I,
pp.5–6
7. ‘he
was in the habit …’: see Pacifico Burlamacchi, La Vita del
Beato Geronimo Savonarola (Florence, 1937 edn), p.7. This comes from
the anonymous sixteenth-century biography said to have been written by Fra
Pacifico Burlamacchi (often called ‘Pseudo-Burlamacchi’, as many claim this was
not his true identity). The author, whoever he was, knew Savonarola and his
intimate circle, and probably either witnessed or heard much of his information
at first hand. However, this short biography is not entirely reliable as it
also includes several evident exaggerations and myths concerning its subject.
Burlamacchi is one of the contemporary sources referred to in note to p.8.
8. ‘In
the sadness …’: the original version of this poem is cited in
Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola, Vol. I, p.10
9. Fra
Benedetto of Florence: see Vulnera diligentis in
Alessandro Gherardi, Nuovi documenti e studi intorno a Girolamo
Savonarola (Florence, 1887), pp.7–8
10. ‘not
had desire for …’: Savonarola, Prediche sopra Aggeo, ed.
L. Firpo (Rome, 1965), p.325
11. ‘lustfulness
[and the] …’: Savonarola’s works abound in such sentiments: this
particular instance is cited in Stanley Meltzoff, Botticelli,
Signorelli and Savonarola(Florence, 1987), p.51
12. ‘the
bloody …’: Savonarola cited in Pierre Van Passen, A Crown of
Fire: The Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola (New York, 1960), p.29
13. ‘the
partisans …’: ibid., drawing on descriptions by contemporary
chroniclers
14. ‘Caleffini
reports …’: ibid.
15. ‘Now
those who live …’: et seq.: Girolamo Savonarola, A
Guide to Righteous Living and Other Works, trans. Konrad Eisenbichler
(Toronto, 2003), pp.62, 3
16. ‘Get
thee out of …’: Genesis, Ch.12, v.1 (King James version). Savonarola
refers to this in a number of his sermons; see for instance Predica XIX
sopra Aggeo, delivered on 19 December 1494. For the most part I have used
the King James version of the Bible when translating Savonarola’s references.
This is of course anachronistic, as the King James translation would not be published
in England until more than a century later; however, this version would seem
best suited to convey the language and tone of Savonarola’s words.
17. ‘truly
this would have …’: et seq.: Savonarola’s letter to his
father Niccolò, 25 April 1475. See Savonarola, Le Lettere, ed.
Roberto Ridolfi (Florence, 1933), pp.1–3. There is an English version in
Savonarola, A Guide to Righteous Living …, pp.35–7. Only the
latter includes the address to his father.
18. ‘rejoice
that God …’: Savonarola, Lettere, p.4
19. ‘a
strong man …’: letter of 25 April 1475, ibid., p.1
20. ‘My
son …’: see Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola, Vol. I, p.12,
citing as his original source Fra Benedetto, Vulnera Diligentis,
ms. nella Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze, Magl. XXXIV. 7 (che si completa col
Riccardiano 2985), c. 13 t
21. ‘the
silence which enveloped …’: ibid., p.15
22. ‘where
I found liberty …’: ibid., p.16, citing several sources, including
Burlamacchi and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Vita
23. ‘The
sceptre has …’: Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola, Vol. I, p.9
24. ‘If
the rapid …’: Burckhardt, Renaissance in Italy, p.48
25. ‘long
silent streets …’: Charles Dickens, American Notes and
Pictures from Italy(London, 1908), p.321
1. LORENZO’S
FLORENCE
SAVONAROLA
WOULD HAVE entered Florence in 1482 by the Porta San Gallo, the northernmost
gate in the city walls, and less than half a mile down the main Via Larga he
would have come to the monastery of San Marco[1]. After
pulling the bell beside the gate in the wall, he would have been admitted to the
enclosed precincts.
The
monastery of San Marco, which stood just two blocks north of the Palazzo
Medici, had been founded in the thirteenth century. However, it had been
completely renovated and considerably expanded by Lorenzo the Magnificent’s
grandfather Cosimo de’ Medici just thirty years previously. Cosimo had used his
favourite architect Michelozzo Michelozzi, and incorporated the work of the
resident monk Fra Angelico, one of the great early Renaissance artists.
Michelozzi would be responsible for some of the finest early Renaissance
architecture in Florence, including the renovation of the Palazzo della
Signoria and the design of the Medici villa at Careggi. For his part, Fra
Angelico’s ethereal paintings would heavily influence Michelangelo, whose
depiction of God’s finger passing on life to Adam in the Sistine Chapel was
directly inspired by the artist-monk. The work of Fra Angelico and Michelozzi
came together at San Marco in the delightful shaded San Antonio cloister, whose
delicate pillars and colourful frescoes enclosed a tranquil green garden in the
midst of the monastery.
Cosimo
de’ Medici had undertaken the renovation of San Marco late in his life,
intending it as absolution for the sin of usury, which had enabled him to
accumulate his fortune as a banker. Yet there had also been a less manifest
reason for Cosimo’s benevolence, one that explained why in particular he chose
to lavish his wealth on San Marco, rather than other similarly prestigious
monasteries in the city. Before the 1433 coup which had removed Cosimo from
power in Florence, almost costing him his life, he had managed in the nick of
time to transfer secretly to San Marco a large quantity of the funds held in
the Medici bank in Florence. After Cosimo’s banishment into exile, his enemies
had raided all Medici premises, as well as those of known supporters, but had
been unable to discover the whereabouts of these funds, which had been held on
trust, without a word, by the monks at San Marco.
In
consequence, Cosimo had spared no expense on the rebuilding of San Marco, which
eventually cost 30,000 florins – an unprecedented sum at the time. The
monastery had been furnished with a library, together with many hundreds of
religious manuscripts, intended for public use – the first lending library in
Europe. Instead of the usual communal dormitory, each monk was assigned his own
cell, many of which contained frescoes painted by Fra Angelico and his
assistants. These were mainly portrayals of angels and biblical scenes. A
special double cell, sumptuously frescoed, had been created for Cosimo’s
personal use, to which he would often retire for periods of contemplation.
