CHAPTER IX.
SAVONAROLA.
The Attitude of Savonarola toward the Renaissance--His Parentage, Birth, and Childhood at Ferrara--His Poem on the Ruin of the World--Joins the Dominicans at Bologna--Letter to his Father--Poem on the Ruin of the Church--Begins to preach in 1482--First Visit to Florence--San Gemignano--His Prophecy--Brescia in 1486--Personal Appearance and Style of Oratory--Effect on his audience--The three Conclusions--His Visions--Savonarola's Shortcomings as a patriotic Statesman--His sincere Belief in his prophetic Calling--Friendship with Pico della Mirandola--Settles in Florence, 1490--Convent of San Marco--Savonarola's Relation to Lorenzo de' Medici--The death of Lorenzo--Sermons of 1493 and 1494--the Constitution of 1495--Theocracy in Florence--Piagnoni, Bigi, and Arrabbiati--War between Savonarola and Alexander VI .-- The Signory suspends him from preaching in the Duomo in 1498--Attempts to call a Council--The Ordeal by Fire--San Marco stormed by the Mob--Trial and Execution of Savonarola.
Nothing is more characteristic of the sharp contrasts of the Italian Renaissance than the emergence not only from the same society, but also from the bosom of the same Church, of two men so diverse as the Pope Alexander VI.

and the Prophet Girolamo Savonarola.

Savonarola has been claimed as a precursor of the Lutheran Reformers, and as an inspired exponent of the spirit of the fifteenth century.

In reality he neither shared the revolutionary genius of Luther, which gave a new vitality to the faiths of Christendom, nor did he sympathize with that free movement of the modern mind which found its first expression in the arts and humanistic studies of Renaissance Italy.

Both toward Renaissance and Reform he preserved the attitude of a monk, showing on the one hand an austere mistrust of pagan culture, and on the other no desire to alter either the creeds or the traditions of the Romish Church.