Savonarola, the Unarmed Prophet

Girolamo Savonarola wasn't the typical Dominican friar. He began protesting moral corruption in the clergy at a young age. Eventually he came to Florence, the dominion of the powerful and decadent Medici clan. Tune in and learn what happened next.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downy, and it is
a gorgeous day in Atlanta today it feels like spring.
But Sarah, you know, I was taking this walk earlier

(00:22):
in the sunshine, and I was wondering if you'd thought
about the last days lately, you know, Redney Revelation, Maybe
thought about how you'd like to spend the apocalypse. No,
I's not, Katie. Well, I really think you should, and
I think you should repent, and I think you should reform.
I would like to go burn your books and your makeup,
and I want you to stop telling jokes. I'm really

(00:45):
not interested in that. Not interested in burning my things,
especially my body CELLI paintings and my priceless books. Um
So no, thanks us, Sorry, sir, it's it's not me.
I was channeling our subject for to day, Gerlamo Savonarola,
and I read a good quote about him earlier in
an article by Donald Weinstein in History Today, and he

(01:08):
was quoting Machiavelli, who was thinking of Savonarola when he
wrote Unarmed prophets are bound to fail. So Savonarola is
known as a book burner, a destroyer of Boticelli paintings,
and his sermons are full of fire in brimstone, and
that's probably how you know him. But he's also a
reformer of the church, the government, the scourge of Lorenzo

(01:30):
de Medici, and an enemy of Pope Alexander the seventh.
He died by fire, and some think he should be
made a saint. Who was this man? We're going to
take you to his early life, like we like to do.
He was born in fourteen fifty two in Ferrara, and
he got his book learning and also his moral education

(01:50):
from his grandfather Michelle, who was both a doctor and
a medieval scholar. And Grandpa's sense of morality definitely rubbed
off on the child Alamo. He seems like a pretty
serious kid at one point, I think in his teens
he references the blind wickedness of the peoples of Italy,
which sounds like something I also would have written in
my middle school diary. Oh that's pretty dramatic, Katie. He's

(02:12):
a very dramatic twelve year old. So he gets a
liberal arts degree and starts studying medicine, but he leaves
it all behind in fourteen seventy five to become a
Dominican priest in Bologna. Right, he's found his calling. It's
not in medicine, it's in religious life. And in fourteen
eighty two, Savonarola left for Florence, which was called the
city of his destiny and many of my sources, and

(02:34):
he became a lecturer at the Convent of San Marco.
But he doesn't really impress anyone. His sermons are kind
of boring. He's not a great public speaker. He doesn't
make much of a mark on the city, and so
he leaves for a while, returns to Bologna to act
as a master of studies in fourteen eighty seven, and
then embarks on a year of traveling and preaching. And

(02:55):
sometime during this time he has a revelation and everything
changes for him. Yeah, and he returns to Florence in
fourteen ninety and this is when he begins to make
his reputation for great sermons. And yeah, like you've said,
something happens to him spiritually, but something also happens to
him in terms of public speaking. He's really compelling now

(03:17):
a lot of his sermons are prophetic too. He predicts
the date of Innocent the Eighth's death, for example, and
the theme of most of them is corruption. Corruption of
the city and the government and the church that have
all been ruined by vices, and he wants reform, and
that's what he's proposing through these radical sermons. He believed

(03:38):
that the church would need to be scourged before it
could be renewed, and he preached again a lot about
the apocalypse and the end days and for all the
fire and brims. It was so very fiery. He also
preached specifically about how corrupt and greedy the Medici are,
which makes him a powerful enemy and Lorenzo de Medici.

(03:58):
While he's advocating a set us is um, he's also
busy predicting Lorenzo's death. So Lorenzo the Medici is known
for some pretty amazing accomplishments. We've already talked about some
of them in our Popsy Conspiracy podcast, mostly how he
managed to survive the Pozzy conspiracy. But he's also known
as the father of the Italian Renaissance. He's brilliant, he's important,

(04:21):
he's from a huge, powerful family and he's got a
lot of personal talents, like if he writes poetry, he's
a patron of the arts, but he's not necessarily loved.
And one historian who we also mentioned in our earlier
podcasts referred to his style of government as a benevolent tyranny.
So Lorenzo wants Savonarola to stop these sermons. They're they're

(04:43):
threatening him, and they're threatening the power of the Medici.
And he does what Medici, the Medici family does best,
which is to to try to threaten, try to bribe um.
But Savonarola is immune to this. He's not a player
in this whole name, and he lives by a very
strict moral code. He doesn't just apply it to other people,

