Predici savonarola biography

In August,Savonarola began his sermons in the pulpit of San Marco with the interpretation of the Apocalypse. His success was complete. All Florence thronged to hear him, so that from his sermons in the cathedral he acquired a constantly growing influence over the people. In he became prior of the monastery of San Marco. He made manifest his feelings towards the ruler of Florence by failing to visit Lorenzo de Medici, although the Medici had always shown themselves generous patrons of the monastery.

Lorenzo took no notice of this but continued his benefits, without however changing the opinion of the new prior. Savonarola began at once with the inner reform of the monastery itself. San Marco and other monasteries of Tuscany were separated from the Lombard Congregation of the Dominican Order and were formed in with papal approval into an independent congregation.

Monastic life was reformed in this new congregation by rigid observance of the original Rule. Savonarola, who was the vicar-general of the new congregation, set the example of a strict life of self-mortification ; his cell was small and poor, his clothing coarse, his food simple and scanty. The lay brothers were obliged to learn a trade and the clerics were kept constantly at their studies.

Many new brethren entered the monastery ; from 50 the number of the monks of San Marco rose toamong them being members of the first families of the city. Meanwhile Savonarola preached with burning zeal and rapidly won great influence. He was looked upon and venerated by his followers as a prophet. His sermons, however were not free from extravagance and vagaries.

Without regard to consequences he lashed the immoral, vain-glorious, pleasure-seeking life of the Florentines, so that a very large part of the inhabitants became temporarily contrite and returned to the exercise of Christian virtue. Both his sermons and his whole predici savonarola biography made a deep impression. He bitterly attacked Lorenzo the Magnificent as the promoter of paganized art, of frivolous living, and as the tyrant of Florence.

Nevertheless, when on his death bed, Lorenzo summoned the stern preacher of morals to administer spiritual consolation to him. It is said that Savonarola demanded as a condition of absolution that Lorenzo restore its liberties to Florence; which, however, the latter refused to do. This however cannot be proved with absolute historical certainty.

From Savonarola spoke with increasing violence against the abuses in ecclesiastical life, against the immorality of a large part of the clergy, above all against the immoral life of many members of the Roman Curia, even of the wearer of the tiara, Alexander VI, and against the wickedness of princes and courtiers. In prophetic terms he announced the approaching judgment of God and the avenger from whom he hoped the reform of Church life.

Savonarola's denunciation of the Medici now produced its results. Lorenzo's son Pietro de Medici, who was hated both for his tyranny and his immoral life, was driven out of the city with his family. The French king, whom Savonarola at the head of an embassy of Florentines had visited at Pisa, now entered the city. After the king's departure a new and peculiar constitution, a kind of theocratic democracy, was established at Florence, based on the political and social doctrines the Dominican monk had proclaimed.

Christ was considered the King of Florence and protector of its liberties. He started to compose philosophical treatises taking into account Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. In or he was sent by his better than the lecture in Florence. He lectured in alternate urban areas of Italy amid the years At Brescia, inhe clarified the Book of Revelation and from that time turned out to be increasingly invested in Apocalyptic thoughts concerning his own particular time, the judgment of God which undermined it, and the recovery of the Church that was to take after.

In the meantime, he was loaded with an extreme enthusiasm for the salvation of souls and was prepared to hazard all so as to battle evil and to spread heavenliness of life. In he came back to Florence which was to be the scene of his future works and triumphs and additionally of his fall. Girolamo Savonarola's granddad, Michele Savonarola, was a prominent doctor and polymath, was the person who later helped Girolamo on his approach to gaining an expert of expressions degree at the University of Ferrara.

He was instructed by his fatherly granddad, Michele, a commended specialist and a man of inflexible good and religious standards. From this elderly researcher, whose own training was of the fourteenth century, Savonarola may have gotten certain medieval impacts. In his initial verse and other pre-adult compositions the principle qualities without bounds reformer are seen.

