The fifty Lenten sermons that Girolamo Savonarola presented in early 1491 shortly after arriving in Florence, culminated in one particular performance outside his church. This was instead before the heads of state at the Palace of the Signoria in Florence. Lauro Martines spends some time on these sermons for Lent, in this year. Year after year, he continued the onslaught on less than pious practices, in this time crucial to him and his new chosen city. Looking at the topics, the tone and delivery as well as the external politics, Martines emphasizes thier effects in turn, on these central issues of the friar's focus. It seems it was the force of these sermons that made him into a household name. By at least March of that year, he was proclaiming 'I believe that Christ speaks through my mouth.'
The speeches were given extemporally drawn from notes that Savonarola had written up beforehand in latin. Only these latin outlines survive. Even so, the range of topics and methods of condemning the rich and corrupt regular practices within the church and the consequent sinfulness of everybody else were constant themes. We don't have written reactions of these sermons. But his audiences, Martines assures us, must have been stunned.
Savonarola began with bible verses but would use these as starting points to begin criticizing and condemning a wide range of externalities. From the showy fakeness of religious praise, from cardinal's clothes to empty ceremonies, to the emptiness of souls that perform these, or sold church offices, or the lechery or sodomy by church clerics, injustices to the poor, usury over taxation, all became flashpoints in his deliveries. And, God's justice was to soon condemn and break and burn and cleanse all of this.
Now and then, he would break from the onslaught of condemnation to point out the love of God, or lessons from Scripture, Christ's sacrifice for mankind, the examples of Christian martyrs. But soon he would return to the stupidity of so-called wisemen, the vanity of women, the clerics that have 'killed Christ' in their hearts in order to play dice, thirst after money, chase after dead people for money, become slaves to love keeping concubines or boys or, who laughed in the choir. [pp. 25-6]
In the wake of these sermons, Martines says, Savonarola became known as the preacher for the 'desperate and malcontent'. He would however still be allowed to travel and preach elsewhere - in 1491 he went to Lucca for a dozen sermons - as well as teach and preach at his new, growing, home congregation in Florence. In July 1491 he was elected Prior of San Marco there. Later, he even had reportedly been invited to visit the dying Lorenzo de Medici in April 1492. [p. 28] There's no record of what they spoke of, only the normal blessings. But then, inevitably, the proliferating innuendo was spread. In turn, in May 1492 and also early 1493, he went to Venice seeking support for his designs. In the spring of 1493 he went to Bologna and delivered new Lenten sermons there. [p.32]
Difficulties in Florence began as early as the year after Lorenzo de Medici's death. The other nobles and oligarchs within the de Medici circle had growing doubts of the lesser, twenty-year old son of the great il Magnifico, Piero de Medici. He was vain, liked horse riding and cultivated his own circle of 'new men' rather than listen to counsel from older, more experienced oligarchs. Wags said he acted more like his mother's family, the Orsini, and preferred fancy dressing and heroic posing to active engagement. [p.29] Distancing himself from day to day affairs and spending more time with his own friends and counsels, the increasing numbers of outsiders questioned more, and spoke more and more disparagingly of the young man. By the spring of 1493, some began insinuating that Piero might soon like to reform Florence itself into a reggimento and thus be called lord of some new-fangled Republic.
Meanwhile, as Piero saw no direct threat from Savonarola himself, the preacher as Prior at San Marco, extended certain austerities on the clerics there. Silver crosses and fancy rosary beads or finer cloth was removed, and more fasting, prayer, smaller cuts of rough cloth, less idle talk were encouraged. Reforms of other churches outside Florence were also organized and pursued. In a decision by the new pope Alexander VI, it was in May 1493 that the convent at San Marco won independence from the Lombard Congregation. As that year progressed, these austere practices were exported to other convents in Fiesole, and in Pisa. The attempts at Siena to reform failed and the local Dominicans mounted a fierce opposition. In Pisa, the friars abandoned their offices rather than submit to the new rules. [pp. 31-2] After many initial failures and setbacks however, the message of Savonarola kept advancing and his influence spread.
_____________________________________
notes and pagination from Martines, Lauro: Fire In The City: Savonarola and the struggle for the soul of Renaissance Florence ; Oxford University Press, New York, 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment