SAVONAROLA, PREACHER AND PROPHET
Part II, The Final Act of the Drama
By Herbert Lucas
"The vain efforts of the Papal commissaries," says Villari, "had only
succeeded in making more evident the innocence of Savonarola." For
our part, we cannot take this view of the matter. He had not formally
taught heretical doctrine. And no wonder; for among those who had
either heard or read his sermons, there could be no question as to
the orthodoxy of his ordinary dogmatic teaching.
But on one point -- or rather on two points very closely connected
with each other -- there can be no doubt whatever. He had endeavored
to procure the deposition of the Pope, by means of a General Council,
to be convoked by temporal sovereigns; and herein lay the head and
front of his offending. This being so, it seems to us to be a mere
perversion of the truth to say, with Villari, that the result of the
trial from its inception to its close had been to bring the innocence
of Savonarola into an even clearer light. The Papal commissioners sat
to try not -- in the first instance -- his conscience, but his acts.
His acts might be viewed by them as contravening, if not the letter,
at least the spirit and purpose of the Bull <Execrabils> of Pius II.,
which explicitly condemns an appeal from the Pope to a General
Council. And therefore they might be regarded as involving
constructive heresy and schism, as well as "contempt of the Holy
See," the three counts on which the sentence was explicitly based.
Savonarola would of course have said that in fact his conduct
involved no such contravention of the Bull; that Pius II speaks of an
appeal from a lawful Pope, but that Alexander was not a lawful Pope;
that his simoniacal election had been invalid from the outset, and
that it could be only provisionally revalidated by his subsequent
recognition at the hands of Christendom; and finally, that his
unchristian life, subsequently to his election, amounted not merely
to constructive heresy, but to constructive infidelity. Every
student of ecclesiastical history is aware that in 1505 Julius II,
the all but immediate successor of Alexander VI., decreed by his
Bull, <Cum tam divino>, that for the time to come a simoniacal
election to the Papacy should be regarded as <ipso facto> invalid,
and incapable of revalidation by mere course of time or recognition.
There can be no question that this Bull had its origin in the sad
memory of the scandalous election of Alexander. Unless we carefully
distinguish between resistance to a lawful Pope, and resistance to
one who is least believed to be an intruder, it will be impossible to
excuse the conduct of Julius II. himself when, as Cardinal Giuliano
della Rovere, he did his best to procure the deposition of Alexander
VI. Lest, however , we should be misunderstood, we hasten to say that
the case of Savonarola is not on the same footing with that of the
Cardinal, as we shall presently point out in detail.
Moreover, even if it were tenable as an opinion that Alexander was
not <per se> a lawful Pope, he was certainly entitled to be treated
as such by the faithful at large, and by private individuals, so long
as he was in actual and undisturbed possession of the Holy See; and
so, in fact, Savonarola had treated him for several years. Nor could
Savonarola, as a private individual, be canonically justified in
raising the standard of revolt, however much an error of judgement
might excuse him before God. It was not for him, or for any other
irresponsible person, to take the initiative in a movement which
might have so seriously compromised the unity of Christendom. It is
particularly noteworthy that even the Bull <Cum tam divino> by no
means leaves it open to all and sundry to raise objections against
the validity of a papal election. The right of raising a protest is
strictly limited to the Cardinals, and even among them it is
restricted to those who have been present at the election. It is
obvious, then, that even had the decree been in force in Savonarola's
lifetime, it would have afforded him no justification for his action.
Once more, the only ground on which he can be excused is that of an
error of judgement of a very serious kind.
In the eye of the law, then, and in the judgement of the papal
commissaries, Savonarola's guilt, in respect of the main charge
against him, was abundantly proved, and the commissaries passed
sentence accordingly. Could they have done otherwise? Of course it is
easy for a man living in our own days to flatter himself that he,
wise with the superior wisdom of the twentieth century, would have
acted very differently; that he would, as a mere matter of course,
have lifted up his voice against the wicked Pontiff, and would have
told him to his face that if Savonarola had been guilty of
contumacious disobedience, or even of a treasonable or schismatical
plot, it was he who, by the shameless intrigues which had led to his
election, and by the flagrant scandals of his life as Pope, had
provoked the disobedience, and invited the treason; and that his duty
now lay, not in the execution of justice, but in the exercise of
mercy, and in the self-humiliation of the Christian penitent. But can
we be quite sure that it even as much as crossed the mind of Torriano
or of Romolino [Papal legates] that this was the wiser and the better
course to take? Can we be even quite sure that it would have been
wiser and better for them thus to protest against the sentence which
they were bidden by the Pope to pronounce?...
