Savonarola, Girolamo

Abstract

Girolamo Savonarola was one of the most important Italian preachers of the Late Middle Ages. He was a Dominican friar who lived in fifteenth-century Italy, between Ferrara and Firenze, where he died following his death sentence on 23 May 1498. His fame is due to his intense preaching activity which reached its acme between 1494 and 1498. His message had theological, moral, and political contents and spoke to every social class; indeed, he addressed people in the vernacular Italian language and often, for his theological and philosophical treatises, opted to employ the vernacular rather than Latin (e.g., Trattato contro gli astrologi, Trattato circa el reggimento e governo della città di Firenze). He also wrote Latin works that he translated into Italian himself (e.g., De simplicitate vitae christianae, Triumphus crucis, Compendium revelationum) (Savonarola 1959, 1961, 1974) and genuine Latin treatises and sermons (e.g., Triumphus fidei abbreviatus, Sermoni sul salmo “Quam bonus,” Sermoni sul principio della Cantica) (Savonarola 1976, 1999).

Savonarola launched a strong, violent attack against the corruption of the Roman Church and papacy, especially Pope Alexander VI Borgia; he endlessly invited his followers to repent and atone and to recover the fundamental importance of the Holy Writ in Christians’ life; he also promoted institutional and social reforms, becoming a prominent figure in Florentine political life of the late Quattrocento. In 1494, he was sent by the Signoria to negotiate with Charles VIII of France and obtained the king’s promise that the French troops would be allowed to pass through the city without violence.

Savonarola claimed to be a prophet, as he explicitly stressed in his Compendium revelationum, a work in which he explains the content of his past visions related to the corruption of clerics (the so-called tiepidi), to the flood of sins and vices, and to the descent of Charles VIII of France, “the new Cyrus.” He pursued his aims until he was captured, tried, and (following a confession extorted through torture) condemned to death: this all happened in Florence, the same city that a few years before had looked to him as a leader.