These utterances, followed by others fully as audacious, forced Alexander to a resolution. He demanded, under pain of interdict, that either the government must place Savonarola in his custody, subject to a promise that he should not be hurt, or at least confine him to his convent and prevent his preaching. The envoys assured the Signoria that the Pope was now in earnest, and after much debate Savonarola was ordered not to preach. On receiving this decision, the Friar preached his farewell sermon; he was willing to obey the State, for he could not force virtue upon the city against its will. This sermon contained his fiercest diatribe against the Roman Court; none could misunderstand the allusions to Alexander’s concubines and children. It was time now, cried the preacher, to appeal from the Pope to Christ; the Power ecclesiastic was ruining the Church, it was therefore no longer Power ecclesiastic, but Power infernal, Power of Satan. Henceforth, if Savonarola was silent, he was not idle. In his seclusion he prepared an appeal to a General Council, and drafted letters calling upon the European princes to depose the Pope, who was no Pope, for his election was simoniacal, he was a heretic and unbeliever, since he disbelieved in the existence of God- the deepest depth of unbelief. Had his cause been as strong in Florence as of yore, had succeeding Signorie been as bold as that of January, 1498, a formal Schism must have followed; and who can say that the revolt would have been limited to Florence, or that it would not have overstepped the frontier of discipline and doctrine? But the issue was to be decided by internal rather than by external politics, and the final conflict was provoked by circumstances almost accidental.
Savonarola’s brethren were still preaching, and perhaps exaggerating, the apocalyptic features of his doctrine. From prophecy to miracle was but a step; an appeal to supernatural agency became almost a form of speech; it was boldly asserted that miracle, if necessary, would support prophecy. At length, on March 25, 1498, a Franciscan in Santa Croce threw down the challenge; he would pass through fire if Savonarola would do likewise: he knew that he should himself be burnt, but the Dominican would also perish, and the people would be freed from its delusion. Savonarola was averse to forcing a miracle from God; the Court of Rome expressed its abhorrence at this tempting of the Divine Power. The government, however, yielded to popular clamour; it was willing to clutch at any remedy for the civil conflict, which was wasting the life of Florence. Above all the Piagnoni were eager for the ordeal; the more zealous offered to enter the fire in full reliance on a miracle, while those who wavered thought that the prophet’s success would render his cause triumphant or his failure justify secession.
Neither Savonarola nor the Franciscan challenger, Francesco da Puglia, were the champions of their Orders. Domenico da Pescia, Savonarola’s right hand, represented the Dominicans, and Fra Ron-dinelli the Franciscans. The painful tale of the ordeal is too well known to bear retelling in detail. The Franciscans were gathered in the Loggia, and the huge pile was laid in the great Piazza, when the Dominicans entered in procession, two by two, amid lines of torch-bearers, followed by Fra Domenico bearing the Host, and his Prior bearing the Crucifix. Their chant “Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered” was caught up by the faithful on every side. The square was free but for the armed bands of the government, and the groups of the leading supporters of each party; but every window and every roof was dark with eager onlookers, hungering for miracles or horrors. Then followed the unseemly wrangles between the Orders, Franciscans insisting that Fra Domenico must be stripped of his robes for fear they should be enchanted, Dominicans refusing to send their champion to the flames without the Host. Then came the drenching thunderstorm, and their wrangles again till eventide, when the Signoria dismissed the Friars to their convents. The Dominican procession reached San Marco amid the yells and threats of a disappointed mob.
The populace, long wavering, had made up its mind. Some were angry at their own credulity, others at the proposal to endanger the Holy Sacrament. Many were disgusted at losing a spectacle for which they had waited wet and weary; others had hoped that the Dominican’s death by fire would purify the State from faction. Savonarola preached to his disciples that he had won the victory; but in their hearts they doubted it, for they gathered to defend the convent in expectation of an onslaught. This was not slow in coming. On the following day, Palm Sunday, the Compagnacd shouted down a Dominican preacher in the Cathedral, and amid cries of “To San Marco” led the mob against the convent. Valori escaped to rally adherents round his palace and to attack the enemy from without. But the assailants were too quick; Valori reached his house with difficulty and hid himself; his wife, looking from an upper window, was killed by a cross-bow. Then came officials of the Signoria and took him from his hiding-place towards the Palazzo. The weak escort was overpowered; a Ridolfi and a Tornabuoni hacked the Piagnone leader down, in vengeance for their relation’s death, and so the greatest citizen in Florence died unshriven in the street. Meanwhile San Marco was gallantly defended. The bell was tolling to rally the Piagnoni, who, however, were isolated in the churches or in their houses in blank dismay. Women were gathered in the nave in prayer, while Savonarola stood before the altar, Sacrament in hand, with his novices around him, expecting martyrdom, for the convent doors were burnt and the enemies crowding in. It was high time that the Signoria should interfere in the cause of order. All lay citizens were commanded on their allegiance to leave the convent within an hour. Further resistance was hopeless. Savonarola and Fra Domenico surrendered under promise of safe conduct. For the last time the Prior gathered the Brethren in the library, and besought them to abide in faith, in prayer, in patience. The officers led their prisoners out into the street, and thence to the Palace, through the surging, howling ,mob, spitting, kicking and striking at its victims. On the following day Fra Silvestro left his hiding-place and was given up.
From the moment of Savonarola’s arrest, his execution became a necessity of State; nothing else would satisfy the people, who would otherwise have clamoured for a proscription of his party; nothing else would have healed the divisions among the governing class. The religious strife had not only cleft the city in twain; it was making her alliance worthless to any foreign power. The news” of Charles VIII’s death had arrived, it seemed certain that Pisa could only be recovered through the League, and this would give no aid while Savonarola thundered from the pulpit against the Pope. Exile was an alternative to death, but exile would have removed the danger to a foreign and almost necessarily hostile State; the Piagnoni would never rest, while there was a possibility of their leader’s return. The Pope at once urged the transference of the prisoner to Rome; the government, as a reward for silencing the prophet, pressed for a tithe upon the clergy for the Pisan war. Florentine independence declined to play the sheriff’s officer for Rome, and Savonarola’s extradition was refused; as a compromise the Pope sent commissioners to aid in his examination.
The trial of the three Friars lasted from April 9 until May 22. Their depositions and those of other citizens are not necessarily worthless, because they were extracted under torture. Torture was invariably applied, and such a view would invalidate, for instance, the whole of the evidence on which the Medicean conspirators were condemned. Savonarola was, however, a bad subject. His nervous, highly-strung constitution, weakened by asceticism and anxiety, shrank from physical pain. Though never abandoning his duty, he had always been haunted by the fear of personal violence; he frequently referred to his providential escapes from the poison or the dagger of Ludovico il Moro, although successive governments devoted to the Friar never contrived to arrest one of these Milanese agents, with whom he believed Florence to be teeming. The prosecution admitted that Savonarola retracted the confessions made under torture, and these retractations are set down in black and white. Not all of the Florentine Commission were pronounced enemies; and of the two Papal Commissioners, the General of the Dominicans, Turriani, had, until Savonarola’s final act of disobedience, been his consistent friend. More difficult is the question of the additions, alterations, and omissions attributed to the notary Ser Ceccone, a renegade; although, had this “editing” been absolutely unscrupulous, the confessions of the accused would have been more compromising. The depositions of Fra Domenico, whether in their original form or in the official copy, bear out the general authenticity