But the Pope had timed his threat well. Savonarola’s supporters were losing ground in Florence where, indeed, they had been only partly responsible for the impermanent changes which had taken place in the government of the city. There had been poor harvests that year in Tuscany; starving people had fallen down and died in the streets; there had also been an outbreak of plague. Savonarola’s hero, King Charles, had not returned Pisa to Florence as he had promised to do, but had handed it over instead to its inhabitants who had taken up arms to defend their independence. And the subsequent war, fought as usual by ill-paid mercenaries, dragged on indeterminately. Making much of these calamities, Savonarola’s opponents had been more and more outspoken in their criticisms of his regime. A party of high – spirited young men known as Compagnacci, mostly sons of rich families, had gone so far as to smear the Cathedral pulpit with grease, hanging round it the putrid skin of an ass, and to contrive the fall of a heavy chest which came crashing down to the stone floor of the nave, sending the panic-stricken congregation rushing out of the Cathedral in the middle of the Prior’s sermon.
It was one of the last sermons which Savonarola was to deliver; for it had been decided in Florence that, in view of the Pope’s warnings, he must be asked to preach no more. He agreed to desist on condition that he be allowed the opportunity of vindicating himself. He attempted to do so on 18 March in a sermon in which he insisted on his right to resist unlawful authority, made reference to the fulfilment of his prophecies and castigated the Church as a Satanic institution for the promotion of whoredom and vice. He had not preached because he wanted to but because he had been compelled to by a raging fire within the very marrow of his bones: ‘I feel myself all burning, all inflamed with the spirit of the Lord. Oh, spirit within! You rouse the waves of the sea, as the wind does. You stir the tempest as you pass. I can do no other.’
After this final sermon the Franciscans, who had long challenged the Dominicans’ claims to a special relationship with God, renewed their request that Savonarola should produce some evidence of His peculiar favour. Fra Francesco da Puglia, a Franciscan monk, in particular insisted that Savonarola’s claims to divine inspiration were false, and that he could not prove they were otherwise. He offered to walk through fire in company with Savonarola to satisfy the world that the Dominican was not under God’s protection. Savonarola declined to take part in the ordeal, protesting that he was reserved for higher work; but he agreed that his passionately devoted supporter, Fra Domenico da Pescia, might represent him. Fra Domenico eagerly accepted the challenge. Fra Francesco, however, refused to match himself with anyone other than Savonarola; so another Franciscan, Fra Giuliano Rondinelli, was found to take his place.
Most members of the Signoria were horrified by this suggested reversion to the barbarism of past ages. One suggested that their ancestors would be ashamed of them if they could hear them even so much as discussing the propriety of the proposed ordeal. Another put forward the idea that walking across the Arno without getting wet would be ‘just as good a miracle’ to settle the dispute. Yet it was felt that the populace had by now become so excited by the prospect of an ordeal by fire that it might prove dangerous to disappoint them. It was settled that if the Dominican, Fra Domenico, died then Savonarola would be banished from Florence; if the Franciscan, Fra Giuliano, perished – as, indeed, he expected to do – but the Dominican did not, then Fra Francesco da Puglia would be banished. It was also settled that the ordeal should take place in the Piazza della Signoria on Saturday 7 April 1498 between ten o’clock in the morning and two in the afternoon, that on the appointed day all strangers must leave the city, the streets be barricaded, and the approaches to the Piazza held by armed guards.
An avenue thirty yards long and ten yards across was constructed in front of the Loggia dei Lanzi. Each side of the avenue was lined with piles of sticks soaked in oil leaving a passage in the middle about three feet broad through which the monks had to pass. The Loggia dei Lanzi was divided into two for the accommodation of the rival supporters.
The Franciscans were the first to enter the arena, where they were kept waiting for the arrival of the Dominicans, who marched towards the Loggia in pairs behind a crucifix, chanting an appropriate psalm. At the end of the procession walked Fra Domenico next to Savonarola in ‘whose excommunicated hands’ the Franciscans were appalled to see the Host. There was further consternation when it became apparent that Fra Domenico intended to take a crucifix with him into the flames. He eventually agreed that he would not do this, but he could not be persuaded to be parted from the consecrated Host. The arguments continued until a heavy thunderstorm broke above then-heads, and it was announced that no ordeal would take place that day after all.
This was too much for the people to bear. The next day, Palm Sunday, an angry mob attacked a congregation who had assembled in the Cathedral to hear a sermon by one of Savonarola’s disciples. The congregation fled from the Cathedral and, pursued by sticks and stones and the execrations of the Compagnacci, ran for the shelter of San Marco. Here, unknown to Savonarola who urged them to seek protection only in prayer, the monks had assembled a small store of weapons and were prepared to withstand a siege. Some of them loosened a pinnacle at the top of the monastery church and sent it hurtling down on the heads of the mob in the square below; others struck out with lances at men trying to set fire to the monastery walls. Several rioters and monks were killed before the assailants managed to clamber over the walls and down into the choir. Savonarola took refuge in the library where, soon afterwards, a guard arrived from the Signoria with orders for his arrest. He was escorted through the streets, hooted and jeered at by the mob, and cast into the Alberghettino in the tower of the Palazzo della Signoria where Cosimo de’ Medici had been imprisoned sixty-five years before.
Orders were given for Savonarola to be tortured. Suffering the exquisite agonies inflicted by the strappado, he made all such confessions as were required of him, retracting the confessions when the ropes were removed from his body, and then being tortured again. Together with Fra Domenico and another of his most faithful disciples Fra Silvestro, he was found guilty of heresy and schism and condemned to death. A scaffold, surrounded by tinder, was erected in the Piazza della Signoria and on this Savonarola and his two companions were hanged in chains and burned. As the flames leapt towards the early summer sky, a voice called out derisively, ‘O prophet, now is the time for a miracle! Prophet save thyself.’
‘In a few hours the victims were burned, their legs and arms gradually dropping off,’ Landucci recorded in his diary.
Part of their bodies remaining hanging to the chains, a quantity of stones were thrown to make them fall, as there was a fear of the people getting hold of them; and then the hangman and those whose business it was, hacked down the post and burned it on the ground, bringing a lot of brushwood, and stirring the fire up over the dead bodies so that the very last piece was consumed. Then they fetched carts, and accompanied by the mace-bearers, carried the last bit of dust to the Arno near the Ponte Vecchio in order that no remains should be found.
VI
RETURN OF THE MEDICI
‘The town of Prato was sacked, not without some bloodshed’
THEIR TREASURES lost, their palaces and villas forfeited, the Medici wandered over Europe like the members of an outcast tribe. Piero remained in Italy, occasionally pawning a gem or a cameo, offering his services to the Republic’s enemies, making repeated attempts to reinstate himself in Florence by force, joining forces with Cesare Borgia, who was creating an empire for himself in the Romagna and who hoped that by re-establishing the Medici in Florence he would make a valuable ally for himself in Tuscany. Once Piero actually appeared at the Porta Romana with a band of men-at-arms, who trotted away to Siena when it became clear that the Florentines were not in the least disposed to favour a Medicean restoration under Piero’s leadership. Eventually Piero decided to offer his services to the French in return for some vague, unfulfilled promises of their support in yet another attempt to regain Florence.