7

Cat and Mouse

SUCH WAS SAVONAROLA’S popularity amongst his fellow friars at San Marco that in July 1491 they elected him prior of the monastery. As the Medici family had been responsible for the rebuilding of San Marco, and continued to be its benefactors (to the extent that they even referred to it as ‘our’ monastery), it was customary for any newly elected friar to pay a courtesy visit to the Palazzo Medici, a short walk down the Via Larga. However, when Savonarola’s fellow monks urged him to fulfil this obligation, he demanded of them: ‘Who made me prior – God or Lorenzo?’¹ When they replied, ‘God’, Savonarola declared, ‘Thus it is the Lord God who I will thank’, and then returned to his cell to continue with his habitual regime of prayer and fasting.

When word of Savonarola’s refusal reached the Palazzo Medici, Lorenzo remarked irritatedly, ‘A foreign monk has come to live in my house and he does not even deign to come and see me.’² Lorenzo’s illness was giving him increasing pain, and this time he decided against any confrontation with Savonarola. Instead, he chose to take a conciliatory course of action which would give the new prior the chance to make amends without either of them losing face before the people of Florence. Lorenzo began attending the church of San Marco on Sundays to hear Mass, and afterwards he would walk in the garden, or in the cloisters, in the hope of encountering Savonarola, engaging him in conversation and exerting his famous charm upon the new prior. On earlier occasions when Lorenzo had strolled in the monastery gardens after Mass he had been joined by the previous prior, along with several of the more senior monks, who were still pleased to join the man they regarded as their benefactor. When Savonarola’s fellow monks came to inform him of what Lorenzo was doing, he said to them, ‘Is he asking for me?’³ When they replied that he was not, Savonarola told them, ‘Then let him walk as he pleases.’

This made Lorenzo even more determined to gain the confidence of the man whose holiness he viewed with increasing respect, yet whose opposition he knew it was politically dangerous to tolerate. By this stage Lorenzo’s illness was causing him to lose his grasp of affairs and cloud his judgement – a fact that became evident in the way he now misjudged Savonarola. Lorenzo ordered gifts to be sent to San Marco, but these were simply returned to the Palazzo Medici. In a public allusion from the pulpit to this turn of events, Savonarola likened a true preacher to a loyal watchdog who is not distracted when a thief throws him a bone or a lump of meat; instead, he ignores these gifts and continues barking.

As a last resort, Lorenzo ordered his chancellor, Piero da Bibbiena, to deposit anonymously gold coins to the value of 300 florins in the alms chest of San Marco. This chest was the chief source of public financial support for the monastery, and would accumulate a collection of largely copper coins, plus the occasional silver one, through the week. When Savonarola was informed of this hugely generous anonymous gift, he knew at once that it came from Lorenzo. He decreed that the silver and bronze coins deposited by the good citizens of the city should be set aside as usual for the running costs of the monastery. However, the gold coins were to be taken to the brotherhood of St Martin, who distributed alms amongst the deserving poor. When Bibbiena heard of what Savonarola had done, he reported back to Lorenzo, declaring, ‘This is a slippery customer we are dealing with.’⁴

It was evident that Savonarola was unwilling to make any accommodation with Lorenzo’s authority. There would be no compromise on his behalf, and Lorenzo was forced to the realisation that although he respected Savonarola, he could not allow him any further concessions. It was time to assert his authority. Lorenzo could still have banished Savonarola without further ado, as he had Fra Bernardino three years previously; and he was certainly capable of savage reprisal when he felt his political power was under threat. A decade or so earlier, Lorenzo had become suspicious that a pilgrim begging for food at the gate of his country villa was in fact a hired assassin. The pilgrim had been arrested and interrogated, the soles of his feet held over a fire until the fat dribbled, spitting in the flames. When still no confession was forthcoming, the pilgrim was made to walk on his charred, bloodied feet over coarse salt, an excruciating ordeal that resulted in his death. As Machiavelli, who lived through these events, would later write in his characteristically sardonic fashion of Lorenzo, ‘all his enemies met with an unhappy end’.⁵

Yet once again Lorenzo hesitated from taking an absolute and final step against Savonarola: he would exercise his authority indirectly. Some days later, five of Florence’s leading citizens arrived at San Marco and demanded to see Savonarola. This delegation consisted of members of some of the most respected families in the city: Guidantonio Vespucci, Paolantonio Soderini, Francesco Valori, Domenico Bonsi and Bernardo Rucellai.

