New Light on the Savonarola-Machiavelli Controversy: Philosophy,

Simplicity and Popular Government

Lecture held on 15 October 2008 for the Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University,
at Blackfriars, Oxford

Grahame Lock (The Queen’s College, Oxford and Radboud University Nijmegen)
and Francesco Maiolo (University College Utrecht)

Let us first of all express our thanks to Blackfriars and to its Regent, Richard Finn, for their
hospitality today. It is of course fitting that a lecture on Savonarola should be given in a Dominican
hall, though it is also appropriate that the lecture should figure on the Philosophy faculty lecture
list, considering the significance of Savonarola’s work in this field. Our paper is a mixture of history
and philosophy, since both are necessary for a good grasp of the political theory of the period. We
have included some biographical detail, to make the paper more self-contained for the interested
reader.
We shall consider the cases of – and the relation between – Savonarola (1452-1498) and Machiavelli
(1469-1527), with a philosophical focus on the topics of popular government and simplicity, looking
at both old and recent interpretations of their ideas, including the theme of the tension between the
political theories of two extraordinary figures living in the same city-state, Florence, and whose lives
overlapped.
Their doctrines differ at least in the respect that, summed up in a very few words, Savonarola was a
theorist of trust and Machiavelli of distrust.
What was the relation between them? You may recall that J.G.A. Pocock, in his Machiavellian
Moment, wrote:
“Machiavelli’s thought can ... be related to Savonarolan tradition, and at this point the notion of
civic virtue takes on added depths of meaning. It ... was the end of man to be a political animal [an
Aristotelian and Thomistic idea]; the polity was the form in which human matter developed its
proper virtue, and it was the function of virtue to impose form on the matter of fortuna. The
republic or polity was in yet another sense a structure of virtue: it was a structure in which every
citizen’s ability to place the common good before his own was the precondition of every other’s, so
that every man’s virtue saved every other’s from that corruption, part of whose time-dimension was
fortuna. The republic was therefore a structure whose organizing principle was something far more
complex and positive than custom.”1
It is indeed true that the republic and republicanism were central to the thought of both Savonarola
and Machiavelli, though, as we shall see, the two had very different views on the role of fortune in
political life.
As you know, Machiavelli referred briefly in The Prince (1513) to Savonarola as an “unarmed

1 J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican
Tradition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975, p. 184.
prophet”. We shall return to this point.2 Specifically, he writes (in chapter 6): “If Moses, Cyrus,
Theseus and Romulus had been unarmed they could not have enforced their constitutions for long –
as happened in our time to Fra’ Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things
immediately the multitude believed in him no longer, for he had no means of keeping steadfast
those who believed or of causing the unbelievers to believe.”
It is certainly true that Savonarola made use of words, as well as institutional innovations, rather
than of armed force – though at the end, when his assailants the Compagnacci and Arrabbiati
stormed the San Marco priory, a few small pieces of artillery had been smuggled in, even if the few
Dominicans and their friends inside didn’t really know how to use them: in fact they had no more
than a keg of gunpowder, two small cannon and a box of bullets; but they were hopelessly
outnumbered by their besiegers.3
Back to Machiavelli. We know that in his Discourses he has more to say about Savonarola and in a
more admiring tone. He writes, in ch. 11: “The people of Florence did not esteem themselves either
crude or ignorant, none the less Brother Girolamo Savonarola persuaded them that he talked with
God. I do not want to judge whether that was true or not, because one ought not to talk of so great a
man except with reverence. But I may say that an infinite number believed him without having seen
anything extraordinary which would have caused them to believe, because his life, the doctrine, the
subjects he took up were sufficient to enlist their faith.”
But in ch. 45 he adds a critical remark, which is worth quoting at length: “Florence, after 1494,
having had its Government reformed with the aid of Brother Girolamo Savonarola (whose writings
show the doctrine, prudence, and the excellence of his spirit) and, among other provisions for the
security of the Citizens, having enacted a law which enabled an appeal to the People from the
verdicts which the Council of Eight and the Signoria were to give in cases affecting the State (the
passage of which took a longer time and was achieved only with the greatest difficulty); it happened
that a little after the passing of this [law] five citizens were condemned to death by the Signoria
because of acts against the State, and when they wanted to appeal, they were not permitted to do so
and the law was violated. This harmed the reputation of the Brother more than any other event; for
if that right of appeal was salutary, he should have had it observed: if it was not salutary, he ought
not to have had it passed in the first place. And this incident was noticed the more, inasmuch as the
Brother, in so many sermons preached after that law was broken, never either condemned those who
broke it or excused them, as if he were unwilling to condemn a thing that suited his purpose, yet was
not able to excuse it. This, having exposed his ambitions and partisan spirit, helped destroy his
reputation and exposed him to much obloquy.”
We don’t think that this account is quite fair to Savonarola, though we cannot go into the details
here. It does however draw attention to Machiavelli’s view of correct political tactics: the mistake he
thinks Savonarola made was to have been blamed for not keeping his word: it is above all a matter
of reputation, of how things look, of image.
In the Discourses, ch. 30, Machiavelli also returns to the “unarmed prophet” scheme, remarking
that: “Whoever reads the Bible attentively will recall how Moses, in desiring that his laws and his

2 For studies of Machiavelli’s debt to Machiavelli, see for example J.H. Whitfield, “Savonarola and the
Purpose of the Prince”, The Modern Language Review, XLIV, 1949 and Donald Weinstein, “Machiavelli and
Savonarola”, in Myron P. Gilmore, ed., Studies on Machiavelli, Florence: Casa Editrice Sansoni, 1972.
3 Isaiah Berlin, in his essay “The Originality of Machiavelli” (in Henry Hardy, ed., Against the Current:
Essays in the History of Ideas, New York: Viking Press, 1971), even remarks that “an unarmed prophet will
always go to the gallows” (like Christ?).
2
ordinances be observed, was constrained to kill an infinite number of men who opposed his designs,
moved by nothing else than envy. Brother Girolamo Savonarola understood this very well: Pietro
Soderini, Gonfalonier of Florence, also understood it. The former, the Brother, however could not
comply with it, because he did not have the authority to do so; but those of his followers who did
have the authority failed properly to grasp his teaching. But this was not his fault, and his preaching
is full of accusations and invective against the wise of the world, as he [ironically] called his envious
rivals and those who opposed his reforms.”
This phrase, “the wise of the world”, is in part ironically intended: Savonarola, though himself an
excellent philosopher, was suspicious of those thinkers who displayed the hubris of believing that
they could, alone and without God’s help, discover and act on the deepest truths about man and the
universe.
Finally, on the matter of Machiavelli’s personal relation to Savonarola, a rather odd quote from
Desmond Seward’s recent The Burning of the Vanities. Seward writes: “During the weeks [of March
1498] a dissatisfied young bureaucrat called Niccolò Machiavelli, an Arrabbiato4 excluded from the
Grand Council because of his inadequate background, saw Fra’ Girolamo as a ruthless fraud. After
attending two sermons at San Marco, he reported in a letter of 9 March how the Frate had acted the
part of Moses, shouting from the pulpit. ‘Oh Egyptian, I want to give you a thrust with my
sword’ ... – the Egyptian being presumably the Pope. He also quoted [Savonarola] as saying, ‘Don’t
you realise what it means to cry ‘Interdict! Interdict! Interdict!’ It means ‘Tyrant, Tyrant, Tyrant’.” So
it seems that Machiavelli thought Girolamo was implying “that, should [Pope] Alexander put
Florence under the ban, a tyrant must take over – his henchman Francesco Valori. [But Machiavelli]
was wrong. Fra’ Girolamo was warning the Florentines of the far from unlikely possibility of a
Medicean Restoration.”5
The suggestion is that Machiavelli sometimes got things topsy-turvy. He understood Savonarola to
be making a plea for a tyranny (under Valori, who had once been a supporter of oligarchy but had
changed his position, allying himself with Savonarola and his piagnoni), whereas the plea was in fact
for vigilance against the restoration of tyranny.
We shall return to the confrontation between Machiavelli and Savonarola, at a philosophical and
theoretical level. But first, some general words on Savonarola himself.
Our topic is, to begin with: what kind of philosopher was Savonarola?
At one level, the answer is simple: of course a Thomist, who had made a very thorough study of
scholastic philosophy. But that answer would be incomplete.
Donald Weinstein correctly notes (in his article “Savonarola, Florence, and the Millenarian
Tradition”)6 that Savonarola played an important role not only in the city’s religious life but in its
intellectual life too. Thus San Marco, including under Savonarola as Prior, took a prominent
position in encouraging Florentine intellectual debate, and was perhaps even the leading institution
in that field. Among his friends were for example Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and he helped
Pico write his Treatise against astrology, the Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinicatrium – a
matter worth recalling, given Machiavelli’s belief in and even devotion to astrological revelation.

4 This is by the way an odd suggestion: Machiavelli can hardly be considered a member of the Arrabbiati,
determined and militant enemies of the piagnoni.
5 Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Company, 2006, p. 224.
6 Church History 27, 1958.

