Part One:
And Jewish Abravanel
by
Damien F. Mackey
Savonarola bears
some uncanny likenesses to the Jewish Abravanel,
both of these also
sharing similarities with the ancient Jewish prophet Jeremiah
Introduction
Such
can be the similarities in these cases that it would almost seem as if the
biblical prophet Jeremiah (c. 600 BC) has been ghostly projected to the 1400’s
AD in the form of the generic Jeremiah-like Jew, “Don Isaac ben Judah
Abravanel”, who in turn can remind one of the Italian, Savonarola (1452-1498
AD).
The
prophet Jeremiah appears not to have received a full martyrdom (despite the
tradition that he was murdered – stoned to death, or poisoned), though he did
suffer beating, imprisonment and near death in a cistern. The sorely-tried Jeremiah
did experience many ‘martyrdoms’, however, and The Jerome Biblical Commentary (19:98) actually designates the
substantial block of Jeremiah 36:1-45:5, as the “Martyrdom of Jeremiah”.
Savonarola
was, for his part “a martyr of preaching”.
The
name Girolamo (Savonarola) is just the Italianised version of Jerome, which is
like Jeremiah. He, in fact, is often called Jerome Savonarola.
Now,
Savonarola is thought to have had a Jewish contemporary, Abravanel, whose name
has some similarity to the Italian name of Savonarola. The full name of this
very Jeremiah-like Jew was “Don Isaac ben Judah Abravanel”.
A Jeremiah Type
The fiery Renaissance preacher, a Dominican friar, Fra Girolamo, pronouncing
doom upon Florence, is a Jeremiah type, ‘coming in the spirit of Jeremiah’.
Commentators
have readily noticed this. One has only to read, for instance, Savonarola’s
purely Jeremian words (as taken from Jonathan Kirsch’s A History of the End of the World, Harper, 2006, p. 98):
I have sometimes thought, as I came down from the
pulpit, that it would be better if I talked no more and preached no more about
these things – better to give up and leave it all to God …. But whenever I went
up into the pulpit again, I was unable to contain myself. To speak the Lord’s
words has been for me a burning fire within my bones and my heart. It was
unbearable. I could not speak. I was on fire. I was alight with the spirit of
the Lord.
The
prophet Jeremiah had sais almost identically (Jeremiah 20:9): “If I say, ‘I
will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ then within me there is
something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it
in, and I cannot’.”
Just
as striking are T. Cheyne’s comparisons between Jeremiah and Savonarola, in
whom, he writes, “several of the old Hebrew prophets seemed united” (Jeremiah: His Life and Times, Google
Books, pp. 203-205, emphasis added):
PER CRUCEM AD LUCEM
… I would rather compare Jeremiah with one who was
mighty both in words and in deeds (Acts vii. 22), and whom a sympathetic
poetess has painted
perhaps more truly than her sister-artist in prose.’
Need I mention his name?
“This was he, Savonarola, who, while Peter sank
With his whole boat-load, cried courageously, ‘Wake, Christ; wake, Christ!’ Who
also by a princely deathbed cried, ‘Loose Florence, or God will not loose thy
soul!’ Then fell back the Magnificent and died Beneath the star-look shooting
from the cowl, Which turned to wormwood-bitterness the wide Deep sea of his
ambitions”.
I admit that Jeremiah had not the hopefulness
described in
the opening lines; Jerusalem was a less promising field of
work than, with all its faults, Florence was in the age of
Lorenzo. But do not the closing lines give almost a reflexion
of Jeremiah’s attitude towards Jehoiakim [king of Jerusalem]? Savonarola had, I
suppose, a richer nature than Jeremiah. In
him several of the
old Hebrew prophets seemed united. He had the scathing
indignation of Amos, and the versatility of Isaiah, as well as the tenderness of Jeremiah. He differs
most from the
latter in two respects in his emphatic reassertion of the principle of
theocratic legislation, and in his ultra-supernaturalistic theory of prophecy,
which disturbed the simplicity of his faith in his own inspiration. Again and again, however, in his latter
days, his preaching reminds us of Jeremiah’s. “Your sins,” he cries to the Florentines, “make me a prophet. . . . And
if ye will
not hear my words, I say unto you that I will be the prophet
Jeremiah, who foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, and
bewailed it when destroyed.” Like Jeremiah, he had many a
sore inward struggle; “an inward fire,” he says, “consumeth
my bones (comp. Jer. xx. 9), and compelleth me to speak.”
Like Jeremiah, he was no respecter of persons; he fought
bravely, and outwardly at least was defeated. Like Jeremiah,
he foresaw the end of the struggle. “If you ask me in
general” so he said, shortly before he was burned at the
stake, in the convent-church of St. Mark’s “as to the issue of this struggle, I
reply, Victory. If you ask me in a particular sense, I reply, Death. For the
master who wields the hammer, when he has used it, throws it away. So He did with Jeremiah, whom He caused to
be stoned at the end of his ministry. But Rome will not put out this fire,
and if this be put out, God will light another, and indeed it is already
lighted everywhere, only they perceive it not.”
It was winter both in
Jeremiah’s time and in Savonarola’s. Which was the more favoured of these two heralds of spring? I think,
Jeremiah, because his prophecy of spring was fulfilled, after a brief interval,
to his own people. ….
