The face inside this cowl might look unsettling to us today — the light skin peers out from the dark clothes in a startling way, and those eyes hold a distant focus that might seem creepy. But in late 15th-century Italy, this man was an extremely popular religious leader that practically controlled Florence — the “queen city” of the Italian Renaissance — for several years.
Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) prophesied about the eminent end of the world and condemned the excesses of the Florentine people in hugely popular speeches that warned everyone to repent of their sins and turn away from vice. His message reached the masses — even the wealthiest — and under his influence Florence became a theocracy for about four years. New laws punished those who committed adultery, sodomy, or public drunkenness.
Eventually Savonarola’s raging condemnations of vice resulted in “Bonfires of the Vanities,” where Florentines deliberately burned wealth and luxurious secular objects as a way to publicly reject this-worldly objects. The bonfire of 1497, for instance, saw musical instruments, art by masters such as Donatello, and books by Dante and Boccaccio swept up and annihilated in the pyre.
As happens frequently in history, the radical leader inspired a backlash. In this case, the Medici family and the papacy united with others to bring Savonarola down. One of the macabre aspects of the religious leader’s fall happened when someone challenged him to an ordeal by fire. (You know, the *ordeal*, that thing where you try to light someone a bit on fire and see whose side God is on by how fast they heal? This actually was a Thing.) Turns out, the day of the hot coals test the heavens opened up and rain poured down. Unfortunately for Savonarola, however, many thought it was caused by evil magic rather than God’s grace.
Things swiftly unraveled for the Dominican friar. He underwent painful torture that had his arms tied behind his back and raised above his head before hanging him up by his dislocated limbs. Savonarola confessed to all sorts of crimes under such duress, and ended up being burned at the stake as a heretic by secular and (pro-papal) clergy officials.
Sources: Anthony Grafton “Trial by fire” _Lapham’s Quarterly_ reviewing _Savonarola: the Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet_ Donald Weinstein, Yale UP, 2011. Painting by Fra Bartolomeo, c 1498
