Henceforth the interest of Savonarola’s career is rather ecclesiastical than political; the attack upon him is directed not from Florence but from Rome. Nevertheless the scourge which was manufactured in the Vatican was composed of several strands,—strands social and constitutional, moral and religious, personal and political,—all twisting in and out in the rope-walk of Italian diplomacy. Alexander VI has rightly left so terrible a repute that every act of his is exposed to a sinister interpretation. He had, perhaps, no positive virtues, but he was not entirely a conglomerate of vices. Abstemious in meat and drink, he had an equable temper; a healthy animal, he was not irritated by personalities; scandal has few terrors for those who habitually live in sin. Alexander was not cruel, if his immediate gratification were not concerned; in his official duties he had been regular and hardworking; he possessed a perfect knowledge of the etiquette and business of the Vatican, nor were the ecclesiastical interests of the Christian world neglected. It would be rash to assume that Alexander VI was actuated by personal hostility to Savonarola, although such hostility would have been only human. Under the zealous Popes of the Catholic Revival Savonarola would have met with less consideration, had their ideas and his been found in conflict.
Alexander VI was fully conscious that he would not a second time escape so lightly from the consequences of a French invasion. His personal enemy, Cardinal della Rovere, was influential at the French Court and, together with Cardinal Brissonet, would gladly make the Pope’s simoniacal election a pretext for his deposition. He was thus the natural ally of Ludovico il Moro, who had everything to fear from French vengeance; the Duke’s brother, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, was still the leading figure at the Vatican. The refusal of Florence to abandon the French alliance and join the Italian League kept the peninsula in a condition of nervous agitation; it was known that Savonarola’s party looked forward to a new invasion; it was guessed that he was himself corresponding with the French Court. Thus the Medici plots were hatched at Rome, but the Pope had no special interest in the Medici. Ludovico, as has been seen, was definitely opposed to a Medicean restoration. Alexander VI, on the other hand, would use the Medici, as he would use any other instrument, to embarrass a government which was a standing danger to himself, although it might be impolitic needlessly to exasperate the Republic, for this might only hasten an invasion.
Savonarola’s relations to the Pope have hitherto been left unnoticed, because until the summer of 1497 they had little effect upon his action. They had opened with the brief of July 21, 1495, which summoned the Friar to Rome, and they reached a climax in the brief of excommunication. The points of attack were the alleged gift of prophecy, the public invectives against Rome which brought the Papacy into contempt, “and the artifices by which the separation of the Tuscan Congregation had been obtained. Savonarola defended himself point by point with great ability. He excused himself from visiting Rome on the plea of weak health, which was forcing him to abandon the pulpit, and of the danger from Milanese assassins on the road. He submitted his doctrines to the judgment of the Church, referring the Pope to his Compendium Revelationum for his defence of prophecy; his Holiness, he constantly repeated, had been deceived by the slanders of his enemies. Alexander vacillated; he was pressed on the one side by Ludovico il Moro and the Friar’s Florentine enemies, on the other by the government and by the several Florentine envoys, all personally devoted to Savonarola. He was perhaps genuinely unwilling to take a decisive step against one whose holiness he respected; for sinners are not unable to value saints. In September, 1495, he adopted an obvious method of removing the Dominican from Florence by re-uniting the Tuscan to the Lombard Congregation. In answer to Savonarola’s remonstrances he abandoned this intention, but in November, 1496, he ordered the union of all the Tuscan Dominican convents under a new Tusco-Roman Congregation. Even this brief contained no patent evidence of hostility. The papal consent to the independence of the Tuscan Congregation had been won almost by a trick; the Congregation had not proved an entire success, owing to the resistance of the larger Tuscan towns; even the union of the convent at Prato had only just been effected, and not without difficulty. The smallness of the Congregation virtually confined Savonarola’s ministrations to Florence, which was most unusual. No previous hostility existed between the Roman and Tuscan Dominicans, like that which animated the latter against their Brethren of Lombardy; the new Vicar-General, the General, and the Protector of the Order were all of them Savonarola’s friends. The Roman authorities might reasonably have doubted whether his temporary withdrawal from the city would prove an unmixed evil, either for Florence or for himself.
To this brief Savonarola’s reply from the pulpit was almost a declaration of war. For he hinted not obscurely, that there were limits to obedience; that if a brief of excommunication were brought into the city on a spear-head he should know how to reply; and that his answer would make many a face turn pale. His Apology of the Brethren of San Marco was a formal appeal from the Pope to the public. Yet of Savonarola’s resistance Alexander took little notice, until he felt assured that there were signs of a reaction within Florence. Then, he launched his brief of excommunication, which was solemnly read between lighted torches in the Florentine churches on the evening of June 18, 1497. To the clauses of the brief which condemned Savonarola for disobedience in not visiting Rome and for doctrinal heterodoxy, he could readily reply that his excuses had been accepted, and that his doctrines had been submitted to the judgment of the Church; in further proof of his orthodoxy he now coiyposed his most elaborate work, the Triumphus Crticis, a noble tract on which his reputation as a theological writer mainly rests. The gist, however, of the brief was the Friar’s resistance to the Tusco-Roman Congregation, to which charge a reply was not so easy. If the Pope possessed the power to separate the Tuscan from the Lombard Congregation, in spite of the protests of the latter, he could clearly unite the Tuscan to the Roman. But Savonarola was not daunted; in letters addressed to the public he opposed a non volumus in the form of a non possumus, protesting that it was not in his power to compel his Brethren, and that they were fully justified in their resistance. His answer implied that the Pope had no powers in such a matter of discipline, if his command were contrary to the wish of those affected; he forgot that in 1493 the union of St Catherine’s at Pisa with his own Congregation had been effected against the declared wish of the great majority of the Brethren.
The brief after all seemed likely to fall harmless. It was doubtful how far the Pope was yet in earnest; more than a month had elapsed between the dating and the publication of the sentence. On June 14 occurred the mysterious murder of the Duke of Gandia. Alexander, in his passionate grief and remorse, initiated a project of reform such as Savonarola would have welcomed. It was a moment of strange concessions. The excommunicated man wrote a letter of condolence on the death of the Pope’s bastard, tenderly urging him to lead a new life, while Alexander assured the Florentine ambassador that the publication of the brief had never been intended; the belief was current that he would willingly withdraw it, if only the Friar would come to Rome. From July, 1497, onwards until the spring the Florentine government and its envoys pleaded ceaselessly for pardon. Testimonials of the Prior’s orthodoxy were forwarded by the Brethren of San Marco and by five hundred leading citizens; Savonarola himself in October addressed a humble letter to the Pope praying for reconciliation. For six months he never preached; the excitement both at Rome and Florence had subsided.
On Christmas day Savonarola committed his first act of open disobedience. He celebrated mass at San Marco, and then led a solemn procession round the square. This act scandalised many zealous supporters; but from Rome it provoked no violent protest. The Pope’s interest was political; he would withdraw his brief for an equivalent- the adhesion of Florence to the League. On February 11,1498, Savonarola broke silence. He preached in San Marco on the invalidity of the excommunication, declaring that whosoever believed in its validity was a heretic: that the righteous prince or good priest was merely an instrument of God for the people’s government, but that, when grace was withdrawn, he was no instrument but broken iron: that if any Pope