[End of quote]
And
indeed there does seem to be a distinct Jewish-Israelitish connection with
Savonarola (who some even suspect was Jewish). It is with his Jewish
contemporary, Abravanel, who can be somewhat like a ghostly projection of the
real Jeremiah. Thus Benzion Netanyahu asks (in Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman and Philosopher?, Cornell University
Press, 5th edition, 1998, as quoted by Mor Altshuler at Haaretz.com Wed,
January 19, 2011 Shvat 14, 5771. Emphasis added):
How did [Abravanel]
this Jewish version of Savonarola, the fundamentalist monk who prophesied
the fall of corrupt Rome-Babylonia, come up with the format for a democratic, constitutional Jewish state hundreds of
years before one was established? Netanyahu believes he took his cue from
the Venetian republic, which had democratic components not often seen in those
days. Perhaps throwing off the yoke of this world made it easier for him to
offer Europe in general, and the Jews in particular, an improved model of
government that would only come into being centuries later. ….
[End of quote]
Netanyahu
has even more to say about Savonarola as a veritable mirror-image of Abravanel.
According to Todd Endelman (Comparing
Jewish Societies, p. 85, n. 36, emphasis added:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Abrabanel”): “Netanyahu notes the parallels between
the prophecies of Savonarola and Abravanel. Often the only substantial
difference is that one [Savonarola] is referring to the Florentines and
Florence, while the other [Abravanel] is referring to the Jews and Jerusalem”.
Abravanel, then, is the prophet to the Jews,
whilst Savonarola is a prophet to the Florentines. Hence Abravanel is the more
accurate version of Jeremiah than is Savonarola because he, like Jeremiah, was
an Israelite preaching to the Jews, and he was not physically martyred; whereas
with Savonarola, a Catholic, he preached largely to the Catholics of Florence,
with his life terminating in a real martyrdom.
But it is remarkable how closely the names accord:
‘Savonarola’ and ‘Abravanel’ (whose variants are Abrabanel, Abarbanel, Barbonel).
He was a “Portuguese Jewish statesman, philosopher, Bible commentator, and
financier of Lisbon and Venice” – belonging to a famous family of the time that
claimed to trace its roots back to King David of the tribe of Judah.
The name ‘Isaac ben Judah Abravanel’ reads like (to
me) a kind of generic Hebrew name, with the latter part, Abravanel, comprising
Ab (father) Rabban (priest) and El (God). It may even be some sort of a title,
since he is “commonly referred to as The Abarbanel”.
By
de-Italianising the name, ‘Savonarola’, converting the ‘v’ to a ‘b’ and the
‘arola’ ending to a more Hebrew ‘arel’, we get Sabonarel, somewhat like
Barbonel (Abravanel).
Due to
lack of available data on the Jews of this time, a researcher such as Benzion
Netanyahu has to attempt to tie together various disparate threads. Altshuler (op. cit.) tells of the difficulties
here, where “Netanyahu takes advantage of the fact that he is a biographer, and
hence endowed with hindsight”:
…. Jewish historical research is short on
biographies despite their importance for understanding the spirit of the times,
possibly because shifting attention from a person’s work to his private life
was perceived as presumptuous in Jewish tradition. Source material from which
one can assemble a solid picture of the lives of great Jews is rare. Benzion
Netanyahu grappled with this paucity of Jewish sources by plumbing the archives
of the European monarchies under which Abravanel lived, from documents on the Inquisition
to the correspondence of Christian scholars. The outcome is a comprehensive,
two-part biography divided into sections on Abravanel’s life with the expulsion
of the Jews from Spain and the annihilation of Jewish life in the Iberian
Peninsula, and the evolution of Abravanel’s thinking. Combining these elements
in one book allows Netanyahu to examine the relationship between the events of
the time and Abravanel’s spiritual outlook. The conclusion he comes to is that
Abravanel, in the face of this cruel and senseless expulsion, began to despair
whether the world would ever operate in a logical and just manner. This despair
led him to give up his rationalist approach to history and to base his
political theories on messianic theocracy, launching the age of Jewish
messianism and heralding European utopianism. Useless fire and brimstone. In
the same way that Don Isaac Abravanel was an admirer of Maimonides, but had no
qualms about exposing flaws in his thinking, Netanyahu lauds Abravanel’s
greatness but is not afraid to point out his weaknesses. As a leader of Spanish
Jewry, he failed in his primary mission: alerting the Jews to the fact that
expulsion was imminent and that a safe haven should be sought elsewhere,
perhaps in the Ottoman Empire, which Abravanel, as a diplomat, knew was more
tolerant. Abravanel’s nonchalance proved tragic. ….
[End of quote]
The
key phrase in the above is (I think) “the evolution of Abravanel’s thinking”.
Of
Jeremiah it could largely be said, as Netanyahu writes of Abravanel, that he,
“in the face of this cruel and senseless [he did warn of it, though] expulsion,
began to despair whether the world would ever operate in a logical and just
manner. This despair led him to give up his rationalist approach to history and
to base his political theories on messianic theocracy, launching the age of
Jewish messianism and heralding European [read Jewish] utopianism”.
This could be considered an ‘evolution’ of Jeremiah’s thinking.
Abravanel
also suffered a tri-part loss like the prophet Job (op. cit.):
…. Don Isaac Abravanel was born in 1437 to a
wealthy and influential Jewish family in Spain that traced its ancestry back to
King David. ….
…. [Abravanel] lost everything he had three times
in a row − once when he fled to Portugal after his father converted to
Christianity and the family went bankrupt; a second time in 1482, when he was
accused of participating in a conspiracy of Portuguese nobles seeking to
overthrow Juan II and was forced to take refuge in Spain; and a third time, in
1492, when the Jews were expelled from Spain.
The
prophet Job, too, like Abravanel, had famously suffered three catastrophic
losses ‘in a row’ (Job 1:13-19).
