The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain
still remained almost outside the State, some of them enjoying great social, and indirectly no little political influence. Hitherto there had been possibilities of recovering qualification through membership of the Arts; this avenue was now closed. Hitherto they could at all events belong to the Council of the Commune: this Council was now abolished. Thus, a wealthy and influential class was placed in inevitable opposition towards the new government.
If the highest class lost by the constitutional change, the lower classes did not gain. There was no extension of the franchise in the modern sense; no new class obtained a share in government. Citizenship still depended on membership of the Artl (the Greater or the Less); in each magistracy the former were represented in the proportion of three to Even in the Council, a little consideration will show that the same one. proportion must have been approximately maintained, unless it be urged that three generations of a poorer class will produce more children than three of a richer. Government was left, as before, in the hands of the upper middle classes, with a preponderance in favour of the uppermost.
The name of Savonarola has been indissolubly connected with this constitution. He did not probably first propose it, nor had he, as far as is known, any share in drafting its actual provisions. But unquestionably he created an overpowering public feeling in its favour. Henceforth he regarded the Grand Council as his offspring, whose life it was his most solemn duty to safeguard. His influence too induced the Twenty to resign before their term of office had expired, and from June 10, 1495, the Council assumed full sovereign authority. Even before this date his sermons had directly affected legislation. The first Act carried by the Council was an amnesty for the past; this was followed by a measure granting an appeal to the Council to any citizen qualified for office, who, for a political offence, had been sentenced by a vote of two-thirds of the Slgnoria or the Eight. This question of “appeal from the Six Beans” was the first which seriously agitated the new republic, and ultimately gravely affected Savonarola and his party. The SigTioria and the Eight possessed by law an unlimited power of punishment. This they were usually too timid to exercise on their own responsibility, but they might easily be made the tools of a dominant faction for party purposes. Political opponents might be proscribed under legal forms without the chances afforded by delay or by an appeal to popular feeling. Hence this appeal to the Council was proposed and was warmly debated in that peculiar Florentine institution termed a Pratica.
The Pratica was no formal element in the constitution new or old, and yet so strong were its traditions that, when in later years the Gonfalonier Piero Soderini preferred to consult the regular magistracies, the innovation was almost regarded as unconstitutional. The upper magistracies and committees sometimes composed the Pratica, but on important occasions the executive added a considerable number of leading citizens and legal luminaries. The timid executive thus widened the area of responsibility, and obtained a preliminary test of the drift of public opinion. A Pratica was the only assembly in which questions were freely debated; hence it somewhat threw into the shade not only the Eighty, but the Council itself. In Savonarola’s career, on the three most critical occasions, the interest centres in the debates of the Pratica.
The final vote in favour of appeal was large both in the Eighty and the Council, but during the discussion the result had seemed very doubtful. The aristocrats, who had hitherto manipulated the Signoria, could show that such a measure would still further weaken the already feeble executive. A section of them had, however, become aware that henceforth the executive would be wielded by the people, and that, after the Medicean leaders, the prominent oligarchs might be the victims of a sudden sentence: delay would be in favour of men of position, who in the Council would not be without adherents. On the other hand those who were irreconcilable with the Medici urged that the executive was the sword of the people, and that to blunt its edge was to weaken the people’s power. Savonarola had previously proposed an appeal, not to the Council, but to a smaller body. He seems however to have attributed no importance to the distinction, and preached earnestly in favour of the government proposal. Against the Dominican his opponents set up the eloquent Franciscan Fra Domenico da Ponzo, and the populace flocked from San Marco to Santa Croce and back again, to be taught its politics from the pulpit. The triumph of the government was complete, and the law was carried; time only could show whether, amid party passions, it would be observed. Savonarola’s share in this law has recently been denied; but contemporary friends and enemies ascribed to him its initiation and success. His panegyrists have no need to be ashamed of a measure which rightly gave the power of pardon to the sovereign authority. In a democracy, wrote Aristotle, the people should have the power of pardoning, but not of condemning. Savonarola’s reputation was afterwards injured, not by the law of appeal, but by the failure of his party to observe it.
In a kindred proposal to pare the claws of the executive, Savonarola had a yet more direct share. From the pulpit of San Marco was uttered the death-warrant of the primeval Florentine assembly, the Parlamento. This was a curious survival of the old municipal life of a comparatively small city, in which the people at large was the ultimate resort on any change of government. Under altered conditions it was doubtless an abuse. Each dominant party could induce the Signoria, which was its nominee, to summon a Parliament, and there propose measures of greater or less importance, with the purpose of prolonging or enhancing its own authority. By this simple expedient the constitution was more than once suspended. Savonarola saw that a single Signaria with an aristocratic or Medicean majority might, through such a plebiscite, overthrow in an hour the fabric of the new republic. On no political subject was his language more intemperate. There was now, he cried, no need of Parliaments: the sovereignty of the people was vested in the Council, which could make every law that the people could desire: Parliament was the robbery of the people’s power. He warned his congregation, if ever the bell of the Palazzo rang for Parliament, to hack to pieces every Prior that stepped upon the platform: the Gonfaloniers of the companies must swear that on the first stroke of the bell, they would sack the Priors’ houses, and of each house sacked, the Gonfalonier and his company should divide the spoils. Within sixteen days of Savonarola’s sermon this ferocious proposal, though modified in its penal details, became law. Thus the middle classes deprived the lower of even the semblance of a share in government. The Parliament which abolished the Medici regime had shouted away its own existence. Hitherto every insignificant bafia had required the assent of this popular assembly; but the sweeping change which established the new republic had never received its sanction. The time might come when even this faint echo of the people’s voice might be regretted.
In these two deliberate attempts to weaken the executive, Savonarola was probably less influenced by theoretic democratic considerations, than by feverish anxiety to fend off the immediate danger, a recrudescence of party strife and proscription executed under legal forms. But his dislike of the rabble as a political power was genuine. He had all an Italian’s respect for family; he dwelt with complacency on the fact that many of his novices were scions of the best Florentine houses. He knew, or soon learned to know, the defects of a weak executive. During his trial he confessed his wish to imitate yet further the Venetian constitution, by the appointment of a Doge, a Gonfalonier for life. After his death, this very method was adopted from sheer despair at the incompetence of the republican administration. So again he opposed the most durable democratic principle which flattered Florentine love of equality, election by lot. When a combination of aristocrats, who wished to discredit the Council, and of extreme men, who would carry democratic principles to their logical conclusions, strove to eliminate nomination, and to substitute a bare for an absolute majority, Savonarola preached against this enfeeblement of administrative efficiency.
Savonarola taught his congregation that every vote entailed a solemn responsibility; he amplified San Bernardino’s warning that a single bean wrongly given might prove the ruin of the State. The elector, he preached, must have in view the glory of God, the welfare of the community, the honour of the State: he ought not to nominate a candidate from private motives nor reject one who may have wronged him: a candidate should be both good and wise, but if the choice lie between a wise man and one who is good but foolish, the interest of the State required the former: no man should be elected to an office by way of charity, his poverty must not be relieved to the detriment of the public service: the elector should not from temper or persuasion vote against a candidate or throw his nomination paper on the ground, nor yet support any who had canvassed him, nor ever give a party vote: in cases of reasonable doubt let the elector