Indeed, even at that early date, as he wrote in a letter to his dad, he couldn't endure "the visually impaired insidiousness of the people groups of Italy. He saw as the reason for this spreading defilement a ministry horrible even in the most elevated amounts of the congregation progressive system. On April 24,he went out and his restorative studies, on which he had set out in the wake of taking a degree in the human sciences, to enter the Dominican request at Bologna.

The investigation of Scripture, together with the works of Thomas Aquinas, had dependably been his awesome energy. In Savonarola was sent to Florence to take up the post of speaker in the religious community of San Marco, where he picked up an awesome notoriety for his learning and self-denial. As a minister, he was unsuccessful until a sudden disclosure enlivened him to start his prophetic sermons.

At San Gimignano in Lent andhe set forward his popular recommendations: the congregation required improving; it would be scourged and afterward reestablished. The next year he cleared out Florence to end up expert of studies in the school of general learns at Bologna. InSavonarola lectured strongly against the oppressive misuse of the administration.

Past the point of no return, Lorenzo attempted to dam the perilous expressiveness with dangers and honeyed words, yet his own particular life was attracting to a nearby, while mainstream eagerness for Savonarola's proclaiming always expanded. Before long subsequently Savonarola gave his approval to the withering Lorenzo. The legend that he denied Lorenzo vindication is discredited by narrative proof.

Two years prior, Savonarola had anticipated his coming and his simple triumph. Once the Medici had been driven out, Florence had no other expert than Savonarola's horrible voice. As he told his father in his farewell letter, he wanted to become a knight of Christ. In the convent, Savonarola took the vow of obedience proper to his order, and after a year was ordained to the priesthood.

He studied Scripture, logic, Aristotelian philosophy and Thomistic theology in the Dominican studium, practised preaching to his fellow friars, and engaged in disputations. He then matriculated in the theological faculty to prepare for an advanced degree. Even as he continued to write devotional works and to deepen his spiritual life, he was openly critical of what he perceived as the predici savonarola biography in convent austerity.

In his studies were interrupted when he was sent to the Dominican priory of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Ferrara as assistant master of novices. The assignment might have been a normal, temporary break from the academic routine, but in Savonarola's case, it was a turning point. One explanation is that he had alienated certain of his superiors, particularly fra Vincenzo Bandelli, or Bandelloa professor at the studium and future master general of the Dominicans, who resented the young friar's opposition to modifying the Order's rules against the ownership of property.

Ininstead of returning to Bologna to resume his studies, Savonarola was assigned as lector, or teacher, in the Convent of San Marco in Florence. In San Marco, fra Girolamo Savonarola taught logic to the novices, wrote instructional manuals on ethics, logic, philosophy and government, composed devotional works, and prepared his sermons for local congregations.

Florentines were put off by his foreign-sounding Ferrarese speech, his strident voice and especially to those who valued humanist rhetoric his inelegant style. While waiting for a friend in the Convent of San Giorgio, he was studying Scripture when he suddenly conceived "about seven reasons" why the Church was about to be scourged and renewed. A year later, when he left San Marco for a new assignment, he had said nothing of his "San Giorgio revelations" in Florence.

For the next several years, Savonarola lived as an itinerant preacher with a message of repentance and reform in the cities and convents of north Italy. As his letters to his mother and his writings show, his confidence and sense of mission grew along with his widening reputation. It seems that this was due to the initiative of the humanist philosopher-prince, Giovanni Pico della Mirandolawho had heard Savonarola in a formal disputation in Reggio Emilia and been impressed with his learning and piety.

Pico was in trouble with the Church for some of his unorthodox philosophical ideas the famous " theses" and was living under the protection of Lorenzo the Magnificentthe Medici de facto ruler of Florence. Savonarola preached on the First Epistle of John and on the Book of Revelationdrawing such large crowds that he eventually moved to the cathedral.

