Florence, May 1498. A scaffold was erected in Piazza della Signoria where the infamous Dominican, Girolamo Savonarola was to be hanged.
Conveniently enough for the corrupt Pope Alexander VI, Savonarola had been supposedly found guilty of heresy. A bishop came to degrade Savonarola from the clerical state, and said, “I remove you from the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant.” Savonarola contemptuously told off the bishop, “Not from the Church Triumphant, that is not within your power.” Before the noose strangled him, Savonarola withdrew the false testimony he had given under torture where he had “admitted” to having acted out of personal ambition and not divine inspiration.
After he was strangled, a burning pyre licked the flesh off his bones ‘til his body was reduced to ash and swiftly flung into the River Arno, where it dissolved before anyone had a chance to collect it as his last remains. The life of a loud and influential critic of the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI was snuffed out. He was only 45.
Perhaps his most accurate criticisms were of the financial malfeasance and corruption of Pope Alexander VI’s reign. Savonarola charged the Spanish born Pope with simony, that he had bribed certain cardinals to vote him into the Chair of Peter, which historians down through the ages have credited as true. Savonarola unflinchingly decried Alexander VI’s “execrable crime of simony”. He repeatedly denounced the Pope’s lustfulness, he made hay with the fact that Alexander VI had fathered several children with his mistresses.
From his pulpit, Savonorola railed against Alexander VI, and called him, “this pestilence”, and even declared, “This man is not a Christian, he does not even believe there is a God.” Savonarola was not very tactful, or subtle. His conclusions were sometimes tainted with personal dislike. He held the Pope in contempt, and truly Alexander was contemptible, but Savonarola’s conclusion that he was an atheist was surely beyond his ability to tell.
But Savonarola was no sycophant. He was certainly not complicit in the corruption or a tacit observer, and for that a debt of gratitude is owed him. The words he used were vile, but he did so because the Church was in a vile state. I, however, am a recovering papal sycophant. To my shame, in years gone by, I was in a bid to outdo myself to pour praise on past and present bishops of Rome. But after years of self-medicating on false positivity, my conscience has made me eat my sweet words, and I find something medicinal in the way Savonarola’s words put into perspective the dire situation of Pope Alexander VI’s papal court. I am not saying that the Popes of today share the misdemeanors of Alexander VI, rather I see the necessity of open criticism of high-ranking men of the cloth.
Savonarola’s strong criticisms would not have ruffled the Pope as much, had he been a small-time preacher with a tiny audience. But no, for a handful of years Florence was under the firm control of the implacable Savonarola who ruled as moral leader or “dictator” as his critics hyperbolically claim. He sought to cleanse the city of prostitution, gambling, drunkenness and debauchery. His playbook was astoundingly controversial; he employed a league of youths to spy on citizens and bring the people to heel according to acetic standards. He never tried to flatter his congregation. During one sermon he held forth on why Florence was like a donkey.
The validity of his methods still stirs hot debate and even people who warm to him are conflicted about his tactics and some of his teachings, as am I. He was keen to preach that natural consequences of vice were signs of God’s vengeance. There was a syphilis epidemic, and he taught that this was a punishment from God.
At the height of his power, he organized a bonfire of the vanities where he instigated the burning of objects, from cards and dice to immodest items of clothes to several copies of Decamerone, a collection of pornographic short stories. Most jarringly, he burned works of art with levels of nudity that breached his standards. The claim that these works of art were priceless masterpieces has never been evidenced substantially, yet his critics often assert as fact that Savonarola reduced to ash several masterpieces, and they engage in the same error they readily say he committed; going too far in his denunciations. Once I heard a critic of Savonarola describe that “treasures” such old wigs and false teeth were thrown into the bonfire. Treasures indeed! He definitely wanted the destruction of pieces of art that depicted Our Lady in an unchaste and impure manner, and thus he defended the Blessed Virgin’s honour.
All the while he issued stinging rebukes of Alexander, his words like scalpels that were meant to cut out papal corruption. Savonarola's move that most threatened Alexander was his campaign for the council that would depose the Pope. Such a council could have revealed Alexander's simony, and shown his election to be invalid, maybe even led to him being forced to resign, and led to a cleansing of the curia. One view is that this may have even prevented the Reformation, or at least have meant that there were less disaffected Catholics lending support to the Protestants.
Alexander was growing weary of this die-hard Dominican, and in his politically savvy way he set in chain a series of events that would put Savonarola in his place, or give him grounds to put him to death. He sent Savonarola an invitation to come to Rome and explain himself, which the Dominican rebuffed on grounds that he was needed in Florence. Next the Pope forbade Savonarola from preaching, but the Dominican with eyes like black olives continued to preach and denounce the Pope in ever more vituperative terms.
When the Pope charged Savonarola with disobedience, Savonarola preached that if the Pope commands something wrong, then he must be disobeyed. His excommunication followed shortly but he fought it off, pointing out that excommunications were easily bought, that anyone who wanted to see an enemy of theirs excommunicated could just bribe a member of Alexander's court.
Savonarola flouted all attempts made to restrict him. He was thrown in jail where he was tortured for 45 days before he was put to death like the worst criminal. Some of his followers claim he was made a martyr, which provokes a strong protest from more progressive types who may be against the death penalty for common criminals, except for figures like Savonarola who they say was no martyr.
Savonarola, however, had always wanted to be martyred. When the philandering Alexander VI had tried to buy Savonarola by making him a cardinal, Savonarola sharply refused the red hat saying, “I want a cap of blood.” Savonarola was a priest, unsuited to his times, because he could not be bought.
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I wrote this story on Girolamo Savonarola for the Spring Edition of Mass of Ages, the magazine of The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales. You may read the entire magazine here.