Florentines first disliked Savonarola's preaching for his accent and shrill voice
When Girolamo Savonarola began preaching in Florence, audiences were put off by his Ferrara accent, strident voice and clumsy style. Within a decade the friar effectively controlled the city, promised it would become the New Jerusalem, and lit bonfires of the vanities. Then a pope excommunicated him and Florence turned against him.
Born in Ferrara on 21 September 1452, Savonarola was raised under the eye of his grandfather Michele, a wealthy physician and polymath, and seemed headed for medicine himself. Instead he wrote apocalyptic poems such as On the Ruin of the Church, attacking the papal court. His brother claimed a neighbour, Laudomia Strozzi, had rejected his marriage proposal, though most biographers dismiss the tale. On 25 April 1475 he knocked at the Dominican friary in Bologna, telling his father he wanted to be a knight of Christ.
Friary life suited his severity; he openly criticised slackening discipline and opposed relaxing the order's ban on owning property, which may have irritated superiors. Sent to Florence's San Marco in 1482, he taught logic and preached with little success. While studying scripture he conceived roughly seven reasons why the Church was about to be punished and renewed, themes he first aired in San Gimignano. The philosopher Pico della Mirandola, impressed by his learning, persuaded Lorenzo de' Medici to bring him back to San Marco in 1490.
His moment came in September 1494, when Charles VIII of France invaded Italy. As Savonarola negotiated with the king, Florentines expelled the Medici and, at his urging, set up a republic he effectively steered. He denounced clerical corruption, tyranny and the exploitation of the poor, and recruited young people for a harsh campaign of moral reform, with processions and bonfires of worldly goods.
Politics undid him. When Florence stayed out of the anti-French alliance organised by Pope Alexander VI, Savonarola ignored a summons to Rome and preached under a ban, and he was excommunicated in May 1497. A rival preacher's proposed trial by fire in April 1498 collapsed into farce, public opinion swung, and on 23 May 1498 he and two fellow friars were executed in Florence's main square. His followers, the Piagnoni, kept his cause alive for decades, and Martin Luther later hailed him as a forerunner of the Reformation.
Source: Girolamo Savonarola