Without mentioning names, he made pointed allusions to tyrants who usurped the freedom of the people, and he excoriated their allies, the rich and powerful who neglected and exploited the poor. Scoffers dismissed him as an over-excited zealot and "preacher of the desperate" and sneered at his growing band of followers as Piagnoni —"Weepers" or "Wailers", an epithet they adopted.

In Savonarola warned of "the Sword of the Lord over the earth quickly and soon" and envisioned terrible tribulations to Rome. Around these sermons have not survived he began to prophesy that a New Cyrus was coming over the mountains to begin the renewal of the Church. Charles advanced on Florence, sacking Tuscan strongholds and threatening to punish the city for refusing to support his expedition.

As the populace took to the streets to expel Piero the UnfortunateLorenzo de' Medici's son and successor, Savonarola led a delegation to the camp of the French king in mid-November He pressed Charles to spare Florence and enjoined him to take up his divinely appointed role as the reformer of the Church. After a short, tense occupation of the city, and another intervention by fra Girolamo as well as the promise of a huge subsidythe French resumed their journey southward on 28 November Savonarola now declared that by answering his call to penitence, the Florentines had begun to build a new Ark of Noah which had saved them from the waters of the divine flood.

Even more sensational was the message in his sermon of 10 December:. I announce this good news to the city, that Florence will be more glorious, richer, more powerful than she has ever been; First, glorious in the sight of God as well as of men: and you, O Florence will be the reformation of all Italy, and from here the renewal will begin and spread everywhere, because this is the navel of Italy.

Your counsels will reform all by the light and grace that God will give you. Second, O Florence, you will have innumerable riches, and God will multiply all things for you. Third, you will spread your empire, and thus you will have power temporal and spiritual. This astounding guarantee may have been an allusion to the traditional patriotic myth of Florence as the new Rome, which Savonarola would have encountered in his readings in Florentine history.

In any case, it encompassed both temporal power and spiritual leadership. With Savonarola's advice and support as a non-citizen and cleric he was ineligible to hold officea Savonarolan political "party", dubbed "the Frateschi", took shape and steered the friar's program through the councils. The oligarchs most compromised by their service to the Medici were barred from office.

A new constitution enfranchised the artisan class, opened minor civic offices to selection by lotand granted every citizen in good standing the right to a vote in a new parliament, the Consiglio Maggiore, or Great Council. At Savonarola's urging, the Frateschi government, after months of debate, passed a "Law of Appeal" to limit the longtime practice of using exile and capital punishment as factional weapons.

On 13 January he preached his great Renovation Sermon to a huge audience in the cathedral, recalling that he had begun prophesying in Florence four years earlier, although the divine light had come to him "more than fifteen, maybe twenty years ago". As he had foreseen, God had chosen Florence, "the navel of Italy", as his favourite and he repeated: if the city continued to do penance and began the work of renewal it would have riches, glory and power.

If the Florentines had any doubt that the promise of worldly power and glory had heavenly sanction, Savonarola emphasised this in a sermon of 1 Aprilin which he described his mystical journey to the Virgin Mary in heaven. At the celestial throne Savonarola presents the Holy Mother a crown made by the Florentine people and presses her to reveal their future.

Mary warns that the way will be hard both for the city and for him, but she assures him that God will fulfil his promises: Florence will be "more glorious, more powerful and richer than ever, extending its wings farther than anyone can imagine". She and her heavenly minions will protect the city against its enemies and support its alliance with the French.

In the New Jerusalem that is Florence predici savonarola biography and unity will reign. Buoyed by liberation and prophetic promise, the Florentines embraced Savonarola's campaign to rid the city of "vice". At his repeated insistence, new laws were passed against "sodomy" which included male and female same-sex relationsadultery, public drunkenness, and other moral transgressions, while his lieutenant Fra Silvestro Maruffi organised boys and young men to patrol the streets to curb immodest dress and behaviour.