3
Machiavelli, we may recall, in fact had his own personal astrologer, Bartolomeo Vespucci. Maurizio
Viroli relates that, in dedicating his work First Decennial to Alamanno Salviati, Machiavelli
expressed his view that Italy’s travails in the period 1494-1504 were an effect of “irresistible fate”, the
stars having been unfriendly to Italy’s well-being. It was in fact to combat these “bad stars” that
Machiavelli devised his plan to establish a popular militia.7
Anthony Parel has made a study of Machiavelli’s interest in astrology in his The Machiavellian
Cosmos.8 As John M. Najemy points out, “Parel shows that astrological themes and language appear
often enough and play sufficiently important roles at some critical junctures in the Machiavelli texts
to warrant serious attention. That Machiavelli had some early interest in astrology and in the
contemporary controversies over its merits and status seems clear from the 1504 letter to him from
Bartolomeo Vespucci, which was evidently a response to a request from Machiavelli for an opinion
on the subject .... Machiavelli’s early awareness of astrological lore also emerges from the 1506
Ghiribizzi [Caprices] to Giovan Battista Soderini, in which he writes that anyone ‘wise enough to
know the times and the order of things and how to adjust to them would always enjoy good fortune
or protect himself from bad fortune, and it would thus be true that the wise man could command
the stars and the Fates’” – even if such wise men are almost impossible to find.9 And by the way, as
“Eugenio Garin noted years ago in an essay cited by Parel, the phrase about the wise man
commanding the stars and the Fates is almost a direct quotation of a celebrated dictum of
divinatory astrology – sapiens dominabitur astris”.
Thus we have on the one hand a Machiavelli, considered nowadays as the first great modern theorist
of politics – as the first scientist of politics, as opposed to his mediaeval predecessors – who is in
reality an adept of astrology (and its central category of “fortune”) and on the other hand a
Savonarola, widely considered in our day not only as a fanatic – as a kind of 15th century Ayatollah
– but also as an obscurantist, who is in fact a strict, even a rationalist opponent of astrological
conceptions and practices and indeed himself the author of a Trattato contra gli astrologi.
A question which however remains, though one which we shall not try to resolve here, is the status
of Savonarola’s claim to have been visited by the gift of prophecy. Now prophecy and astrological
divination are two quite different things. Important in this connexion is the sermon of 13 January
1495, in which he claims that his prophecies are based on what God had revealed to him and not
only on the Bible and its interpretation.10 We shall shortly consider this text in connexion with his
critique of the epistemological bases of astrology. In any case: the light entrusted to him is, he says,
that through which “the holy prophets understand from extrinsic signs what they mean
intrinsically ... This light is a participation in eternity, which God communicates to whomever he
wants.”11 Savonarola believed that he had benefited from such communication.
Lauro Martines, author of a new account of Savonarola’s life and works, writes in this regard that
“the Friar’s foes and critics would chip away at his claim to be a prophet, especially because his
entire standing in Florence and on the European stage rested on this contention. The force of the
claim was in its singularity and focus, which also, however, made it easier to target. Savonarola
7 See Grahame Lock and Francesco Maiolo, “Machiavelli en Savonarola tegenover het saeculum”, in
Wijsgerig Perspectief, Meppel: Boom, 1 (43).
8 New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
9 Review of Parel in The Journal of Modern History, vol. 67 , no. 3, 1995.
10 See Alison Brown, Introduction to Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola, trans. and ed. Anne Borelli
and Maria Pastore Passaro, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006.
11 Savonarola, “Psalms, Sermon III: Renovation Sermon (Octave of the Epiphany)”, in Selected Writings of
Girolamo Savonarola, p. 61.
4
fought back with a short work, published in the late summer of 1495, his Compendium of
Revelations (Compendio di rivelatione) Here he draws a ... theological distinction between absolute
and conditioned prophecies, the second depending in part upon contingent forces in temporal
affairs, such as the free will, in theological terms, of the King of France or of the Florentine
people.”12
Let us quote the above-mentioned Renovation Sermon, since it contains one answer to the question
what kind of philosopher and theologian Savonarola was: namely, a rather scientifically-oriented
one, and subtle. Listen for example to his arguments against astrology:
“In every creature”, he argues, “its creation is limited, both its being and its power, [whereas] eternity
has no limit or end .... But God, who can do anything, is eternal and embraces all time ... [Now]
God has reserved to Himself ... knowledge of the future and communicates it to whomever He
pleases (see above), however much and whenever he likes. Indeed, it is true that angels know those
future things which come about through a necessary cause. [So in contrast] it can obviously be
concluded that divination and that branch of astrology which seems to divine de futuris
contingentibus [future contingencies] are utterly false, for future things and those things which
depend on free will, which can be or not be [our emphasis], only God and any creature which God
wants to reveal them [to] can know ....”
Either philosophy is true or it is false; if it is true, astrology is false, for philosophy says that de
futuris contingentibus non est determinata veritas – one cannot determine any truth about future
contingencies. This principle is in fact taken directly by Savonarola from Thomas.13
From all accounts, Savonarola was a gifted logician as well as philosopher. One example – though
this is a parenthesis, I think it is an interesting one – in this connexion.
Bernard Bolzano, the 19th century Bohemian mathematician and logician, refers in his 1837
Wissenschaftslehre (Theory of Science) to Savonarola’s version of the Liar Paradox (of which a
simple variant is: if I say I am lying, and I really am lying when I say it, then I must be telling the
truth, so I am not lying – but if I am telling the truth when I say I’m lying, then I must be lying, so
not telling the truth). Bolzano refers to Savonarola’s Compendium aureum totius logicae, where the
latter discusses the “insolubile propositum”: “hoc est falsum”, and resolves the paradox by denying
that this combination of words is itself a proposition. Savonarola thus claims that such word-
combinations cannot be properly affirmed or denied: “non sunt propositiones ... Habent tamen
figuram propositionum ...” Bolzano writes: “I disagree”: we should rather say that such a word-
combination is a proposition, but one with the special characteristic that its contradictory “cannot
be found in the same way as with so many other propositions (whose subject idea has only a single
object), namely not by placing the negative ‘not’ before its predicate ‘false’.”
Now it is not obvious that Bolzano’s account is an improvement on Savonarola’s: it is a rather weak
or eclectic suggestion. And indeed, when the Polish logician Stanislaw Lesniewski came to consider
the matter (in his “On The Foundations of Mathematics” of 1927) he rejected Bolzano’s solution
and in effect adopted Savonarola’s, banning self-reference but also claiming that liar-sentences are
outside of the scope of logic; that they are not well-formed sentences and cannot be employed in
logical transformations. This matter is discussed by Arianna Betti in a recent publication. 14 She

12 Martines, Scourge and Fire: Savonarola and Renaissance Italy, London: Pimlico, 2007, p. 159.
13 Summa 2.2, q 171, a 3.
14 “The Strange Case of Savonarola and the Painted Fish – On the Bolzanization of Polish Thought”, in A.
Chrudzimski and D. Lukasiewicz, eds., Actions, Products, and Things: Brentano and Polish Philosophy,
5
concludes that not only Lesniewski but also another Polish logician, Jan Lukasiewicz, who “worked
on their respective solutions to the Liar in the period to which Lesniewski’s passage from 'On the
Foundations of Mathematics' corresponds” took a clear distance from Bolzano. Indeed,
“Lukasiewicz’s stand is exactly the same as Savonarola’s as quoted by Bolzano: the Liar is no
proposition, exactly like a dead man is no man and a painted fish [a painting of a fish] is not a
fish.”
This kind of logical analysis is very relevant to debates in theology;15 and Savonarola’s logical skills
proved useful in his own contribution to the controversies in which he was involved.
Clearly, Savonarola knew what he was talking about when he discussed matters like that of necessity
and contingency, therefore of scientific method, which were crucial to his views on astrology on the
one side and prophecy on the other. He is no obscurantist: on the contrary.
This is the man (to return to Donald Weinstein’s survey) whom Giovanni Nesi – a Florentine poet –
referred to as the “Socrates of Ferrara” (his home town), and whom Piero Crinito, a pupil of the
famous humanist Politian (Angelo Pulciano), called “the best informed man in philosophy of his
time”.
In his great biography of Savonarola, in the chapter on “Savonarola’s Philosophy”, Pasquale Villari
considers the character of the philosophical works. He notes that although his positions are of
course defined in relation to Aristotle, and evidently to Thomas, Savonarola is no mere transmitter
of their doctrines, remarking for instance that “your Aristotle does not even succeed in proving the
immortality of the soul...”
His philosophical writings (leaving aside his political theory, which we shall come to in a moment)
consist especially in four short treatises – Compendio di filosofia, di morale e di logica – and a short
work on the Divisione e dignità di tutte le scienze. In the Compendio, which deals among other
things with epistemology, Savonarola argues that our knowledge is derived from sensation; yet this
sensation must be converted into ideas; and this would be impossible without “pre-existing moral
cognition”, that is to say, cognition of first principles known to us without demonstration, since
they are not only true but also self-evident. In fact, the foundation of all our knowledge is that
which is known-in-itself, sharing in the actum essendi (the act of being) – like God. Thus are the first
foundations of science laid.16 This is in effect an element in a philosophical demonstration of the
necessary limits of philosophy: you can show from the inside – from within philosophy – that faith
(and theology) are also required, in fact are indispensable, and even that theology is the superior
science.
In the Compendio Savonarola also again opens an attack on the astrologers: for, as he argues, “it is
free will that distinguishes man from beast .... [So] our will can be moved by no extraneous forces,
neither by the stars, nor by the passions, not even by God unless He so chooses ... For the Creator
does not destroy our free will, but preserves it ...”17

Frankfurt etc.: Ontos-Verlag, 2006.