However, he had taken a more active role in the creation of the gardens across
the street from San Marco: as a man who delighted in retiring to the
countryside, he had done his best to create a pastoral space here within the
walls of the city. These gardens would in turn become a favourite spot of
Lorenzo the Magnificent, who began decorating the shady spaces with pieces of
ancient classical sculpture. It was here, as he walked along the paths between
the beds of greenery and marble relics, that according to legend Savonarola
would first catch sight of Lorenzo the Magnificent from the window of his cell
across the street.
The
monastery of San Marco was hardly the kind of religious institution to which
Savonarola aspired, or indeed to which he had been accustomed. The Florentine
Dominicans no longer lived in poverty, or depended upon the charity of their
congregation. The cells of the individual monks were for the most part well
furnished, and indeed the librarian and the prior lived in some luxury, with
meals served privately in their cells, where on occasion they would entertain
leading citizens with sumptuous meals served on dishes and plates bearing the
Medici crest. All the food for the monastery was supplied by Lorenzo the
Magnificent – with olives, wine, bread, fish, fruit, oil and eggs provided in
abundance. By special dispensation from Lorenzo, all such produce for the
monastery was imported into the city free of the usual customs charges. Even
the monks’ robes and silk vestments were specially tailored by Lorenzo’s
appointed haberdashers – the very ones who also ran up the costumes for his
carnivals and popular entertainments.
Savonarola
saw these entertainments, when they were laid on for the high days and holy
days, and quickly decided that they were not to his taste. Instead, we gather
from remarks in his later sermons that he began taking long walks through the
streets of the city. In those days one could walk from the Porta San Gallo, in
the northern walls, right across the city to the southernmost Porta Romana at
the limits of the Oltrarno district in half an hour, and Savonarola had soon
explored all the various districts and neighbourhoods in between. He insisted
that he was not overawed by the large piazzas, palaces and churches that he saw
in the centre of the city – he was used to such buildings in his native
Ferrara. But Florence’s larger population, and the commercial success of its
leading families, produced greater contrasts between the palazzi of the rich
and the backstreet tenements and narrow lanes of the slums occupied by the
poor. These crowded dwellings mainly housed the families of the many dyers and
cloth workers employed as day-workers in the textile industry for which the
city was famous throughout Europe. Here, in the mean alleyways, Savonarola
encountered the destitute: the haggard beggars who tugged at his sleeves and
the blind with their pitiful cries. His regime of self-denial and abstinence
had taught him what it was like to starve, yet as he would recount in his later
sermons, he soon became heart-rendingly aware of the contrast between his
Dominican ‘poverty’ and this genuine poverty, which he came across amongst the
inhabitants of the squalid teeming slum districts. Worse still, he found that
these people actually resented his presence when he walked amongst them in his
distinctive black robes – the Dominicans were seen as ‘Lorenzo’s men’, their
friars regarded as his spies, Lorenzo’s eyes and ears amongst the public. In
Ferrara, the Dominican Black Friars had been regarded as friends of the poor.
Yet
there was an even more fundamental difference between the numerous poor of
Florence and those of Ferrara. In Ferrara the poor had grown resigned to their
lot. The d’Este ruled as tyrants, with every aspect of the administration under
their strict control. There was no veneer of democratic government. But here in
Florence things were different. The democratic process by which Lorenzo
maintained power may have become a sham, but there was no denying that
its ethos remained amongst the people. They still regarded
themselves as equal citizens; quietly, they talked politics. Unlike in Ferrara,
where dissenting voices were quickly despatched to the dungeons of the castello,
the people of Florence were not afraid of airing their views, though for the
most part only covertly and amongst themselves, especially in the case of the
poor. Indeed, there remained a widespread feeling that one day things could
change. As the little Black Friar passed alone through the back streets, he
would have been aware of the odd catcall or insult called out behind his back.
Meanwhile
Lorenzo the Magnificent had more pressing things to do than stroll amongst the
statuary in his garden under the beady eye of a Ferrarese friar. In fact, he
was attempting to deal with the very situation that had brought Savonarola to
San Marco, namely the war between Venice and Ferrara. By the midsummer of 1482
this had escalated to the point where it threatened Florence’s eastern trade
route acoss the Apennines to the Adriatic Sea. But the situation was not
entirely one-sided. Duke Ercole of Ferrara was married to Leonora d’Aragona,
the eldest daughter of King Ferrante of Naples, and when the Venetians had
invaded the duke’s territory he had immediately called upon his father-in-law
to come to his rescue. Knowing of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s constant attempts
to maintain the balance of power in Italy, Duke Ercole also appealed for aid to
Florence. Lorenzo responded positively, calling in his ally Milan, at the same
time joining forces with his friend King Ferrante of Naples.
The
troops of the allies were placed under the command of Alfonso, Duke of
Calabria, the son of King Ferrante. In a subtle move, Alfonso now requested
formal permission from Sixtus IV to march his troops north from Naples across
papal territory towards Ferrara. Sixtus IV refused permission, thus bringing
into the open his secret support for Venice. Alfonso advanced into papal
territory nonetheless, but was then defeated by the pope’s forces. In response
to this setback, King Ferrante immediately played on Sixtus IV’s unpopularity
amongst the Roman nobility by inciting the Orsini and other noble families to
rise up against him. In order to guard Sixtus IV, Girolamo Riario and the
pope’s forces had to return from the papal territories to Rome itself.
Meanwhile, Lorenzo directed his mercenary commander Duke Federigo of Urbino to
march east to prevent the Venetians from overrunning all the territory ruled by
Ferrara, whose troops were hampered by the untimely illness of Duke Ercole.
In
September 1482 news reached Florence of the unexpected death of Duke Federigo
of Urbino. Once again, it looked as if the Venetians were going to prevail.
Girolamo Riario, who remained unable to fulfil his side of the secret pact with
the Venetians by providing papal forces, sent word of this latest development
to his ‘uncle’ Sixtus IV, who immediately realised the danger. If the Venetians
took over Ferrara completely, and there was no military pact between them and
his nephew, there would be nothing to stop them expanding to take over the
papal territories ruled by Riario. In a lightning volte-face, Sixtus IV at once
ordered the Venetians to halt their invasion, declaring that it had no just
cause. The Venetians pressed forward nonetheless, and when news of this reached
Rome the pope became so enraged that he excommunicated the entire Venetian
Republic. But still the Venetians continued to advance, until finally by
November 1482 they were laying siege to the city of Ferrara itself. At this
stage Sixtus IV succumbed to a fever, his condition exacerbated by an
incapacitating attack of gout.