An exchange of letters between the pope and the friar ended in an impasse which Savonarola tried to break by sending the pope "a little book" recounting his prophetic career and describing some of his more dramatic visions. This was the Compendium of Revelations, a self-dramatisation which was one of the farthest-reaching and most popular of his writings.

The pope was not mollified. He summoned the friar to appear before him in Rome, and when Savonarola refused, pleading ill health and confessing that he was afraid of being attacked on the journey, Alexander banned him from further preaching. For some months Savonarola obeyed, but when he saw his influence slipping he defied the pope and resumed his sermons, which became more violent in tone.

He not only attacked secret enemies at home whom he rightly suspected of being in league with the papal Curia, he condemned the conventional, or "tepid", Christians who were slow to respond to his calls. He dramatised his moral campaign with special Masses for the youth, processions, bonfires of the vanities and religious theatre in San Marco.

He and his close friend, the humanist poet Girolamo Benivienicomposed lauds and other devotional songs for the Carnival processions ofandreplacing the bawdy Carnival songs of the era of Lorenzo de' Medici. A number of them have survived. The writings of Savonarola spread widely to Germany and Switzerlandand due to Savonarola's life and death, many people started to see the papacy as corrupted and sought a new reform of the church.

Many people saw him as a martyr, including Martin Lutherwho was influenced by Savonarola's writings. Savonarola may have influenced John Calvin, but this is a matter of historical debate. Savonarola never abandoned the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church; for example, Savonarola held to a belief in seven sacraments and that the Church of Rome is "the mother of all other churches and the pope its head".

Savonarola even prophesied that Rome will come under judgement from God. But, if he did so command, I would say to him, thou art no shepherd. I say they are the courtesans of Italy and Rome. Or, are there predici savonarola biography A thousand are too few for Rome, 10, 12, 14, are too few for Rome. He was aware that he might share the fate of other preachers, most recently Bernardino da Feltre, who had been expelled from Florence for stirring up unrest; but the city's rulers made no effort to pluck this latest thorn from the flesh of the body politic, perhaps because they were pleased by Savonarola's fruitful efforts to create a new Tuscan congregation of Dominican houses with San Marco at its center, perhaps because they knew it would be difficult to dislodge him without scandal among his widespread following.

With Piero de' Medici, who succeeded Lorenzo inhe seems to have been on good terms. By the s rumbles of the earthquake that was to destroy Italy's facade of collective security were beginning to be heard. Charles VIII — was heralded as the new Charlemagne, who would restore French imperial glory, cross the sea to conquer "the Infidel," and convert the world into a single sheepfold under one shepherd.

To Savonarola he was the flagellum Dei who would scourge the church and carry the children of Israel into captivity. Florence, that den of iniquity, would suffer with the rest. In the fall of Charles invaded Italy, and his opposition melted away as he marched to the frontiers of Tuscany. A frightened Piero de' Medici hurried to the king's camp and surrendered the key Florentine strongholds.

Returning to Florence, Piero encountered a city in revolt, and he fled. After sixty years of Medici domination Florence had recovered its liberty. Savonarola's standing as a popular champion and prophet gave him unrivaled authority. Holding no civic office, he exercised his influence through preaching now supported by visionsthrough meetings with civic leaders, and through political allies in the city's councils.

He charted a course between direct democracy and narrow oligarchic reaction, the chief feature of which was a new Great Council with hereditary qualifications for admission and sovereign powers on the model of Venice. In the city's religious institutions he changed little, but he sought to introduce a spiritual revolution through moral reform.

Ascetic conduct was urged from pulpits and enjoined by new laws and by youthful vigilantes organized from San Marco. Religious processions replaced secular festivals; bonfires of "vanities" consumed the tokens of "worldliness"; specially written lauds celebrated the millennial glories of a spiritually revitalized Florence. Ignoring his earlier warnings of tribulation and doom, Savonarola now envisioned Florence as the New Jerusalem, center of liberty and virtue, from which would radiate the new era, when Florence would be "richer, greater, more powerful than ever.

