Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) was a Dominican friar who briefly took over the city government of Florence, Italy. He governed for only four years, but he left a profound mark on the famous city by destroying many of its artistic treasures and enforcing a strict code of Christian morals. He initially enjoyed widespread popular support, but was overthrown and killed in 1498.
Savonarola was born in Ferrara, in northern Italy, and entered the Dominican order against his parents’ wishes at age twenty-one. He became an ardent critic of the papacy and the Roman curia, who he believed had betrayed Christian teaching.
He was stationed in Florence from 1482 to 1487, but made little impression on the city until he returned in 1490. The city—one of the wealthiest in Europe and the heart of the Italian Renaissance—was not regarded as a bastion of religious fervor. It was home to some of the world’s most opulent palaces and monuments, constructed by the ruling Medici family.
To Savonarola, the city’s thriving culture was nothing more than decadence, and its art and literature merely temptations to sin. He recoiled at the paintings, many of which contained nudity, and the city’s relatively tolerant attitude toward homosexuality. In his fiery preaching, he denounced the Medici, tapping into an underlying discontent in the city toward their rule.
In 1494, France invaded northern Italy, and in the tumult the Medici were expelled from the city. Savonarola, with popular backing, took control of the city. He set out upon a program of sweeping moral reforms, including applying the death penalty for homosexuality and establishing a “bonfire of the vanities,” in which books and works of art that he deemed decadent were burned.
He also continued to preach against the papacy, sermons that led to his excommunication in 1497. Amidst growing unhappiness in Florence, he offered to undergo a test by fire to prove his righteousness. Unhappily for Savonarola, the citizens called his bluff, and he suddenly changed his mind in April 1498. As it turns out, he got a trial by fire anyway: He was arrested that month, condemned to death, and burned at the stake in May 1498, his experiment in populist theocracy over.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- Savonarola’s bonfire of the vanities provided the title for the 1987 Tom Wolfe (1931–) novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, which satirized the excesses of New York City society in the 1980s.
- Although Savonarola never differed from the Roman Catholic Church on theological matters, he is considered by some Protestants to be a forerunner of the Reformation because of his criticism of Vatican corruption. A statue of him was erected in Worms, Germany, the birthplace of Protestantism, next to the statue of Martin Luther.
- A style of folding chair that was common during the Italian Renaissance is referred to as the Savonarola chair, after the Florentine monk.