15 See for example Stephen Read, “The Liar Paradox from John Buridan back to Thomas Bradwardine”, in
Vivarium, vol. 40, no. 2, 2002. Buridan for instance used the Liar Paradox to prove the existence of God. In
Thomas there is an account of a teacher who teaches all and only those in his town who do not teach
themselves: Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate q 11, a 2; see Peter Suber, The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A
Study of Law, Logic, Omnipotence, and Change, Section 1, Introduction: Logical Paradoxes in Law;
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/psa/sec01.htm.
16 Villari, Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola, New York: Scribner and Welford, 1888.
17 See Villari, loc. cit.

6
Thus we move to the field of practical philosophy (whose place is discussed by Savonarola in his
Divisione). In this connexion he defines veracity as “a certain habit in respect of which man shows
himself, in word and deed, as he really is (and rather lesser than greater)”. This, he adds, is not so
much a legal as a moral duty, “a debt of honesty owed by every man to his neighbour” – noting that
“the manifestation of truth is always a part of justice”: so there is a conceptual link between the two.
In contrast to Savonarola, Machiavelli, to whom we now turn, was no philosopher in the technical
sense. In even greater contrast, he quickly gained a reputation as a “diabolic thinker”: organum
Satanae, a reputation dating from at least the late 1530s.18 One of the best known declarations in this
respect is to be found in the Apologia ad Carolum Quintum of 1539 by Cardinal Pole. He labelled
Machiavelli an enemy of mankind and Il Principe as a work written by the devil’s pen. The Catholic
reaction against Machiavelli reached its apex in the Council of Trent (1545-1563).
Protestant anti-Machiavellianism, especially in France after the St Bartholomew’s Eve Massacre of
1527, was no less radical than Catholic. Gentillet’s Contre Machiavel of 1576 restated ideas already
expressed in the work of other Huguenot writers and anticipated the Vindiciae contra tyrannos of
1579. Gentillet saw in Machiavelli the forerunner of political absolutism and, oddly, even considered
his influence as one of the major causes of the religious conflicts in France. A similar point of view
is presented in theatrical form in England in the 16th-early 17th century by Christopher Marlowe
and William Shakespeare. In the Anti-Machiavel of 1741, a pamphlet produced in cooperation by
Voltaire and Frederick II of Prussia, Machiavelli is dubbed a “précepteur des tyrans” and his Il
Principe is described as a book whose aim was to “dogmatiser le crime et la tyrannie”. Frederick
wrote: “I dare to take up the defence of humanity against this monster, who wants to destroy it.”
More recently, at the beginning of the 1940s, Jacques Maritain claimed that only a restatement of the
Christian common good could provide a shelter against Machiavellianism. And at the end of the
1950s Leo Strauss, in his Thoughts on Machiavelli, did not hesitate to characterize his life and work
as “diabolic”.
However that may be, you will be familiar with Machiavelli’s political theory: it turns around the
questions of gaining and holding political power, and the roles played in this respect by virtue –
political talent and ruthlessness – and fortune – good and back luck, or fate, respectively.
In the light of that theory, what was Savonarola to Machiavelli? We have already outlined some
elements of an answer. Now a few words more.
Machiavelli’s judgment is complex. Though ideologically an anti-Savonarola – in fact Machiavelli
probably owed his original appointment as Secretary to the Second Chancery to his hostility to the
Savonarolans – he considered him as a politically innovative figure. He recognized that Savonarola’s
main goal was no longer to reject the saeculum (see below) or to impose a strict religious asceticism,
but to regenerate civil as well as religious life.
The first document in which Machiavelli expresses his point of view on Savonarola is the letter of 9
March 1498 to Riccardo Becchi, Florentine diplomat at the Roman Curia. Savonarola was already
having a hard time. His attacks on Alexander VI had become more aggressive after his
excommunication in 1497. He had insisted that governmental affairs must be conducted under the
rule of Christ. But Machiavelli regretted that the friar had in fact not united but divided the
Florentines into two groups: the virtuous, who aimed at the Christian vivere bene, his own followers,
versus the followers of the devil, his opponents. Savonarola had established his own “Axis of Evil”,
18 But compare, on Savonarola, the words of Marsilio Ficino, in his Apologia contra Savonarolam:
Savonarola, writes Ficino, is “the Antichrist”, “the most crafty demon”, a “diabolic spirit”, possessed of a
“tyrranical malignity” and so on. See Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola, pp. 355-359.
7
so to speak, by proclaiming these opponents to be enemies not only of Florentine liberty but of
God.
This first description by Machiavelli portrays what we might provocatively call a “Machiavellian”
Savonarola, namely a political leader deeply rooted in the spirit of the times who makes use (or
misuse) of religion in order to achieve his own interests.19
In his Decennale primo,20 Machiavelli speaks sarcastically of a school of thought headed by the
“great” Savonarola. He calls the friar “lume divin” (divine lantern). But his sarcasm is evident from
his further remark that this lantern was extinguished by a greater fire, that is, by the fire of the
gallows, as soon as the Florentines got tired of suffering the consequences of his prophetic
guidelines.21 In Asino d’oro, an autobiographical satire written in rhyme, probably composed in
1517, Machiavelli restated his view that history is a dialectical movement of good and evil and
ridiculed those who, like the piagnoni, believed that usury and sensuality alone cause the decline of
states, whereas prayer, abstinence and charity are their salvation.
He had already expressed a similar view in chapter XII of Il Principe, where he considers the causes
of Charles VIII’s success during the Italian campaign. There Machiavelli argues that Savonarola was
right to condemn the general state of wickedness in Florence. But the cause was not what Savonarola
took it to be: it was not sin, but lack of military cohesion and civic virtue. This is a fundamental
disagreement.
A comparable argument is found in book VII of Arte della guerra, composed in 1519-20. In it,
Machiavelli ridicules the lust for personal honour and wealth of the Italian princes at the time of
Charles VIII’s invasion, interpreting this as a sort of civic sin. In chapter VI of Il Principe, as we
have seen, Machiavelli notes that Savonarola had been unable to rely on well-prepared, solid and
trustworthy armed support. This meant that Savonarola’s ambitions were utopian.
In the course of time, Machiavelli developed a balanced appreciation of Savonarola’s political action,
though he never approved of it. We already quoted the Discourses in this regard.
We now need to look more closely at Savonarola’s explicitly political writings. We shall focus on his
Treatise on the Government of Florence, dating from early 1498, and written at the request of the
Florentine government.22
There is still interest in the Treatise. Last year, for instance, there appeared an essay by Rebecca
McCumbers on “Preaching Politics: Girolamo Savonarola’s Sermons and Writings on Republican
Government”.23 This follows Matthias Mayer’s 2001 study on Die Politische Theologie Girolamo
Savonarolas.24
So attention is being paid to Savonarola’s political analyses and action. What do these amount to,
and what is their relation to key concepts of his religious and philosophical thought?

19 See G. Sasso, Niccoló Machiavelli. Il pensiero politico, vol. I, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1980; and Weinstein,
“Machiavelli and Savonarola”, loc. cit.
20 This work is a compendium of Italian political history from 1494 to 1504, composed in rhyme towards
the end of 1504. It was published (his first work) at his own expense in 1506.
21 See L. Blasucci (ed.), Niccolò Machiavelli, Opere letterarie. Milan: Adelphi, 1964.
22 Trattato sul governo di Firenze, Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1999; English translation in Selected Writings of
Girolamo Savonarola.
23 Paper presented to the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 2007.
24 Tübingen, Basel: Francke.

8
***
Let us take a step back and consider the Florentine society within which both Savonarola and
Machiavelli operated. “The Italian Renaissance”, Lauro Martines wrote, “was not an age of reason,
liberation, and tolerance, unless we choose, perversely, to characterise it by the interests of a
minuscule elite of classical scholars and Neo-Platonists”. The gods and heroes of pagan antiquity, as
represented in painting and poetry, “were the figment of learned courtiers and their hired artists and
poets”.25 Perhaps it was above all a contradictory age, which worshipped the saints and martyrs of
Christianity and yet at the same time also astrology, magic, and demonology.
Splendour and squalor were the two sides of another medal. The Medici family had ruled over the
city, though behind a republican façade, since 1434, especially thanks to Cosimo il Vecchio, the
Florentine Pater patriae. In league with Pope Sixtus IV and King Ferdinand – Ferrante – of Naples,
the Pazzi, an old, noble and rich family, conspired to murder Lorenzo and Giuliano, Cosimo’s
nephews, and to overthrow Medici rule, in order to create a new political order.26 While attending
mass in the cathedral on Sunday 26 April 1478, before a crowd of almost 10,000, as the consecrated
host was elevated, Giuliano was stabbed and bled to death, while Lorenzo, only wounded, took
refuge in the sacristy with the help of the humanist Angelo Poliziano. The conspirators’ plan failed.
Attacked by the crowd, many of them were brutally lynched. One, the Archbishop of Pisa, Francesco
Salviati, was hanged from a window of the Palazzo Vecchio. Some thirty years later, in his Istorie
fiorentine (VIII, 9), Machiavelli referred to the great impact of that attempted coup d’état, recalling
that the limbs of the conspirators had been raised high on the points of lances or carried through
the streets of the city for days.27 The people of Florence, in the main, took the side of the Medici
family. Lorenzo reached the zenith of his popularity after Pope Sixtus IV and King Ferdinand
declared war on Florence. He travelled to Naples in December 1479 to negotiate peace and returned
in March 1480, acclaimed as the saviour of his homeland. Machiavelli remarks on the fact that
Lorenzo used corruption as an instrument of government and noted that when a ruler is powerful
and seductive enough, the populace is deaf to any appeal to liberty and integrity. His judgement on
Lorenzo was in fact rather positive, for he saw in him the saviour of Florence’s liberty, the builder of
a genuine political equilibrium in the peninsula, and a great patron of the arts. He had been able to
restrain not only the papacy’s hegemonic pretensions but also French, Spanish and German political
imperialism. Yet Machiavelli saw in the pax laurentiana one of the major causes of the decline of the
city. Most Florentines had taken for granted and indeed wasted the great opportunities offered
during almost twenty years of Medicean government. Of Florentine youth, Machiavelli wrote, again
in Istorie fiorentine (VII, 28), that it only cared about appearing “splendid in dress, behaving in a
lascivious manner in love and feigning sophistication in speech”. Whoever was best at “wounding
with words”, he recalled, was deemed “the wisest and most estimable”.28 Those were the years in
which lechery, gambling, luxury and sodomy – the so-called vizio fiorentino – increased
dramatically. It was against such civic, moral and even ecclesiastical corruption that Savonarola
raised his voice.29