Inevitably, however, Savonarola's insistence that the French king was Florence's divinely elected champion led to the city's political isolation in Italy, and the longer Charles put off his return, the lower Savonarola's credit dropped. His avoidance of the pope's summons to Rome and his disobedience to a command of silence led to his excommunication, and a papal interdict for harboring him threatened the city.

All this created a situation that Savonarola's enemies could exploit. He was unable to block a Franciscan's challenge to a trial by fire, and he bore the brunt of the blame when this eagerly awaited test failed to take place. A mob attacked San Marco, and Savonarola and two other friars were imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured. Altered versions of Savonarola's confession to false prophecy and political conspiracy were published.

On May 23, the three friars were hanged and burned on a specially constructed scaffold in Florence's main civic square. The Savonarolan republic survived untilwhen the Medici were restored by Spanish troops. It was revived by a revolt inin which piagnoneor Savonarolan, ideology played a fundamental role. Once again revolutionary millenarianism and puritanical republicanism flowed from San Marco.

Once again the Jews were expelled. Prostitutes were banned. Pro-Medicean utterances were made a capital offense. Enemies of the regime were exiled. Blasphemers and sodomites were put to death. Such uncompromising fanaticism alienated republican moderates and strengthened the hand of the Medici, who came back to the city in As a political movement "piagnonism" was finished, although the cult of Savonarola thrived and has been revived periodically up to the present day.

Its traces can be discerned in the Risorgimento biography by Pasquale Villari, the Catholic modernist life by Joseph Schnitzer, and the cinquecentennial biography by Roberto Ridolfi. Hagiography apart, Savonarola's sermons and devotional works continued to be printed and read in Italy, Spain, France, and Germany. Savonarolan piety, with its emphasis upon individual religious experience, charity, and the way of the cross of Christ, was admired by Martin Luther.

A statue of the Dominican was erected in Wittenberg, although Savonarola surely belongs more to the Catholic than to the Protestant reformation. Cattin, Giulio. Il primo Savonarola: Poesie e prediche autografe dal Codice Borromeo. Florence, Polizotto, Lorenzo. Ridolfi, Roberto. The Life of Girolamo Savonarola. Translated by Cecil Grayson. New York Schnitzer, Joseph.

Savonarola: Ein Kulturbild aus der Zeit der Renaissance. Munich, Weinstein, Donald. Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance. Princeton, N. Weinstein, Donald " Savonarola, Girolamo. Weinstein, Donald "Savonarola, Girolamo. Dominican monk whose fiery preaching ignited a movement of cultural reform and puritanism in Florence, and who became a martyr for his cause on the day of his public execution in the city's main square, the Piazza della Signoria.

Born in Ferrara, the son of a doctor, Savonarola was trained for a career in medicine but took a stronger interest in the Biblethe writings of Aristotleand the work of the medieval Scholastics, including Saint Thomas Aquinas. He studied at the University of Ferrara but spurned a career as a scholar by turning to the Dominican order, which he joined in Favoring the solitary and ascetic life, he withdrew to the monastery of San Domenico in Bologna and, injoined San Marco, a convent in Florence.

Predici savonarola biography

At the Church of San Lorenzo, he preached against the vice, corruption, and vanity of the church and its leaders as well as the pursuit of riches among the Florentines. At first, his use of the didactic and obscure language of religious scholars turned listeners away. He left the city in but returned under the patronage of Count Pico della Mirandola in He continued his sermons and gained a following by speaking in a more direct and popular manner.

His accurate predictions of certain worldly events also earned him a reputation as a prophet. In Savonarola became the prior of San Marco. His biting criticism of the Florentine aristocrats and tyrants inspired the anger of Lorenzo de' Medicithe ruler of Florence who advised the monk to control his tongue or suffer the consequences. Inthe monk boldly denied Lorenzo absolution of his sins, as punishment for his tyranny over the city.