The ensuing meeting took place in the sacristy, and was reported by a number of contemporary sources, each of whom left a remarkably similar account of Savonarola’s sensational behaviour. To begin with, the citizens explained to Savonarola that they had come of their own accord to warn him against persisting in his current behaviour, which was putting both himself and his monastery in some danger. But Savonarola soon cut them short, interjecting: ‘I know that you have not come of your own free will, but have been sent by Lorenzo. Bid him to do penance for his sins, for the Lord is no respecter of persons, and does not even spare the princes of this earth from his judgement.’⁶ The citizens then repeated their warning, insisting that if he continued to behave in this fashion he was liable to be banished from Florence.

Savonarola replied: ‘Only people like you, who have wives and children, are afraid of banishment. I have no such fear, for if I did have to leave, this city would become no more than a speck of dust to me, compared with the rest of the world. I am not frightened, let him do as he pleases. But let him realise this: although I am a mere stranger to this city, and Lorenzo is the most powerful man in Florence, it is I who will remain here, and he who will depart. He will be gone, long before me.’

The citizens were amazed; they realised that Savonarola was in fact predicting that Lorenzo was going to die. Collating the contemporary reports, Savonarola’s biographer Pasquale Villari described what happened next: ‘[Savonarola] began to speak about the city of Florence and the political state of Italy, displaying a depth of knowledge in these matters which astonished his listeners. It was then that he predicted, in front of the many witnesses who were present in the sacristy of San Marco, that great changes would soon take place in Italy. He then specifically prophesied that Lorenzo the Magnificent, Pope Innocent VIII and King Ferrante of Naples would all soon die.’ Whispers of these sensational prophecies soon began to spread around Florence.^fn1

Lorenzo the Magnificent was aware of the vital power slipping from his grasp. Physically he was reduced, and as a consequence he could no longer stand centre-stage politically. Yet he was not one to make excuses for his misfortunes. As he had written on an earlier occasion:

So great was the persecution I endured at that time, from both Fortune and from men. Even so, I am inclined by nature to rise above such things, to mention them but briefly, in order to avoid the charge of being proud and vain, since reporting one’s own serious dangers cannot be done without the presumption of vainglory.⁷

Congenital gout was reducing his charismatic physical presence to a shell. The champion jouster and insatiable lover, filled with such inspirational physical and intellectual joie de vivre, who had so enchanted Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola, whose charm had won over King Ferrante of Naples and Innocent VIII, was now a crabbed, irritable and weak forty-two-year-old invalid, his mind clouded with pain. A ghost of his former self, he would spend hours on end shivering in his cloak by the fire, attempting to melt the icy crystalline needles of pain in his joints. By this stage he had become desperate, willing to resort to all manner of quack remedies. Even his famous collection of jewels was brought to bear on the problem. The physician Petrus Bonus Avogarius wrote advising him:

To prevent the return of these pains, you must get a stone called sapphire, and have it set in gold, so that it should touch the skin. This must be worn on the third finger of the left hand. If this is done the pains in the joints, or gouty pains, will cease, because that stone has occult virtues, and the specific one of preventing evil humours going to the joints.⁸

Lorenzo’s jewels remained his pride and joy – it was, after all, on them that he had left evidence of his deepest, most secret ambition: LAU.R.MED, Lorenzo de’ Medici – king, or the father of future kings. This was his prediction, far more likely than the prophecies of some ranting priest. His oldest son Piero would succeed him as ruler of Florence. All this had been settled with the leading Medici lieutenants – the likes of Soderini, Vespucci and Valori, who could be relied upon to do his bidding. Lorenzo himself had only been invited by the Signoria to take over the reins of power out of respect for his father Piero, but during the twenty-two years of Lorenzo’s rule things had changed: from now on the succession would be a Medici right.