25 See Martines, op. cit, p. 219.

26 In his Storie fiorentine, Francesco Guicciardini recalled that Lorenzo de’ Medici was in fact the true
Signore of Florence. The members of the Pazzi family involved in the conspiracy failed to gain significant
support among the popolo minuto due to their irritatingly stubborn attitude. See Guicciardini, Storie
fiorentine, IV, in Opere, ed. V. De Caprariis, Milan-Naples, 1953, p. 181 [FGO].
27 See Machiavelli, Tutte le opere (ed. M. Martelli), Firenze, 1972, p. 822 [NMO].
28 See NMO, p. 811.
29 For Guicciardini’s positive judgment, see his Storie fiorentine, XII in FGO, p. 210.

9
***
We have already considered a number of aspects of Savonarola’s ideas and political works. Now
some further details of his life, which are relevant to the turn taken by him in the 1490s.
He was born in Ferrara on 21 September 1452, the third of seven children in a family of Paduan
origin.30 It was his grandfather, Giovanni Michele Savonarola, a well-know physician, rather than his
father Niccolò, who was of crucial importance to his personal development. In 1440, Giovanni,
professor of medicine at Padua, settled in Ferrara, where he won honour and reward at the Este
Court. He was a pious and charitable man and devoted himself to the care of his nephew until 1468,
when he died. He instilled in the boy a remarkable religious zeal and a strict love of Holy Scripture.
In spite of his family’s desire to see him become a doctor, he had been overwhelmed by an ardent
passion for Christian faith and truth. He turned in this connexion to the study of Platonic and
Aristotelian philosophy. Some of the works of St Thomas Aquinas fascinated him to such a degree
much that, often times meditating on them for whole days, he could hardly be persuaded to return
to his medical studies. A passion for theology took over. As Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola put
it in his Vita Hieronymi Savonarolae (1530), Savonarola was intellectus perspicax and veritatis
amator. The recurrent public festivities and thoughtless enjoyments indulged in by prominent
citizens of Ferrara became a matter of concern to him. Revulsion against the excesses of opulence,
against vanity and against lax sexual habits led him to disappoint his family’s hopes for the kind of
career open to someone of his social rank. He was thus ready to wage his personal war against the
civic and religious decadence surrounding him.31
The young Savonarola ignored the balsamic power of laughter and at the age of eighteen his
dismissal of the saeculum became radical. Some malicious witnesses traced his rejection of worldly
enjoyments back to an unhappy love in his youth. It seems that, in love once with a girl from a
prominent local family, he asked her to marry him. The young lady, a Strozzi, who was obviously
not aware of being illegitimate, rejected the proposal, answering that one of her rank could never
degrade herself by marrying a Savonarola. He replied that no Savonarola would be so shameless as to
marry a bastard child like her.
At this time, besides studying, he passed his time playing sad music on his lute and composing
verses full of grief. He wrote, probably at the age of twenty, his De ruina mundi (On the Ruin of the
World); then, most likely in 1475, he penned De ruina ecclesiae (On the Ruin of the Church). These
are lyrical works in which he expressed his fear for a world in which vice was exalted while Christian
virtue was dishonoured. In De ruina mundi he already denounced the decay of the papal court,
where “all lusts abound”, and in De ruina ecclesiae he defended the “true Church” against the
“arrogant harlot of Babylon”, the Church of “the pirate” Sixtus IV.32 His need to seek refuge in
30 Unless otherwise indicated, the biographical information on Savonarola appearing in this section is drawn
from R. Ridolfi, Vita di Girolamo Savonarola (2 vols.), Rome, 1952.
31 Religious decadence was a matter of concern to Machiavelli too, although in a sense differing essentially
from the Friar’s understanding of the phenomenon. In Discorsi (I, XII) Machiavelli argued that “there can
be no surer indication of the decline of a country than to see divine worship neglected”. But he disagreed
with those who believed that the credit for the prosperity of the Italian cities should go to the Church of
Rome. Because of the bad example set by the papal court, Machiavelli claimed, “Italy has lost all devotion
and all religion”. “Where there is religion”, he added, “it may be taken for granted that all is going well”, but
where religion is missing “one may take for granted the opposite”. So, he concluded, the “first debt” for
which the Church and the priests were responsible was that they had become “irreligious and perverse”. The
“second debt”, which constituted the second cause of the ruin of Italy, was that the Church had kept Italy
divided. See NMO, pp. 95-96.
32 See G. Savonarola, De ruina mundi, in M. Ferrari, Savonarola, vol. I, Florence, 1952, pp. 5-11.

10
religion became urgent towards the end of 1474. During an excursion to Faenza, a sermon preached
by an Augustinian friar made so deep an impression on him that he immediately took the
irrevocable decision to devote himself to monastic life. He was moved by God’s call to Abraham:
egredere de terra tua (Gen 12, 1).33 Once home from Faenza, he struggled before putting his resolve
into practice, so apprehensive was he about leaving his family. Eventually, on 24 April 1475, during
the festival of San Giorgio, he decided to leave his home and set forth on his one-way journey to
Bologna, to take his vows at the well-known monastery of San Domenico. The next day, 25 April
1475, he wrote an affectionate letter to his father justifying his decision and comforting the family.
His choice, he said, had not been formed in childish haste, but after long and painful meditation.
To reveal his intention in advance would have meant risking failure. He asked his father “to love
truth, as is proper to real men, above passion, as is typical of women”. He explained that it had no
longer been possible for him to tolerate the corruption of the world: “the great misery of that world,
the iniquity of men, the carnal crimes, adulteries, thefts, pride, idolatry and cruel blasphemies, all
present on such a scale that not even a single good man can any longer be found …. I could not bear
the evil of the peoples of Italy in their blindness”. His mission was to “withdraw from the world” in
order to live a rational life and not exist “as a beast among the pigs”. He alleged that in spite of our
bodily constitution, reason commands us to abstain from all forms of sensuality. He struggled day
and night so that the devil should not “jump onto his shoulders”. Grace, he argued, will, after the
pain of the moment vanishes, provide consolation in this life, and glory in the next. This letter is
notable also for the type of logic found in it. Against his father’s pleas to return to Ferrara, the
young Savonarola made use of a peculiar syllogism. He told his father: “either you love me or you
don’t. If you do love me, since I am made of two parts, soul and body, you either love the body or
the soul more. You cannot say the body, because then you would not really love me, in loving the
vilest part of me. If therefore you love my soul more, why do you not accept what is good for me?”
In another letter written to his family a few weeks later he was particularly harsh. He admonished
them for what he regarded as immoderate complaints. He called them “a folk without light” and
“enemies of all virtues”. He deplored the fact that after God had called him to a superior mission,
they stupidly shed tears of mourning.34
In the same period he was displaying his philosophical and theological skills before his superiors at
the monastery, inspiring high hopes. In 1479 he left Bologna and was sent to Ferrara, to the convent
of Santa Maria degli Angeli. In April 1482, he received an order to move to Florence. He walked all
the way to the city. It seems that he was de facto recruited by Lorenzo de Medici. In May he became
Bible lector at the San Marco priory with the additional task of teaching theology. When in 1484
Savonarola started preaching from the pulpit of San Lorenzo, the Medici church, he was still
considered by many to be if not a barbarian at least something similar. Knowing the Holy Scriptures
by heart, he focused on them alone, warned against sin, invoked the wrath of God and defended a
renewed sense of the common good. He made clear that his task was not to please the courtesans but
to call them and everyone else back to sanctity. He prophesied for the first time torments and
plagues that would soon strike but yet help to regenerate the Church.
The first Florentine experience ended in 1485. The integration of the friar presented various

33 Twenty years later, in the sermon of 21 December 1494, he recalled that important moment, the moment
at which he was led to “the true and safe port of Christian religion”. Two things, he explained, pushed him
in that direction: the desire for true liberty and a similar desire for true tranquillity. He explained that in
order to obtain “true liberty” he renounced all carnal pleasures, and in order to gain “true tranquillity” he
renounced the attractiveness of the world. See Savonarola, Predica XIX in Prediche sopra Aggeo con il
Trattato circa il reggimento et governo della città di Firenze, ed. L. Firpo, Rome, 1965, pp. 324-25.
34 See R. Ridolfi, V. Romano, A.F. Verde, eds., Lettere e scritti apologetici, 7-8, Rome, 1984, pp. 3-6 [LSA].

