Villari's Savonarola

THE new edition of Professor Villari’s Savonarola,¹ which has been favorably known for a quarter of a century, includes notice of such fresh material as has come to light since its first issue, but without affecting the results of his previous study. In his learned preface he defends himself against some English critics who think that he, by adhering to former views, has purchased consistency at the price of ignoring later research, and in particular the remarks of Ranke upon the great Florentine monk; and His answer seems complete and satisfactory. he reaffirms his judgment that Savonarola was sincere in those prophecies which have been the stumbling-block in the way of an appreciation of him by modern minds, and insists once more on the important point that they were only one portion of his life, which in other parts was distinguished by the highest usefulness through his sagacity, intellectual acuteness, and moral fervor. He ranks Savonarola, as before, with those who, in the long line of history, have endeavored to reconcile reason with faith and religion with liberty.

The difficulty which arises in the attempt to realize to the mind the extraordinary characters of the Italian Renaissance is due to the number of elements which mingled in its life, the very wealth of the time in vital influences, and quite as much to the disparity of these elements. One finds in it something of the childishness and maturity of mind existing together which is so striking in Plato; but to concentrate attention upon Plato’s physical theories and mathematical mysticism would be to gather the chaff and throw away the grain. Similarly, if Savonarola, in an age when the spiritual was inextricably blended with the supernatural, believed in direct revelations vouchsafed to him in visions, he was not singular in such superstition ; other men of his age, eminent for mental force and intellectual subtlety, men of science even, as science went in those days, were also deep in supernaturalism, and the victims of its delusions. To fasten the eye on this trait of the monk, and judge him by it, is to make a grave error. The perspective of thought changes in succeeding ages, and things loomed large in the Platonic academy of Florence that have now receded far into the distance. It so happened that this single misconception of Savonarola with respect to his gift of prophecy was the occasion of his fall, and gave to it those dramatic incidents of the Ordeal by Fire and its consequences, which impress the mind so vividly as to make it lose sight of much that was of more importance in the career of the self-deceived seer. Villari was the first to notice, for example, the character of Savonarola’s metaphysics, and to find in his little-known minor treatises a philosophy having much affinity with Campanella’s doctrines, and in general in the line of tendency out of which modern metaphysics resulted. This, however, was a small matter to a man who, from the circumstances of his time, was led more to solve the problem of reconciling religion with liberty than reason with faith. This task was the one he set his hand to, and in which he was martyred. The history of it is a most interesting episode, not only in the course of events at Florence, but in the theory of politics.

To Savonarola it was a practical matter, immediate and pressing, and to it he addressed himself both as a reformer and as a statesman. The contest of Florence with the Medici and with the Pope was one in which liberty was involved first of all, and into it Savonarola imported religion. In the early stages of the revolution which had exiled Piero, he gave to Florence a government based upon popular principles, of a type that won for him after his death the encomium of political thinkers, the respectful mention of Machiavelli, and the warm eulogy of Guicciardini. If, as is said by his critics, he did not originate these institutions, but adopted them, this course commends itself to the student of history as being the true method of statesmanship. But he went further than this, and required that the state be founded upon good morals and pure religion. In proclaiming Christ the King of Florence, nevertheless, he did not share in the dreams of those who were in later times known as the Fifth-Monarchy men; he did not attempt an ecclesiastical régime, of whatever nature, though his principles might have been bent to such an issue, — the sight of what was doing at Rome was sufficient to make him sever the Church from the world; but he did declare that the only hope of liberty lay in the moral rectitude and reverent piety of the people who would enjoy its continuance. Whenever he interfered with the course of events, and gave advice from the pulpit, or in the council, or on embassies, his political sagacity was clearly shown; indeed, his success in forecasting events which he helped to bring about, or which fortune occasioned, probably betrayed him into more confidence than he might otherwise have felt in the divination which he asserted as coming by Heaven ’s will to him, though in general his denunciations of vengeance resemble those of the prophets of Scripture, who believed in the necessary visiting of unrighteousness by calamity. But however it came to pass that events seemed at times to sustain his gift of prophecy, and so enhanced his popular influence and credit, it is to be taken as the just judgment of history that in the realm of local Florentine politics he was astute, wise, and successful to a degree which made his work as a man of affairs remarkable in the eyes of those who scoffed at the monk’s superstition.

The reform of Florence and the government and conduct of the state in its usual worldly routine were but a small part of what he thought his mission. He preached the reform of the Church itself; and when he was suddenly arrested, and found himself friendless, he was already acting to bring about a general council by a personal appeal to the kings of Christendom. Villari takes pains to show clearly the nature of his quarrel with Rome, and to deny that be was a precursor of Luther or in any sense a Protestant.His fidelity to the

Catholic faith was entire, and his submission to the Church often fully declared; but within the limits of orthodoxy in opinion and obedience in conduct he found sufficient ground to resist the papacy in what he considered a wrongful exercise of its power. He was a precursor, rather, of the counter-Reformation ; the successor of the saints who, in the foundation of the great orders, had in their day done what was possible for an earlier cleansing of the priesthood and purification of ecclesiastical morals. He was, in the broad and ethical sense, a Puritan, not a Protestant, and he possessed that enthusiasm in expression and courage in action which make a leader. He was dangerous enough to the Rome of the Borgias, but not by his prophecies; it was by his ideals and his acts in endeavoring to realize these ideals that he became the object of interminable plots, and finally the victim of his enemies. They laid hold of the weakness in his position and his nature to destroy him when they demanded that miracle which should prove that he was a prophet. The superstition of the time, which he breathed, and which in a fanatic temperament had such powerful effects, was his source of danger, and by this avenue he was first discredited and then put to death. So far as that great reform of the Church of which he dreamed was concerned, he had been no more than an agitator of opinion and a sign of the times to come.

But though these lines of character and of its work are constantly kept in view by the author, the interest of his story lies in the strong individuality of Savonarola, in the picturesqueness of his career of pious enthusiasm in times of violence and corruption, and in the general drama of Florence, in which this grand figure stands relieved. The paganism of the Renaissance, it is true, is not represented on its attractive side, but rather as it appeared to Savonarola, who could have but little sympathy with it. Villari thinks, nevertheless, that it is wrong to suppose that Savonarola was the unenlightened and barbarous destroyer that he is believed to have been by those who lament the hypothetical codexes and antiques supposed to have perished in the famous bonfire of the vanities which he twice kindled in holy carnival. The author does not think that there is reason for much sorrow, since Savonarola’s activity in preserving the Medicean library shows what high value he placed upon real treasures. It is shown, too, from his scheme of the sciences in what regard he held poetry, an art which he himself practiced. That he was a learned man is plain, and he was not without admiration for the refinements that go with learning. He did believe that Christianity was of more value to the world than paganism, as much as the infinite multiplies the finite ; and in this the history of the Renaissance eventually sustained him, for the corruption of Italy proceeded from the decadence of faith. To announce this while it seemed yet possible to effect reform was the work of his oratory in the pulpit; and notwithstanding his other capacities as a statesman, a thinker, an administrator, a writer, oratory was the principal instrument of his life, — an oratory which he regenerated and brought back from artifice and frivolity to true touch with the people, so that Villari would regald him, first in so many other things, as first in the line of modern orators. Villari, it may be thought from this and other remarks, has written a eulogy; it is truly and deservedly so.