At the same time, the Medici family would extend its power beyond Florence and into the Church, by means of Giovanni’s rich benefices and his coming cardinalate. But Innocent VIII had driven a hard bargain for the cardinalate, leaving Lorenzo’s finances under strain and only adding to his overall debt.

A portion of this debt had been to cover the education of Giovanni, who in 1490 had been sent to study at the celebrated university that Lorenzo had recently re-established at Pisa. It had quickly become clear to Lorenzo that Giovanni should not be exposed to Savonarola’s inflammatory sermons, and he hoped that a scholastic university education would give him a more suitable theological grounding. However, Giovanni’s education had proved rather more costly than his father had anticipated. Although he had shown high intelligence, combined with a certain indolence, the chubby, likeable teenager had at the same time inherited his father’s inclination towards hedonistic extravagance. As a result, the cash-strapped Lorenzo had been obliged to order the Medici bank to cover Giovanni’s debts in Pisa. According to some sources, these amounted to the astonishing sum of 7,000 florins.⁹

As if all this were not enough, some time towards the end of 1491 Lorenzo had received a request from Innocent VIII for the equivalent of 10,000 florins as a ‘final’ down payment on Giovanni’s cardinalate, which was due to be confirmed and made public in a few months’ time. Lorenzo knew that he could not refuse this ‘request’ if he wished the pope to confirm Giovanni’s appointment. He had been forced once again to turn to Miniati and his underhand manipulations of the Florentine exchequer. This was a desperate last resort, as the latest financial reform undertaken by Lorenzo – with the connivance of Miniati – had provoked considerable unrest. During the previous year there had arisen a problem over the coinage circulating in Florence. The city’s role as a centre of trade, especially in commodities such as wool, alum and fine cloth, had resulted in a large number of foreign coins entering circulation. These coins mostly originated from nearby cities that issued their own currency, such as Bologna, Siena or Lucca, and were similar to the Florentine quattrini (or pennies), for which they were frequently exchanged. The foreign coins were known as ‘blackquattrini’. In order to resolve this anomaly, Lorenzo set up a committee, which decided to call in the ‘black quattrini’ and replace the old Florentine quattrini with similar new ‘white quattrini’, which were worth 25 per cent more. The old coins would be melted down, and only the ‘whitequattrini’ would be accepted for payment of taxes, duties and other contributions to the city exchequer. This caused little complaint amongst the citizens, until it was discovered that instead of melting down the old Florentine quattrini, the authorities were reintroducing these selfsame coins as equivalent to ‘white quattrini’, thus making 25 per cent on any transaction involving these old coins (which could not then be used to pay taxes, and thus effectively reverted to their old call-in rate).

To exacerbate the problem, Lorenzo’s sudden unexpected need for the equivalent of 10,000 florins to pay Innocent VIII led him to a rash embezzlement, which would not be exposed until after his death. This involved the public fund known as the Monte delle Doti, a public deposit account that had been established in 1424 by Cosimo de’ Medici for the provision of dowries for the daughters of the poor, who would otherwise not have been able to get married. Anyone paying into this fund received a 5 per cent interest on their savings, which could all be withdrawn after an agreed number of years to become a daughter’s dowry. The establishment of the Monte delle Doti (Dowry Fund) had proved a highly popular move, and it had soon accumulated a considerable sum, as payments into the fund greatly exceeded withdrawals. Thus when the Florentine exchequer found itself short of assets, instead of repayments it would issue the citizen with shares in the Dowry Fund, which also rose by 5 per cent annually and could be withdrawn at a future date to provide a dowry. This enforced form of saving was not popular, but was tolerated. Even this measure only made small inroads into the Dowry Fund, which had continued to increase over the years.

However, by 1485 a downturn in trade had cut the tax revenue, leaving the Florentine exchequer heavily indebted. In an effort to rescue the city’s finances, and his own, Lorenzo had ordered Miniati to expropriate a sizeable sum from the Dowry Fund. (The precise figure remains unclear, owing to the Medici family’s subsequent destruction of all ledgers relating to these years, but this too may be a candidate for at least part of the 74,948 florins later demanded from the Medici family in compensation for money taken by Lorenzo ‘without the sanction of any law and without authority’.) In order to cover this embezzlement, Lorenzo had issued Miniati with orders to explain that, owing to the harshness of the economic downturn, only one-fifth of anyone’s savings could be withdrawn from the Dowry Fund at one time, but in compensation the interest on the remaining savings would be increased to 7 per cent. Inevitably this restriction proved highly unpopular. For three generations the poorer families of Florence had taken to depositing their meagre savings in the Dowry Fund. Indeed, over the decades the fund had proved so popular that by now a majority of the population had stakes in it. In mitigation for Lorenzo, this raid on the Dowry Fund may well have been his only hope for restoring the city’s finances. Had the city gone bankrupt, this would probably have meant the end of Medici rule; yet as far as the populace was concerned, the city’s bankruptcy would also have resulted in considerable hardship – starvation even – and the inevitable civil strife would have torn it apart. Under such circumstances, Florence would inevitably have lost its independence to one of the other major powers in Italy.

Lorenzo would certainly have been mindful of such dangers, lending an altruistic, or at least pragmatic, element to this appropriation. On the other hand, he almost certainly used some of this appropriation to cover his own expenses. Yet the distinction between Medici expenses (often for civil entertainments and such) and the city’s exchequer had by now become hopelessly blurred. This makes it difficult to assess the rights and wrongs of the preceding restriction on Dowry Fund payouts. As it was, Lorenzo’s embezzlement may well have played a significant role in saving the city, and more. During the ensuing years there was a boom in trade from which Florence was well placed, financially, to benefit.

However, there would seem to be no mitigating circumstances with regard to Lorenzo’s later dealings with the Dowry Fund. Faced with Innocent VIII’s request for 10,000 florins before Giovanni could be confirmed as a cardinal, Lorenzo once again turned to Miniati, and this time the Dowry Fund was ransacked to the tune of 10,000 florins purely for Lorenzo’s use, leaving it seriously depleted. To cover this, it was announced that the interest accruing to deposits would be reduced from 7 to 3 per cent. Not unnaturally, this move too proved highly unpopular.

Savonarola tapped into this unpopularity when he preached during the period, and was well aware of what he was doing. Indeed, some later commentators go so far as to claim that he specifically mentioned this appropriation from the Dowry Fund during his Lenten sermons in 1492, ‘accusing Lorenzo of stealing the dowries of poor girls to line his own pocket’.¹⁰ Savonarola kept himself well informed about what was taking place in Florence, and would certainly have heard the rumours about Lorenzo dipping into the Dowry Fund that began circulating at this time. Whether he took the inflammatory step of actually mentioning this is less clear. However, we do know from the Latin notes that Savonarola made for his 1492 Lenten sermons that he certainly denounced Lorenzo in more general terms: ‘These great men, as if unaware that they are just men like anyone else, want to be praised and blessed by everyone. But he who preaches the truth must attack these vices …’¹¹ Did he elaborate on this theme when he actually spoke? Either way, Savonarola’s congregation would have known in their own minds, from their own experience, a good part of what these ‘vices’ involved.

At long last, in March 1492, the news came through from Rome, confirming the sixteen-year-old Giovanni’s appointment as a cardinal. This event was marked by a solemn ceremony on 10 March in the Badia (the eleventh-century abbey) at Fiesole, outside Florence, during which Giovanni received his cardinal’s red hat. The following day Cardinal Giovanni, accompanied by his older brother Piero, entered Florence in a grand procession. A contemporary chronicler described the scene:

the whole city, nay, the whole territory, was gathered together, as one man, from which it may be judged how earnestly this dignity had been desired for one of the citizens of Florence.¹²