In
an effort to remedy the situation before it was too late, Lorenzo called a
conference of the anti-Venetian allies at Cremona. Besides Lorenzo, the
conference was attended by Alfonso of Calabria, Ludovico ‘il Moro’ Sforza of
Milan, Ercole of Ferrara and the pope’s respresentative in the form of Girolamo
Riario. It was soon agreed that Ludovico Sforza should launch his Milanese
troops in a diversionary attack on Venetian territory, while Alfonso of
Calabria led his remnant troops north in an attempt to relieve Ferrara before
it fell into Venetian hands. These moves soon persuaded the Venetians to
withdraw, and all parties now agreed that peace negotiations should be opened.
But with the prospect of negotiating territorial gains, the fragile pact
between the allies fell apart. Girolamo Riario persuaded Alfonso of Calabria to
back his claim to add Ferrarese territory to the papal territories that he now
ruled, but unbeknown to these plotters, Ludovico Sforza had entered into a
secret agreement with the Venetians. When news reached Rome that peace
negotiations were to open, Sixtus IV immediately understood that things had now
slipped beyond his control. He was liable to lose everything he had set out to
gain, while his enemies stood to gain everything at his expense. According to
the diplomatic representative for Ferrara, the pope was beside himself with
fury: ‘He uses the most terrible language in the world, and says that he has
been deceived and betrayed.’1 Such were the difficulties
faced by Lorenzo the Magnificent in his attempt to maintain the balance of
power in Italy. All he could do was prevail upon the interested parties to
conclude a reasonably balanced peace, in the hope that this would last.
Peace
terms were finally agreed on 7 August 1484. Despite Lorenzo’s best efforts,
these inevitably reflected the underhand pacts between the stronger of the
negotiating allies. Although Venice had finished the war in retreat, it
actually increased its territory at the expense of Ferrara, as did its covert
ally, Milan; meanwhile Naples regained lost territory. At the same time
Girolamo Riario gained nothing, and Duke Ercole of Ferrara had to be content
with retaining just the city of Ferrara and a reduced surrounding territory.
Sixtus IV, whose machinations had been responsible for the war, had not only
lost any immediate prospect of adding to Riario’s papal territories, but was
now distrusted by all – former allies and present allies alike. When news of
the outcome of the peace negotiations reached Rome a few days later, the pope’s
reaction was decidedly mixed. At a public audience with his cardinals he
expressed, seemingly without qualm, his regret over the turn of events. ‘With
great expense to ourselves have we carried on the war to save Ferrara, and to
please the majesty of the King [of Naples] and the other allies, so we were
ready to continue.’2 Yet when the ambassadors had
withdrawn, his anger was such that he succumbed once more to his fever. He
particularly blamed Ludovico Sforza of Milan for his ‘treachery’, since just a
few months previously Sixtus IV had made his brother a cardinal, in the
expectation of tying Milan to his cause. During the evening of 12 August Sixtus
IV suffered a severe relapse and, in the words of the papal historian F. Ludwig
von Pastor, drawing on a report by the Ferrarese ambassador: ‘That same night
Sixtus died, denouncing the conditions of the peace with his last breath,
declaring that Ludovico Sforza was a traitor.’3 As his
contemporary Machiavelli drily remarked in his history of the period: ‘Thus at
last this pope left Italy in peace, having spent his life ensuring that it was
constantly at war.’4
News
of these historic events soon reached the thirty-two-year-old Savonarola in his
monastic cell at San Marco in Florence. The death of Sixtus IV, whom he had so
long despised, inspired Savonarola to write another of his impassioned poems
about the Church, appealing to the Lord even as the cardinals gathered in Rome
to elect another pope:
Jesus, highest good and sweet comfort,5
Of all hearts that suffer,
Look upon Rome with perfect love …
Save thy Holy Roman Church
From the devil who tears it apart.
Savonarola
still entertained hopes that the Church might yet return to its original state,
‘that peace she knew when she was poor’. Such hopes appeared patently
unrealistic. Italy was now moving inexorably away from the simple poverty and
timeless way of life that had been the lot of most people during the previous
medieval era: an existence that, amongst many levels of society, retained a
recognisable rapport with the earliest days of Christianity – in Judaea, in the
Levant, and later amongst the slaves of Ancient Rome. But now, despite the wars
and political uncertainties that racked Italy as the fifteenth century drew to
a close, the transformations brought about by the Renaissance were entering a
new phase. Classical knowledge and pre-Christian ideas had by this stage begun
to stimulate an entirely new spirit of enquiry and consequent originality. New
discoveries were being made in fields ranging from architectural technique to
mathematics and pictorial perspective. Nowhere was this more apparent than in
Florence, where the man who epitomised this phase of the Renaissance more than
any other was the artist Botticelli. After being loaned by Lorenzo the
Magnificent to Sixtus IV and completing the first frescoes to adorn the pope’s
new Sistine Chapel, Botticelli had returned to Florence in 1482, the very year
in which Savonarola had taken up residence at San Marco.
Botticelli
once more renewed his contact with the intellectual circle associated with the
Palazzo Medici, where he was particularly influenced by the Platonic idealism
of the philosopher Ficino and the humanism of the poet Poliziano. As a result,
Botticelli’s work underwent a spectacular tranformation. Instead of religious
scenes, he began to depict pagan subjects from classical mythology. Typical of
these was his Pallas and the Centaur, which depicts the goddess
Pallas Athena grasping the hair of the mythical half-man half-horse, apparently
restraining the repentant centaur. The scene is illustrative of how the
Renaissance was beginning to emerge from its slavish mimicking of classical
learning into an originality of its own. There is no classical legend involving
Pallas Athena and a centaur, but Botticelli has used these two figures to
suggest an encounter between wisdom (Pallas Athena) and lust (in the form of
the half-man half-beast). It was intended to be an allegory depicting rational
restraint overcoming animal sensuality.