…. Thanks to his diplomatic and financial skills,
[Abravanel] managed to recover each time. Latin, Portuguese, Castilian and
Hebrew − he spoke them all fluently. He was a Jewish scholar, an expert in
philosophy, including the works of Aristotle and the Arab philosophers Ibn
Rushd and Ibn Sina − and knowledgeable in the sciences of his time − magic,
medicine and astrology. His biblical exegesis put him on par with Rashi and the
Ramban. His ability to spot contradictions in the writings of Maimonides led
Rabbi Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal) to describe him as the conqueror of the
Jewish Aristotelians. As the author of a messianist trilogy, the historian Zeev
Aescoly called him “the greatest codifier of messianism in his day”. If there
was any Jew toward the end of the medieval period and the beginning of the
modern period who deserved a royal title, it was Don Isaac Abravanel. ….
But what we also find is that Abravanel’s writings
also greatly influenced Christians [certainly the case with the biblical
prophet Jeremiah]. Wikipedia again:
…. Christian scholars appreciated the convenience
of Abravanel’s commentaries, and often used them when preparing their own
exegetical writing. This may have had something to do with Abravanel’s openness
towards the Christian religion, since he worked closely with Messianic ideas
found within Judaism. Because of this, Abravanel’s works were translated and
distributed within the world of Christian scholarship.
Exegesis
His exegetical writings are set against a
richly-conceived backdrop of the Jewish historical and sociocultural
experience, and it is often implied that his exegesis was sculpted with the
purpose of giving hope to the Jews of Spain that the arrival of the Messiah was
imminent in their days. This idea distinguished him from many other
philosophers of the age, who did not rely as heavily on Messianic concepts.
Due to the overall excellence and exhaustiveness of Abrabanel’s exegetical
literature, he was looked to as a beacon for later Christian scholarship, which
often included the tasks of translating and condensing his works. ….
[End of quote]
Altshuler
continues:
…. Many of the Jews of Spain fled to Portugal,
falling into a trap: Juan II closed the borders and forced them to convert.
Others were herded onto ships bound for the Mediterranean. Plague epidemics
broke out on the overcrowded vessels, which were then refused entry to the
ports of Italy. Only in Genoa were the passengers allowed to disembark for a
short time, on a dock surrounded by water on three sides. “One might have
mistaken them for ghosts”, an eyewitness wrote. “So emaciated they were, so
funereal, their eyes sunken in their sockets. They could be taken for dead, if
not for the fact that they were still able to move”.
Cf.
Lamentations 2:10: “The elders of daughter Zion sit on the ground in silence;
they have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth; the young girls of
Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground”.
2:11-12:
“Infants and babies faint on the streets of the city. They cry to their mother,
‘Where is bread and wine?’ As they faint like the wounded in the streets of the
city, as their life is poured out on their mothers’ bosom”.
4:7,
8: “Her princes …. Now their visage is blacker than soot; they are not
recognized in the streets. Their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has
become as dry as wood”.
[Altshuler]: …. By the summer of 1492, in less
than three months, the Jews of Spain, whose cultural achievements had been a
beacon to the Jewish world for hundreds of years, were wiped out. ….
Netanyahu
tells of Abravanel in words that could, in the main, be re-directed back to
Jeremiah, but with one needing to replace all of the modern European history
references now with ancient Jewish history and the Chaldeans. Thus the invader
from across the Alps, Charles VIII of France takes the place of Nebuchednezzar
the Chaldean invading from the north; Lorenzo ‘the Magnificent’ reminds (as
according to Cheyne above) of king Jehoiakim of Jerusalem. Allow me to supply
the parallels, of Abravanel, with both Jeremiah and with Savonarola:
…. Jews dwell securely in all the countries of
Spain, feasting on delicacies in peace and tranquility.
(Jeremiah 6:14): “They have treated the wound of
my people carelessly, saying “Peace, peace”, when there is no peace”.
…. The alarm should have sounded with the onset of
the pogroms of 1391, which was followed by waves of forced conversion and
reached a peak when the Inquisition was established, 11 years before the final
expulsion edict. Despite centuries of oppression, the Jews of Spain dismissed
the dangers and became hooked on the illusion that the pogroms were a
lightening rod that would divert the hatred toward the converts and away from
the Jews. ….
(Jeremiah 7:4): “Do not trust in the deceptive
words: “This is the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of
the Lord”.
…. It is an intriguing tale about a man who soars
high and falls low, who watches helplessly as ships [in Jeremiah’s case,
probably carts] laden with Jews sail [roll] off to their deaths, and who hobnobs
with princes and dukes in the palaces of Naples and Venice.
Jeremiah mixed with high and low alike.
…. The drama reaches a pinnacle in the final
chapters: Abravanel, shattered and depressed by his people’s fate, disgusted
with the vanities and temptations of this world, consolidates a pessimistic
view of the world as Sodom and Gomorrah, fated to be destroyed in an
apocalyptic war.
Cf. Savonarola: “After Charles VIII of France [cf.
Nebuchednezzar II the Chaldean] invaded Florence [Jerusalem] in 1494, the
ruling Medici were overthrown and Savonarola [like Jeremiah] emerged as the new
leader of the city, combining in himself the role of secular leader and priest.
He set up a republic in Florence. Characterizing it as a “Christian and religious
Republic,” one of its first acts was to make sodomy, previously punishable by
fine, into a capital offence. Homosexuality had previously been tolerated in
the city, and many homosexuals from the elite now chose to leave Florence. ….
(Jeremiah 23:14): “… the prophets of Jerusalem …
all of them have become like Sodom to me, and its inhabitants like Gomorrah”.
(Lamentations 4:6): “For the chastisement of my
people has been greater than Sodom”.
…. His belief in the end of history is supported
by intricate eschatological calculations proving that sometime between 1501 and
1513, salvation will arrive: An end-of-days war between Christians and Muslims
will destroy evil Rome; from beyond the Sambatyon [akin to the Euphrates] River
a Jewish army of the Ten Tribes will arise and take revenge on the enemies of
Israel; the dead will return to life, and the Messiah, now revealed, will lead
the last revolution − the revolution of the Kingdom of Heaven. ….
