Savonarola’s financial scheme was predoomed to failure, for it was totally inadequate to its purpose. Even the assessment was not completed until the year of his death, and then only for the inhabitants of Florence. The republic from the first resorted to the old tainted sources of supply-forced loans from richer or less popular citizens; it still, as was said of Cosimo de1 Medici, used the taxes instead of the dagger. The arbitrio, an impost on the profits of trades and professions, reappeared; and the duties on articles of consumption rose and rose again. Even before Savonarola’s death it was proposed to restore the progressive tax, which could be levied several times within the year. The white farthings, the withdrawal of which had been the first concession to the populace, were reissued. The finances were incompetently and extravagantly administered; there was no permanent control, no subordination of private to public interests. Under the Medici a limited number had benefited from corruption; under the Republic each fresh group which came into momentary power, felt bound to gratify its adherents by the superfluous creation of commissaries and envoys. It became difficult to pass money-bills through the Council, and the consequent delay came to cost the State a hundred times the sum originally needed. So entire was the decay of the Florentine marine, that towards the close of the Pisan War, Florence was reduced to hiring a Genoese pirate with a brigantine or two to blockade the outlets of the Arno.
The defects of Florentine justice did not escape Savonarola’s ken. His recommendation that the chief commercial court, the Mercatanzia, should be reformed by means of a representative committee, was carried out as far as statute went. Politicians however continued to manipulate the court through the agency of its permanent secretary, and this afterwards brought about a split in the liberal party, even as it was alleged to have caused the original breach between Medici and Albizzi. The Friar also proposed a new criminal court, which he called Ruota, composed of citizens sufficiently wealthy and well-paid to stand above fear or favour. A Ruota was after his death established, but bore no resemblance except in name to his proposal, which was undoubtedly borrowed from the admirable Venetian courts named Quarantle. When, still later, a Quarantia was introduced at Florence, it was a mere temporary criminal commission to ensure the condemnation of the over-mighty subject.
Savonarola’s political programme might now seem complete, but he well knew that the constitution was not perfect. He stated plainly that time would show the defects and make them good; the essential was to establish the local popular base at once. Even this he came to see might need amendment; in a remarkable sermon preached in 1497, he hinted that the Grand Council itself might need a purge. He had to learn that there was no panacea for the inherited hysteria of a State. Not entirely without reason the hostile chronicler Vaglienti wrote that little reliance could be placed in what the Commune of Florence did, since what was done to-day was undone to-morrow; that truly Dante had said
Quante volte nel tempo che rimembre Legge, moneta ed ufficio e costume Hai tu mutato, e rinnovato membre.
Notwithstanding Savonarola’s political activity, politics were for him solely subordinate to ethics. The form of government was not an end in itself, but the means to moral purification; tyrants must be expelled, not because they were oppressive, but because they were morally perverting. He preached against Cosimo de’ Medici’s maxim that a State could not be governed by paternosters: the more spiritual a polity, the stronger it was: where there was grace, there were unity, obedience, sobriety, and therefore strength: riches followed grace and enabled the citizens to help each other and the Commune in times of need: in a State that kept its word, the soldiers were braver and more regularly paid: enemies feared the city that was at unity with itself, and friends more readily sought its alliance. For Savonarola the State was coextensive with the citizens’ moral and religious welfare. His aim may almost be termed a system of State socialism applied to ethics rather than to economics. His programme was set out in four clauses-the fear of God-the common weal-universal peace-political reform. He confessed that Florence had begun at the end, but hoped that she would work backwards. Politics and ethics were so closely dovetailed, that he regarded opposition to his political views as involving sin; and herein lies his justification for his unmeasured denunciation of his opponents.
The Friar’s influence upon the new government is proved by its first legislative acts, especially by the terrible penalties attached to unnatural vice. The deadly canker of Florentine life he, like other friars before him, believed to be gambling. To eradicate this, he was prepared to violate the privacy of family life, destroy individual liberty, and make the servant an informer against his master. Gambling he would punish with torture, blasphemy with piercing of the tongue. The dress and the hair of women and children were made the subject of legislation. The establishment of monti di pieta, State pawnbroking offices, would nowadays be regarded as an economic measure; in Savonarola’s eyes it was mainly ethical, a form of State charity and a protest against usury; indeed, he at first proposed that the State should lend free of interest. His success in this measure proved his strength; for again and again Franciscans had advocated this check upon usurious Jews, who in bad seasons gained a hold upon the poor. Invariably they had been shown the city-gate by the upper citizens, themselves, as was believed, not averse to usurious interest. Quite of late Piero de’ Medici had favoured a monte di pietd, but had found the opposition insuperable. Savonarola was no professed Anti-Semite; he expressed in print his sympathy for the Jews and his desire for their conversion; but for all that he virtually rid Florence of them.
His enemies accused Savonarola of leading the poor to idle. The general sense of excitement and unrest was no doubt intensified by prophecy. Nevertheless he consistently preached the gospel of labour for rich and poor. He had made every member of his own convent toil for its support; from the pulpit he implored artisans to return to work, and the employers to find them labour; to give work, he repeated, was the best form of charity; no one need fear starvation who lived a godly and industrious life. The rich, he preached, should labour even as the poor; he denounced the princes who lived on their subjects without protecting them, the wealthy who cornered grain, who scraped away the wages of the poor, who would give their worn-out shoes in lieu of money. But in the financial crisis through which Florence was passing an exhortation to work was not enough; crowds of peasants were driven into the towns by war and famine; wages must be supplemented by public and private charity. Collections were raised in the churches, in the processions, at the street corners, by house to house visitation; the government was urged to buy up grain from abroad, to open a relief office, to write off old arrears of taxes.
The reform of the public holidays was a natural consequence of the political and moral revolution, for the Medici had closely associated themselves with these, and their return was to be marked by a revival of the old magnificence. Savonarola knew, as all earnest reformers know, that such holidays not only contain possibilities of irreparable evil in themselves, but taint the preceding and succeeding months, and permanently lower the standard of national purity and sobriety. He insisted on the suppression by the State of the horse-races, the bonfires and allegorical processions, the gross carnival songs, which would have been tolerated at no other season; in the country-towns the podesta was to forbid the public dances. His enemies accused him of imposing total abstinence on Florence; a Sienese satirist has jeered at Florentine teetotalism. But this was an exaggeration, based apparently on recommendations for a short fast in time of national humiliation. Savonarola was aware that men and children cannot live without amusement, and hence the processions, the religious dances, the burning of the vanities, which have become so celebrated. Bands of urchins had been wont to stretch poles across the streets and levy black-mail upon the passers-by. The proceeds were expended on a supper, while faggots and brooms were piled around the pole, and the stack converted into a bonfire, after which the rival bands would stone each other throughout the