This
painting was commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1482 as a gift to his
nineteen-year-old cousin and ward, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, on the
occasion of his marriage to Semiramide, daughter of Jacopo IV d’Appiano, Lord
of Piombino. As was customary, this marriage had been arranged by Lorenzo,
largely for political reasons. The city of Piombino occupied a strategic
location on the coast seventy miles southwest of Florence, and its alliance to
Naples during the war against Florence after the Pazzi conspiracy had
represented a serious threat; with this marriage it would be permanently allied
to Florence. As Jacopo IV was also a condottiere, it meant that his
army would prove a useful addition to Florentine forces. On top of this, Jacopo
IV’s territory included the island of Elba, which at the time contained the
only iron-ore deposits being mined in the entire Italian peninsula. Medici
control of this monopoly would represent a considerable income. The subject
matter of Lorenzo’s wedding gift to his young cousin was intended as an exemplar
of the benefits of marriage and the wisdom of restraint – a subtle hint that it
was time for him to curb the wild behaviour in which he seems to have indulged.
Lorenzo
di Pierfrancesco must have taken the hint and amended his ways, for his former
tutors Ficino and Poliziano – who almost certainly suggested the painting’s
subject matter to Botticelli – now both spoke highly of him. The enigmatic
hunchbacked Ficino, in a characteristically florid Platonic turn of phrase,
wrote of how Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s ‘mind and the radiance of his manners
and letters [shine] like the sun among the stars’.6 Poliziano
was equally gushing, speaking in a poem of how Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco was
lacking in ‘neither gravity, nor winning grace of countenance, nor the high
honour of a lofty head, nor capacious genius equal to civil affairs, nor a
tongue that can minister the ample riches of your mind’.7 Such
fulsome flattery may not have been utterly sincere, but it does indicate that
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco was held in the highest regard by the man who employed
these two silver-tongued intellectuals – namely, Lorenzo the Magnificent
himself. Indeed, Lorenzo was so impressed by his young cousin that when he was
just nineteen he began sending him on diplomatic missions, much as he himself
had been sent by his father. As far as this aspect of Lorenzo di
Pierfrancesco’s life was concerned, Botticelli’s painting was evidently
intended to serve much the same purpose as Piero the Gouty’s earnest letters
warning his son about his ‘exuberance’.
The
diplomatic tasks entrusted to the young Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco were of some
importance, including as they did missions to the pope and Venice. The messages
he delivered may have been written by Lorenzo the Magnificent, but under the circumstances
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s presence would have been deemed of considerable
significance: he would to all intents and purposes have been regarded as a
stand-in for Lorenzo the Magnificent’s firstborn son and heir Piero, who was
just thirteen years old. And two years later Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco travelled
all the way to France to represent Florence at the coronation of the
nine-year-old Charles VIII at Rheims on 30 May 1484 – an event that was to
prove of great significance to Italy over the coming years. France was the most
powerful nation in Europe, and Lorenzo the Magnificent had long since realised
how vital it was that France should be discouraged from taking any active part
in the politics of weak and divided Italy.
Despite
all this, it is possible with hindsight to recognise that Lorenzo the
Magnificent may also have had other, less honourable financial motives for
keeping his cousin away from Florence, although these would prove to no avail.
On 4 August 1484 Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco finally came of age and claimed the
inheritance that had been left to him and his brother Giovanni by his father,
money that had been entrusted for safekeeping to Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Initially Lorenzo simply refused to pass on this inheritance, but it soon
became clear that most – if not all – of it had already been spent. The cash
value of this inheritance is difficult to ascertain, though it would certainly
have been considerable. Lorenzo the Magnificent is said to have held the money
in ‘thirteen leather bags’,8though precisely how much these
contained is disputed. He certainly dipped into them during the aftermath of
the Pazzi conspiracy, when the city was threatened by war and he made his
celebrated dash to Naples. According to de Roover, the meticulous expert on
Medici financial affairs:
Between May and September, 1478, Lorenzo de’ Medici,
being in desperate straits, at different times took a total of 53,643 florins
in coin which belonged to Giovanni and Lorenzo, the minor sons of Pierfrancesco
de’ Medici, whose guardian he was.9
Others
suggest that a further 20,000 florins were removed later. However, the two
brothers claimed that together they were owed 105,880 florins, including
interest, and applied to the city authorities for legal arbitration on this
matter. That Lorenzo the Magnificent’s power in Florence was far from absolute
is reflected in the verdict that the legal arbitrators handed down some two
years later in 1486 – doubtless after much profound discussion and much covert
pressure from the Medici faction. The verdict went against Lorenzo, but by this
time the sum that he owed had been whittled down to 61,400 florins. His
justification for this reduced sum was that his cousins, being shareholders in
the Medici bank, were liable for at least some of the money needed to shore up
the bank so that it could manage the large debts that it had recently been
forced to absorb. These had been incurred when the London branch had been
forced to close down, and when the assets of the Rome branch had been seized by
Sixtus IV after the failure of the Pazzi conspiracy (when the pope had also
reneged on his large overdraft at the Medici bank).
In
the event, Lorenzo the Magnificent simply did not have 61,400 florins with
which to pay off his cousins, and instead was forced to hand over to them the
Medici villa at Cafaggiolo, and further much-treasured ancestral land, property
and farms in the Mugello valley, across the mountains to the north of Florence,
the original homeland of the Medici. This judgement provoked considerable
acrimony between the two branches of the Medici family.
Despite
Lorenzo the Magnificent’s apparent lack of liquid funds, he continued to live
as lavishly as ever. His celebrated circle of poets, philosophers and artists
continued to be maintained (and entertained) at the Palazzo Medici, exquisite
items were added to his famed collection of jewels, and the populace of
Florence went on being placated with extravagant entertainments and festivals.
Much of this must certainly have come from public funds, though as mentioned
earlier the details of the city’s financial transactions for this period were
all later destroyed by the Medici family. What we do know is that Lorenzo by
now had complete control of the financial affairs of the city, and of its
exchequer, which had been placed in the hands of his close friend and associate
Antonio Miniati, a man who incurred much hatred throughout the city. Finance
was one of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s chief weapons against wealthy citizens who
sought to oppose him. The amount of tax to be paid by each citizen was assessed
by a panel of taxation officers, who took account of registered property, a
reckoning of possessions, as well as declared income. Inevitably any such
estimate was open to abuse, and enemies of the Medici were liable to be
bankrupted by swingeing taxes, or forced into exile to avoid losing all their
wealth.
As
Lorenzo the Magnificent pleaded near-bankruptcy, he did not have to pay tax
during these later years of his reign. In reality, by this stage his financial
affairs had become so identified with those of the city that there was a
considerable ‘overlap’ between the two. And although Lorenzo certainly
benefited from this state of affairs, it is also undeniable that the citizens
of Florence benefited from his stewardship of the city. Lorenzo, through his
leadership and sheer force of personality, gave much to Florence. Its citizens
may not have been entirely free, but the independence of Florence itself
resulted largely from Lorenzo’s astute statesmanship. The assessment of the
city some years later by the Florentine historian Francesco Guicciardini, who
lived through these times, holds largely true for the coming years:
The city was in perfect peace, the citizens who made
up the administration were united and the government was so powerful that none
dared speak against it. The people were entertained daily with all manner of
festivals, spectacles and novelties. The city had abundant supplies of all its
needs, whilst its trades and commercial activities brought great prosperity.
Men of intellect and talent were able to engage in literature, the arts and the
sciences, which were all encouraged, such that their efforts were not only
recognised but also well rewarded. While the city remained peaceful at home, it
was held in the highest esteem abroad because she had a government and a leader
of the highest authority, because her territory was expanded, and because she
had the full support of pope Innocent VIII[2], as
well as being allied with Naples and Milan, by which means she maintained the
balance of power in Italy.10
Such
a picture may appear somewhat idyllic in the light of the preceding
descriptions – of the Ferrara war and poverty in the Florentine slums – but it
had more than an element of truth. These were years of some prosperity for
Florence, whose overseas trade had once again spread to the limits of Europe,
and beyond. As we have seen, several decades previously Cosimo de’ Medici’s
Florentine galleys had plied the sea route through the Straits of Gibraltar
across the Bay of Biscay to Bruges and London, carrying the dyed cloth for
which the city was famous, as well as alum and oriental spices. These spices
had been shipped from the eastern Mediterranean; and despite stiff competition
from Venice and Genoa, Medici agents had penetrated Egypt as well as other
trading centres throughout the Levant. But with the Medici bank in decline,
such opportunities were now being exploited by other Florentine merchants and
banking families. Not least amongst these, in the coming years, would be
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and his brother Giovanni, who would establish a number
of successful international trading enterprises.
The
divergence between the two branches of the Medici family was now evident to
all. Yet for the time being, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and his brother would
eschew any direct competition or conflict with their cousin. Lorenzo the
Magnificent and his side of the family would be concerned with political power,
while Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and his family would pursue commercial wealth.
The di Pierfrancesco brothers were soon establishing ventures in Spain and then
Flanders, and such was the success of their enterprises that for a brief time
the brothers left Florence altogether and took up residence in Bruges. Here
they branched into the lucrative oriental spice market, a move quickly followed
by other Florentine merchants. Indeed, such was Florence’s commercial
penetration of the East during these years that word of the city spread along
the Silk Road as far afield as China, where it was assumed that Florence, with
all its wealth and culture, was the capital of Europe. Nearer to home, in 1487
the Sultan of Egypt sent an ambassador to Florence, who brought with him
greetings from various rulers, as well as an assembled menagerie of rare and
exotic animals. The people of Florence were accustomed to the sight of lions:
these were the city’s mascots, kept in a cage behind the Palazzo della Signoria
on a street still known as Via dei Leoni. On the other hand, they were filled
with genuine wonder at the sight of the tall, long-limbed animal they
called cameleopardo, on account of it having the head of a camel
and the spotted furry coat of a leopard. This was the giraffe that would end up
in the grounds of Lorenzo’s country villa at Poggio a Caiano, which now became
his favourite country residence after the loss of Cafaggiolo to Lorenzo di
Pierfrancesco.
There
may have been a rift between the two branches of the Medici family, but Lorenzo
di Pierfrancesco and his brother continued to occupy their town residence
attached to the Palazzo Medici on the Via Larga, and they also continued to mix
with members of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s intellectual circle. Evidence of this
can be seen in the fact that Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco continued to commission
work from artists attached to the Palazzo Medici, especially ‘Lorenzo’s
artist’, Botticelli. A direct consequence of this was one of Botticelli’s most
magnificent and most mysterious works – namely his Primavera (Spring)[3]. This painting suggests,
as much as any other of the period, the happy state of the Renaissance city as
described earlier by Guicciardini. The painting depicts a group of delicate
classical figures in the shade of a woodland clearing. The golden apples hanging
from the high branches of the trees identify this as the Garden of the
Hesperides, the blessed isle inhabited by nymphs at the western edge of the
world. The central figure is Venus, whose apparent pregnancy may symbolise
fecundity. To the left of her the Three Graces, symbolising Joy, Beauty and
Creativity, dance in their diaphanous robes whilst above their heads
blindfolded Cupid is pulling back his bow, about to pierce one of them with his
arrow – of love, or lust. To the left of them stands Mercury, the messenger of
the gods with his phallic sword at his waist, while to the right of Venus
stands Flora, the goddess of spring, her blonde hair crowned with flowers,
resplendent in her flowered dress, in the act of scattering flowers that blend
into the flowers amongst the grass at her feet.
Primavera has prompted all manner of interpretation
through the centuries. Some have identified it as a scene from classical myth;
others have read it as an ingenious political allegory; while many
contemporaries hinted at personal identifications (Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco as
Mercury, his wife Semiramide as the apparently pregnant Venus). At the same
time, it is undoubtedly infused by the philosophy of Ficino, with the figures
as embodiments of Platonic ideas; paradoxically, it is also characterised by
the realistic humanism of Poliziano’s poetry. Unlike so much of the painting
that had preceded it, Primavera depicts an unmistakably
secular, even pagan scene. Here is a touching humanity completely devoid of
religious overtones, in no evident Christian setting.
In
the event, Botticelli seems to have intended no precise allegory or ‘meaning’
in his Primavera, seeing it more as a starting point: an object of
aesthetic contemplation and philosophical reflection. Its very mystery may be
seen as the mystery of what was happening to human consciousness (and
self-consciousness) at this point of profound and subtle transformation in our
evolution. These are the elements of our burgeoning humanity: inspired by the
philosophical and poetical suggestions of Lorenzo de Medici’s trusted
intellectual circle and realised by Botticelli.
Of
the figures within the Florentine cultural community, Ficino was enjoying an
unprecedented ascendancy. His expert knowledge of Plato had now begun to attract
widespread attention. No less a figure than Pico della Mirandola had already
opened a correspondence with him. Pico’s quest to understand the early
religious ideas that had inspired Christianity had extended beyond Judaism to
include the ideas of the Ancient Greek philosophers. Scholasticism, the
official philosophic backing of medieval Christianity, may have been deeply
imbued with many of the ideas of Aristotle, but Pico now sought to discover
Christianity’s links with Platonic idealism. In pursuit of this quest Pico
arrived in Florence in 1484, expressly in order to study under Ficino, who
quickly introduced him to the intellectual circle at the Palazzo Medici. Here
he was rapturously received. According to Poliziano:
He was a man, or rather a hero, on whom nature had
lavished all the endowments both of body and mind … Of a perspicacious mind, a
wonderful memory, indefatigable in study … Intimately conversant with every
department of philosophy, improved and invigorated by the knowledge of various
languages, and of every honourable science.11
For
his part, Pico was similarly impressed by Lorenzo the Magnificent. He would go
on to dedicate his Apology to Lorenzo, and upon reading
Lorenzo’s poetry he judged it superior to that of Dante – its humanism more
reflective of the age than Dante’s religious subjects[4].
Ficino
was deeply grateful that such a distinguished scholar as Pico della Mirandola
should champion his Platonism in the face of the vehement criticism it was
receiving from some orthodox Aristotelians. A number of these theologians had
even gone so far as to suggest that Ficino’s ideas were heresy, though this was
largely on account of his dabbling in certain hermetic ideas that he had found
in later Platonic texts. Despite Ficino’s adherence to Plato’s philosophy, he
remained deeply religious, and he would regard Pico della Mirandola’s ability
to convince devout humanist adherents of classical philosophy that they
belonged in the Christian fold with such admiration that he called him a
‘fisher of men’.12
However,
this great and enthusiastic meeting of minds at the Palazzo Medici was based
upon a profound misunderstanding. Pico della Mirandola, with his elegant
manners and deep philosophical learning, may have appeared as the embodiment of
the new humanism, but this was a misreading of his intellectual stance.
Although Pico was willing to embrace Platonism, this did not mean that he
rejected orthodox scholastic Aristotelianism. On the contrary, the aim of his
philosophical quest was inclusive – he wished to discover true
religion as it manifested itself in all these different sources. This becomes
clear in a letter that he wrote as early as 1485 to the Venetian scholar
Ermolao Barbaro, in which he explained that when he travelled to Florence to study
with Ficino he went ‘not as a deserter’13 from
Aristotle, ‘but as a spy’. In fact, the Latin word he used for ‘spy’ wasexplorator,
whose English connotations come closer to conveying what he actually meant.
Pico della Mirandola certainly had no hostile intent in coming to study with
Ficino, though the possibility of deception remains. The fact is that the
Medici court accepted him as a fellow humanist. This would seem to indicate
either a secrecy that was alien to Pico’s flamboyant nature, or that he was simply
content to go along with Lorenzo the Magnificent, Poliziano, Ficino and the
others in their erroneous assumption, because this better enabled him to
understand their thinking. For there can be no doubt that, certainly at this
stage, the assumption made by Lorenzo and his circle was erroneous. This can be
seen from the other company that Pico kept during his residence in Florence.
Besides becoming a favourite of the liberal intellectual circle at the Palazzo
Medici, it is known that Pico also renewed his contact with Savonarola.
Regarding his visits to the austere cell at the monastery of San Marco, the
twenty-one-year-old Pico would later write of how he spent his time ‘piously
philosophising’14 with the earnest thirty-two-year-old
monk. The worldly philosopher and the ascetic theologian – in so many ways such
opposites – indubitably continued to have one thing in common: the exceptional
depth of their theological knowledge.
They
also had another, somewhat surprising, element in common: their extensive
knowledge of unorthodox philosophical thinking. Pico della Mirandola was
already beginning to show an interest in esoteric learning – such as the
Kabbala (a mystical branch of Judaism) and Zoroastrianism (the early
monotheistic religion of Persian fire worshippers). Although Savonarola’s
religious interests are unlikely to have extended to such exotica, we know that
his learning was not confined to orthodox Christianity. It was probably around
this time that Savonarola completed his Compendium totius philosophae (A
Brief Summary of all Philosophies), which would not be published until after
his death. We now know that parts of this work, some of which elaborated an
aspect of unorthodox religious thought, were lost, or possibly destroyed by
overzealous followers who wished to eradicate all hint of heretical thinking
from his works. Still, despite Savonarola’s early years of humanist education
with Guarino at the University of Ferrara – an experience shared by Pico –
there can be no doubt that by this stage Pico’s knowledge of unorthodox
thinkers and philosophers was far greater than that of Savonarola. Yet as we
shall see, Savonarola’s informed discussions and critiques of such thinkers
would later play an integral part in Pico’s beliefs. For the time being, it
seems, Savonarola and Pico merely exchanged their views and agreed to differ;
for though Savonarola studied such matters, he remained deeply opposed to
unorthodox thinking of any sort.