So did Savonarola foresee a New Jerusalem?: The
reward for the self-sacrifice of the Florentines, he promised, would be the
elevation of the city of Florence to the stature of the New Jerusalem, a model
of Christian purity and the capital of the millennial kingdom.
And Jeremiah?: (Jeremiah 31:31): “The days are surely coming says
the Lord, when I will make a New Covenant with the House of Israel and the
house of Judah”.
(38, 40): “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when the city [of
Jerusalem] shall be rebuilt … sacred to the Lord. It shall never again be
uprooted or overthrown”
…. This era of geographical exploration and the
sense of space conjured up by the New World, which contrasted starkly with the
gloomy prospects of the Jews, prompted Abravanel to fantasize about a mythical
solution for his persecuted people. In this Jewish theocracy that he predicted
would arise at any moment, he envisioned a humane and democratic government in
which everyone would have the right to vote; in which the judges would be
chosen by the people rather than the king; in which officials would serve the
public, not their superiors.
(Jeremiah 33:14-15): “The days are surely coming,
says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise I made to the house of Israel and
the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous
Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness
in the land”.
One has to ask why God would so favour the city of
Florence of all places, so as to make of it a ‘New Jerusalem’. Jerusalem
renewed, yes. Or Rome, the eternal city. These two holy cities. But Florence?
Like Jeremiah, Savonarola was a rather reluctant
prophet.
He burned to engage in the work of saving souls,
yet shrank for some years from entering on the priestly office. This might be
ascribed to his sense of its responsibility and of the high qualifications
which it demanded. No preparatory studies, no Church ceremonial, neither Pope
nor prelate, he boldly averred, could make a man a priest; personal holiness,
in his judgment ….
(Jeremiah 1:6): “Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Truly
I do not know how to speak, for I am only a [Hebrew na’ar, usually translated as] ‘boy’.”.
As a result, Savonarola is always cast as being
lambasted for being “ungainly, as well as being a poor orator”. But it was
Jeremiah’s actual words that were ridiculed, with his listeners mocking his
mantra: ‘Terror on every side’.
Jeremiah also, like Savonarola, had a disdain for
both priests and prophets. And so did Abravanel (though supposedly of the
Catholic clergy). Thus Netanayahu (Don Isaac Abravanel … p. 323):
An echo of Savonarola’s campaign against official
Rome may be heard in the following statement of Abravanel: “All the priests of
Rome and her Bishops pursue avarice and bribery and are not concerned with
their religion, for the sign of heresy is upon their forehead”. (Salvations, p.
3, 4a).
Now this is again an entirely Jeremian image in
relation to Unfaithful Israel (Jeremiah 3:3). “You have the forehead of a
whore, you refuse to be ashamed” (the image taken up again later by St. John in
Revelation 17:5).
Indeed, Savonarola called the Vatican “…. a house
of prostitution where harlots sit upon the throne of Solomon and signal to
passersby: whoever can pay enters and does what he wishes”.
But Jeremiah was, like Savonarola, virtually the
only good man left, so he had to be chosen. “Search …. If you can find one
person who acts justly and seeks truth …” (Jeremiah 5:1).
Savonarola is supposed to have claimed: “It is not
the cowl that makes the monk – being not only the highest qualification for
that office, but one indispensable and essential”.
This qualification he is thought to have possessed
in a pre-eminent degree. In no Church has there been many men so holy. Fra
Sebastiano da Brescia, a very devout Dominican, who was vicar of the
congregation of Lombardy, and for a long time his confessor, declared his
belief that Savonarola had never committed – what he calls – a mortal sin, and
bears the highest possible testimony to the purity of his life. ….
Perhaps his reluctance arose also from the degraded position into which those
who filled it had brought the sacred office. So openly abandoned to vice were
most of them at that time, that he was in the habit of saying, “If you wish
your son to be a wicked man, make him a priest !” ….
Savonarola, like Jeremiah, would suffer greatly
for this: “Little did this gentle spirit, lover of peace as of purity, dream,
as he entered the gates of the monastery, of a day when he would exclaim with
Jeremiah, “Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife, a man
of contention to the whole earth!” [a reference to Jeremiah 15:10]. But so it
turned out”.
One could do worse than to view, in a Jeremian
context, the apocalyptical warnings of Abravanel and Savonarola and their denunciations
of the rulers and the clergy.
Early years
Savonarola’s stance against morally corrupt clergy was initially manifested in
his poem on the destruction of the world entitled De Ruina Mundi (On the
Downfall of the World), written at the age of 20. It was at this stage that he
also began to develop his expression of moral conscience, and in 1475 his poem
De Ruina Ecclesiae (On the Downfall of the Church) displayed his contempt for
the Roman Curia by terming it ‘a false, proud archaic wench’.
Cf. Jeremiah’s references to Jerusalem and Israel
as ‘playing the harlot’ (2:20; 3:1, 6, 8).
Friar
Finally in 1482 the Order dispatched him to
Florence, the ‘city of his destiny’. He made no impression on Florence in the
1480s [supposedly because he was not a good orator], and his departure in 1487
went unnoticed. He returned to Bologna where he became ‘master of studies’.
Savonarola returned to Florence in 1490 at the
behest of Count Pico della Mirandola. There he began to preach passionately
about the Last Days ….
(Jeremiah 23:20): “The anger of the Lord will not
turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind. In
the latter days you will understand it clearly”.
Part Two:
Candidate for Sainthood?
Savonarola a most
controversial holy man.
Jesuits and Dominicans
square off anew over Savonarola
BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
NCR Staff
More than 500 years after being burned at the
stake as a heretic, Dominican Friar Girolamo Savonarola — preacher of fiery
apocalyptic sermons, de facto ruler of Florence and today a candidate for
sainthood — can still stir deep passions.