Our readers will, we trust, be thankful if we pass rapidly over the
closing scene. Shattered by the repeated tortures which he had
undergone, his soul was yet strong in His strength who is the support
of the downcast; and he had spent the weary days which elapsed
between his second and his third examination (25th April to 20th
May), days of solitary and rigorous confinement, in well--nigh
uninterrupted prayer. His very beautiful meditations on the Psalms,
"Miserere" (Ps. li.), and "In te Domine speravi" (Ps. xxx), composed
during his imprisonment, and the "Rule of a Christian Life" which he
drew up for the use of his gaoler, are a touching record of his
thoughts and aspirations during that time of tribulation. His last
sleep, during the night which preceded his execution, was taken with
his head resting on the knees of one of the members of the pious
confraternity of the Battuti, whose office it was to assist the
dying. After a brief interval of this peaceful repose he once more
rose to pray, and at daybreak he received at his own hands the Holy
Communion, and communicated his two companions. Having been kept
apart since the night of their arrest, six weeks before, they had
been allowed an interview on the previous evening, and now they met
again for the last consolations of religion.
Admonished that the time for the execution had arrived, the three
came forth to die. From the Palazzo Vecchio, a long narrow platform
extended across the Piazza towards the Tetto de' Pisani. It
terminated in a circular scaffold heaped high with the fuel that was
to consume the dead bodies of the condemned men. Above the plle of
wood rose the gibbet with its three halters.
"On the marble terrace of the Palazzo were three tribunals; one near
the door for the Bishop (Pagagnotti), who was to perform the ceremony
of degradation of Fra Girolamo and his two brethren...another for the
Papal Commissaries, who were to pronounce them heretics and
schismatics and to deliver them over to the secular arm; and a third,
close to Marzocco, at the corner of the terrace where the platform
began, for the Gonfaloniere, and the Eight, who were to pronounce the
sentence of death." (George Eliot, <Romola>, Ch. 72.)
Before each of these tribunals, in turn, the three companions were
led to hear their sentence pronounced, and, strange as it may seem,
to receive at the hands of the Papal delegates a plenary indulgence,
as if in recognition of at least the possibility that they had acted
in good faith. Then, stripped of their religious habit, they were
conducted to the scaffold and Savonarola once more stood face to face
with the people of his beloved Florence. In the words of the
authoress of <Romola>, he saw "torches waving to kindle the fuel
beneath his dead body" and "faces glaring with a yet worse light"; he
heard, as His divine Master had heard, "gross jests, taunts, and
curses"; he was well assured that in the background were many
hundreds of weeping Piagnoni, faithful still; and he knew that the
very moment of his cruel ignominious death would be for him the
moment of a great moral victory.
And so on a very true sense it was. Fra Girolamo Savonarola had
sounded the long-drawn and wailing blast of a fearless challenge to
all the powers of wickedness. He had slipped and fallen in the shock
of the first onset. But the notes of his trumpet-call reverberated
through Christendom, and through the century that was so soon to dawn
upon the world, and woke many an echo which heartened other men and
women besides S. Philip Neri and S. Catherine of Ricci for their own
combat with evil. The Church was scourged after another manner than
that which he had foreseen. The face of the Church has been renewed,
though not so "soon and speedily" as he had imagined. In substance,
however, more than one of Fra Girolamo's "conclusions" have been made
good, even though his revelations have been for the most part
disallowed. And, all his errors and their consequences
notwithstanding, the Church and the world owe him a debt of
gratitude.