Following the celebration of high Mass in the cathedral, Cardinal Giovanni proceeded with all due ceremony through the streets to visit the Signoria, where he received gifts of more than ceremonial value, which the contemporary diarist Luca Landucci detailed as:

30 loads of gifts carried by porters. These included silver plate, bowls, jugs, and dishes, and all kinds of silver utensils which can possibly be of use to a great lord. So everyone said, all this must have cost over 20 thousand florins, though this hardly seems possible to me. But this is what people were saying, so I wrote it down. There is no doubt that it was an expensive magnificent gift. Praise be to God!¹³

Rumour may indeed have exaggerated the value of the gift, but its sheer size must have been impressive, and there is no denying that this was seen by the watching citizens of Florence as Cardinal Giovanni proceeded across the centre of the city from the Palazzo della Signoria to the Palazzo Medici on the Via Larga. All this would seem to indicate that although rumours of Lorenzo’s financial chicanery fomented a certain unrest in the city, which was further augmented by Savonarola’s sermons, the Medici still remained to a certain extent popular as rulers. The chubby young Giovanni was undoubtedly likeable, and the citizenry spontaneously responded to him and his great parade, as well as to the honour that he brought to the city.

However, by the time of Giovanni’s installation as a cardinal, Lorenzo had become too incapacitated with gout to attend any of the ceremonies, let alone appear in reflected glory at his son’s side as he paraded through the streets. Yet he certainly saw Giovanni when he arrived back at the Palazzo Medici that day. Here the new cardinal presided over a ceremonial banquet in the main hall attended by sixty guests, consisting of foreign ambassadors and leading citizens. Whether Lorenzo actually put in an appearance at this banquet remains uncertain. Some suggest that at one stage he came, or was at least assisted, into the hall, where his crippled body and gaunt features shocked the guests. They had not realised that he was so ill, and only now understood that he was dying. Other reports suggest that Lorenzo had himself carried on a litter onto a balcony overlooking the hall, where – unseen – he gazed down at his son, who in the eyes of his proud father had assumed a new maturity with his office and seemed ‘to have changed since yesterday’.¹⁴ Despite this, Lorenzo remained worried about his son’s character; and next day, after Cardinal Giovanni had set off to take up his post in Rome, Lorenzo began writing a letter of advice to his son. The composing of this long letter must have taken considerable effort for Lorenzo, but he was determined that the Medici legacy should prosper, so that one day the family would fulfil his dream. Like father, like son: just as Lorenzo’s father Piero, when he was incapacitated with gout, had worried about Lorenzo’s ‘exuberance’ when he had sent him abroad to represent him at the courts of Italy, so in turn Lorenzo had worried about the behaviour of his oldest son Piero, and would now worry about his son Giovanni’s ‘extravagance’:

I recommend that on feast days you should celebrate less than others, rather than more … In keeping with your position, be sparing when wearing jewels and fine silks. Far better to have a few fine antiques and learned books … Eat plain food and take regular exercise, for those who wear the habit are prone to illness if they are not mindful of their health.¹⁵

After this homely advice, evidently so necessary in Giovanni’s case, his father moved on to more serious matters. It is clear that Lorenzo shared at least some of Savonarola’s views of the Church, for he refers to Rome as a ‘sink of all iniquities’ where Giovanni will be regarded with great envy by ‘enemies that had striven to prevent your appointment, who will do their best to denigrate little by little, your public reputation, attempting to drag you down into the very ditch into which they themselves have fallen’. But unlike Savonarola, Lorenzo believed that the city had its redeeming features, containing ‘many good and learned men who lead exemplary lives’, and he advised his son to behave likewise. Moving on to more practical matters, he advised Giovanni to:

be sure that your conversation with all people avoids giving offence … As this is your first visit to Rome, I think it would be much better for you to use your ears more than your tongue … devote yourself entirely to the interests of the Church, and in doing so you will not find it difficult to aid the cause of Florence and that of our house … Remain close to the pope, but ask of him as few favours as possible.

