The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain
almost necessarily hostile State; the Piagnoni would never rest, while there was a possibility of their leader’s return. The Pope at once urged the transference of the prisoner to Rome; the government, as a reward for silencing the prophet, pressed for a tithe upon the clergy for the Pisan war. Florentine independence declined to play the sheriff’s officer for Rome, and Savonarola’s extradition was refused; as a compromise the Pope sent commissioners to aid in his examination.
The trial of the three Friars lasted from April 9 until May 22. Their depositions and those of other citizens are not necessarily worthless, because they were extracted under torture. Torture was invariably applied, and such a view would invalidate, for instance, the whole of the evidence on which the Medicean conspirators were condemned. Savonarola was, however, a bad subject. His nervous, highly-strung constitution, weakened by asceticism and anxiety, shrank from physical pain. Though never abandoning his duty, he had always been haunted by the fear of personal violence; he frequently referred to his providential escapes from the poison or the dagger of Ludovico il Moro, although successive governments devoted to the Friar never contrived to arrest one of these Milanese agents, with whom he believed Florence to be teeming. The prosecution admitted that Savonarola retracted the confessions made under torture, and these retractations are set down in black and white. Not all of the Florentine Commission were pronounced enemies; and of the two Papal Commissioners, the General of the Dominicans, Turriani, had, until Savonarola’s final act of disobedience, been his consistent friend. More difficult is the question of the additions, alterations, and omissions attributed to the notary Ser Ceccone, a renegade; although, had this “editing” been absolutely unscrupulous, the confessions of the accused would have been more compromising. The depositions of Fra Domenico, whether in their original form or in the official copy, bear out the general authenticity of the evidence, as do even those of the hysterical somnambulist Fra Silvestro, who was believed by many to be more knave than fool, and with whom, it was suspected, the less scrupulous leaders of the Piagnom conducted their political correspondence.
The Florentine commissioners directed the examination mainly to the gift of prophecy and political relations. It was essential to extort from Savonarola a denial of his prophecies; for nothing would so effectually alienate the large numbers who still silently clung to him. At first he stoutly asserted the divine origin of his gift, but under the strain of torture he broke down, and henceforth his answers were contradictory or confused. He was perhaps at war within himself on this mysterious subject, on which even his pulpit utterances are not consistent; in his agony of mind he now cried out that the spirit of prophecy had departed from him. The prosecution represented him as admitting that his alleged gift was an imposture, the result of ambition, of the desire to be thought wise and holy. He strenuously denied that his prophecies were founded on confessions made to Fra Silvestro or himself. With regard to his interference in party politics the depositions of the three Friars were very colourless. It was the wish of the government to narrow the issue to San Marco, and not to mark leading citizens out for popular vengeance. Even those who were arrested and tortured were soon released. Not Savonarola’s old aristocratic enemies, but the people were the most vindictive. Parenti, whose own opinions are typical of the changes in public feeling, affirms that, to satisfy the people and to save the heads of the Savonarola party, the government replaced four of the Friar’s judges, who might possibly be too favourable to his cause. The aristocracy could escape a revolution only by his condemnation. Valori and his associates, it was confessed, frequently visited the convent, as did other believers high and low; the Friars had heard their visitors speak of the prospects of the coming elections; their prayers had been sometimes asked in the cause of righteousness, but there had been nothing in the nature of an electoral organisation. Savonarola clearly avowed that he had supported the popular government, but had not meddled with its workings. Both he and Fra Domenico mentioned their design for a life-Gonfalonier or Doge. Their thoughts had naturally turned to Valori, but his violent and eccentric character made them hesitate; the excellent Giovanni Battista Ridolfi had been mentioned, but his large family connexion might lead to the predominance of a single house; Savonarola had protested against the tendency to form an oligarchical ring within his party. In all this there was no implication of any political association, nothing to compel the Signoria to extend enquiry further.