It was Kitchener, not Gordon, who conquered the Soudan. Yet had it
not been for Gordon's tragic death, there had been no Soudan
expedition under Kitchener, And it may be that the leaders of the
great Catholic revival of the sixteenth century were more indebted
than they were aware to Fra Girolamo Savonarola. The Reform of the
Church was to be effected by methods other than his. Not "cito et
velociter"; not by that brilliant kind of warfare which wins a battle
and loses a campaign; but slowly and surely, through patience and
long preparation, and a careful adaptation of means to ends, by the
assiduous training of a body of men who, in their turn, were to drill
others one by one in the principles of the spiritual life, and little
by little to leaven the world. And again, not by the decentralization
of the Church, and the reduction of its rounded circle to an ellipse
with rival foci at Rome and Florence, but by the uncompromising
assertion of the duty of loyalty to the Vicar of Christ in his
official capacity, whatever might be his personal shortcomings or
even vices; by the full and explicit recognition of the truth that,
"de Sion exhibit lex et verbum Domini de Jerusalem." And yet, who
shall say how far the "excursions and alarums" of the great
Florentine preacher not merely preluded and heralded, but helped to
clear the ground for, the organized religious campaign of the
sixteenth century?
"When Savonarola, degraded and unfrocked, ended his life on the
gallows, his cause seemed to be irretrievably lost, and his enemies
triumphed. Nevertheless, he died a conqueror and he died for the
noblest cause for which a man can give his life -- for the spread of
God's kingdom on earth. The future belonged to him, and he to the
Church."
So writes Dr. Schnitzer, and we may make his words our own without
either justifying the disobedience of Fra Girolamo, or unreservedly
condemning his judges. Even though his disobedience may have had its
root in pride, and may have made his condemnation inevitable, no one
can call in question the burning zeal for the kingdom of God which
was the dominant motive in his life; and the fire which consumed his
mortal remains may be deemed to have purged his fault, at least
before the tribunal of human judgment.
We have said: "All his errors notwithstanding"; for those writers
have, in our judgement, done a real disservice to Fra Girolamo's
memory who have striven to show that the life and character of their
hero were all but flawless, and to justify well-nigh his every word
and action. To do this is to miss the lessons which are writ large on
the very surface of his career, and to call aloud for the cold and
calculating application of a discriminating criticism where the
veredict of common-sense might have sufficed. The lessons to be
learned from the life and death of Fra Girolamo Savonarola are, in
our judgement, so obvious that, but for the unmeasured encomium of
his panegyrists, it had been needless to draw the obvious moral.
The severe austerity of Fra Cirolamo's life, his truly wonderful gift
of prayer, his fearless intrepidity, his boundless confidence in God,
his keen insight into the true condition of the Church and of civil
society, his surpassing eloquence, his marvelous influence over the
minds and hearts of men, an influence wielded on the whole for the
noblest of ends -- all these things claim the admiration which is due
to a truly great and good man. Yet the story of his life reminds us
that even exalted gifts and noble qualities such as these may yet be
unavailing to save a man from being misled by a subtle temptation
into an unacknowledged self- esteem, which may end by snapping the
very roots of obedience, by luring him onwards till at last he makes
private judgement -- in matters of conduct if not of doctrine -- the
court of final appeal. And when this point has been reached only two
issues are possible if the conflict becomes acute; spiritual ruin or
temporal disaster. It was, perhaps, well for Fra Girolamo that
temporal disaster overtook him, and that his baptism of fire came to
him in time. The life's story of Girolamo Savonarola is, in fact, in
the truest and fullest sense, a tragedy. For the very essence of
tragedy lies in this, that under stress of critical circumstances,
some flaw in a noble character leads by steps, slow perhaps, but
sure, to a final catastrophe, and that in and through the catastrophe
itself that which was noble survives in the mind and memory of men,
and does its work more effectively than it would have done had there
been no catastrophe to arouse attention and awaken sympathy.
From Fra Girolamo Savonarola (1906)
This article was taken from "The Dawson Newsletter," Summer 1994,
P.O. Box 332, Fayetteville, AR 72702, $8.00 per year.
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