Despite advice on such weighty matters, the anxious Lorenzo could not refrain from returning to his original theme, admonishing the lazy Giovanni that whatever else he did: ‘One rule above all others I urge you to observe most rigorously: Get up early in the morning.’

There is nothing exceptional in this advice from father to son, yet it is its very lack of originality or insight that makes it interesting. Lorenzo’s mind may have been dulled by pain when he was writing (or, more likely, dictating) this letter, but the fact remains that he was one of the finest intellects of his time, he felt that he was nearing death, and he was passing on his final advice to the young man he believed to be his most talented son. (Of Piero and Giovanni, Lorenzo had said: ‘one is foolish, one is clever’.¹⁶) Lorenzo was passing on the fruits of a lifetime of statesmanship, the wisdom gained by ‘the needle of the Italian compass’, no less. Yet his most insistent advice to Giovanni was with regard to his behaviour, his personality. Lorenzo had perhaps tried to follow the commonplace wisdom that he passed on; it had probably been the guidance passed on to him by his own father. Yet for the most part he had surpassed this advice, if not simply contravened it. His greatness as a statesman, and his flaws, had come about through his seemingly rash decisions, his impulsiveness, his belief in his own brilliance: the dash to King Ferrante in Naples, the catastrophe at Ferrara, his decision to raid the Dowry Fund in order to further the Medici cause, his insistence on giving refuge to his friend Pico after he had fallen foul of Innocent VIII, his gesture in allowing Pico to write in his name to Savonarola inviting him back to Florence. Lorenzo knew that Giovanni too was possessed of such qualities – the precocious young cardinal well understood how to conduct himself, knew how to charm others, how to win over the crowd. He needed little advice here. What he had to be protected from was the one flaw that might destroy these qualities: sloth. Get up early in the morning – and the rest would follow. How Lorenzo must have been aware of the irony of this, now that he (never the sluggard) was confined to his bed.

Writing this letter to Giovanni had been a heroic effort. By now Lorenzo had become so ill that he was unable to conduct the business of running the state. The Milanese ambassador, representative of Florence’s most powerful ally, was forced to wait a fortnight for an audience with him. His personal physician Piero Leoni had exhausted all the remedies he knew, and it was at this stage that the Milanese ambassador conveyed to his master Ludovico Sforza of Milan the gravity of Lorenzo’s condition, causing him to order the famous physician Lazaro da Ticino to travel to Florence at once to treat his friend. Despite such measures, the physician Leoni still insisted that there was no cause for alarm. Lorenzo may have been ill, but his complaint was far from being fatal, so he assured Lorenzo’s oldest son Piero, who was becoming highly agitated at his father’s incapacity and Leoni’s unwillingness to inflict any further painful remedies on the old man. Part of Piero’s agitation appears to have been caused by the prospect of taking over the reins of power. Now just twenty years old, he had developed into an arrogant young man, but growing up under the shadow of his father’s dominant personality had left him with deep inner uncertainties as to his own abilities.

On 21 March, some days after Lorenzo completed his letter to his son Cardinal Giovanni, he was carried on a litter from Florence to his villa at Careggi, in the countryside a couple of miles north of the city walls. This seemed to many an ominous sign: it was here that both Lorenzo’s grandfather and his father had retired to die.

On 5 April 1492 news reached the Medici villa at Careggi that two of the city’s famous lions had mauled each other to death in their cage. This was taken as an extremely bad omen by all who heard of it. These mascots were the living emblem of the city’s heraldic symbol, the lion. The significance appeared obvious: evil events lay in store for Florence. The Florentine apothecary Luca Landucci, who kept a diary covering these years, would record the event that took place in the city that night:

5th April.¹⁷ At about 3 at night (11 p.m.)^fn2 the lantern on top of the dome of Florence Cathedral was struck by a thunderbolt and was split almost in two. As a result, one of the marble niches and many other pieces of marble on the side by the door leading to the Servi [that is, on the north of the building], were broken off in a miraculous way. No one had ever seen lightning have such an effect before … Many pieces of marble fell around the building, outside the door leading to the Servi; one piece even fell on the paving-stones of the street, split the stone, and buried itself underground.

