From that conclusion he rose upon the wings of faith to the belief that a new age would dawn.

The originality of his intuition consisted in this, that while Italy was asleep, and no man trembled for the future, he alone felt that the stillness of the air was fraught with thunder, that its tranquillity was like that which precedes a tempest blown from the very nostrils of the God of Hosts.
To the astonishment of his hearers, and perhaps also of himself, his prophecies began to fulfill themselves.

Within three years after his first sermon in S.Mark's, Charles VIII.

had entered Italy, Lorenzo de' Medici was dead, and politicians no less than mystics felt that a new chapter had been opened in the book of the world's history.

The Reform of the Church was also destined to follow.