Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

it to God." `050514 He proposed that Florence should think of its

government as having an invisible king- Christ Himself; and under this

theocracy he predicted Utopia: "O Florence! then wilt thou be rich

with spiritual and temporial wealth; thou wilt achieve the reformation

of Rome, of Italy, of all countries; the wings of thy greatness

shall spread over the world." `050515 And in truth Florence had seldom

been so happy before. It was a bright moment in the hectic history

of virtue.

But human nature remained. Men are not naturally virtuous, and

social order maintains itself precariously amid the open or secret

conflict of egos, families, classes, races, and creeds. A powerful

element in the Florentine community itched for taverns, brothels,

and gambling halls as outlets for instincts or as sources of gain. The

Pazzi, the Nerli, the Capponi, the younger branch of the Medici, and

other aristocrats who had effected the expulsion of Piero were furious

at seeing the government fall into the hands of a friar. Remnants of

Piero's party survived, and watched for a chance to restore him and

their fortunes. The Franciscan friars worked with religious zeal

against the Dominican Savonarola, and a small group of skeptics called

for a plague on both their houses. These diverse enemies of the new

order agreed in satirizing its supporters as Piagnoni or weepers

(for many wept at Savonarola's sermons), Collitorti or wry-necks,

Stropiccioni or hypocrites, Masticapaternostri or prayer-munchers;

and the recipients of these titles denominated their opponents, from

the virulence of their hostility, Arrabiati, mad dogs. Early in 1496

the Arrabiati succeeded in electing their candidate for gonfalonier,

Filippo Corbizzi. Having assembled in the Palazzo Vecchio a council of

ecclesiastics, he summoned Savonarola before it, and accused him of

political activities improper in a friar; and several churchmen,

including one of his own Dominican order, joined in the charge. He

replied: "Now the words of the Lord are fulfilled: 'The sons of my

mother have fought against me.'... To be concerned with the affairs of

this world... is no crime in a monk unless he should mix in them

without any higher aim, and without seeking to promote the cause of

religion." `050516 They challenged him to say whether his sermons were

inspired by God, but he refused to answer. He returned to his cell a

sadder man.

He might have overcome his enemies had foreign affairs favored

him. The Florentines, who praised liberty, were furious at Pisa for

demanding and securing it. Even Savonarola dared not defend the

rebellious city; and a cathedral canon who remarked that the Pisans

too had a right to be free was severely punished by a Piagnone

Signory. Savonarola promised to restore Pisa to Florence, and rashly

claimed that he held Pisa in the hollow of his hand; but he was, as

Machiavelli scornfully said, a prophet without arms. When Charles VIII

was chased from Italy, Pisa consolidated its independence by an

alliance with Milan and Venice; and the Florentines mourned that

Savonarola had tied them to Charles's falling star, and that they

alone had not shared in the glorious expulsion of the French from

Italy. `050517 Before abandoning the lately Florentine fortresses of

Sarzana and Pietra Santa, their French commandants had sold one to

Genoa and the other to Lucca. Montepulciano, Arezzo, Volterra, and

other Florentine dependencies were agitated by movements for

liberation; the once proud and powerful city seemed on the verge of

losing nearly all its outlying possessions, and all its trade

outlets by the Arno, the Adriatic, and the roads to Milan and Rome.

Trade suffered, tax revenues fell. The Council tried to finance the

war against Pisa by forced loans from rich citizens, offering them

government bonds in return; but as bankruptcy neared these bonds

declined to eighty to fifty to ten per cent of their face value. In

1496 the treasury was exhausted, and the government imitated Lorenzo

by borrowing money from a fund confided to the state to provide

dowries for poor brides. In the administration of government funds,

whether by Arrabiati or Piagnoni, corruption and incompetence rose

and spread. Francesco Valori, made gonfalonier (January, 1497) by a

Piagnone majority in the Council, maddened the Mad Dogs by excluding

them from all magistracies, denying them membership in the Council

if they were delinquent in taxes, allowing none but Piagnoni to

address the Council, and expelling from Florence any Franciscan

friar who preached against Savonarola. For eleven months in 1496

rain fell almost daily, ruining the crops of the narrowed

hinterland; in 1497 people dropped dead of hunger in the streets.