Amidst such a climate, even the great humanist Lorenzo the Magnificent found himself succumbing to the old superstitions. When he heard news of the lightning bolt striking the cathedral, he immediately demanded to know which side of the cathedral the shattered marble had fallen. As soon as he was told that it had fallen on the north side, he is said to have declared: ‘That is the side facing this house. It means that I shall die.’

Another commonly reported story connected with the lightning incident concerns Savonarola, whose biographer Ridolfi reports: ‘That night Savonarola was not able to sleep, and stayed up late trying without success to prepare the sermon he was to deliver next day.’¹⁸ Savonarola had then experienced a striking vision of how the world was to be scourged by God. Next morning he had included this vision of God’s scourge in his sermon, and the congregation had immediately associated it with the thunderbolt. However, Savonarola’s original texts in his Compendio di Rivelazioni(‘Compendiom of Revelations’) make it clear that he had this vision ‘on the night before the last of my Advent sermons’.¹⁹ This would place Savonarola’s vision just before Christmas 1492, around nine months later, giving it no reinforcing coincidence with the thunderbolt.

Despite Leoni’s protestations to the contrary, it was now evident to all in attendance on Lorenzo the Magnificent that he was dying. The celebrated physician Lazaro da Ticino, recently arrived from Milan, took over from the ineffective Leoni, administering his elixirs of ground pearls and the like. At some point Lorenzo called in Piero, and in accordance with the family tradition passed on to him the secret of the Medici ambitions. The enormity of these ambitions must have seemed staggering at the time: the plans laid for them to become royalty and ascend to the papal throne. These were indeed unprecedented aspirations – yet, astonishingly, all of them would take place within fifty years. Such momentous events do not happen by accident: the precise details of how they would come about must have been relayed during this deathbed exchange.

Lorenzo was also to have another fateful encounter on his deathbed. Amazingly, this would prove to be of even greater significance to the city of Florence in the immediate future. This meeting would be the only known face-to-face encounter between Lorenzo the Magnificent and Savonarola.

Precisely how and why Lorenzo invited Savonarola to his bedside at Careggio is not known. All we do know is that he extended this personal invitation to the man he regarded as the only ‘honest friar’, and that Pico della Mirandola may well have encouraged him in this. Exactly how and why Savonarola accepted this invitation is also unclear. It seems likely that Pico della Mirandola, or maybe Poliziano, acted as messenger. Both are known to have been at Careggio during these last days, and either could easily have travelled across the fields to the city walls and in to San Marco. Either one’s known admiration for Savonarola could well have proved the deciding factor that persuaded him to visit Lorenzo.

There are several contemporary accounts of this personal encounter between Savonarola and Lorenzo the Magnificent. The most vivid is that of Poliziano:

Pico arrived to see Lorenzo and sat down beside his bed, while I sank to my knees nearby so that I could hear what Lorenzo was saying, for his voice was by now so frail that it could hardly be heard … Pico had only just left when Savonarola came into the bedroom. He exhorted Lorenzo to keep the faith (to which Lorenzo replied that he held firmly to his belief), he must live a blameless life from now on (Lorenzo replied resolutely that he would be sure to do this), he must endure death, if this should now prove unavoidable, with due equanimity. To which Lorenzo replied, ‘Nothing would be more pleasant, if God has decreed that this must happen.’ Just as Savonarola was leaving, Lorenzo called to him, ‘Father, give us your benediction before you depart.’ After simultaneously bowing his head and composing his features in an attitude of suitable piety, he gave the responses to the preacher’s words and prayers, replying each time correctly and from memory, not at all disturbed by all the weeping and wailing of his family and close friends which could no longer be contained.²⁰

