Savonarola by Donald Weinstein

Author:Donald Weinstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2011-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

I Can’t Live without Preaching

“Well, we’re still here; we haven’t run away. By now they should be content with all the lies they’ve told. They say we’ve carried off a lot of money. Too bad for you, Florentines; you didn’t know how to catch me!”1

With this verbal snap of his fingers at the latest calumny in circulation, fra Girolamo resumed preaching in the Cathedral on May 8, 1496. He returned in defiance of the papal ban, though apparently with the permission of the Eight, to shore up his “brigade,” encourage his followers in their faith, and urge everyone to confess and take communion for Pentecost. His first reason for returning, he admitted, was to defend himself against the slanders of his enemies. His ordering of motives is telling. In years of fending off charges of bad faith, demagoguery, secret ambition, heresy, and diabolic intent, years in which he had also to assure himself that he was truly God’s prophet, the message of tribulation and renewal had become virtually identical with the messenger. This was more than a matter of style: in the constant need to affirm the legitimacy of his apostolate he had become his own principal text. Eventually this self-preoccupation would betray him. The audacious “If I lie, Christ lies,” caused him endless trouble in Rome. The calls for a miracle to verify his heavenly commission would lead to disaster. Another reason he gave for returning to the pulpit goes to the essence of the man. “I’ll tell you the truth, the preaching is for my benefit; I can’t live without preaching.”

If the papal summons of the previous July had been a mortal warning, the Frate’s continued defiance of it was a prescription for self-immolation. Yet the few months following this most recent return to preaching have been described as a period of great calm for him.2 Rome sent no ultimatums. At home the Arrabbiati could only grind their teeth at the Frate’s durable popularity. Most of the Priors elected were favorable to governo civile, if not to him, and the city remained faithful to the French alliance. Duke Lodovico of Milan wrote fra Girolamo honeyed letters, implicitly acknowledging his crucial influence on foreign policy, and the pope sent secret envoys (including, it was rumored, his own son Cesare Borgia) to win him to the Holy League. Another rumor—that Alexander VI, through some back channel, was tempting him with a cardinal’s hat—seemed confirmed when the Frate startled his congregation by crying out, “I want no hats, no miters either large or small. I want nothing but what you [God] have given to your saints: death. A red hat, a hat of blood; this is what I want!”3 A period of calm, perhaps, but martyrdom was never far from his mind.

For his principal text he chose the Book of Ruth. He had been reworking his treatise On the Simplicity of the Christian, and Ruth, the personification of simple faith, was a convenient model for his ongoing war against the tepid.

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