The government opened relief stations to provide grain for the poor;

women were crushed to death in the multitudes that applied. The

Medicean party plotted to restore Piero; five leaders were detected

and were condemned to death (1497); appeal to the Council,

guaranteed by the constitution, was refused them; they were executed

within a few hours of their condemnation; and many Florentines

contrasted the faction, violence, and severity of the Republic with

the order and peace of Lorenzo's time. Hostile crowds repeatedly

demonstrated before Savonarola's monastery; Piagnoni and Arrabiati

stoned each other in the streets. When the friar preached on Ascension

Day of 1497 his sermon was interrupted by a riot in which his

enemies tried to seize him and were repulsed by his friends. A

gonfalonier proposed to the Signory that he should be banished as a

means of quieting the city, and the proposal was lost by a single

vote. Amid this bitter collapse of his dream Savonarola faced and

defied the strongest power in Italy.

III. THE MARTYR

-

Pope Alexander VI was not deeply disturbed by Savonarola's criticism

of the clergy or of the morals of Rome. He had heard the like

before; hundreds of ecclesiastics, for centuries past, had

complained that many priests lived immoral lives, and that the popes

loved wealth and power more than became the vicars of

Christ. `050518 Alexander was of a genial temperament; he did not mind

a little criticism so long as he felt secure in the Apostolic chair.

What disturbed him in Savonarola was the friar's politics. Not the

semidemocratic nature of the new constitution; Alexander had no

special interest in the Medici, and perhaps preferred in Florence a

weak republic to a strong dictatorship. Alexander feared another

French invasion; he had joined in forming a league of Italian states

to expel Charles VIII and to discourage a second French attack; he

resented the adherence of Florence to its alliance with France,

considered Savonarola the power behind this policy, and suspected

him of secret correspondence with the French government. Savonarola

wrote to Charles VIII about this time three letters seconding the

proposal of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere that the King should call a

general council of ecclesiastics and statesmen to reform the Church

and depose Alexander as "an infidel and a heretic." `050519 Cardinal

Ascanio Sforza, representing Milan at the papal court, urged the

Pope to end the friar's preaching and influence.

On July 21, 1495 Alexander wrote a brief note to Savonarola:

-

To our well-beloved son, greeting and the apostolic benediction.

We have heard that of all the workers in the Lord's vineyard thou

art the most zealous; at which we deeply rejoice, and give thanks to

Almighty God. We have likewise heard that thou dost assert thy

predictions proceed not from thee but from God. *05017 Therefore we

desire, as behooves our pastoral office, to have speech with thee

considering these things; so that, being by these means better

informed of God's will, we may be better able to fulfill it.

Wheretofore, by thy vow of holy obedience, we enjoin thee to wait on

us without delay, and shall welcome thee with loving kindness. `050520

-

This letter was a triumph for Savonarola's enemies, for it placed

him in a situation where he must either end his career as a

reformer, or flagrantly disobey the Pope. He feared that once in the

papal power he would never be allowed to return to Florence; he

might end his days in a Sant' Angelo dungeon; and if he did not come

back his supporters would be ruined. On their advice he replied to

Alexander that he was too ill to travel to Rome. That the Pope's

motives were political appeared when he wrote to the Signory on

September 8 protesting against the continued alliance of Florence with

France, and exhorting the Florentines not to endure the reproach of

being the only Italians allied with the enemies of Italy. At the

same time he ordered Savonarola to desist from preaching, to submit to

the authority of the Dominican vicar-general in Lombardy; and to go

wherever the vicar-general should bid him. Savonarola replied

(September 29) that his congregation was unwilling to subordinate

itself to the vicar-general, but that meanwhile he would refrain

from preaching. Alexander, in a conciliatory response (October 16),

repeated his prohibition of preaching, and expressed the hope that

when Savonarola's health should permit he would come to Rome, to be

received in "a joyful and fatherly spirit." `050521 There, for a year,

Alexander let the problem rest.

