Neither Guicciardini nor Machiavelli, writing years afterwards, when Savonarola had fallen and Florence was again enslaved, could propose anything wiser than his Consiglio Grande.
Yet the fierce revivalism advocated by the friar--the bonfire of Lorenzo di Credi's and Fra Bartolommeo's pictures, of MSS, of Boccaccio and classic poets, and of all those fineries which a Venetian Jew is said to have valued in one heap at 22,000 florins--the recitation of such Bacchanalian songs as this-- Never was there so sweet a gladness, Joy of so pure and strong a fashion, As with zeal and love and passion Thus to embrace Christ's holy madness! Cry with me, cry as I now cry, Madness, madness, holy madness! -- the procession of boys and girls through the streets, shaming their elders into hypocritical piety, and breeding in their own hearts the intolerable priggishness of premature pietism--could not bring forth excellent and solid fruits.

The change was far too violent.

The temper of the race was not prepared for it.

It clashed too rudely with Renaissance culture.

It outraged the sense of propriety in the more moderate citizens, and roused to vindictive fury the worst passions of the self-indulgent and the worldly.