By
this stage, Savonarola was already establishing something of a reputation for
himself within San Marco, such that soon after his arrival he had been made
master of the novices. His intellect, as well as his exemplary asceticism and
fervour, had inspired a devoted following amongst those who attended his
theological instruction – a following that included both the novices in his
charge and his fellow monks. Despite this, the indications are that Savonarola
was undergoing something of a spiritual crisis during this period. One of his
fellow monks recounts how he would arrive to give his morning lessons with his
eyes swollen from the weeping that had overcome him during the night-long
vigils and hours of fervent meditation that he imposed upon himself. Regardless
of Savonarola’s evidently distressed psychological state, ‘His teachings …
raised men’s hearts above all human things.’ It seemed to his listeners ‘that
from the time of the early Christian fathers no one equalled him in the
teaching of the sacred books’. This comparison to the early days of
Christianity would seem to be no accident: Savonarola’s stated aim was to
return the Church to the physical poverty and utter spiritual devotion of its
origins.15
Part
of Savonarola’s duties involved delivering the occasional sermon at one of the
many smaller churches in Florence. Evidently his sermons impressed, for in the
spring of 1484 he was invited to deliver the Lenten sermons in the Church of
San Lorenzo, one of the oldest and largest in Florence, which had recently been
redesigned by Filippo Brunelleschi. This early Renaissance architectural
masterpiece was the chosen burial place of the Medici, and the congregation was
accustomed to erudite sermons delivered with some eloquence by leading
preachers of the day. Savonarola’s lessons in the closed privacy of the
monastery of San Marco had a miraculous effect upon his listeners, and he must
have made a similarly inspiring impression with the sermons that he delivered
in the smaller churches of Florence; yet outside such intimate surroundings he
proved far from compelling. ‘The little friar’, with his heavy, dark eyebrows
and his long, hooked nose, made an unprepossessing figure in the pulpit. His
low, intense voice did not carry through the long, high-ceilinged nave, and his
broad Ferrarese accent struck many as comical; at the same time, the fervour of
his words was entirely dissipated in such vast echoing surroundings.
According
to Placido Cinozzi, the fellow monk who was present at all of Savonarola’s
Lenten sermons, his congregations gradually diminished, until all that remained
were just twenty-five people, including women and the young children they had
brought with them. As Savonarola himself later admitted:
I had neither the voice, nor the strength, nor the
ability to preach; as a result everyone was bored when I delivered my sermons …
just a few simple men on the one side of the aisle, and a few poor women on the
other, came to hear me.16
Savonarola
was so dispirited that he decided to abandon the whole idea of preaching
sermons in public. This would have been a humiliating decision indeed – an
admission of his failure as a monk, no less – for the Dominicans were a
preaching order, and this fact must surely have been at the forefront of his
mind when he chose to join the Dominicans, rather than an alternative order.
Indicatively, one of the reasons Savonarola gave for abandoning preaching was
that his sermons were so ineffectual they ‘couldn’t even have frightened a
chicken’. This suggests that from the very start he conceived of his sermons
with a particular purpose in mind: his words were not intended to enlighten, or
to reassure, but to inspire the fear of God in his listeners.
This
humiliation brought Savonarola’s ongoing spiritual crisis to a climax. One day,
late in 1484, he accompanied a fellow monk who was visiting his sister at the
convent of San Giorgio. While Savonarola was waiting alone in the churchyard
outside the convent, he was overcome by a sudden revelation, which he described
as taking the form of ‘many reasons, at least seven, that a scourge of the
Church was at hand … And from this moment on I fell to thinking much of these
things.’17
Despite
Savonarola’s desire to give up preaching, his superiors decided he should
continue. But in order to prevent him from suffering any further humiliation in
Florence, he was asked to deliver the Lenten sermons in the small hilltop town
of San Gimignano, away in the rolling Tuscan countryside some thirty miles
south-west of Florence. Here, with no pressure to ‘perform’, and filled with
the inspiration of his recent revelation, Savonarola appears not only to have
found his voice, but for the first time to have begun to express himself in the
manner that was to become his own. Unfortunately, no record of these 1485
Lenten sermons has been found, but we can gather his state of mind from a
letter he wrote during this period. On 9 March, in the midst of his succession
of sermons at San Gimignano, Savonarola received word from his mother Elena in
Ferrara that his father Niccolò had died. We do not know the exact words of
Savonarola’s reply, but its general content and tone can be inferred from other
letters that he wrote to her later during this period. Savonarola seems to have
been utterly preoccupied with his vocation and the sermons he was delivering:
he replied to his mother that she should no longer regard him as a member of
the family, for his father was now Jesus Christ and his family was the
Dominican order. As he later insisted again and again: ‘You should consider me
dead.’18 Such words can hardly have consoled Elena, yet
she persisted in regarding him as her son. Seven months later she wrote to
inform him that her brother Borso had also died. Niccolò’s financial
incompetence had left Elena struggling with debts, and Savonarola’s Uncle Borso
had been the sole support for his mother and her two daughters. This time it
appears that Savonarola did find himself moved by his mother’s sorrowful words
and her pitiful plight. Addressing her as ‘Most honourable and most beloved
Mother’,19 he explained that he could not send her the
money for which she was asking because his vow of poverty meant that he had
none. Instead he sent her all he could: a five-page letter that took him many
days to compose. This was a curious blend of a sermon and advice on how to
become a saint, complete with biblical references ranging from Psalms to
Corinthians:
I want your faith to be such that you could watch
[your children] die and be martyred without shedding a tear for them, as that
most holy Hebrew woman did when seven of her saintly children were killed and
tortured in front of her and she never cried, but instead comforted them in
their death.
Parts
of this tract can be read as an exhortation to himself and, when read in this
light, its attitude towards its recipient appears utterly heartless and selfish.
However, it is in fact a call to place one’s life completely in the hands of
God. ‘It is better, therefore, to tolerate patiently our brief tribulations so
as to have eternal joy and peace and glory everlasting.’ This last advice is
certainly intended for his mother, rather than for himself. Yet it is not
hypocrisy: Savonarola had come to see his own life as something more than
striving for ‘eternal joy and peace’. His revelation at the convent had
convinced him that he was intended to become a prophet. This would soon become
evident in his sermons. Savonarola’s initial Lenten sermons at San Gimignano
had proved so popular that he was invited back to deliver the 1486 Lenten
sermons. For many years it was thought that the contents of these too had been
lost; but in 1935, whilst searching through the Florentine archives, the
Italian scholar Roberto Ridolfi came across some notes written in medieval
Latin. On inspection, it became clear that these were Savonarola’s rough drafts
for his 1486 Lenten sermons. In these, he elaborated upon his ‘revelation’,
when he had learned of ‘at least seven’ reasons why ‘a scourge of the Church is
imminent’, including the presence of evil ‘shepherds’ in the Church, the
corruption of the Church, and simony (the selling of Church posts for money).