A public tiff in Italy between members of the
Dominicans and the Jesuits over the campaign to canonize Savonarola is the
latest proof of his enduring power to divide.
Despite having called the church of his day a
“harlot” and a “monster of abomination” — and despite charges of having
administered a fundamentalist theocracy in Florence, Italy, analogous to
Afghanistan under the Taliban — Savonarola seems a serious candidate for a
halo.
Last year [1998] Cardinal Silvano Piovanelli of
Florence convened a historical commission in conjunction with the 500th
anniversary of Savonarola’s death. Italian media accounts suggest the
commission is likely to issue a positive report, which could clear the way for
an investigation by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
This past summer L’Osservatore Romano, the
official newspaper of the Vatican, paid tribute to Savonarola. The paper called
him “a tireless preacher for moral reform of civil society.”
But Savonarola still has influential detractors —
the most visible of whom happen to be Jesuits, the old rivals of the monk’s
Dominican order.
An editorial in the 1999 New Year issue of the
influential Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica said that “an indiscriminate
revisionist spirit” was at work in the effort to rehabilitate the controversial
monk.
He was a “contradictory man who inspired opposing
passions,” the magazine said. He was capable of “deceit.” It is “probably
impossible to give a definitive opinion” about him, the article concluded —
strongly hinting that the requisite certainty of Savonarola’s holiness could
not be found.
Jesuits ‘deceived’?
In an interview with an English journalist, Jesuit
Fr. Ferdinando Castelli, a writer for La Civiltà Cattolica, was more direct.
“He rebelled against ecclesiastical authority,” he said of Savonarola. “We do
not believe that he was a religious man worthy of sanctification,” Castelli
told London’s Daily Telegraph on Jan. 7.
Meanwhile the Italian newspaper La Stampa quoted a
Dominican member of the historical commission in Florence on Jan. 2 as saying
that it might be the Jesuits who are “deceived.”
“Savonarola was not a heretic but was burnt for
his obstinate fidelity to the gospel,” Fr. Tito Centi said. “He stood against
the atrocious agents of Alexander VI, who inflicted every type of persecution
on the friar in order to remove him, even unto death.”
“The Jesuits have been anti-Savonarola from the
foundations of their order,” Centi said, referring to Ignatius of Loyola’s
insistence that Savonarola’s works be burned. Ignatius saw Savonarola as an
enemy of the papacy.
The work of the historical commission to date has
shown that “the old suspicions of the Jesuits are totally unfounded,” Centi
told La Stampa. “These charges repeated over the centuries can be discounted,
though they are disagreeable because they come from brothers in the faith.”
Centi’s criticism was echoed by Professor Claudio
Leonardi, a Florentine advocate of Savonarola, who also spoke to the Daily
Telegraph. “Whoever wrote the [La Civiltà Cattolica] article … has never read
the works of Savonarola and was influenced more by subjective considerations
than historic reality,” he said.
Such divided opinions reflect the complexities of
Savonarola’s life and legacy. From 1494-1498, Savonarola’s followers controlled
Florence after they chased out the successor to Lorenzo (de Medici) the
Magnificent. During those four years the city was rocked by running clashes
between the pro- and anti-Savonarola factions.
Savonarola captured hearts as a preacher. His
powerful apocalyptic visions warned that God would soon scour the world and
that Florence, God’s chosen city, had better be ready. Contemporaries speak of
the spellbinding power of these sermons; Savonarola’s followers were called
piagnoni, or weepers, because he so often moved them to tears.
As evidence of his powerful charisma, Savonarola
managed to convince the highly humanistic Florentines to surrender their
mirrors, dice, cards, cosmetics and nude paintings and burn them all in the
Piazza di Signoria in a towering bonfire of the vanities. He also demanded
repression of homosexuals. It is these aspects of his reign that have led to
comparisons with the Taliban or to Iran under the ayatollahs.
But Savonarola was also an early democrat, pushing
for the creation of a citizen’s council that would form city policy.
He was also a friend to the poor. Under
Savonarola, the city created a building society that offered loans at rates
well below what was demanded by Florence’s private bankers — 5 to 7 percent, as
opposed to the 32.5 percent that had been standard practice under the de
Medicis. One of the charges that led to Savonarola’s downfall was that he
impoverished the city by refusing to ever turn away a beggar.
He also patronized the famous painters of his day.
Michelangelo would later say that when he painted the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel, it was the sermons of Savonarola he heard in his mind.
Savanarola was a fierce critic of ecclesiastical
corruption, and this is perhaps the most contested aspect of his legacy for
those proposing to canonize him. He referred to Alexander VI as a “broken
tool,” accusing the pope of practicing simony and of dubious personal morality.
He defied the pope by aligning Florence with the French king, Charles, rather
than the “Holy Alliance” of Italian city-states championed by Alexander. Toward
the end, Savonarola called for a church council that would depose Alexander.
There was never serious question about
Savonarola’s doctrine — his chief theological work, The Triumph of the Cross,
is widely viewed as orthodox. In 1558, Pope Paul IV — who had served in the
court of Alexander VI — said that Savonarola was not a heretic. The question
for examiners today is not doctrinal but disciplinary: whether Savonarola
defied the authority of the pope in impermissible fashion.
In English the name of Savonarola may be
synonymous with religious fanaticism, but many Italians, and Florentines in
particular, have a different image.
In an age of corruption, Savonarola represented
honest government, making him something of a patron for the current Italian drive
to break the grip of cronyism and political patronage that has long dominated
their politics.