In the same year, Savonarola's accurate prediction of the deaths of Lorenzo as well as Pope Innocent VIII brought him a fearful respect among ordinary citizens. After Lorenzo's son Piero succeeded his father as ruler of the city, Savonarola's influence increased; his prediction of a coming catastrophe as punishment for the city's sins and tyranny found a receptive audience.

InPiero de' Medici was deposed and Savonarola became the city's ruler, intending to make Florence a pure, republican example for the rest of Italy. Savonarola saved his severest criticism for the Papacy, which he saw mired in luxury and corruption, an institution in dire need of reform. For this reason, he supported the invasion of Italy by the French under King Charles VIIIseeing in this event an predici savonarola biography for Florence and the other cities of northern Italy to establish democratic governments and for the Papacy to change its ways.

Savonarola personally negotiated with Charles after the king deposed Piero de' Medici, and convinced Charles to moderate his demands. After this event Savonarola became the absolute master of Florence. InSavonarola had passed a new constitution establishing republic in Florence. He reformed the tax code, replacing arbitrary levies with a tax of 10 percent on property, assessed against all citizens equally.

He made sodomy a capital offense, banned popular entertainments, forced the Florentines to don plain clothing, and organized the famous Bonfire of the Vanities, the destruction of books, artworks, and vain luxuries mirrors, musical instrumentsgames, cosmetics, jewelry, fine clothing in the Piazza della Signoria. The Renaissance of new learning, art, and culture inspired by the antiquities of Greece and Rome represented to Savonarola a return to the paganism of the ancients, and a defiance of the predici savonarola biography piety and purity of medieval times.

Savonarola's sermons on the corruption of the church, as well as his alliance with the French invaders, earned him the enmity of the Duke of Milan and of Pope Alexander VIwho ordered him to cease preaching, an instruction that Savonarola defied. The pope excommunicated the monk inupon which Savonarola accused Alexander of gaining his title through bribery.

Savonarola's power among the commoners and middle class in Florence represented a threat to the established church, to the merchant class of the city, to the Arrabiati supporters of the Medici familyand most dangerously to the pope. He was also opposed by members of the Franciscan order, rivals of the Dominicans. The pope excommunicated Savonarola in and then threatened to put the entire city of Florence under an interdict for Savonarola's continued preaching.

The town fathers took the threat seriously and ordered the monk to cease his preaching. Inwhen one of Savonarola's followers agreed to a public ordeal by fire, a storm prevented the ordeal from taking place. This greatly angered the Florentines, who were growing weary with Savonarola and his puritanical regime. The entire city suddenly turned against him, rioting at San Marco, killing several of his followers, and demanding his arrest.

Savonarola was taken into custody with two of his followers and charged with heresy, sedition, and false prophecies. He was tortured on the rack and reportedly confessed to his crimes. The three men were convicted, sentenced to death, hanged by chains from a cross, and then burned to death in the Piazza della Signoria. Savonarola's remains were crushed into the cinders and thrown into the Arno River, to prevent any relics of his body from being preserved and venerated by those still loyal to him.

The Italian religious reformer Girolamo Savonarola became dictator of Florence in the s and instituted there, in the middle of the Renaissance, a reign of purity and asceticism. Girolamo Savonarola was born in Ferrara on Sept. He was the third of seven children of Niccolo Savonarola, a physician, and Elena Bonacossi. His father groomed Girolamo for the medical profession, but even as a youth he took more interest in the writings of the Schoolmen, particularly Thomas Aquinas.

Savonarola had time for neither the comfortable, courtly life of his father's household nor youthful sports and exercises, so absorbed was he in the subtleties of the scholastics and their spiritual father, Aristotle. Repelled by the corruption of the world around him, Savonarola withdrew ever further into solitude, meditation, and prayer. In he entered a Dominican monastery at Bologna.