This last was an obvious reference to the new pope, Innocent VIII, who had
proved every bit as corrupt as his predecessor Sixtus IV. Not only had Innocent
VIII been the first pope openly to acknowledge his own children, but he had also
institutionalised the selling of holy offices. Savonarola may have lamented the
papacy of Sixtus IV, but with the elevation of Innocent VIII to the papal
throne he recognised that things had in reality gone from bad to worse. As he
wrote in a poem at the time: ‘When I did see that haughty woman[5] enter Rome’ it reduced
him to a state of ‘constant weeping’.21
Savonarola
also told the citizens of San Gimignano that God had sent prophets to warn
mankind of what was about to happen – the coming of ‘the antichrist, war,
plague or famine’. Despite being so specific, he insisted, ‘I do not warn you
about this because I am a prophet, but because I can tell from reading the
Bible that such a scourge of the Church is coming.’ Although he was undoubtedly
performing the task of a prophet, he was not yet sure enough of himself to take
on the mantle publicly.
After
finishing his Lenten sermons at San Gimignano, Savonarola returned to Florence,
where some months later he learned that he had been appointed a master of studies
at the great Studium generale in Bologna. He would be
returning to the very place where he had first studied theology; but now, just
ten years later, he himself would be amongst the distinguished theologians of
the teaching staff.
NOTES
1. ‘He uses the …’: despatch of 29
July 1484 from Buonfrancesco Arlotti to Duke Ercole of Ferrara, cited in
Gardner, Dukes … in Ferrara, p.207
2. ‘With great expense …’: despatch
of 12 August 1484 from Arlotti, cited ibid., p.208
3. ‘That same night …’: ibid., p.208
4. ‘Thus at last …’:
Machiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine, Book VIII, Sec. 28
5. ‘Jesus, highest good …’: et
seq.: Girolamo Savonarola, Poesie, tratte dall’ autographo, ed
C. Guasti (Florence, 1862), p.41
6. ‘mind and the radiance …’:
Marsilio Ficino, Opera, ed. A. H. Petri (Basle, 1576), Vol. I,
pp.834–5
7. ‘neither gravity …’: see Ronald
Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli (London, 1978), Vol. I, p.72,
citing A. Politian [Poliziano], Prose volgari ineditedi e poesie …,
ed. I. Del Lungo (Florence, 1867), pp.253–5
8. ‘thirteen leather bags’: many
sources mention these bags; see, for instance, Tim Parks, Medici Money (London,
2005), p.220, and Lauro Martines, April Blood(London, 2003), p.203
9. ‘Between May and September …’: de
Roover, Medici Bank, p.366
10. ‘The city was in perfect …’:
Francesco Guicciardini, Storie fiorentine dal 1378 al 1509, ed.
Roberto Palmarocchi (Bari, 1931), p.72
11. ‘He was a man …’: cited in
Roscoe, Lorenzo de’ Medici, p.265
12. ‘fisher of men’: cited in James
Hankins, ‘Marsilio Ficino’, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
ed E. J. Craig, Vol. III, p.655
13. ‘not as a deserter’ et seq.:
cited in James Hankins, ‘Pico della Mirandola’, Routledge Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, ed. E. J. Craig, Vol. VII, p.387
14. ‘piously philosophising’: cited in
Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola, Vol. I, p.69
15. One of his fellow … et seq.:
the following information on Savonarola’s teaching and preaching, by his fellow
monks and contemporaries, is taken from three contemporary sources:
Savonarola’s fellow monk, Placido Cinozzi, Epistola, p.10 et
seq., the contemporary historian of San Marco, Roberto Ubaldini, Annalia (Cronaco
dell Convento di San Marco), p.153 et seq., which was written in
1505; and Burlamacchi, Savonarola (1937 edn), p.16. Much of
this information is more easily accessible in the English editions of the
Villari and Ridolfi biographies. See Pasquale Villari, Savonarola,
trans. Linda Villari (London, 1888), Vol. I, pp.71–3, and Roberto
Ridolfi, Savonarola, trans. Cecil Grayson (London, 1959), pp.14–15,
whose translations I have not followed precisely.
16. ‘I had neither …’ et seq.:
Savonarola, Prediche sopra l’Esodo, ed. P. G. Ricci, Vol. I, p.50,
and Prediche sopra Ruth e Michea, ed V. Romano, cited in
Ridolfi, Vita … Savonarola, Vol. I, p.26
17. ‘many reasons …’: see the
fifteenth-century document re the trial of Savonarola in the documents
reprinted in Villari, La storia … di Savonarola, Vol. II,
p.cxlix et seq.
18. ‘You should consider …’: see
letter 5 December 1485 in Savonarola, Le Lettere, ed. Ridolfi, pp.5–11
19. ‘Most honourable …’ et seq.:
ibid, pp.5–11
20.
For the reasons Savonarola gave for the imminent scourge of the Church, as well
as quotes from Savonarola’s Latin notes for his 1486 sermons, which were
discovered by Ridolfi, see Roberto Ridolfi, Studi Savonaroliani (Florence,
1935), pp.44–52. More readily available English accounts can be found in
Ridolfi, Savonarola(trans. Grayson), pp.24–5, and Desmond
Seward, Savonarola and the Borgia Pope(Stroud, 2006), p.45
21. ‘When I …’ et seq.:
Savonarola, A Guide to Righteous Living …, p.65
[1] In fact, this is called the convent of San Marco, but
as in English this term mostly refers to closed religious communities of women,
in order to avoid confusion I have throughout used the usual English term for a
building that houses a community of monks.
[3] The precise date when Primavera was
painted remains in dispute. Many favour the earlier date of 1482, immediately
after Botticelli had returned from Rome, and some even favour 1477 when Lorenzo
di Pierfrancesco would have been just fourteen. However, even if Primavera was
not painted at the later date that I have favoured, other works confirm that
the interaction between the intellectual circle of the Palazzo Medici and
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco next door continued after the rift between Lorenzo the
Magnificent and his cousin.
[4] In all fairness, this was not mere flattery. Pico’s
assessment was shared by a number of intellectuals of the time.
[5] This was Simony personified, as Savonarola made plain
by writing in the margin in his own hand: ‘the ambition for ecclesiastical
honours’.
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