In a move laden with symbolism, prosecutor
Gherardo Colombo took part in a ceremony in Florence on May 23, 1998, marking
the anniversary of Savonarola’s death. Colombo is a key figure in Italy’s
“clean hands” anti-graft campaign.
Popular with reformers
Savonarola also defended rule by the people
against the feudal dynasties and papal politics that for centuries impeded
Italian nationalism. As an ecclesial dissenter, Savonarola is popular among
today’s Catholics who believe the church could stand some reform.
There are even those who argue that had the
Renaissance papacy been a bit more open to Savonarola’s critique, the church
might have been spared the agony of the Protestant Reformation.
Whatever the case, Savonarola’s most ardent
supporters seem unlikely to be discouraged by anything historical research
might uncover. He was a “man of faith who loved Jesus Christ,” according to
Dominican Fr. Armando Verde in the International Herald Tribune. Savonarola may
have made compromises in the rough-and-tumble of Florentine politics, Verde
said, “but on the ethical and spiritual level, absolutely never.”
National Catholic Reporter, January 22, 1999
Such
fiery preaching was not uncommon at the time, but a series of circumstances
quickly brought Savonarola great success. The first disaster to give
credibility to Savonarola’s apocalyptic message was the Medici family’s
weakening grip on power owing to the French-Italian wars.
In
Jeremiah’s age, the troubles began firstly with the Egyptians and then the
Chaldeans.
The
flowering of expensive Renaissance art and culture paid for by wealthy Italian
families now seemed to mock the growing misery in Italy, creating a backlash of
resentment among the people.
The
second disaster was the appearance of syphilis (or the “French pox”). Finally,
the year 1500 was approaching, which may have brought about a mood of
millennialism. In minds of many, the Last Days were impending and Savonarola
was the prophet of the day.[1]
His parish church in San Marco was crowded to over-flowing during his
celebration of Mass and at his sermons. Savonarola was a preacher, not a
theologian. He preached that Christian life involved being good and practicing
the virtues. He did not seek to create a religious group separate from the
Catholic Church. Rather, he wanted to correct the transgressions of worldly
popes and secularized members of the Church’s wayward Curia.
Lorenzo de Medici, the previous ruler of Florence and patron of many
Renaissance artists, was also a former patron of Savonarola. Eventually,
Lorenzo and his son Piero de Medici became targets of Savonarola’s preaching.
[End of quote]
Now,
continuing on from Part One:
Leader of Florence
In 1497, he and his followers carried out the Bonfire of the Vanities. They
sent boys from door to door collecting items associated with moral laxity:
mirrors, cosmetics, lewd pictures, pagan books, immoral sculptures (which he
wanted to be replaced by statues of the saints and modest depictions of
biblical scenes), gaming tables, chess pieces, lutes and other musical
instruments, fine dresses, women’s hats, and the works of immoral and ancient
poets, and burnt them all in a large pile in the Piazza della Signoria of
Florence.[2] Many fine Florentine Renaissance artworks were lost in
Savonarola’s notorious bonfires — including paintings by Sandro Botticelli,
which he is alleged to have thrown into the fires himself.[3]
Cf. e.g. Jeremiah 6:27-30 (testing with fire):
‘I have
made you a tester of
metals among my people,
that you may know
and test their ways.
They are all stubbornly
rebellious,
fgoing about with slanders;
they are bronze and iron;
all of them act
corruptly.
The bellows blow fiercely;
the lead is
consumed by the fire;
in vain the refining goes
on,
for the wicked
are not removed.
Rejected silver they are
called,
for the Lord has rejected them’.
Florence soon became tired of Savonarola because
of the city’s continual political and economic miseries partially derived from
Savonarola’s opposition to trading and making money. When a Franciscan preacher
challenged him to a trial by fire in the city centre and he declined, his
following began to dissipate.
During his Ascension Day sermon on May 4, 1497,
bands of youths rioted, and the riot became a revolt: dancing and singing
taverns reopened, and men again dared to gamble publicly.
Cf. e.g. Jeremiah 16:8-13:
‘And do
not enter a house where there is feasting and sit down to eat and drink. For
this is what the Lord Almighty,
the God of Israel, says: Before your eyes and in your days I will bring an end
to the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bride and bridegroom in
this place. When
you tell these people all this and they ask you, ‘Why has the Lord decreed such a great disaster
against us? What wrong have we done? What sin have we committed against the Lord our God?’ then say to them, ‘It is
because your ancestors forsook me,’ declares the Lord, ‘and followed other gods and served and worshiped
them. They forsook me and did not keep my law. But you have behaved more
wickedly than your ancestors. See how all of you are following the stubbornness
of your evil hearts instead of obeying me. So I will throw you out of this land
into a land neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you will serve
other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.’
Excommunication and execution
On May 13, 1497, the rigorous Father Savonarola
was excommunicated by Pope Alexander VI, and in 1498, Alexander demanded his
arrest and execution.
Cf. e.g. Jeremiah 20:1-3:
Now Pashhur
the priest, the son of Immer, who was chief officer in the house of the Lord, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things. Then
Pashhur beat Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the
upper Benjamin Gate of the house of the Lord. The next day, when Pashhur released Jeremiah from the stocks,
Jeremiah said to him, ‘The Lord does not
call your name Pashhur, but Terror on Every Side’.
On April 8, a crowd attacked the Convent of San
Marco. A bloody struggle ensued, during which several of Savonarola’s guards
and religious supporters were killed. Savonarola surrendered along with Fra
Domenico da Pescia and Fra Silvestro, his two closest associates. Savonarola
was faced with charges such as heresy, uttering prophecies, sedition, and other
crimes, called religious errors by the Borgia pope.
