Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
across the cities and regions of the peninsula two camps emerged: Guelphs (Guelfi, who
backed the pope) and Ghibellines (Ghibellini, in support of the emperor).
A WHIFF OF HELLFIRE
Politics in Italy's mercurial city-states could take a radical turn. When Florence's Medici clan rulers
fell into disgrace (not for the last time) in 1494, the city's fathers decided to restore an earlier republic-
an model of government. This time there was a twist.
Since 1481, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola had been in Florence preaching repentance.
His blood-curdling warnings of horrors to come if Florentines did not renounce their evil ways some-
how captured everyone's imagination and the city now submitted to a fiery theocracy. He called on the
government to act on the basis of his divine inspiration. Drinking, whoring, partying, gambling, flashy
fashion and other signs of wrongdoing were pushed well underground. Books, clothes, jewellery,
fancy furnishings and art were burned on 'bonfires of the vanities'. Bands of children marched around
the city ferreting out adults still attached to their old habits and possessions.
Pleasure-loving Florentines soon began to tire of this fundamentalism, as did Pope Alexander VI
(possibly the least religiously inclined pope of all time) and the rival Franciscan religious order. The
local economy was stagnant and Savonarola seemed increasingly out to lunch with his claims of being
God's special emissary. Finally the city government, or
signoria,
had the fiery friar arrested. After
weeks at the hands of the city rack-master, he was hanged and burned at the stake as a heretic, along
with two supporters, on 22 May 1498.