Meanwhile the prior's party had recaptured control of the Council

and the Signory. The emissaries of the Florentine government in Rome

besought the Pope to withdraw his interdict on the friar's

preaching, urging that Florence needed his moral stimulus in Lent.

Alexander seems to have given a verbal consent, and on February 17,

1496, Savonarola resumed his preaching in the cathedral. About this

time Alexander commissioned a learned Dominican bishop to examine

Savonarola's published sermons for heresy. The bishop reported:

"Most Holy Father, this friar says nothing that is not wise and

honest; he speaks against simony and the corruption of the priesthood,

which in truth is very great; he respects the dogmas and authority

of the Church; wherefore I would rather seek to make him my friend- if

need be by offering him the cardinal's purple." `050522 Alexander

complaisantly sent a Dominican to Florence to offer Savonarola the red

hat. The friar felt not complimented but shocked; this, to him, was

but another instance of simony. His answer to Alexander's emissary

was: "Come to my next sermon, and you will have my reply to

Rome." `050523

His first sermon of the year reopened his conflict with the Pope. It

was an event in the history of Florence. Half the excited city

wished to hear him, and even the vast duomo could not contain all

who sought entry, though within they were crowded so tightly that no

one could move. A group of armed friends escorted the prior to the

cathedral. He began by explaining his long absence from the pulpit,

and affirming his full loyalty to the teachings of the Church. But

then he issued an audacious challenge to the Pope:

-

The superior may not give me any command contrary to the rules of my

order; the pope may not give any command opposed to charity or the

Gospel. I do not believe that the pope would ever seek to do so; but

were he so to do I should say to him, "Now thou art no pastor, thou

art not the Church of Rome, thou art in error."... Whenever it be

clearly seen that the commands of superiors are contrary to God's

commandments, and especially when contrary to the precepts of charity,

no one is in such case bound to obedience.... Were I to clearly see

that my departure from a city would be the spiritual and temporal ruin

of the people, I would obey no living man that commanded me to

depart... forasmuch as in obeying him I should disobey the commands of

the Lord. `050524

-

In a sermon for the second Sunday in Lent he denounced the morals of

Christendom's capital in harsh terms: "One thousand, ten thousand,

fourteen thousand harlots are few for Rome, for there both men and

women are made harlots." `050525 These sermons were spread

throughout Europe by the new marvel, the printing press, and were read

everywhere, even by the sultan of Turkey. They aroused a war of

pamphlets in and out of Florence, some of them accusing the friar of

heresy and indiscipline, others defending him as a prophet and a

saint.

Alexander sought an indirect escape from open war. In November,

1496, he ordered the union of all Tuscan Dominican monasteries in a

new Tuscan-Roman Congregation, to be directly under the authority of

Padre Giacomo da Sicilia. Padre Giacomo was favorably disposed

toward Savonarola, but would presumably accept a papal suggestion to

transfer the friar to another environment. Savonarola refused to

obey the order of union, and took his case over the head of the Pope

to the public at large in a pamphlet called "An Apology of the

Brethren of San Marco." "This union," he argued, "is impossible,

unreasonable, and hurtful, nor can the brethren of San Marco be

bound to agree to it, inasmuch as superiors may not issue commands

contrary to the rules of the order, nor contrary to the law of charity

or the welfare of our souls." `050526 Technically all monastic

congregations were directly subject to the popes; a pope might

compel the merger of congregations against their will; Savonarola

himself, in 1493, had approved Alexander's order uniting the Dominican

Congregation of St. Catherine's at Pisa, against its will, with

Savonarola's Congregation of St. Mark. `050527 Alexander, however,

took no immediate action. Savonarola continued to preach, and issued

to the public a series of letters defending his defiance of the Pope.