(05:03):
he also applies it to himself. And so none of
this works. But soon Lorenzo gets very ill, and there's
this legend that Savonarola refused to give Lorenzo absolution in
his dying days, but there's actually no evidence to support this.
It's not true. It's a slur on Savonarola's character. And
he did give a blessing to Lorenzo, his enemy before

(05:23):
he died, which Katie and I were talking about this earlier.
But I don't quite understand why Lorenzo would have Savonarola
at his death when you I don't. I mean, unless
it's just because he was such a prominent and powerful figure.
But I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of nice Medici,
friendly priests and town probably family members. You know. If

(05:44):
you have an idea, drop us an email history podcast
at how stuff works dot com. But going back to Savonarola,
he's only growing in popularity during this time. This message
of reform in government and in the church has really
struck a chord with the Florentines. And now that Lorenzo
the Magnificent is dead, what will happen to Savonarola? So

(06:06):
the Medici are overthrown and eggsiled. When Charles the eighth
of France invades Italy um Savonarola had predicted this, and
he tries to make it happen. He sees his chance
to to make the changes that he deemed so necessary
for Florence, right, knocking everything down so you can starting overbuild.
And if that sounds a little traitorous to you, it

(06:28):
also did to Pope Alexander the sixth, who wasn't the
greatest pope. If you remember our podcast on the Crazia Borgia,
this was her father. So yes, the pope had several
children actually, And of course this kind of behavior is
the kind of thing that Savonarola wanted to stamp out completely.
He thought the papacy had become a mockery, or, if

(06:51):
not the papacy in general, because he did still have
respect for the pope, but the clergy wasn't living like
they should in this pope in particular, really bugs Savonarola.
So Savonarola basically takes over in Florence, but it wasn't
a move of ambition. His motive wasn't about power. He
wanted to dedicate Florence to God. He felt that both

(07:13):
his religion and Florence had strayed too far from the path,
and he wanted to bring them back to the fold.
And he did some pretty fantastic things in Florence. His
contemporaries were amazed with how he'd managed to turn this
city around, and as government corruption is still prevalent pretty
much everywhere, it's a pretty fantastic accomplishment. But of course

(07:36):
people are jealous of this kind of success, especially if
you're if you're striking down a system of patronage and
bribes that's been in place for ages, people are going
to be upset about that. His opposition is a party
known as the Arabbiati, and I will try very hard
not to say a rabbiata like the sauce throughout the
rest of this podcast. They were Florentine and they had

(07:58):
some powerful friends, the Duke of Milan, and of course
the Pope, and the Pope had an axe to grind
with Savona Rola, not just because of the corruption stuff.
He wanted Florence to join the Holy League or the
Holy Alliance, which was a group against the King of
France that's somewhat united Italians. It's maybe a precursor to

(08:18):
the Resorgimento, but it required Florence to join, and they
didn't want to. This could have been because of old
Florentine ties to France, or it could have been Savonarola
who was in the way, but either way, the Pope
thought the best way to get around this was to
target Savona Rolla. So a brief from Alexander to Savonarola
appears in July, and in it he's praising Savonarola, you

(08:42):
know you're doing a really really great job, such a
great job in fact, that you should come to Rome
and tell me all about these amazing prophecies you're having,
because I'd really like to hear Savonarola's responses along the
lines of, uh, yeah, you know, I think I'm not
feeling eight. Maybe we could do this some other time,

(09:02):
because he knows it's a trap. He knows Alexander is
bad news. You heard in our the Crazia Borgia podcast
how the Borgia's like to dispatch with their enemies, and
Savonarola wants no part of it. But the Pope is
not going to be put off quite that easily, and
Savonarola is an obstacle to what he wants, what he
wants to happen, and so in September he sends another brief.

(09:26):
This time he's saying, go to Bologna or I'll excommunicate you.
Savonarola is still unwilling to accede to these bizarre and
kind of frightening demands from the Pope, though, and pressured
by the Holy League, the Pope writes another brief in
September forbidding Savonarola to preach anymore. He relents a bit
near lent and doesn't enforce it. And this is when

(09:48):
Savonarola gives what some call his best sermons. But I
don't think he was, you know, taking it easy and
playing it cool and laying off a little bit because
he'd riled up the Pope, because he's still decrying all
the same things and just as vocaling. Yeah, you would
think that you could kind of interpret these papal warnings
um as you know, you better watch your back and

(10:10):
and tone everything down a little. But he doesn't do
that at all. So there's still somewhat even an uneasy truce.
But things begin to escalate due to Savonarola's popularity. The
Pope offers him a Cardinals hat, and Savonarola's response is
a red hat. I want a hat of blood, so,
you know, a negative. And in fourteen, the Arabbiati in

