Tag: girolamo savonarola

Calendar: February 15

Year: Day to Day Men: February 15

The Edge of the Known World

The fifteenth of February in the year 1472 marks the birth date of Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici, who was the eldest son of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Clarice Orsini, a daughter from the noble Roman house of Orsini. Piero was the lord of Florence from 1492 until his exile in 1494.

Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici was raised alongside his younger brother Giovanni, who would later be installed as Pope Leo X, and his cousin Giulio who later became Pope Clement VII. As the eldest son, he was educated to succeed his father as the head of the Medici dynasty. Piero studied under classical scholar and poet Angelo Poliziano and Catholic priest Marsillo Ficino, the head of the newly restored Florence Academy. 

Piero de’ Medici was arrogant, disruptive and had an undisciplined character. He was constantly at odds with his older and richer cousins Lorenzo and Giovanni, the two sons of Pierfrancesco de’ Medici. Piero was also a suspect in his teacher Angelo Poliziano’s death by poisoning in September of 1494. .

In 1486, Piero’s uncle Bernardo Rucellai, a member of Florence’s social and political elite, arranged a political marriage between Piero and Tuscan noblewoman Alfonsina Orsini. The marriage took place with Rucellai standing as proxy for the groom; Piero finally met Alfonsina in 1488. Their union produce three children: two daughters Luisa and Clarice, and a son named Lorenzo who later became the Duke of Urbino. Baptism records show that Piero had a third daughter named Maria in February of 1492.

Upon the death of his father Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1492, Piero de’ Medici became the leader of Florence. The peaceful existence between the Italian states, established by his father, collapsed in 1494 with King Charles VIII of France’s decision to assert hereditary claims to the Kingdom of Naples. After settling issues with the city-state of Milan, King Charles VIII sent envoys to Florence to ask for support for his claims. After five days, Piero de’ Medici responded that Florence would remain neutral, an answer that was unacceptable to King Charles who subsequently threatened Florence. 

Piero attempted to form a resistance but received little support from the Florentine elite who had fallen under the influence of the fanatical Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola. Piero’s own cousins allied themselves with both pledges and funds to King Charles VIII. At the end of October in 1494, Piero, without consulting the governing Signoria of Florence, visited King Charles at his camp and acceded to all of the king’s demands by surrendering the cities of Pisa and Lvorno as well as four fortresses in the area. 

Upon his return to Florence to report his actions to its Signoria, Piero de’ Medici encountered strong public outrage. King Charles VIII, following his conquest of the Kingdom of Naples, made his entrance as ruler into Florence on the seventeenth of November. Because of his isolation and lack of allies, Piero de’ Medici had not sent an army to stop the invasion, thus fuelling the resentment of the Florentine people who finally forced him and his family into exile. Their palazzo was looted, and the Republic of Florence was re-established.

Piero and his family fled to Venice with the aid of French diplomat Philippe de Commines, a servant of King Charles VIII. They supported themselves by the sale of the Medici jewels. Piero tried several times to reinstate himself in Florence but he was rejected. After the French lost the Battle of Garigliano, Piero de’ Medici drowned in the Garigliano River on the twenty-eight of December in 1503 while attempting to flee the battlefield. He was buried in the Abbey of Monte Cassino.

A member of the Medici family would not rule Florence again until 1512, when Giovanni de’ Medici forced the city to surrender. In the next year, he was elected Pope Leo X which solidified the Medici’s power. 

Calendar: February 7

Year: Day to Day Men: February 7

Late Morning Riser

The seventh of February in 1497, Shrove Tuesday, marks the day on which supporters of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola lit the bonfire of the vanities in the public square of Florence, Italy. 

Born in the Duchy of Ferrara in September of 1452, Girolamo Savonarola was an ascetic Italian Dominican friar and an active preacher in Renaissance Florence. He was known for his prophecies of civic glory and his advocacy for the destruction of secular art and culture, as well as his denunciation of both clerical and papal corruption. Savonarola’s education was overseen by Michele Savonarola, his grandfather and a successful physician. He earned an arts degree at the University of Ferrara and prepared for medical school; however at some point, he decided on a life in religion.

In April of 1475, Savonarola traveled to Bologna and entered the Friary of San Domenico of the Order of Friars Preacher. After a year, he was ordained to the priesthood and studied scripture, logic, Aristotelian philosophy and Thomistic theology. In 1476, Savonarola was sent to the Dominican priory of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Ferrara as an assistant master of novices. Six years later, he was sent to the Convent of San Marco in Florence where, assigned as a teacher of logic, he wrote manuals on ethics, philosophy and prepared sermons. It was during this period that Savonarola, while studying scripture, became to broach apocalyptic themes.

Girolamo Savonarola lived for several years as an itinerant preacher with messages of repentance and reform. In 1490, he was again assigned to San Marco. Italian philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who due to his unorthodox views of the Church was living in Florence under the protection of Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, persuaded de’ Medici to bring Savonarola to the city. Savonarola arrived in Florence in the middle of 1490 and began drawing large crowds with his preaching. He made pointed allusions to tyrants who usurped the people’s freedom and railed against the rich who exploited the poor.

Calling for repentance and renewal before the arrival of a divine scourge, Savonarola wanted to establish Florence as the New Jerusalem, the center of the Christian world. The people of Florence embraced his extreme moralistic campaign to rid the city of vices. New laws were passed against public drunkenness, sodomy, adultery, and other moral transgressions, including immodest dress and behavior. Savonarola saw sacred art as a tool for his worldview and, therefore, was opposed to secular art which he saw as worthless.

Pope Alexander VI for some time tolerated Savonarola’s criticism of the Church, an undercurrent theme that had slowly been increasing in Savonarola’s sermons over the years. After he refused to appear before the pope in Rome, the Vatican banned him from preaching. Seeing his influence wane, Savonarola resumed his sermons which were becoming more violent in tone. He attacked secret enemies at home whom he suspected in league with the papal Curia and condemned conventional Christians who were slow to respond to his callings. Savonarola held special Masses for the youth, processions, bonfires, and religious theater in San Marco.

The  phrase “Bonfires of the Vanities” refers historically to the bonfire of the seventh of February in 1497 when Savonarola’s supporters gathered and burned thousands of objects in Florence’s public square. Held on Shrove Tuesday, an initial day of the religious observance Lent, the focus of this destruction was on objects that might tempt one to sin, including vanity items such as mirrors, cosmetics, fine dresses, playing cards and musical instruments. Other objects that burned in the bonfire included books Savonarola thought immoral, manuscripts of secular songs, and artworks including paintings and sculptures that were not sacred in nature. Anyone who raised objections against the destruction were forced to contribute by teams of Savonarola supporters.

Notes:  Girolamo Savonarola, invited to Florence at the request of Lorenzo de’ Medici, eventually became one of the foremost enemies of the House of Medici and assisted in their downfall in 1494. Campaigning against what he saw as the excesses of Renaissance Italy, Savonarola’s power grew so much that he became the effective ruler of Florence with soldiers assigned for his protection. 

In 1495, Savonarola refused to join Pope Alexander VI’s Holy League against the French. When summoned by the Vatican to Rome, he refused to go and continued preaching under a ban imposed by the Vatican. After describing the Church as a whore, Savonarola was excommunicated in May of 1497 for heresy and sedition. He was executed in May of 1498 in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria, the site of his bonfires of the vanities; his body was burnt. By papal authority, Savonarola’s writings were to be given to a papal agent within four days for destruction. Anyone who did not comply faced excommunication.