During the next few weeks all three were tortured on the rack, the torturers
sparing only Savonarola’s right arm in order that he might be able to sign his
confession. All three signed confessions, Savonarola doing so sometime prior to
May 8. On that day he completed a written meditation on the Miserere mei, Psalm
50, entitled Infelix ego, in which he pleaded with God for mercy for his physical
weakness in confessing to crimes he believed he did not commit. On the day of
his execution, May 23, 1498, he was still working on another meditation, this
one on Psalm 31, entitled Tristitia obsedit me.[4]
On the day of his execution he was taken out to the Piazza della Signoria along
with Fra Silvestro and Fra Domenico da Pescia. The three were ritually stripped
of their clerical vestments, degraded as “heretics and schismatics”, and given
over to the secular authorities to be burned. The three were hanged in chains
from a single cross and an enormous fire was lit beneath them. They were
thereby executed in the same place where the “Bonfire of the Vanities” had been
lit, and in the same manner that Savonarola had condemned other criminals
himself during his own reign in Florence. Jacopo Nardi, who recorded the
incident in his Istorie della città di Firenze, wrote that his executioner lit
the flame exclaiming, “The one who wanted to burn me is now himself put to the
flames.” Luca Landucci, who was present, wrote in his diary that the burning
took several hours, and that the remains were several times broken apart and
mixed with brushwood so that not the slightest piece could be later recovered,
as the ecclesiastical authorities did not want Savonarola’s followers to have
any relics for a future generation of the rigorist preacher they considered a
saint. The ashes of the three were afterwards thrown in the Arno beside the
Ponte Vecchio.[5]
Niccolò Machiavelli, author of The Prince, also
witnessed and wrote about the execution. Subsequently, Florence was governed
along more traditional republican lines, until the return of the Medici in
1512. ….
According
to J. Kirsch (A History of the End of the
World, Harper, 2006, pp. 166-169):
…. So it was that a sermonizer might seek to set
his audience afire with terrors [cf. Jeremiah’s mantra: ‘Terror on Every Side’]
and yearnings and end up in the flames of his own making. Such was the fate of
a man who has been called “a martyr of prophecy,” Girolamo Savonarola
(1452-1498), perhaps the single most famous (or notorious) [167] of the
apocalyptic radicals. …. Florence was destined to be the New Jerusalem, or so
Savonarola believed and preached, and he saw it as his divine mission to make
it so. At a moment in history when Europe was afflicted by “presages, phantoms
and astrological conjunctions of dreadful import,” as one contemporary
chronicler put it, the Florentines were a ready and willing audience.”
Like the author of Revelation, Savonarola was a
self-appointed soldier in a culture war.
The Dominican friar detested what he called “the
perversities and the extreme evil of these blind peoples amongst whom virtue is
reduced to zero and vice triumphs on every hand”… – that is, the worldly ways
of life and art that are seen today as the glory of the Renaissance. And, just
as John denounced the pleasures and treasures of Roman [sic] paganism (“Cargo
of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet …”) …
Savonarola condemned the opulent lives of the Roman Catholic clergy. “You have
been to Rome,” he declared. “Well, then, you must know something of the lives
of these priests. They have courtesans, squires, horses, dogs. [Cf. e.g. Jeremiah
3:2: “You have defiled the land with your prostitution
and wickedness”]. Their
houses are filled with carpets, silks, perfumes, servants. Their pride fills
the world. Their avarice matches their pride. All they do, they do for money.”
…. [Cf. e.g. Jeremiah 48:29: “… exceeding
proud … loftiness … and … arrogancy … and … pride, and … haughtiness of … heart”].
Savonarola, again like the author of Revelation,
was a gifted and powerful preacher, and his sermons “ignited a fireball of
religious panic that heated even the city’s most urbane minds,” according to
cultural historian Robin Barnes. …. His public lectures on the book of
Revelation were so popular, in fact, that he was forced to move to ever-larger
quarters in order to accommodate the crowds. They took to heart his warning
that the end of the world was near: “torrents of blood,” “a terrible famine,”
and “a fierce pestilence” awaited the sinners. …. And they surely thrilled at
the sight of a seer in action: “My reasons for announcing these scourges and
calamities are founded on the Word of God,” ranted Savonarola in one of his
white-hot sermons. “1 have seen a sign in the heavens. Not a cross this time,
but a sword. It’s the Lord’s terrible swift sword which will strike the earth!”
[Cf. e.g. Jeremiah 14:12: ‘I am going to make an end of them by the
sword, famine and pestilence’]. …. [Jeremiah has many references to the sword
of slaughter (2:30; 4:10; 5:12; 9:16; 12:12, etc, etc)].
Above all, Savonarola commanded his congregation
to forgo the pleasures of the flesh in anticipation of the Day of Judgment.
“Sodomy is Florence’s besetting sin,” declared Savonarola, who complained that
“a young boy cannot walk in the streets without of falling into evil hands.”‘
…. But he was no less punishing when it came to the sexual excesses of women,
real [168] or imagined. “Big flabby hunks of fat you are with your dyed hair,
your high-rouged cheeks and eyelids smeared with charcoal,” he railed. “Your
perfumes poison the air of our streets and parks. Not content with being the
concubines of laymen and debauching young boys, you are running after priests
and monks in order to catch them in your nets and involve them in your filthy intrigues.”
[Cf. e.g. Jeremiah 4:30: “What are you doing, you devastated one? Why
dress yourself in scarlet and put on jewels of gold? Why highlight your eyes
with makeup? You adorn yourself in vain. Your lovers despise you; they want to
kill you”].
…. And he
laid the same charge against the pope and the clergy: “Come here, you blasphemy
of a church!” he sermonized, making good use of the catchphrases of Revelation.
“Your lust has made of you a brazenfaced whore. [Cf. e.g. Jeremiah 3:3: “… you
have the brazen look of a prostitute; you refuse to blush with shame]. Worse than beasts are you, who have made
yourself into an unspeakable monster!” …. ‘
….
