1. Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498)

2. Girolamo Savonarola
Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) was an Italian Dominican friar and preacher in Florence. He is best known for his prophecies of civic glory for Florence and calls for Christian renewal.

3. Teachings and prophecies
He spoke out about corruption in the Church and the way in which the poor were exploited. He prophesied the coming of another biblical flood and a new ruler from the north who would reform the Church.

4. Prophecy fulfilled?
This was seen as coming true when Charles VIII of France invaded Italy and threatened Florence. The people of Florence expelled the ruling Medici family and established a republic. In 1495 Florence refused to join Pope Alexander VI’s Holy League against the French and Savonarola was summoned to Rome.

5. Torture and death
Savonarola was tortured and admitted that he had invented his visions and prophecies. On 23 May 1498, he and his two lieutenants were condemned, hanged and burned in the main square of Florence. Their ashes were thrown in the River Arno so that people could not take them as relics.

6. Piagnoni
His followers, the Piagnoni, kept his cause of republican freedom and religious reform alive into the next century, although the Medici broke the movement when they were returned to power.

7. The Prince Of Savonarola, Machiavelli wrote:
‘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, and he had no means of keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to believe.’

8. Other perspectives
Martin Luther praised Savonarola as a martyr. In France he came to be regarded as a precursor of the Huguenot reform. In the Dominican Order Savonarola was presented as a harmless devotional figure — ‘the evolving image of a Counter-Reformation saintly prelate’ (Lorenzo Polizzotto, The Elect Nation, p. 443) The present-day Roman Catholic Church has considered his beatification.