Girolamo Savonarola, OP (, ;"Savonarola, Girolamo" (US) and ; 21 September 1452 – 23 May 1498), also referred to as Jerome Savonarola, was an Italian ascetic Dominican friar from Ferrara and a preacher active in Renaissance Florence. He became known for his prophecies of civic glory, his advocacy of the destruction of secular art and culture, and his calls for Christian renewal. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule, and the exploitation of the poor.
In September 1494, when King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy and threatened Florence, Savonarola's prophecies seemed on the verge of fulfillment. While the friar intervened with the French king, the Florentines expelled the ruling Medicis and at Savonarola's urging established a "well received" republic, effectively under Savonarola's control. Declaring that Florence would be the New Jerusalem, the world centre of Christianity and "richer, more powerful, more glorious than ever", he instituted an extreme moralistic campaign, enlisting the active help of Florentine youth.
In 1495, when Florence refused to join Pope Alexander VI's Holy League against the French, the Vatican summoned Savonarola to Rome. He disobeyed, and further defied the pope by preaching under a ban, highlighting his campaign for reform with processions, bonfires of the vanities, and pious theatricals. In retaliation, Pope Alexander excommunicated Savonarola in May 1497 and threatened to place Florence under an interdict. A trial by fire proposed by a rival Florentine preacher in April 1498 to test Savonarola's divine mandate turned into a fiasco, and popular opinion turned against him. Savonarola and two of his supporting friars were imprisoned. On 23 May 1498, Church and civil authorities condemned, hanged, and burned the bodies of the three friars in the main square of Florence.
Savonarola's devotees, the , kept his cause of republican freedom and religious reform alive well into the following century. Pope Julius II allegedly considered his canonization. The Medici—restored to power in Florence in 1512 with the help of the papacy—eventually fatally weakened the movement. Some early Protestants, including Martin Luther himself, have regarded Savonarola as a vital precursor to the Protestant Reformation.
Early years
Savonarola was born on 21 September 1452 in Ferrara to Niccolò di Michele and Elena. His father, Niccolò, was born in Ferrara to a family originally from Padua; his mother, Elena, claimed a lineage from the Bonacossi family of Mantua. She and Niccolò had seven children, of whom Girolamo was third. His grandfather, Michele Savonarola, a noted and successful physician and polymath, oversaw Girolamo's education. The family amassed a great deal of wealth from Michele's medical practice. After his grandfather's death in 1468 Savonarola may have attended the public school run by Battista Guarino, son of Guarino da Verona, where he would have received his introduction to the classics as well as to the poetry and writings of Petrarch, father of Renaissance humanism. Earning an arts degree at the University of Ferrara, he prepared to enter medical school, following in his grandfather's footsteps. At some point, however, he abandoned his career intentions.
In his early poems he expresses his preoccupation with the state of the Church and of the world. He began to write poetry of an apocalyptic bent, notably "On the Ruin of the World" (1472) and "On the Ruin of the Church" (1475), in which he singled out the papal court at Rome for special obloquy."English translations in Savonarola A Guide to Righteous Living and Other Works ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2003) 61–68 About the same time he seems to have been thinking about a life in religion. As he later told his biographer, a sermon he heard by a preacher in Faenza persuaded him to abandon the world., Gianfrancesco Pico Della Mirandola, Vita Hieronymi Savonarolae ed. Elisabetta Schisto (Florence, 1999) 114. Most of his biographers reject or ignore the account of his younger brother and follower, Maurelio (later fra Mauro), that in his youth Girolamo had been spurned by a neighbour, Laudomia Strozzi, to whom he had proposed marriage.Reported by fra Benedetto Luschino in his Vulnera Diligentis ed. Stefano Dall' Aglio (Florence, 2002) pp. 22–33, 301. True or not, in a letter he wrote to his father when he left home to join the Dominican Order he hints at being troubled by desires of the flesh."Like you, I am made of flesh and my sensuality wars against my reason; I have a cruel fight to keep the devil from my back." Translated from Girolamo Savonarola, Lettere e Scritti apologetici eds. Ridolfi, Romano, Verde (Rome, 1984), p. 6. There is also a story that on the eve of his departure he dreamed that he was cleansed of such thoughts by a shower of icy water, which prepared him for the ascetic life.La Vita del Beato Girolamo Savonarola ed. Roberto Ridolfi (Florence, 1937) p. 8. In the unfinished treatise he left behind, later called "De contemptu Mundi" or "On Contempt for the World", he calls upon readers to fly from this world of adultery, sodomy, murder, and envy.
Savonarola studied Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. He also studied the scriptures and memorised parts. On 25 April 1475, Savonarola went to Bologna, where he knocked on the door of the Friary of San Domenico, of the Order of Friars Preacher, and asked to be admitted. As he told his father in his farewell letter, he wanted to become a knight of Christ.