11
difficulties. His northern accent and his passion for logic and scholasticism as well as his rather
harsh manners did not fit with the generally carefree and hedonist nature of the Florentines. Even
preachers were expected to be magniloquent in order to capture the attention of a sophisticated
upper-class congregation.35 His name already acquired a certain notoriety during his first sojourn in
Florence even if only a few men and women of humble origins attended his sermons. After
excursions to San Gimignano, he returned in 1487 to San Domenico in Bologna as magister. In
1488 he was again sent to Ferrara, and between 1489 and 1490 he preached in Brescia and Genua
and probably also in Modena and Piacenza. In 1485, his father died and in a letter of 5 December to
his mother he recalled that God sometimes destroyed his creatures in order to remind them that an
authentic life is not the worldly one. He said that only through despair are we eventually able to fix
our eyes on the highest good. He hoped his mother would come to love Christ so much that she
would shed no tears when the moment of martyrdom came for her children.
Florentine society at this time was characterized by discontent on the side of the lower and middle-
classes as well as on that of the upper classes. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a close friend of
Lorenzo, who worried about the latter’s deteriorating health and who had met the friar in 1479
during a brief sojourn in Ferrara, put pressure on Lorenzo and persuaded him to call Savonarola
back to Florence. Between May and June 1490 the friar was back at the convent of San Marco, again
as lector. But Lorenzo is said to have regretted that the “foreign monk” who had been invited for the
second time to live in “his house” had not bothered paying a visit to him.36
In August 1490 he began his sermons with the interpretation of the Apocalypse. He invited
everybody to look at what lay behind the veil of amiability of the Medici’s power. Under what were
in fact the ashes of the opulent Florentine establishment there was a flame of purification ready to
burst out and take over Florence and the whole peninsula. If many began following his teaching out
of mere curiosity, others were enthusiastic yet at the same time shocked by his political incorrectness
towards the Medici, other great lords, and the corrupt papal court. The friar who railed harshly
against the decay of the sense of common good and who preached in favour of liberty against
arbitrary rule was the same man who tried to revive the Florentine tradition of the vita civile.37
Savonarola embraced the Florentines, sinful and ascetic at the same time. Before crowds of up to
15,000, he attacked the corruption of the clergy, the avarice and usury of the rich, the neglect of the
poor, and moral depravity, of which sodomy was the primary symbol.
From February 1491 his preaching became vehemently and increasingly critical of decay in all its
forms. The friends of Lorenzo and indeed Lorenzo himself became concerned about the preaching
of the friar. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola again persuaded Lorenzo not to take any action against
Savonarola. When, during Easter of 1491, he preached before the Grandi gathered at the Palazzo
della Signoria, he announced that he appeared before them like Christ among the Pharisees; he
condemned their frivolous living and pagan attitude and condemned the indifference of the Medici
towards the good of the people. Strangely enough, in July he was appointed Prior of San Marco. Any
such promotion would have been impossible without the approval of Lorenzo, the Medici having
35 “The Florentine character”, Roberto Ridolfi wrote, “has a harsh and bitter core beneath its outward
amiability, and perhaps too a spark of cruelty beneath its urbanity”. The Florentines were full of contrasts:
“besides the most sensual carnival songs, they sang sacred hymns, composed in greater numbers and with
greater devotion than in any other city at any time”. See Ridolfi, Life of Niccolò Machiavelli, London, 1963,
pp. 10-11.
36 See Martines, p. 23.
37 See L. Russo, Machiavelli, Rome, 1957, pp. 9-17, 194-202; E. Garin, Ritratti di umanisti, Florence, 1967,
pp. 163-83; Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence. Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance, Princeton (NJ),
1970, pp. 289-316.
12
always been generous patrons of the priory. But not only did the Prior fail to show any appreciation
for the appointment he had been granted, he also repeated that he had been appointed by the will of
God, not by that of a tyrant.
When Lorenzo from time to time visited the convent grounds, Savonarola never approached or
welcomed him. It seems that, shortly before dying, he expressed his wish to see the friar. The latter
finally paid a visit to Lorenzo and, being requested to provide spiritual consolation and forgiveness,
posed three conditions: solemnly to comply with Christian faith; to give back his illegitimately
acquired possessions; and to abandon arbitrary rule and restore republican liberty in Florence. Just
before replying to the third point, Lorenzo died. Most likely the friar gave Lorenzo his blessing
before he died on 9 April 1492. A few weeks before Lorenzo’s death, during one of his sermons,
Savonarola is said to have predicted the event, having proclaimed a couple of weeks earlier that the
Almighty Lord would subdue the Signori and cause them finally to embrace the authentic faith,
either by striking them down with illness or through the power of the pious and humble. A few days
before Lorenzo’s death, on 5 April 1492, lightning damaged the cupola of Santa Maria in Fiore.
Savonarola interpreted the event as a sign of destiny; the next day he uttered the prophetic words
which became in a certain sense the motto of the regime soon to be born: Ecce gladius Domini
super terram cito et velociter. Later, between the spring and summer of 1495, Savonarola decided to
compose his Compendium rivelationum. His intention was to defend the core of his prophetic
preaching against the so-called tiepidi, members of the clergy who were aiming to ruin his reputation
at the papal court, for he had already been depicted as a manipulator and false prophet. In the
Compendium Savonarola explains that his knowledge of certain future events only partly depended
on his reading of the Scriptures: for God had directly inspired him (see above). God’s sword would
soon come to punish the sinners, whose bodies would be destroyed and their souls damned to
eternity.38
On 11 August 1492, making use of barefaced bribery and promises of preferment, Rodrigo Borja y
Borja was elected Pope Alexander VI. Most of those involved were perfectly aware of his dubious
character.39 Savonarola welcomed the election as dreadful but providential, as a necessary negative
step towards Christian regeneration. Meanwhile, he worked at the reform of San Marco and of other
Dominican convents in Tuscany. His intention was to set up a new congregation, through separating
from the Lombard Dominican congregation. The friar’s attempt was successful – the separation was
approved by the Pope on 22 May 1493 and the new Congregation of San Marco was established. He,
as Vicar-General, set the example of a strict life of charity and self-mortification. He spoke out with
increasing violence against the immoral life of many members of the Roman Curia, including the
wearer of the tiara.
Anxiety had been building in the city ever since the spring. Piero, who succeeded his father Lorenzo,
was known as a blunderer; he also soon made it clear that he felt more comfortable with his social
inferiors than with his peers. Many of the latter feared Piero’s opportunistic preference for new men
in high offices. They also feared his immoderate ambitions. Two large and rather heterogeneous
groups disliked Lorenzo’s son. One the one hand there were the most experienced Ottimati who had
worked together with Lorenzo, such as Bernardo Ruccellai, Piero Capponi, Francesco Valori, Tanai
de’ Nerli and Paoloantonio Soderini. They stood for an oligarchic type of republic similar to the
Venetian model. On the other hand there were republicans of a more modest social origin. These

38 See Savonarola, Compendio di Rivelazioni. Trattato del governo della cittá di Firenze, ed. F. Buzzi, Casale
Monferrato, 1996, pp. 43-49.
39 For Guicciardini’s negative judgment of the new Pope see Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia. I, II in FGO, p.
378.
13
were petty merchants, down-at-heel noblemen, and prosperous artisans, who were convinced that the
citizen members of the Great Council should have the right to hold the highest offices.40 Many
thought that Piero would soon make himself absolute ruler of Florence. Florence being traditionally
allied with the French Crown, Piero had already been promised by King Charles VIII himself that he
would be given the leading role in Florentine politics following his father’s death. In 1491 King
Charles VIII, encouraged by Neapolitan exiles in France and the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza,
announced his intention to invade Italy, with a view to seizing the kingdom of Naples – this action
being based on the old Angevin claims to the Neapolitan throne – and to go on from there to
launch a crusade against the Ottomans. In the course of 1494 Charles VIII began to press the
Florentines on the matter of their allegiance. Would they take his side against the kingdom of
Naples or the side of Naples? Florence repeatedly sent the King’s emissaries away with evasive
answers. The city possessed no strong army and was short of money. The leading families were
divided, especially on account of the fact that after the expulsion in June 1494 from Lyons of some
important Florentine bankers and rich merchants who had made significant investments in France,
King Charles was demanding money to fund his military campaign. Piero engaged in ambiguous
political manoeuvres. His mother’s family being the Orsini, bound by blood ties to the Aragonese
King of Naples, Alfonso II, he entered into an alliance with the latter, in spite of the doubts
expressed by many influential Florentines.
In September, from the pulpit of the Cathedral, Savonarola prophesied a flood and the arrival of
foreign troops: Ecce ego adducam aquas diluvii super terram! (Genesis 6, 17). Charles VIII was seen
as the “New Cyrus”, the long awaited gladius Dei (Sword of God), necessary for reforming
Florentine and Italian politics in general as well as the Church. In October Piero secretly met a
number of French emissaries with a view to restraining the King from attacking. On 26 October he
even secretly met Charles VIII. Four days later he informed the Signoria that the King had
demanded Florence’s two important seaports, Pisa and Livorno, in addition to the surrender of two
important fortresses to the north-west of Tuscany (Serrazzana and Pietrasanta) and the payment of
200,000 gold florins. The Signoria reacted with indignation and ordered Piero to abstain from any
further agreement with the King. At the beginning of November it sent an embassy of six prominent
citizens, including Savonarola, to negotiate with Charles VIII. On 9 November 1494 Piero was
expelled from Florence and sixty years of Medici rule came to an end. On 17 November Charles VIII
entered the city in triumph.41
Savonarola became one of the leading Florentine political figures. Speaking as one to whom matters
had been revealed directly by God, he explained to the King that he had been sent to Italy as a
servant of the Almighty. He was the providential scourge which Florence and Italy needed in order
finally to purify themselves. His divine mission entailed special responsibilities: he had to be
merciful, especially with Florence, to defend “the innocents” – the virgins, the widows, the orphans,
the poor of all sorts – and move out of Tuscany as soon as possible, leading his troops towards
Rome and Naples.42 From the beginning of November onwards, besides divulging God’s

40 See N. Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici, Oxford, 1966, pp. 230-1.
41 See J.N. Stephens, The Fall of the Florentine Republic (1512-1530), Oxford, 1983, pp. 24-55.
42 See F. Cordero, Savonarola, vol. I, Rome-Bari, 1986-88, pp. 315-20. In a letter addressed to Charles VIII on
26 May 1495, a few months after his troops had left Florence (28 November 1494), Savonarola asked the
sovereign to be the protector of the new Florentine popular government against the ambitions of the
immoderate Ottimati. He also repeated that he was speaking on behalf of God and that Florence had
received from God the mission of reforming European politics and religion; see LSA, pp. 63-9. It has been
noted that it was his support for the French, rather than merely his claim to prophetic powers, that brought
him into conflict with the Pope. Charles VIII had repeatedly threatened Alexander VIII with a reform
14
punishment, Savonarola announced the renovation: Florence would soon become the New
Jerusalem, the new City of God. He also claimed that a “popular government” was willed by God.43
He asked everyone to put aside resentment and conflict, to build concord and to work for political
and moral change, which would be beneficial to the whole of Italy, to the whole of Christianity and
to the Church. In a Sermon of 28 December, referring to Psalm 2, 6, he proclaimed Christ as King
of Florence: Iesus Christus rex populi florentini.44 Donald Weinstein writes that “with Christ
reigning in Florence no one else might aspire to that place”, and the city was “both monarchy and
republic at the same time”.45
The revolutionary events of November and December 1494 caused the friar to change his own
attitude towards the saeculum. He left his previous rejection of it behind. Earlier in his life he had
considered himself as vox clamantis in deserto (Isaiah 40, 3; Matthew 3, 3) and looked upon
political and social corruption as signs of the imminence of God’s scourge. Now he considered
social cohesion and the elimination and permanent prevention of tyranny as necessary steps towards
a proper vivere cristiano et civile. He first intervened as a peacemaker, urging the reconciliation of all
citizens. He called for a general political amnesty to secure a pace universale between the Ottimati
and the popolo. Thus he promoted a new regime in which the middle classes would enjoy increased
representation and participation in public offices. He wanted to prevent the recurrence of tyranny
and to ease the tax burden upon the middle and lower classes. He initiated “holy laws” to restore
Christian morality. Yet he was no democratic hero in the modern sense.46 Although the idea was to
grant the citizenry benefits via a more open, though not equal, circulation of offices, Savonarola
conceived of political authority as something to be delegated to a representative body neither so
small as to be easily corrupted by bribery or the collusion of friends and relatives, nor so large as to
lead to disorder. He thought of the governo popolare as one in which the power to distribute offices
was delegated to a council of citizens who are members by virtue of their special position in society
and their friendly disposition towards the Christian commonweal, rather than being chosen through
direct election by all the inhabitants of Florence. In his view, the populace remained a potential
source of danger. These conceptions, restated in an influential sermon of 14 December 1494, found
expression in the law of 22-23 December 1494, which established the Consiglio del popolo et
comune – soon referred to as Consiglio Maggiore – a body comprising some 3000 members, whose
function was to pass laws, to levy taxes and to choose the men who were to sit on the various
executive boards.47

council. Already in 1493 the Papacy had formed an alliance with Milan and Naples against the French, and
in 1495 the League included Venice, Spain and the Emperor Maximilian I. Florence, which Savonarola kept
loyal to France, was an obstacle to the Pope’s plan.
43 For a similar opinion see also Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, II, II in FGO, pp. 484, 491.
44 See Martines, p. 71.
45 See Weinstein, p. 295.
46 See Weinstein, “Conclusioni” in G.C. Garfagnini (ed.), Savonarola, 1498-1998. Una città e il suo profeta.
Firenze di fronte al Savonarola, Florence, 2001, pp. 533-45.
47 The city of Florence had about 90.000 inhabitants at this time. The Signoria was composed of Eight
Priors of Liberty (Priori di Libertà) and one Standard-bearer of Justice (Gonfaloniere di Giustizia), the
presiding officer and head of the Republic. It conducted the daily business of government and held office
for two months, after which it was succeeded by a new group of nine men. From each quarter of the city
came two Priors of Liberty. Seven members of the Signoria were required to belong to the arti maggiori, two
to the arti minori. This chief executive board received advice from two old boards: the board of the Twelve
Good Men (Docici Buonuomini) and that of the Sixteen Standard-bearers (Sedici Gonfalonieri di
Compagnia). Other magistrates conducted foreign policy (Dieci), administered justice (Otto di Balìa), and
handled finances (Ufficiali di Monte).
15
At that time printing was one of the most important instruments of political propaganda. Printing
was introduced in Italy in 1465 and in Florence in 1471. Towards the end of the century, Savonarola
was the most widely published author in Italy. In Florence alone there were 108 publications by the
friar. Christian Puritanism triumphed. The city was swept by a campaign of rigorous moral reform.
The Duomo could not contain the crowds that came to hear their prophet. Many enthusiastically
entered the Dominican novitiate. From Florence the light of moral reform was to shine out over
Italy and the whole of Europe. Not only was the city ruled by Paternosters, it even became
something like a “police state”. Austerity was imposed: all non-Christian celebrations were banned,
games considered immoral were prohibited and trivial activities were discouraged. Children were
used as guardians of public morality.
When, probably in 1484, Savonarola compiled the Compendium totius philosophiae tam naturalis
quam moralis – this work contained a section on politics entitled De politia et regno – it became
apparent that his political theory was indebted to St Thomas Aquinas’ De regimine principum (a
work that, although probably completed by Tolomeo da Lucca, was then believed to be wholly the
work of Thomas and which advocated the practical and theoretical superiority of monarchy over the
other forms of government). In his Trattato circa el reggimento e governo della città di Firenze of
1498, he restates the point that all good government proceeds from God; having re-examined the
three fundamental forms of government, he argues that even if in theory monarchy is the best form
of government, since it has the greatest power to promote unity and most nearly reflects divine rule,
nevertheless in practice the character of a people and its traditions determine what form of
government is best for it. Accordingly, the governo civile, otherwise known as governo popolare, was
the most appropriate type of government for Florence. In contrast to the idea that political liberty is
not a general end of political communities, an idea set out in the Compendium of 1484, in the 1498
Trattato the friar treated political liberty as one of the major goals of political life in general, and of
the Florentines in particular, and regarded its practice as a manifestation of the common good. This
view was in accord with Thomas’ idea that the tyranny of a single man is worse than the tyranny of
an oligarchy or a democracy. Savonarola made political liberty coincide with Christian common
good, while the latter in turn presupposed emancipation from arbitrary and immoral rule.
Savonarola thus adapted Aquinas’ political philosophy to local circumstances.
From July 1495 onwards the Roman Curia became increasingly concerned about the friar. Invited to
visit Rome to discuss the revelations he claimed to have received from God, he replied that for the
present he could not go since he – who was used to move from town to town on his bare feet – was
too ill to travel and since the dangers of being murdered on the road were too great. In any case, “he
was needed by God in Florence”. As for the revelations, he promised to send a book he had recently
composed – Compendium revelationum – in order to provide all necessary information. In
September, the Pope issued a brief condemning Savonarola’s claim to divine inspiration and
suspending him from preaching. He moreover ordered, pending the examination of the case by the
vicar-general of the Lombard congregation, the reunification of San Marco with that congregation.
Savonarola replied immediately, protesting against the fusion with the Lombards and the
appointment of the Lombard vicar-general as his judge. He claimed never to have challenged the
principle of obedience to the Holy See and declared himself a humble servant of God and of the
Holy Church. His prophetic power was to be understood from within Catholic orthodoxy, not as a
challenge to it. After the positive results of an ecclesiastical inquiry held at Bologna, the Pope
decided in October temporarily to suspend the reunification but maintained the prohibition on
preaching until a possible vindication at Rome.
Being condemned to silence, the friar wrote, presumably at the end of 1495, a letter to an unknown

16
friend. More than a letter, the document in question is in fact an apology directed against his critics.
It was probably intended as an instrument aimed at defeating the prohibition on preaching. In it,
the friar names Satan as the cause of his current troubles. Alluding to his relationship with the
Roman Curia and the Florentine Franciscans who had opposed him, he recalls that the Pharisees
and not the people had persecuted Christ. He compares his message with the truth of the gospels
and claims that envy and sloth are the major threats to which he is exposed. Against those who
question his prophecies, he recalls the teaching of St Paul and St Thomas Aquinas. Finally, in
opposition to all those who accuse him of having promoted a “insane form of government”, he
claims that given the situation during and immediately after the rule of the Medici “nothing better
than a popular regime could be found for Florence”. He concludes that such accusers only show
disrespect and ungratefulness towards God, who commanded the establishment of that government
through the action of his humble friar.48
In 1495 Savonarola also wrote his De simplicitate vitae christianae, which was published first in
Latin and then in the vernacular between summer and autumn 1496. In it he argued that Christian
simplicity is total devotion to Christ, is love of Christ, and has a divine nature, in that it is
cognition and actualization of the Gospel. The life of Christian simplicity is a life of truthfulness
based upon right reason and grace. The ben vivere, which had previously constituted the pillar of
social and political reform, now takes the form and the substance of Christian simplicity.
The topic of simplicity is of importance for the political theory. Before continuing with our
historical sketch, we shall briefly indicate why. You will recall that Plato was also interested in
simplicity, or more exactly in the avoidance of luxury, which, he believed, tended to corrupt the city-
state. Plato’s text must have been known to Savonarola, who however proposes a different remedy.
Plato talks about the original city, which knew no such luxury: in Book II of The Republic he writes
that “four or five citizens ... are required to make a city”. In such a simple set-up, each does his work
and provides the products required by his co-workers and co-citizens. But gradually, with the
division of labour and associated economic development, there arises a city that “will have far
exceeded the limit of four or five”. So society progresses, with the emergence of trade, imports and
exports, until we wake to find ourselves living in “not only a State, but a luxurious State”.
The moral decadence normally consequent on such luxury can only be resisted by a paradoxical
move: the very surplus product which lies behind the new luxury can be made use of to fund a class
of philosopher-kings, who do not work with their hands but guarantee, by their knowledge – which
is knowledge of the Form of the Good – a system of rule which will establish justice as the ruling
virtue of the city, thus countering the effects of the replacement of simplicity by luxurious living.
Savonarola takes a different line. As we have seen, he does not trust “wise men”. He therefore places
the city-state and its people in the hands of Christ. Christ, as the Son of God, shares in God’s
simplicity: for as we know (for example from Thomas) God is “altogether simple”.49 Thus rule by
48 See LSA, pp. 239-55.
49 Summa Theologica, I, q. 3, a. 7: “Augustine says (De Trin. iv, 6,7): ‘God is truly and absolutely simple.’
I answer that the absolute simplicity of God may be shown in many ways.
First, from the previous articles of this question. For there is neither composition of quantitative parts in
God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His
“suppositum”; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him composition of genus and
difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether
simple.
Secondly, because every composite is posterior to its component parts, and is dependent on them; but God is
the first being, as shown above (Question 2, Article 3).
Thirdly, because every composite has a cause, for things in themselves different cannot unite unless
17
Christ guarantees the purity required for the reform of Florence and of the Church.
Back to our history: in February 1496, Savonarola started preaching again. In order to please the new
Signoria, the Pope had let it be known that he would have tolerated Savonarola’s preaching if only
the latter had moderated his language and kept off the subject of politics. But the friar was now
using a language more violent than ever against the Roman Curia. He even argued that it was not
out of obedience to the Pope that he had withdrawn into silence, but only the better to examine his
conscience. In that same year he promoted the establishment of the Monte di Pietà – a communal
loan fund – with the declared purpose of ending Jewish money-lending and usury. At the beginning
of November, Alexander VI resolved to form a new Roman-Tuscan congregation under the direct
control of the Curia. Savonarola then declared himself no longer bound to obey the Pope, since the
latter’s decree was in violation of true faith. On the side of the friar were the so-called frateschi or
piagnoni, the most zealous Christians, and some of the republicans who supported him after the
departure of Piero de’ Medici, such as Paoloantonio Soderini, Giovanbattista Ridolfi and Francesco
Valori.
By this time several bonfires of the vanities had already taken place, but on 7 February 1497 the
greatest ever was held at the Piazza della Signoria. Many influential Florentines were not only
worried about the new way of life being thus imposed, but also about the future of the relationship
between the Florentine republic, the Papacy and the other Italian powers on the one hand, and the
constant threat constituted by both the Spain and the German Empire on the other.
On 13 May 1497, Alexander VI excommunicated Savonarola. The excommunication was published
in Florence on June 18. The friar immediately reacted by addressing a “letter to all Christians”
denying the validity of the measure. But he again stopped preaching, partly on account of a plague
that had spread through the town and partly in order not to upset the attempts made by the
Florentine diplomats at Rome to have the censure lifted. At the beginning of 1498 the papal court
informed the Signoria that the excommunication could only be removed if Florence agreed to join
the anti-French League promoted by the Pope and comprising the Duchy of Milan, Venice, Spain
and the Empire. Savonarola did not accept the deal. He had already said mass publicly on
Christmas Day, and on 11 February 1498 he recommenced preaching on Exodus in the Duomo,
claiming that whoever accepted his excommunication as valid was a heretic. In March the Signoria,
fearing a papal interdict on the city, requested the friar to suspend his preaching, though it refused
to hand him over to the Roman authorities. In his farewell sermon, the friar compared his
afflictions to those of the prophet Jeremiah. He then played his last (and fatal) card – he started
drafting letters to the Emperor and other European sovereigns urging them to summon a council to
depose Alexander VI and to reform the Church. Savonarola’s violation of the Papal ban had
dangerous consequences for the Republic while the number of hostile preachers in town increased.
The situation was impossible – the pace universale was again threatened.
On 25 March 1498, the Feast of the Annunciation and New Year’s Day in Florence, at a moment
when the Florentines were heavily beset by political discord and the city itself was under the threat
of a collective excommunication, a Franciscan Friar, Francesco da Puglia, preaching in the church of
Santa Croce, challenged the supporters of Savonarola to prove his claims, and in particular the
claims that the excommunication issued by Pope Alexander VI in May 1497 was not valid and that

something causes them to unite. But God is uncaused, as shown above (Question 2, Article 3), since He is
the first efficient cause.
Fourthly, because in every composite there must be potentiality and actuality; but this does not apply to
God; for either one of the parts actuates another, or at least all the parts are potential to the whole.
Fifthly, because nothing composite can be predicated of any single one of its parts ....”
18
the Florentines who had accepted its invalidity committed no sin. A few days later, during the
sermons of the 27th and 28th at San Marco, Domenico da Pescia, one of the closest assistants of
Savonarola, who had replaced the latter on the account of the papal ban on preaching following the
excommunication, perhaps foolishly accepted the challenge. Everyone in town was immediately
talking about it. But the ordeal by fire was seen not just as a dispute between friars. The affair gained
notable political significance due to the rapid involvement of the Signoria. The latter had no
jurisdiction in the matter and yet not only made sure that the arrangements between the Franciscans
and the Dominicans were set down in proper legal and notarial form but also subsidised the event to
be held in front of the Palazzo della Signoria.
As soon as Domenico da Pescia had accepted the challenge, Francesco da Puglia seems to have
changed his mind, explaining that he had only meant to undergo the ordeal if Savonarola himself
took part. In the heat of the moment, the friars of San Marco and numerous followers of Savonarola
offered to enter the fire, sure that a miracle favourable to their cause would take place. Savonarola
was certainly not enthusiastic about the idea and had never offered himself for the ordeal. It was, he
believed, outrageous thus to tempt God, and it was certainly not up to man to determine how, when
and where a miracle would occur. Yet politically he had no choice but to agree to the event, even
though he was aware of the trap that his enemies – chiefly the Arrabbiati (Angry Ones) and the
Compagnacci (Rude Companions), with the support of the Signoria of that moment – had
prepared. They assumed that the very attempt to stage an ordeal by fire would have confused and
undermined support for the friar. Savonarola’s preaching had created conditions in which miracles
were expected. If no miracle now took place the moral credibility of the friars of San Marco and the
political weight of Savonarola’s visions would have collapsed like a house of cards. Pope Alexander
VI himself saw a grave danger, in that the validity of the excommunication and its effects might
have been undermined by such an unpredictable and unorthodox procedure as an ordeal. However,
it was finally decided that the event should take place on 7 April. Two Franciscans and two
Dominicans were expected to walk through the fire. If the Dominicans refused to enter the fire, the
penalty for Savonarola would be immediate exile. If both parties died, the penalty for the
Dominican friar would be exile within three hours. In case a miracle occurred, the following claims
were to be considered validated: 1) the need for the imminent scourging and renewal of the Church;
2) the prediction of a subsequent flourishing of Florence; 3) the nullity of the excommunication; 4)
that those who had considered the excommunication as invalid had not sinned.
After long discussions and hesitation, the friars of both parties abandoned the attempt. Within a few
hours, the thwarting of the ordeal led to a situation in which contempt and brutality were heaped
upon the shoulders of Savonarola and all his followers. The friar had made enemies from the earliest
days of his impassioned preaching against the corruption of the clergy and against the despotic and
unscrupulous political leaders of Florence. He was now even made a target of numerous obscene and
sarcastic poems. Some of them contained vile insults and grotesque personal accusations. Others had
political content. In particular, he was blamed for having sided with King Charles VIII, for having
preached against Florence’s entry into the Italian League, and for having kept the city from regaining
Pisa – as if the piagnoni alone had wanted the French army to return to Italy. Moreover, the
Ottimati saw popular government as a threat. These political considerations played a particularly
important role. The contempt and brutality shown towards the Friar were not only inspired by his
“broken mystical promises”.50
The mood of the city had changed and the number of those who opposed the friar and the
influence of San Marco increased dramatically. The attack on San Marco, to which we already

