SAVONAROLA’S PASSING was greeted with widespread relief, which soon gave way to hectic celebrations. The following month Landucci recorded how:
everyone had begun indulging in degenerate behaviour, and at night-time one saw halberds or naked swords all over the city, with men gambling by candlelight in the Mercato Nuovo [New Market] and elsewhere without any shame. Hell seemed to have opened; and woe betide anyone who had the temerity to rebuke vice!1
At the same time, the authorities launched a concerted attempt to extirpate Savonarola’s teachings. Immediately after his execution, Bishop Remolino announced that anyone in possession of writings by Savonarola was to surrender them within four days or face excommunication. He then returned to Rome to deliver his official papal report, taking with him the beautiful young prostitute he had been given. The grateful Alexander VI would later reward Remolino by making him a cardinal.
The secular administration of Florence was purged of any remnant Piagnoni sympathisers. A number of other leading Savonarola supporters fled the city, though at least one remained. As much as any, Botticelli had found himself plunged into psychological turmoil by the struggle that had originated between Lorenzo the Magnificent and Savonarola. Vasari gave a last glimpse of the effect this had wreaked upon the genius whose radiant philosophical works had so enlightened the early Renaissance:
As an old man, he became so poor that … but for the support of friends he might have died of hunger … Finally, having become old and useless, hobbling about supported by two sticks because he could no longer stand upright, he died infirm and decrepit.2
Although the Piagnoni may have been humiliated, the citizens of Florence had no wish for a return to Medici rule. The more democratic Great Council, which Savonarola had done so much to instigate, had become a popular and respected element of the republican government, and Medici supporters too now found themselves out of favour. Such a clear-out of the old guard on both sides made way for a generation of talented new administrators. This included the young Machiavelli, who was voted into a senior post and proved so able that he was soon being sent abroad as a Florentine envoy.
Florence would remain militarily weak, under threat from Alexander VI and especially the army of his ruthless son, Cesare Borgia. In an attempt to remedy the situation, Machiavelli was hurriedly despatched as an envoy to the French court. Here he played a role in skilfully re-establishing Florence’s close ties with the powerful new French king, Louis XII, thus continuing the policy advocated by Savonarola. This protected the city from invasion until the death of Alexander VI in 1503. Piero de’ Medici died in the same year, but Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici had long cultivated the friendship of Alexander VI’s rival, Cardinal della Rovere, who soon afterwards became the new pope, Julius II, and allowed Cardinal Giovanni to use the papal forces to retake Florence. However, within a few years the reinstated Medici rule proved so corrupt and unpopular that in 1527 it was overthrown in favour of a republic, which soon saw a re-emergence of Savonarolan fundamentalism, declaring itself the ‘Republic of Christ’. This was eventually overthrown after a lengthy siege of the city by forces loyal to the Medici pope, Clement VII, which began in the fateful year of 1529, just as Savonarola is said to have predicted.
Lorenzo the Magnificent may have made the mistake of inviting Savonarola to return to Florence, yet the outcome of this invitation would not disrupt his secret long-term plans for extending Medici power far beyond the limits of the city state – plans that would see their fruition in later generations, when the Medici would become popes, and even rulers of France. The behaviour of two Medici popes – Leo X (the former Cardinal Giovanni) and Clement VII – would lead directly to the Reformation, which tore Christendom in two and changed the face of Europe for ever. The controversial policies of the two Medici queens of France – Catherine and Marie de Médicis – would be instrumental in preserving the French nation as the single sovereign entity that consequently flourished as the most powerful country in Europe under the ‘Sun King’, Louis XIV. If it had not been for Lorenzo the Magnificent and his ambitious plans for his descendants, none of this might have happened. Indeed, the history of Europe might well have taken an entirely different course.
In less than forty years the opposition between a quasi-benign but corrupt capitalist system run by the leader of a family of powerful bankers and an opposing fundamentalist who fulfilled a public longing for the moral certainties of an earlier age, as well as for a more democratic egalitarian society, had moved far beyond the struggle between the Medici and Savonarola within the city of Florence. By the time of Pope Clement VII (1523–34) the Reformation was already well under way, and the reforms that Savonarola advocated had split the unity of Christendom. Whilst leading the Reformation, Martin Luther marked his admiration for Savonarola by writing an introduction to his final ‘Exposition’, clearly regarding him as a forerunner. Yet there were profound differences between Savonarola and Luther. Savonarola believed in reforming the Church from within, and would have viewed Luther as the worst form of heretical priest, especially in the light of his marriage to a nun.
Following the Reformation, the dichotomy between a progressive materialism and the rule of spirituality would continue to underlie a number of major revolutionary upheavals. In this, Savonarola had been ahead of his time. Politically, his emphasis on democracy was undeniably modern. Yet he was also arguably the first in modern Europe to face the problems of leading a revolution where the euphoria of liberty was followed by repression – in the name of maintaining the purity of the revolution, as well as protecting it against its enemies. In the centuries following Savonarola, this would become a virtually inevitable historical process, visible in one form or another from the beheading of Charles I by the Puritans in England, through to the French Revolution and Robespierre. This trend was still recognisable in the twentieth century, from Lenin and the Bolsheviks in Russia to the Ayatollahs in Iran. In the early years of the present century, just as the struggle had spread beyond late fifteenth-century Florence to embrace the whole of Europe, the modern variant of this clash between fundamentalism and materialism has spread beyond the nation state to become a worldwide phenomenon.
There was death in Florence – of Lorenzo the Magnificent, of citizens (from plotters to plague victims), of Savonarola. At the same time an entire era was dying, that of the Middle Ages. And as this old order died in Florence, it gave birth to the new: the full flourishing of the Renaissance and the modern political state.