Florence was also one of the richest cities, but most of the coins were tucked away in the pockets of a few fabulously rich banker/merchant families or in the strongboxes of the Church, whose high offices were filled by men from those same families. It was a dangerous place, where sometimes blood ran in the streets and mutilated bodies littered the city squares because of conspiracies and power struggles between families.
As time passed, Savonarola honed his preaching skills and was soon in such demand he delivered his frightening sermons in the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. By now he was claiming that God spoke directly to him. He made prophesies. His visions of doomsday, he ranted, had been revealed to him by God, and he recorded them in his Compendium Revelationem. He began to interfere in the government, criticizing it for ignoring the poor and underfed. But most of his energy went into forcing his brand of strict morality down people’s throats.
Savonarola urged the passing of laws to burn homosexuals alive, to publicly beat prostitutes, whom he called “pieces of meat with eyes.” He sent bands of youths through the city to harass men and women who dressed too richly, to force their way into houses and confiscate “vanities”-books, sculpture, fine clothing, paintings, jewels-and to burn them in great bonfires.
In his sermons he attacked the Medici family, calling Lorenzo, the top man, a tyrant-which he was. He railed against Pope Alexander VI, saying he was corrupt-which he was-and unfit to be God’s representative on earth. In this way, Savonarola pitted himself against two of the most powerful tyrants in Europe. There was no discussion with Girolamo Savonarola. To oppose him was to stand against the will of God.
Some Florentines saw the friar as an enemy of their power and wealth. Many became his followers, but just as many considered him a puritan and fundamentalist who claimed he spoke in the name of God when he censored or destroyed literature, art, music, and all ideas that were not in agreement with his. He had become, they said, a fanatic.
IV
I TOOK A BREAK from my reading when my eyelids threatened to close permanently.
My parents had come home, and supper was almost ready. Mom sat at the kitchen table, her plate shoved aside to make room for the newspaper. Bowls of steaming vegetables waited in the centre of the table.
Dad pushed through the door. He gave me a look, then set a platter of barbecued steaks beside the bowl of carrots. The look meant things were still a little tense on the home-front. I knew the cause: Mom hadn’t turned down the Afghanistan assignment yet.
“Ready,” Dad said with forced enthusiasm.
We ate without much conversation, and after dessert all three of us seemed to have pressing things to do. My parents went to bridge club. I watched TV for a while, but the sitcoms seemed inane and childish, completely divorced from the real world. Turning off the TV, I laughed out loud.
“A TV comedy is make-believe, but a ghost in a loony library is real?” I asked myself.
I returned to my room and got into bed, the last light of evening fading from the sky. I yawned, picking up the history book.
The last chapter described how Savonarola had made so many enemies that after only three years or so at the height of his influence the city turned against him, including many of its priests and monks. The pope, who was Savonarola’s boss, wanted him dead. The Medici wanted him dead.
So he was kicked out of the church, excommunicated, and commanded to cease preaching. He ignored the pope’s orders. He was arrested-charged with, of all things, crimes against the church-and executed in 1498. The order to torture and hang him was signed by Pope Alexander VI.
I tossed the book down in disgust. Images from my dream swirled into my mind. The dark damp cell, the victim kneeling in agony, the candle illuminating papers bearing the pope’s seal.
“The pope,” I muttered. “God’s representative on earth.”
I lay back and dropped off to sleep.
IN MY DREAM I saw three nooses dangling from a gibbet, swinging lazily to and fro in the morning breeze, their shadows flickering across piles of brushwood stacked around the base of the gallows platform. Around me was a vast city square enclosed by six-storey stone buildings and densely packed with spectators. Their collective gaze was fixed on the closed doors of a stone fortress whose soaring bell tower pierced the clear morning sky. From the crenellated fortress roof, guards watched the crowd, pikes in hand, the pale morning light gleaming on breastplates and helmets.
A marble terrace fronted the building, and from the north end a wooden walkway stretched into the square to a gallows resembling a cross.
The crowd seethed and shifted. The air trembled with anticipation. The wide oaken doors of the fortress swung open and a hooded man emerged, followed by three monks in manacles and ankle chains, then a number of other men, some in long coats, some in clerical habits. The chained men were stripped of their black cloaks and white habits before the hangman led them along the walkway, their leg irons clanking on the new boards just above the heads of the spectators.
The hangman lifted a ladder from the platform and leaned it against the gibbet, then pushed the first prisoner up the ladder ahead of him, snugged the noose around the prisoner’s neck, tied a chain around his waist, and shoved him off the ladder as if he were a sack of grain. The crowd groaned, all eyes on the dying monk twisting and jerking at the end of the rope. The hangman moved the ladder to the opposite end of the gallows’ crossbar, then prepared and dispatched the second prisoner, whose neck could be heard breaking.
I saw the crowd lean forward when the ladder was moved again. I felt the morbid excitement, the fear, the fascination. What would happen when Savonarola was flung off the ladder to his death? Some whispered that he would take wing, like an angel. Others claimed the devil’s hand would reach up from hell and drag him down. Still others said that when the firewood was set alight the famous friar would learn what hell was like.
The hangman mockingly swept his hand up, inviting Savonarola to mount the ladder. The friar, his body twisted by the strappado, awkwardly climbed onto the lowest rung, his leg irons hindering ascent to the top. The hangman fixed the noose in place and looped the chain around the friar’s waist.
“Oh, prophet,” a voice rang out from the crowd, “now is the time for you to work one of your miracles!”
Was it a sneer or a prayer?
The hangman heaved the famous preacher off the ladder, and the spectators uttered a collective gasp. Savonarola’s bare feet kicked and jerked as the quivering rope throttled him. The hangman descended and walked to the marble terrace, then took the stairs to ground level. The crowd parted as he made his way to the foot of the gallows, an unlit torch in his hand.
Spasms of nausea seized my gut. The three men twisting and wriggling above the platform were to be burned alive. Savonarola struggled, writhing and kicking as if he could somehow free himself from the choking noose.
The hangman had lit his torch, but before he could shove it into the brushwood someone burst from the crowd clutching a burning brand. “Now,” he shouted, his eyes on the friar, “I can burn the man who wanted to burn me!”
And he thrust the flaming brand into the brushwood.
As smoke curled upwards the flames spread quickly, snapping and popping, but not loudly enough to smother the friar’s screams. Some in the mob tossed small bags of gunpowder into the fire. The sacks sparked and burst, feeding and spreading the flames, the conflagration forcing the onlookers back. The bodies on the gibbet blackened and blistered and smoked.