As the Lenten season of 1497 approached, the Arrabiati prepared to

celebrate carnival by such festivities, processions, and songs as

had been sanctioned under the Medici. To counter these plans

Savonarola's loyal aide, Fra Domenico, instructed the children of

the congregation to organize a quite different celebration. During the

week of Carnival- preceding Lent- these boys and girls went about

the city in bands, knocked at doors, and asked for- sometimes

demanded- the surrender of what they called "vanities" or cursed

objects ( anathemase )- pictures considered immoral, love songs,

carnival masks and costumes, false hair, fancy dresses, playing cards,

dice, musical instruments, cosmetics, wicked books like the

Decameron or the Morgante maggiore .... On the final day of

Carnival, February 7, the more ardent supporters of Savonarola,

singing hymns, marched in solemn procession, behind a figure of the

Infant Jesus carved by Donatello and borne by four children in the

guise of angels, to the Piazza della Signoria. There a great pyramid

of combustible material had been raised, 60 feet high and 240 feet

in circumference at the base. Upon the seven stages of the pyramid the

"vanities" collected during the week, or now brought to the sacrifice,

were arranged or thrown, including precious manuscripts and works of

art. Fire was set to the pyre at four points, and the bells of the

Palazzo Vecchio were rung to acclaim this first Savonarolan "burning

of the vanities." *05018

The Lenten sermons of the friar carried the war to Rome. While

accepting the principle that the Church should have some terra firma

of temporal power, he argued that the wealth of the Church was the

source of her deterioration. His invective now knew no bounds.

-

The earth teems with bloodshed, yet the priests take no heed;

rather, by their evil example, they bring spiritual death upon all.

They have withdrawn from God, and their piety consists in spending

their nights with harlots.... They say that God hath no care of the

world, that all cometh by chance; neither believe they that Christ

is present in the sacrament.... Come hither, thou ribald Church. The

Lord saith: I gave thee beautiful vestments, but thou hast made

idols of them. Thou hast dedicated the sacred vessels to vainglory,

the sacraments to simony. Thou hast become a shameless harlot in thy

lusts; thou art lower than a beast; thou art a monster of abomination.

Once thou felt shame for thy sins, but now thou art shameless. Once

anointed priests called their sons nephews, but now they speak of

their sons.... *05019 And thus, O prostitute Church, thou hast

displayed thy foulness to the whole world, and stinkest unto

heaven. `050528

-

Savonarola suspected that such tirades would earn him

excommunication. He welcomed it.

-

Many of ye say that excommunication will be decreed.... For my

part I beseech Thee, O Lord, that it may come quickly.... Bear this

excommunication aloft on a lance, open the gates to it! I will reply

to it: and if I do not amaze thee, then thou mayest say what thou

wilt.... O Lord, I seek only Thy cross! Let me be persecuted; I ask

this grace of Thee. Let me not die in my bed, but let me give my blood

for Thee, even as Thou gavest thine for me. `050529

-

These passionate sermons created a furore throughout Italy. Men came

from distant cities to hear them; the duke of Ferrara came in

disguise; the crowd overflowed from the cathedral into the square, and

each striking sentence was relayed from those within to those without.

In Rome the people turned almost unanimously against the friar, and

called for his punishment. `050530 In April, 1497 the Arrabiati

secured control of the Council, and- on pretext of danger from the

plague- forbade all preaching in the churches after May 5. Urged on by

Roman agents of the Arrabiati, Alexander signed a decree

excommunicating the friar (May 13); but he let it be known that he

would rescind the excommunication if Savonarola would obey the summons

to Rome. The prior, fearing imprisonment, still refused, but for six

months he held his peace. Then on Christmas Day he sang High Mass at

San Marco, gave the Eucharist to his friars, and led them in a

solemn procession around the square. Many were scandalized at an

excommunicate celebrating Mass, but Alexander made no protest; on

the contrary he intimated that he would withdraw the excommunication

if Florence would join the league to resist a second invasion from

France. `050531 The Signory, gambling on the success of the French,

rejected the proposal. On February 11, 1498, Savonarola completed

his rebellion by preaching in San Marco. He denounced the

excommunication as unjust and invalid, and charged with heresy any man

who should uphold its validity. Finally he issued an excommunication

himself:

-

Therefore, on him that giveth commands opposed to charity

anathema sit [let there be a curse]. Were such a command

pronounced by an angel, even by the Virgin Mary herself and all the

saints (which is certainly impossible), anathema sit .... And if

any pope hath ever spoken to the contrary, let him be declared

excommunicate. `050532

-

On the last day before Lent Savonarola read Mass in the open

square before San Marco's, administered the sacrament to a great

multitude, and publicly prayed: "O Lord, if my deeds be not sincere,

if my words be not inspired by Thee, strike me dead on this

instant." That afternoon his followers staged a second burning of

the vanities.

Alexander informed the Signory that unless it could dissuade

Savonarola from further preaching he would lay an interdict upon the

city. Though now thoroughly hostile to the prior, the Signory

refused to silence him, preferring to let the onus of such a

prohibition remain with the Pope; besides, the eloquent friar might be

useful in combating a pope who was organizing the Papal States into

a power too strong for the comfort of its neighbors. Savonarola

continued to preach, but only in the church of his monastery. The

Florentine ambassador reported that feeling against the friar was so

intense in Rome that no Florentine was safe there; and he feared

that if the Pope issued the threatened interdict all Florentine

merchants in Rome would be thrown into jail. The Signory yielded,

and ordered Savonarola to quit preaching (March 17). He obeyed, but

predicted great calamities for Florence. Fra Domenico filled the

convent pulpit in his stead, and served as the voice of his prior.

Meanwhile Savonarola wrote to the sovereigns of France, Spain,

Germany, and Hungary, begging them to call a general council for the

reform of the Church:

-

The moment of vengeance has arrived. The Lord commands me to

reveal new secrets, and make manifest to the world the peril by

which the bark of St. Peter is threatened, owing to your long neglect.

The Church is all teeming with abomination, from the crown of her head

to the soles of her feet; yet not only do ye apply no remedy, but ye

do homage to the cause of the woes by which she is polluted. Wherefore

the Lord is greatly angered, and hath long left the Church without a

shepherd.... For I hereby testify... that this Alexander is no pope,

nor can be held as one; inasmuch as, leaving aside the mortal sin of

simony, by which he hath purchased the papal chair, and daily

selleth the benefices of the Church to the highest bidder, and

likewise putting aside his other manifest vices, I declare that he

is no Christian, and believes in no God. `050533

-

If, he added, the kings will call a council he will appear before it

and give proof of all these charges. One of these letters was

intercepted by a Milanese agent, and was sent to Alexander.

On March 25, 1498 a Franciscan friar, preaching in the church of

Santa Croce, turned the drama of the case upon himself by

challenging Savonarola to an ordeal of fire. He stigmatized the

Dominican as a heretic and false prophet, and offered to walk

through fire if Savonarola would do the same. He expected, he said,

that both of them would be burned, but hoped by his sacrifice to

free Florence from the disorders that had been caused by a proud

Dominican's disobedience of the Pope. Savonarola rejected the

challenge; Domenico accepted it. The hostile Signory seized the chance

to discredit a prior who in its view had become a troublesome

demagogue. It approved of the resort to medieval methods, and arranged

that on April 7 Fra Giuliano Rondinelli of the Franciscans and Fra

Domenico da Pescia should enter a fire in the Piazza della Signoria.

On the appointed day the great square was filled with a crowd

eager to enjoy a miracle or the sight of human suffering. Every window

and roof overlooking the scene was occupied with spectators. In the

center of the square, athwart a passage two feet wide, twin pyres

had been erected of wood mixed with pitch, oil, resin, and

gunpowder, guaranteed to make a searing flame. The Franciscan friars

took their stand in the Loggia dei Lanzi; the Dominicans marched in

from the opposite direction; Fra Domenico carried a consecrated

Host, Savonarola a crucifix. The Franciscans complained that Fra

Domenico's red cape might have been charmed into incombustibility by

the prior; they insisted on his discarding it; he protested; the crowd

urged him to yield; he did. The Franciscans asked him to remove

Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.