Papal Breve Sent Marking Savonarola As Excommunicated: later May 1497

There was a delay in the spring of 1497 between the issuance of the papal breve marking friar Girolamo Savonarola of the Dominican Congregation at San Marco in Florence as an excommunicant, and its public reception there. The brief was signed by the Borgia Pope on May 12/13 that year but was read out from the pulpits of the five most important churches in Florence only as late as June 18. There were several reasons for such a delay about such an important declaration. While his enemies in other congregations would begin circulating the story, the central figures of Florentine government would find other ways to delay the reading in order to dampen the already out of bounds strains and tensions revolving around 'the little friar'.

The pope had chosen Giovanvittorio da Camerino to deliver this breve to the major churches in Florence. This was the same man who earlier that year, in March, after thunderously preaching against Savonarola there, the city chose to imprison him and then officially throw him out of the city as an exile. Now, while anxious to get back and deliver this supreme opinion from his superior Holiness in Rome, when Giovanvittorio arrived as near as Siena, he stopped. There he decided to draft letters to the Eight and the Signory in Florence requesting safe conduct. For people exiled from the City this was a regular practice. He didn't want to be imprisoned in Florence again for delivering even this message (this time of excommunication), but was duty bound to fulfill his charge from the Most Holy See. He could explain to the Signoria he had a duty to fulfill and as such should be given this opportunity to deliver his message without any harm coming to him. Giovanvittorio sat and waited for a month in Siena instead.  [p. 168] It is Weinstein that claims Camerino waited in Siena for a month before even these letters asking for safe conduct were sent.

The City leaders heard the news anyway as did many of the congregations there in Florence. The leaders debated what to do and Savonarola's enemies fanned the flames of incitement. Savonarola, after the Ascension Day upset wrote, crafting letters for his brethren, to the pope and for his defense. But the Signoria gave no promise of safe-conduct for Giovanvittorio da Camerino.

from Martines, Lauro: Fire In The City: Savonarola and the struggle for the soul of Renaissance Florence ; Oxford University Press, New York, 2006 

May Dates 1497: Florence, A City In Turmoil

Though heavy rains reportedly had kept the forces and allies of Piero de Medici from breaching the walls of Florence on April 28, this was just one event of many that serially jolted the city and its people from one extreme to another that spring. The following week Friar Savonarola had been allowed to give the Ascension Day sermon on May 4, but that had turned into a circus of another set of events, sending partisans, clerics and the public reeling. News from Rome trickled in after a couple more weeks of the papal breve marking (May 13) Savonarola as an excommunicate, but the messenger was not even allowed to enter the city, so that the public declaration could be postponed. Meanwhile a new vote on May 12 granted new opportunities for more people to seek public office in Florence, creating a strange but temporary coalition that better shows the very fluid nature of the City's politics.

It was a pivotal moment in the central channels of these tumultuous times in Florence. The city was abandoned to its own problems at last without allies and with many adversaries all round. Under attack on many fronts as well, Savonarola was very busy. In addition to the Lenten sermons that year culminating in the famous and undelivered sermon of Ascension Day which turned into an upset, the friar had been putting the finishing touches on his Triumph of the Cross. He had also revised and sent out an Apology for the Brothers of the Congregation of San Marco earlier in the year. The day following the disastrous upheaval in the sacristy itself on Ascension Day, the Signoria banned all preaching until further notice. Without this outlet, by May 8, Savonarola penned another, "A Letter to All the Elect of God and Faithful Christians". When he had recieved a copy for the pope's breve of excommunication, he wrote a reply dated May20. Meanwhile matters in the city had reached a fever pitch.