On the arrival of the papal commissioners the examination turned on Savonarola’s appeal to a General Council; it was conducted chiefly by the Spanish lawyer Romolino, Bishop of Ilerda. Savonarola confessed that, having no friend in Italy, he had turned to foreign princes, and especially to those of France and Spain: he hoped for the aid of Cardinals Brissonet and della Rovere, both enemies of the Borgia; Matthseus Lang, Maximilian’s confidential adviser (afterwards Bishop of Gurk and Cardinal), had spoken ill of Alexander in the Friar’s presence, while the scandals of the Curia were odious to the Spanish sovereigns who could influence the Cardinal of Lisbon. In vain the commissary pressed for evidence to implicate the Cardinal of Naples; for confessions extracted by torture were afterwards withdrawn. The victim declared that he had no wish to be Pope or Cardinal; his reward would be enough, if by his agency so glorious a work as the reform of the Church could be effected.
Extorted and garbled as they were, these depositions showed no proof, in Guicciardini’s words, of any fault except ambition. And who can say that in his last agony Savonarola himself may not have been conscious of past ambition, of the parasite which clings most closely to monastic walls? Pride was the fault which from the first Alexander VI had fixed on his future enemy.
The result of the trial was less the condemnation of Savonarola than that of the popular government on which he had pinned his faith. It would be vain to seek under Medici or Albizzi so violent a strain on the constitution, so shameless a disregard for individual rights. It was pitiful that the free constitution, the panacea against tyranny, should have been guilty of the worst crime with which Florence can be charged. Of physical or political courage there was none, save in the small band which in the heat of fight had held the convent. Only a short time before, the Milanese ambassador had assured his master that Savonarola controlled the great majority of the town; yet now no Piagnone dared mention his prophet in the streets. The Eight and the Ten were known to have Savonarolist sympathies; in defiance of the most fundamental constitutional traditions, without even the pretence of a bafia, they were dismissed before their office had expired. There was no protest from these lawfully elected bodies, and none from the Council which had given them their commission. When the new Signoria was elected, the well-known Piagnoni were forcibly excluded; the qualification for office became cowardice or party hate. The Council itself suffered the garbled depositions to be read, and did not insist on the appearance of the accused, because a Signoria, notoriously hostile, stated that he wasvoluntarily absent from fear of stoning. In the Council and in the magistracies, Savonarola, as was afterwards proved, must have numbered hundreds of secret adherents. Yet one citizen only, Agnolo Niccolini, dared to suggest that death should be commuted for perpetual imprisonment, so that posterity might not lose the fruits of the invaluable works which Savonarola might write in prison. The Florentine constitution was still a sham; there was still no correspondence between real and nominal power; the mandatories of the people were swayed by a ferocious faction, as they had been swayed by a cool-headed dynasty. It is small wonder that the hybrid constitution withered in the first fierce heat; that when a few thousand famished Spaniards rushed the walls of Prato, two audacious youths dragged the chief magistrate of the Florentine Republic from the Palazzo Pubblico, and condescendingly gave him their escort to his home.
In the sentence pronounced on May 22, 1498, Church and State concurred. Savonarola and his companions were declared heretics and schismatics, because they had denied that Alexander was true Pope and had compassed his deposition; because they had distorted Scripture and had revealed the secrets of the confessional under the pretext that they were vouchsafed by visions. Against the State they had sinned in causing the useless expenditure of countless treasure and the death of many innocent citizens, and in keeping the city divided against herself. Unity between the city and the Pope was now complete; Florence obtained the grant of three-tenths of Church revenues; the price, observed the Piagnoni, of them that sold innocent blood was three times ten. Even to the three Friars Alexander sent his absolution. On the morrow came the end. Unfrocked and degraded by the Archbishops Suffragan, condemned as heretics and schismatics by the Papal Commissaries, Savonarola and his Brethren were handed over to the secular arm, the Eight, who passed the formal