Poliziano’s description was written down just over a month later, on 18 May, in a long letter to his friend Jacopo Antiquari in Milan. There is no doubt that Poliziano was deeply distressed during his attendance at Lorenzo’s bedside on these last days. He speaks of ‘turning away from [Lorenzo] and trying to hide my emotions’, and how on occasion he would ‘rush to the nearby inner chamber where I could give vent to my grief without restraint’. Poliziano’s emotional state may account for his version of Savonarola’s three demands differing in detail from the version described in the Prologue at the opening of this book, which came down to us from Savonarola’s followers (who probably heard the story from Savonarola himself). As we have seen, according to this version Savonarola asked Lorenzo whether he repented of his sins and believed in the one true God – to which Lorenzo replied that he did. Next, he demanded that if Lorenzo’s soul was to be saved, he would have to renounce his ill-gotten wealth ‘and restore what has wrongfully been taken’.²¹ To this, Lorenzo replied, ‘Father, I will do so, or I will cause my heirs to do it if I cannot.’ Finally, Savonarola demanded that he should restore to the people of Florence their liberty, which Savonarola believed could only be guaranteed by a truly republican government. To this last demand Lorenzo refused to reply, finally turning his face away. This version of events would seem to be more appropriate to the characters of the two protagonists.

Yet this was not all. Later evidence suggests that there may have been an even more sensational element to the exchange between the two men. This is mentioned in no sources, and would appear on the surface to be utterly unlikely, were it not for the fact that what was agreed on this occasion would play an unmistakable role in ensuing events, its details gradually emerging as these events unfolded. Astonishingly, it would seem that Lorenzo asked Savonarola to back the succession of his son Piero, and to support his rule over Florence. And even more astonishingly, this was precisely what Savonarola must have agreed to do. Lorenzo’s reasons for this request are evident; Savonarola’s motives were at the time less clear. Yet why did no source mention this pact? Those of Lorenzo’s circle who were at his bedside, including Poliziano, may well have connived to keep this agreement secret – understanding that if it came out, Savonarola would certainly repudiate it, leading him to a more vigorous opposition to Medici rule. Yet why should Savonarola agree to support the continuance of Medici rule, when his preachings had been so opposed to it? Ironically, his motive was his wish to increase his power, and that of his monastery, within the city. As prior of San Marco, Savonarola was beginning to understand that not everything could be accomplished by straightforward preaching, even when this was reinforced with prophetic visions. If he was to achieve his aims, there would have to be a political element to his strategy: the achieving of power could not be done by spiritual means alone. For the time being, power remained inextricably linked with politics, and without power he would achieve nothing.

This was the first clear indication of Savonarola’s conscious ruthlessness in his pursuit of his theological ambitions. It is possible to view this as unscrupulous, hypocritical or simply pragmatic. Previously Savonarola’s will to impose himself, and his theological vision, on the people of Florence had not strayed from the path of determined righteousness – at least not in his own eyes, and not in any conscious form. Even so, this ruthlessness had certainly expressed itself in an unconscious form. Savonarola was not aware of what drove him to his prophetic visions; he neither questioned them, nor their motive. Here there was no unscrupulousness, no hypocrisy: he believed in what he experienced in his mind and saw before his mind’s eye. There seems little doubt that he did indeed ‘see’ his visions, and was utterly sure of their ‘prophecies’. Convinced that they were not his doing, he felt that they came from outside him, and they came with such force – so where else could they have come from, but from God?

Now, in pursuance of God’s will, he was prepared to sacrifice even his integrity. If he was required to seek accommodation with the Devil, this too he would do. Like Lorenzo the Magnificent, he too had his secret long-term agenda. And for the time being it so happened that these two agendas were the same: focusing on the need for a Medici to succeed as ruler of Florence.

^fn1 Ridolfi even goes so far as to claim: ‘With such words he prophesied that Lorenzo would soon die, and to those closest to him he even went so far as to predict the very date.’ The latter claim was certainly made around this time, but after the event. This was typical of the mythologising that grew up around Savonarola’s name, even during his lifetime. The celebrated claims regarding Italy, together with the deaths of Lorenzo, Innocent VIII and King Ferrante, are more definitely verifiable, and their grounds will be examined later.

^fn2 The hours of the Florentine day were counted from the ringing of the Angelus bell at sunset, which at this time of year would have been around 8 p.m. our time.