Friar In the convent, Savonarola took the vow of obedience proper to his order, and after a year was ordained to the priesthood. He studied Scripture, logic, Aristotelian philosophy and Thomistic theology in the Dominican studium, practised preaching to his fellow friars, and engaged in disputations. He then matriculated in the theological faculty to prepare for an advanced degree. Even as he continued to write devotional works and to deepen his spiritual life, he was openly critical of what he perceived as the decline in convent austerity. In 1478 his studies were interrupted when he was sent to the Dominican priory of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Ferrara as assistant master of novices. The assignment might have been a normal, temporary break from the academic routine, but in Savonarola's case, it was a turning point. One explanation is that he had alienated certain of his superiors, particularly fra Vincenzo Bandelli, or Bandello, a professor at the studium and future master general of the Dominicans, who resented the young friar's opposition to modifying the Order's rules against the ownership of property.Michael Tavuzzi O.P., "Savonarola and Vincent Bandello," Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 59 (1999) 199–224.
In 1482, instead of returning to Bologna to resume his studies, Savonarola was assigned as lector, or teacher, in the Convent of San Marco in Florence. In San Marco, fra Girolamo (Savonarola) taught logic to the novices, wrote instructional manuals on ethics, logic, philosophy and government, composed devotional works, and prepared his sermons for local congregations.Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola Religion and Politics, 1490–1498 Translated and edited by Anna Borelli and Maria Pastore Passaro (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006). As he recorded in his notes, his preaching was not altogether successful. Florentines were put off by his foreign-sounding Ferrarese speech, his strident voice and (especially to those who valued humanist rhetoric) his inelegant style."He satisfied almost no one either in his gestures or in his manner of speaking, as I who was there for all of Lent recall. At the end there were fewer than twenty-five people, men, women and children." Translated from "Epistola di fra Placido Cinozzi", in P. Villari, E. Casanova, Scelta di prediche e scritti di fra Girolamo Savonarola con nuovi documenti intorno alla sua vita (Florence, 1898) p. 11.
While waiting for a friend in the Convent of San Giorgio, he was studying Scripture when he suddenly conceived "about seven reasons" why the Church was about to be scourged and renewed.Armando F. Verde O.P., Et andando a San Gimignano a predicarvi.' Alle origini della profezia savonaroliana", Vivens Homo IX (1998) pp. 269–298. He broached these apocalyptic themes in San Gimignano, where he went as Lenten preacher in 1485 and again in 1486. A year later, when he left San Marco for a new assignment, he had said nothing of his "San Giorgio revelations" in Florence.Donald Weinstein, Savonarola The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet (New Haven, 2011) pp. 36–37
Preacher For the next several years, Savonarola lived as an itinerant preacher with a message of repentance and reform in the cities and convents of north Italy. As his letters to his mother and his writings show, his confidence and sense of mission grew along with his widening reputation.Translation of letter from fra Girolamo to his mother, 25 January 1490, Girolamo Savonarola, A Guide to Righteous Living and Other Works, Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto, 2003) 38–41. In 1490, he was reassigned to San Marco. It seems that this was due to the initiative of the humanist philosopher-prince, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who had heard Savonarola in a formal disputation in Reggio Emilia and been impressed with his learning and piety. Pico was in trouble with the Church for some of his unorthodox philosophical ideas (the famous "900 theses") and was living under the protection of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Medici de facto ruler of Florence.William G. Craven, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Symbol of His Age: Modern Interpretations of a Renaissance Philosopher (Geneva, Switzerland, 1981). To have Savonarola beside him as a spiritual counsellor, he persuaded Lorenzo that the friar would bring prestige to the convent of San Marco and its Medici patrons.Tavuzzi, "Savonarola and Vincenzo Bandello," 216–217. After some delay, apparently due to the interference of his former professor fra Vincenzo Bandelli, now Vicar General of the Order, Lorenzo succeeded in bringing Savonarola back to Florence, where he arrived in May or June of that year.
Prophet
Savonarola preached on the First Epistle of John and on the Book of Revelation, drawing such large crowds that he eventually moved to the cathedral. Without mentioning names, he made pointed allusions to tyrants who usurped the freedom of the people, and he excoriated their allies, the rich and powerful who neglected and exploited the poor."Le lezioni o i sermoni sull' Apocalisse di Girolamo Savonarola (1490) 'nova dicere et novo modo,'" ed. Armando F. Verde O.P., Imagine e Parola, Retorica Filologica-Retorica Predicatoria (Valla e Savonarola) Memorie Domenicane, n.s. (1988) 5–109 Complaining of the evil lives of a corrupt clergy, he now called for repentance and renewal before the arrival of a divine scourge. Scoffers dismissed him as an over-excited zealot and "preacher of the desperate" and sneered at his growing band of followers as Piagnoni—"Weepers" or "Wailers", an epithet they adopted. In 1492 Savonarola warned of "the Sword of the Lord over the earth quickly and soon" and envisioned terrible tribulations to Rome. Around 1493 (these sermons have not survived) he began to prophesy that a New Cyrus was coming over the mountains to begin the renewal of the Church.Weinstein, Savonarola, Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet pp. 87–96.