50 See Martines, pp. 157, 230, 243.

19
referred, was unleashed by a furious crowd on the afternoon of Palm Sunday, 8 April 1498. That
morning Savonarola had closed a short sermon by announcing his imminent martyrdom. Even if
the anger of many people with the materialist habits of the papal court had not vanished overnight,
they were afraid in the new circumstances to come to the defence of San Marco. Finally arrested, and
with their hands tied behind their backs, Savonarola and the other friars left the building and,
surrounded by armed guards, were led to the Signoria amidst a shower of angry insults.
The Friar was subjected to three so-called trials before lay judges, two in April (from the 11th to the
18th and from the 21st to the 25th) and one in May (from the 20th to the 21st) before two papal
commissioners; but these were nothing more than question-and-answer sessions involving moreover
the drop-and-jerk type of torture. The original trial transcripts vanished in obscure circumstances.51
The recorded trial proceedings would seem to be unreliable, given the fact that Savonarola’s
testimony was extorted by torture, though there is still no agreement among historians about the
nature and the extent of the fraud involved in the changes made to it after Savonarola’s signature
was already attached. At the end of the two April sessions, Savonarola broke, admitting that he was
not the prophet he had claimed to be, as well as accepting guilt for disobeying the papal bans and
urging secular rulers to call a council to depose the Pope. Among other things, he even
acknowledged that he had consecrated the bread every day and taken communion without being
confessed, the reason being that he wanted to avoid disclosing secrets and in the knowledge that he
would have not been absolved. At the end of the third and dramatic session, he and two other friars,
Silvestro Maruffi and Domenico da Pescia, were declared guilty of heresy and schism. The Papal
commissioners ordered the three men to be handed over to the Florentine authorities for capital
punishment, but not before having being defrocked and degraded and having been separated from
the Church.52 On 23 May 1498 Savonarola and his two companions died a terrible death on Piazza
della Signoria.
***
Let us now briefly return to theoretical matters and close with one final point. We noted at the
beginning that Savonarola is the theorist of trust, Machiavelli the theorist of distrust. In
Machiavelli’s case the matter is clear: a Prince who acts in a truly trustworthy manner, he says, will
thereby undercut his own power. Thus he writes (in ch. XVIII of The Prince): “Everyone insists how
praiseworthy it is for a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity .... But our experience has been
that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account.” It is necessary
for a Prince – that is, he has no alternative, if he wants to avoid losing his position – where necessary
“to act contrary to faith, friendship, humanity, and religion”. So anyone would be a fool to trust
him – as he would be a fool to trust anyone else.
In Savonarola’s case we find an entirely different line of argument. Very roughly – we don’t have
time to develop the point53 – this is because Savonarola’s thought is in the line of covenant thinking
on politics and human society. Covenant can perhaps best be understood in contrast with the
modern conception of contract. Thus “contract “is an agreement made in suspicion” – “the parties
do not trust one another” – whereas a covenant is an agreement made in trust”. Or, in other words:

51 Martines, p. 265.
52 But the story is told that, in answer to the formula of the bishop of Vasona, "I separate thee from the
Church militant and the Church triumphant", Savonarola answered: "Militante, non triumphante; hoc enim
tuum non est."
53 See Grahame Lock, “Contract, governance and covenant: How the empty throne was filled – and what
might still be missing”; http://users.ox.ac.uk/~quee0813/.
20
in a covenant there is a mutual “pledge of loyalty or community of soul”.54
Savonarola makes extensive use of covenant models, especially the Old Covenant, for example in his
sermons on Exodus. This began early in his career. For instance, Pseudo-Burlamacchi (his 16th
century biographer, in the Vita del Beato Ieronimo Savonarola55) writes that the Dominicans of
Fiesole recalled “Savonarola, moulding the pith which he had taken from several branches of the fig-
tree, [and making] of it some small white doves, which he distributed amongst the monks,
[explained] to them the while, with the eloquence of a poet and of a prophet, the twofold
intervention of this mystic bird, in the covenant which God made with Noah when he came out of
the ark, and in that which he afterwards sealed with the blood of his Son”. 56 What is important in
respect of Savonarola’s later repeated references to Moses – in which “no detail of Moses’ life and
circumstances went unremarked”57 – is his insistence that “Moses represented the elect of God who
prefigured the faithful in Christ”,58 while Florence meanwhile has come to take the place of ancient
Israel as the people elect.
As we saw, for Savonarola, Florence has been given the chance to play the role of the City of Christ,
with Christ as its King, a city from which the reform of the Church and of society in general will
spread. “Florence”, he apostrophizes, “seek this gift from God, and, having it, you will be blessed.”
And: “O Florence, the prophecy of Zacharias has been fulfilled in you .... Here is your King, who
has come down to you ....” 59 Making Christ into its King signified that Florence would fall under
its law.60 This means that the people of Florence would stand to God in a covenant relation. Or, as
Rebecca McCumbers points out, “for Savonarola, man overcomes his natural, conflicted state not
through a social contract but rather through God’s grace and spiritual conversion”.61
In Machiavelli’s case, on the other hand, Moses “was useful for tilting at that second, self-declared
Moses in Savonarola, [his] foremost example of an unarmed prophet .... [For] Savonarola failed to
resort to force when that became necessary, so he came to ruin.”62 Moses, according to Machiavelli,
had not hesitated to make use of force when necessary, executing (see above) an “infinite number” of
his own people after descending from the mountain. The story is told in Exodus, where it is related
that the Lord told Moses: “If you obey Me and keep My covenant, you shall be to Me a treasure out
of all peoples, for Mine is the entire earth.”63 This is the story of the golden calf and of Moses’
punishment of those who had worshipped it: “And Moses said unto them [the sons of Levi], Thus
saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to
gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every
man his neighbour. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of
the people that day about three thousand men.”64 Machiavelli approves. For the same reason, he

54 See e.g. http://www.bluecloud.org/covcon.html and http://www.scborromeo.org/papers/covenant.pdf.

55 Once thought to have been written by Fra Pacifico Burlamacchi.
56 See http://www.orestesbrownson.com/index.php?id=229.
57 John H. Geerken, “Machiavelli’s Moses and Renaissance Politics”, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 60,
no. 4., 1999.
58 Savonarola, Sermoni e prediche, Florence, 1846, p. 590, quoted in Geerken, op. cit., p. 587.
59 Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola, pp. 163, 226.
60 In Prediche italiane, I, pp. 362-3; quoted in Weinstein, “Savonarola, Florence, and the Millenarian
Tradition”, p. 297.
61 McCumbers, “Preaching Politics”, p. 12.
62 Geerken, p. 591.
63 Exodus, 19-5.
64 Exodus, 32-27, 28.

21
disapproves of Savonarola, who rejected the use of such bloody solutions in Florence. Thus, in the
sight of Machiavelli, “Savonarola emerges as, de facto, a half-Moses or anti-Moses”. Instead of
Machiavellian virtù, which meant the use of physical force, Savonarola put his faith in humility,
contemplation, suffering and patience.65
But Savonarola’s position is consistent with his covenantal approach. There is no social contract
because Christ is King; and one does not negotiate with Christ. But since Christ is King, there is no
room for any other King. And so, as McCumbers notes, Savonarola chose simplicity of faith, of
wisdom and of the eloquence of sacred scripture; for earthly wisdom is ineffective even in temporal
affairs (see above, our remarks on Plato and Savonarola). So his conclusion follows: if the elites –
even the “wise” – are not fit to rule and if for that reason too no man is as worthy to be King as is
Christ, “to whom else should the temporal government be given but the people?”66
Savonarola’s republicanism is thus no opportunist or merely secular preference, but a theologically-
grounded position. In this respect he of course stands apart from Machiavelli’s version of republican
allegiance, in which religion, if important, is to be regarded from a pragmatic point of view, as
something which, true or false, is there to be mobilized in the cause of Florentine and Italian
power.67 In that regard he is again the very antithesis of Savonarola, who insisted that “all temporal
goods must be subordinated to the moral and religious good” upon which they depend.68
In opposition to what came to be the Machiavellian argument, Savonarola thus concludes: “The first
thing you will have to accomplish will be universal peace among all the citizens .... It is necessary to
turn to God .... In the meantime, in order to impart a good form to your government, be ready to
impose the necessary order .... And know this also, Florence: God has made and instituted Himself
your physician, if you will observe what I have told you; have no fear of your enemies, for you will
always be more powerful than they, and God will defend you ...”69 But this conclusion is of course
one which Machiavelli could never accept.

65 Weinstein, pp. 591-2.

66 McCumbers, p. 21.
67 Cf. Geerken, p. 595.
68 Quoted by J.F.T. Prince, “The Social teaching of Savonarola”, New Blackfriars, vol. 33, issue 393,
December 1952.
69 “Aggeus, Sermon XIII”, Third Sunday of Advent, 12 December 1494; in Selected Writings of Girolamo
Savonarola, pp. 161-62.
22