“Tell him,” said he to a deputation who, at the
instigation of Lorenzo – determined to silence Savonarola by fair means or foul
– came urging him to leave Florence, “Tell him that he is the first man in the
city, and I am but a poor friar; nevertheless, it is he who has to go from
hence, and I who have to stay; tell him that he should repent of his sins, for
God has ordained the punishment of him and his.” So it happened, I may remark,
not long afterwards when the house of the Medici fell, and the sceptre departed
from their hands.
Cf. Jeremiah 21:1-8: “This is the Word that came
to Jeremiah from the Lord, when King Zedekiah sent to him Pashhur son of
Malchiah and the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah, saying, ‘Please inquire of
the Lord on our behalf, for King Nebuchedrezzar of Babylon is making war
against us …”.
Then Jeremiah said to them: ‘Thus you shall say to
Zedekiah: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel; I am going to turn back the
weapons of war that are in your hands and with which you are fighting against
the king of Babylon and against the Chaldeans who are besieging you outside the
walls; and I will bring them together into the center of this city. I myself
will fight against you with outstretched hand and mighty arm, in anger, in
fury, and in great wrath. And I will strike down the inhabitants of this city,
both human beings and animals; they shall die of a great pestilence. Afterward,
says the Lord, I will give King Zedekiah of Judah, and his servants, and the
people in this city – those who survive the pestilence, sword, and famine –
into the hands of King Nebuchedrezzar of Babylon, into the hands of their
enemies, into the hands of those who seek their lives. He shall strike them
down with the edge of the sword; he shall not pity them, or spare them, or have
compassion”.
Vol. 6, Chapter IX (Cont’d) – 76. Girolamo
Savonarola
His message was the prophet’s cry, “Who shall
abide the day of His coming and who shall stand when He appeareth?”
I could not endure any longer the wickedness of
the blinded peoples of Italy. Virtue I saw despised everywhere and vices
exalted and held in honor. With great warmth of heart, I made daily a short
prayer to God that He might release me from this vale of tears. ‘Make known to
me the way,’ I cried, ‘the way in which I should walk for I lift up my soul
unto Thee,’ and God in His infinite mercy showed me the way, unworthy as I am
of such distinguishing grace.
The clergy he arraigned for their greed of
prebends and gold and their devotion to outer ceremonies rather than to the
inner life of the soul.
[Cf. e.g. Jeremiah 22:17): “But your eyes and
heart are only on your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for
practising oppression and violence”.
Portraying the insincerity of the clergy, he said:
—
In these days, prelates and preachers are chained
to the earth by the love of earthly things. The care of souls is no longer
their concern. They are content with the receipt of revenue. The preachers preach
to please princes and to be praised by them. They have done worse. They have
not only destroyed the Church of God. They have built up a new Church after
their own pattern. Go to Rome and see! In the mansions of the great prelates
there is no concern save for poetry and the oratorical art. Go thither and see!
Thou shalt find them all with the books of the humanities in their hands and
telling one another that they can guide mens’ souls by means of Virgil, Horace
and Cicero … The prelates of former days had fewer gold mitres and chalices and
what few they possessed were broken up and given to relieve the needs of the
poor. But our prelates, for the sake of obtaining chalices, will rob the poor
of their sole means of support.
Jeremiah 22:13, 14, 17: “Woe to him who builds his
house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his
neighbours work for nothing, and does not give them their wages; who says, “I
will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms”, and who cuts out windows
for it, panelling it with cedar, and painting it with vermillion … your eyes
and heart are only on your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for
practising oppression and violence”.
The inscription on the heavenly sword well
represents the style of Savonarola’s preaching. It was impulsive, pictorial,
eruptive, startling, not judicial and instructive. And yet it made a profound
impression on men of different classes. Pico della Mirandola the elder has
described its marvellous effect upon himself. On one occasion, when he
announced as his text Gen_6:17, “Behold I will bring the flood of waters upon
the earth,” Pico said he felt a cold shudder course through him, and his hair,
as it were, stand on end.
Cf. e.g. Jeremiah 47:2: “See, waters are rising
out of the north and shall become an overflowing torrent; they shall overflow
the land and all that fills it, the city and those who live in it”.
Savonarola’s confidence in his divine appointment
to be the herald of special communications from above found expression not only
from the pulpit but was set forth more calmly in two works, the Manual of
Revelations, 1495, and a Dialogue concerning Truth and Prophecy, 1497. The
latter tract with a number of Savonarola’s sermons were placed on the Index. In
the former, the author declared that for a long time he had by divine
inspiration foretold future things but, bearing in mind the Saviour’s words,
“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs,” he had practised reserve in such
utterances. He expressed his conception of the office committed to him, when he
said, “The Lord has put me here and has said to me, ‘I have placed thee as a
watchman in the centre of Italy … that thou mayest hear my words and announce
them,’” Eze_3:17.
Cf. e.g. Jeremiah 1:18: “And I for my part have
made you today a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall, against the
whole land – against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the
people of the land”.
The question arises whether Savonarola was a
genuine prophet or whether he was self-deluded, mistaking for the heated
imaginations of his own religious fervor, direct communications from God.
Alexander VI. made Savonarola’s “silly declaration of being a prophet” one of
the charges against him.
Cf. e.g. Jeremiah 29:27: ‘So now why have you not
rebuked Jeremiah … who plays the prophet for you?”
Prior to any further push for canonisation, it may
be worthwhile reviewing Savonarola’s legacy regarding the Church, and the
papacy, and his supposed anti-culturalism, such as “paintings by Botticelli and
books by Petrarch and Boccaccio were also pitched into the flames …”.
And, indeed, much else.