(10:33):
the league have finally had it with Savonarola, so they
apply pressure to the Pope, and this time he incorporates
Savonarola's congregation, basically taking away his power. I kind of
try to think of it as redistricting. So suddenly he
Savonarola doesn't have anybody to preach to if he's going
to follow the pope's orders. And this of course proposes

(10:55):
a bit of a predicament for him, because if he
goes along with the Pope's you know, increasingly crazy town demands,
then everything he's worked for is gone. But if he doesn't,
he'll be excommunicated, which is a big, huge deal. So
he goes along with it, but again, no one really
enforces this order, so he keeps on a preaching people
keep on coming. So this brings list to probably the

(11:18):
most famous episodes of his life, which is the Bonfire
the vanities, and Savonarola is against so many things. But
you know, while you can't burn vices and sins like
greed or adultery or sodomy, you can burn expensive clothes
and jewelry and gambling equipment and makeup and pornography. And

(11:39):
while he did burn a lot of things, some of
his reputation is a bit unfair. He's generally been blamed
for destroying great books and art, but according to modern historians,
there are very few pieces that were destroyed. Although he
is connected to the painter Sandro Boticelli and some say
that he came under Savonarola's spell and that's when his

(11:59):
art changed, and that Boticelli himself through his own paintings
on the bonfire. We don't know if this is true
or not. A lot of people think it isn't, but
all can agree that his paintings did take a serious turn. Yeah,
they go from being these beautiful, bright paintings to being
very dark and gloomy. There there there's a world of

(12:20):
difference between them. So we have this tension still between
the Pope, the Duke of Milan, and Savonarola. It obviously
cannot go on forever. It's got a break at some point,
and who's gonna Who's gonna come out on top? Well again,
Savonarola is forbidden to preach, but now we have it.
The Pope finally does excommunicate him, but the Arabbiati had

(12:43):
actually bribed the Roman Curia for this pool of excommunication,
and it's riddled with mistakes. I think at one point
the Pope actually says he didn't even write it because
it's so incredibly bizarre it wouldn't even have been valid. Well,
and it's interesting that they have to bribe him too,
because you. And though the Pope clearly does not like Savonarola,
he's not willing to take this step himself, so risky,

(13:07):
and the whole thing is just ridiculous. It's very sneaky,
it's very underhanded. The Florentine government knows it. They're a
bit up in arms. Savonarola doesn't respond to this at all.
He just retreats and he prays, and then Rome says,
you know, we'll take the whole excommunication thing back if
Florence joins the alliance. So Savonarola preaches on exodus, which, yeah,

(13:28):
that's symbolism for you. And he's not supposed to be preaching,
of course, And so the city is threatened with interdict,
which we also talked a bit about in our Popsy
Conspiracy podcast. But that's when you know you're not allowed
to worship. Several religious ceremonies are suspended. It's a big deal.
And Savonarola starts to write appeals to the church council,

(13:49):
but then he burns the letters. Perhaps he just didn't
want to go behind the Pope's back or start any
kind of internal conflict, because again he did respect the
office of the papacy. But he's clearly concerned about the
souls of Florentines. Yes, and so now we enter Frau
Domenico Dipacia, who is one of Savonarola's followers. So to

(14:10):
give this story, there is another priest, a Franciscan, who
said that Savonarola's excommunication was in fact valid and that
he shouldn't be violating the Pope's order by preaching. And
the Franciscans in general weren't huge fans of Savonarola's very
passionate fire and brimstone type of methods. They also thought

(14:30):
it was ridiculous that he said he communicated directly with
God and the saints, that maybe he was even a heretic.
So the Franciscan issues a challenge to the Dominicans and
he says, if you think this excommunication isn't valid, you
should undergo an ordeal by fire. You know, of course,
what else would you do. So a representative is picked
from each side. It's going to be a fire off contest,

(14:54):
and if the Dominican dies, Savonarola will be banished. If
the Franciscan dies, then for a Francesco is banished. So
the people as Savonarola's side hope that he'll perform a miracle,
save his guys, save the dominican Um. His opponents hope
that he'll mess it up. Maybe um the two priests

(15:14):
will both die or something dramatic will happen, and Savonarola
will be left looking embarrassed and exposed as a fraud
or not everything that he said he could be, because
he set himself up as this incredibly powerful person, you know,
with his direct line to God and to the saints,
and so both sides are looking at him to see

(15:35):
what he'll prove himself to be. Savonarola himself thinks this
ordeal by fire is a terrible idea, so does the Pope,
but everyone else is just really excited by the drama
of the Florentines. Oh yes. Savonarola does, however, say that
it's been revealed to him that his side will win,
although it wasn't mentioned to him whether the ordeal would
actually take place, which is a bit convenient. Well, and

(15:58):
that's a great way to to stoke a drama without
actually having to go through with it, you know, Like,
why do we even need to burn anybody? Because I
know my side is gonna win. But anyways, they argue
over every little detail of this burning and it doesn't
end up happening, and this leaves everyone pretty dissatisfied, i'd imagine,
except for the guys who are going to be burned.
People want spectacle, they want a miracle, and Savonarola has

(16:21):
failed to deliver. And the next day there is a riot.
Savona Rola's people are at the Duomo. They're listening to
a sermon and the opposition shows up with rocks, at
which point they all retreat to San Marco, which is
then attacked the convent and there's a bloody fight between
both sides, with Savonarola urging an end to the violence, saying,

(16:43):
you know, please, let's fight with prayer and not with weapons.
But it's taken on a life of its own. At
this point there are people fighting on the altar and
Savonarola is completely horrified. I imagine him sitting here wondering
how he'd ended up at the center of all of this.
So he and Frau Domenica, the Dominican follower, are taken

(17:04):
and there are two investigations of him and fred Domenico
and Frost Silvestro, the third guy involved in this, and
the examiners are all enemies of Savonarola's so clearly this
is going to be a really fair thing. Right from
the beginning, he's savagely tortured um, which of course doesn't
usually result in reliable confessions. And we're not even sure

(17:24):
what he was accused of. Was it armed rebellion, was
it treason? The crimes seem really vague. Yes, Um that
he's tried in a secular court for crimes against the state,
and later in an ecclesiastical court for heresy and schism,
and he is convicted on all counts. So he's sentenced
to hang and burn, as are his two companions, and

(17:46):
they received absolution and die in front of a crowd
on May and some of the people in the crowd
are actually taunting Savonarola to perform a miracle, kind of
like Jesus. Yeah, it reminds me of another biblical story.
And we have to note that some people do consider
him to be a saint and a martyr. There are
many who's still clamor for his canonization. I'd also like

(18:08):
to add another detail. Apparently they were all hanged and
then there were chains holding them up on both sides
for when they were burned, so it looked a lot
like a crucifixion, claiming that exactly according to accounts, Savonarola
died with the lord's name on his lips, and people
picked up little bits of their bones that were left,
and the rest was thrown into the arno. So to conclude,

(18:33):
you have to think about, I guess what we make
of this man, because we've got this picture of him
as someone who you know, burns books, which in Sarah's
and my opinion, is a bit of a cardinal sin well,
and I'll say in an art history class, he is
so depicted as a villain, and of course he's not
a big fan of art. I disapproved of sex, he
disapproved of jokes. He prophesied, you know, doom and disaster.

(18:56):
But on the good side, he always fought for the
people against this ms he genuinely believed to be corrupt,
and he was right they were, and he was put
on a pedestal by the people, only to be abandoned
watching a church desecrated with fighting in his name. He
died in front of a crowd who taunted him, and
remained faithful so we're left with a few questions at

(19:16):
the end of this. You know, was this whole thing
about religion or was it about politics? Was it about
power or about higher motives? You know, like was he
really communicating with God and he felt he had to
do this? And also was it about one man, you know,
Savonarola versus the Catholic Church or was he just just
an excuse to to go after Florence? And was he

(19:40):
a heretic or a saint. Oh, we have our questions,
we don't have answers, So if you have an opinion,
please drop us an email at History Podcast at how
stuff Works dot com. And that brings us to listener mail.
So we got a lot of interesting responses about our
questions regarding the amber, especially the electricity in the amber room.

(20:03):
Listener Sean wrote, you mentioned that visitors of the amber
room mentioned the heat or energy from the walls. Amber
was used in early experiments with electricity. In fact, the
word electric comes from the Latin word electron in Greek
word electron, both meaning amber. I don't know if the
tour are related, but having so much amber in one place,
maybe even airflow can create enough friction to produce a

(20:25):
low charge, which, uh, that's certainly an interesting theory. Another
email we got from listener John, he sent lots of
cool pictures of his own trip to Katherine Palace in
the amber room, well not specifically the amber room. He
said that we were right, and you cannot photograph it.
You're not even allowed to linger in it. Apparently they

(20:46):
give you the tour highlights you walk through quickly, and
then they talked about it a little more on the
other side. But one interesting point he mentioned was that
the Katherine Palace is half a mile long, which I
think would make for some really good, luxurious indoor jogging
instead of making it to the gym, which I don't
think anyone enjoys. So going back to our topic for today, Savonarola.

(21:09):
If you'd like to learn a little bit more about censorship,
you should check out our article how does Banning a Bookwork?
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(21:31):
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