Henceforth he became the champion of popular liberty in the pulpit.

Feeling that in the people alone lay any hope of regeneration for Italy, he made it the work of his whole life to give the strength and sanction of religion to republican freedom.

This work he sealed with martyrdom.

The spirit of the creed which he bequeathed to his partisans in Florence was political no less than pious.

Whether Savonarola was right to embark upon the perilous sea of statecraft cannot now be questioned.