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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/prophetofflorencOOdenn 
 
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Savonarola 
 
THE PROPHET OF 
 FLORENCE 
 
 Mary Putnam Denny 
 
 RICHARD G. BADGER 
 
 THE GORHAM PRESS 
 BOSTON 
 
Copyright 1911, by Richard G. Badger 
 All right* reserved 
 
 -^'^ 
 
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 The Oorham Pre^s, Boston, U. S. A. 
 
 ©CI.A303390 
 
Dedicated to the Memory of 
 My Grandmother 
 
 MARY PUTNAM LEMEN 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 THROUGH THE MISTS 
 
 THE soft mist clouds touched with a trail of shadow, 
 the storied turrets and glistening domes of the 
 towered palaces of Ferrara, and far below the 
 green and amber of the clinging undergrowth that 
 crowned the river banks. On, on, afar the drift of mingled 
 blue and broken light waves floated out over the river Po, 
 forminga delicate mirage enfolding the heights that crown 
 the lowlands. 
 
 There was a movement among the bushes : a youth groping 
 to reach a spot where a knotted clump of cypress on a hillock 
 made a little viewpoint over the far ways. He stood for a 
 few moments, grasping the cypress as if it possessed some 
 living power, at one with the spirit of the place, to guide and 
 direct, with the dumb expectant air of an imprisoned life, 
 waiting for something to break the bars of sense — ^for the 
 mists to break over the rift of morning light — the vision 
 which, when it opened in its full glory, would yet be but a 
 hovering, mystic dream way — unrealized. 
 
 The gray mantle thrown carelessly over head and shoulders 
 marked a slight stoop in the figure of the boy as he stood thus 
 silhouetted against the dark of the cypress, while the hood 
 brushed back from his brow revealed, in dark relief, the 
 lights and shadows of a face touched with the world- vision 
 of sorrow of the man. Through the long hour he stood thus, 
 bending further forward in the strain of expectancy, until, 
 
6 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 just as the chime of bells from the campanile pierced the 
 silences in the valley, the mist-ways lifted, and blended in the 
 sunburst of glory over the heights. The boy moved forward, 
 then quickly turned from angle to angle to grasp the full 
 view of the supernal glory over river and glistening spires. 
 It was not until then, as the broken light waves made a halo 
 of glory over the mass of brown curls that shadowed the 
 delicate beauty of a girl's face — and even then for a moment 
 the face and figure did not seem a thing apart from the 
 dream — not until her voice, with a pleading note sounding 
 in its rhymthic rise and fall as beauteous as the far chime 
 through the lowlands, "Girolamo! Girolamo!" that the boy 
 felt the presence of the girl apart from the silver fabric of 
 the dream. 
 
 She advanced a step toward him; the silken scarf, falling 
 back from her, disclosing the full, rounded throat, and 
 accentuating, as it trailed over her shoulders, the rich olive 
 of her face. The heavy, langourous brows drooped for a 
 moment, the whisper of surrender to a love that she could 
 not understand; to the vision, the unknown depths of strength 
 of Girolamo, who had suddenly become a man to the girl, 
 as he towered so far above. Then a change, as a quick wave 
 of remembrance, swept with strange power over her. 
 "Girolamo! Girolamo!" The words came again, not in the 
 soft cadence of pleading as before; there was a subtle change 
 of feeling in the note, a trace of coldness that Girolamo had 
 never felt before, and it was his face now that drooped before 
 this new incarnation of Maria de Strozzi. The scarf trailed 
 at her feet, forming a frame to her regal beauty as she drew 
 nearer. "Yes, Girolamo, I was there beneath the cypress 
 all the time that you stood gazing out toward the mist- ways; 
 yet I seemed only one of the shadows to you; you did not 
 move or speak." The bitterness in her tone deepened as 
 Girolamo, with the old intensity of vision, turned again 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 7 
 
 toward the far-flimg glory of the ghstening distances. ''If 
 you only knew — " there was a touch of the old pleading, but 
 it was quickly smothered in the feeling that he cared more 
 for the beauty of the silvery vistas than for her poor little 
 life — "Knew that the great prince of the house of Este has 
 even now spoken to the padre — that he sent a coronet of 
 roses — " her jeweled bracelets and rings gleaming in the 
 soft light as she raised her arms in a little circle to represent 
 the rose crown — "on the day of the festa of St. Thomas." 
 The softly molded features of her face, that in its delicate 
 symmetry yet should be a model for the Madonna of the artist 
 Bartolommeo, and through him even of a Raphael, grew as 
 passionless as the marble on the floor of the great Cathedral; 
 even the gleam from the dark eyes seemed to grow cold; an 
 expression apart, it seemed to Girolamo, from the real soul 
 of the girl-woman that he loved, as she clutched his very life 
 with the words, "And Girolamo — Girolamo! He has gold — 
 gold and power and the palace of Ferrara!" 
 
 For a moment Girolamo could not answer. Could this 
 be the voice of the real Maria, the voice of the little girl with 
 the brown curls, that he had first found that morning of the 
 festa, that year that Borso, the natural son of Niccolo III 
 had been crowned Prince of Ferrara.^ The nurse had for- 
 gotten the child, in the great rush to see the Duke, at the 
 moment of the coronation, bow beneath the canopy of gold 
 cloth to receive the cardinal's benediction. And the boy 
 boy, Girolamo Savonarola, wandering apart from his father's 
 party, even then groping in the maze of the visions and 
 voices that should deepen with the years, until he stood as a 
 man, in the great outer room of sacrifice where every earthly 
 voice save one should be hushed in the music of the heavenly, 
 found the little Maria, child of the Strozzi, frightened by the 
 great crowd as they pressed in toward the piazza, crouching 
 under one of the colonnades that had been erected there. 
 
 The year before the boy had m^^de his first long journey, 
 
8 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 journeying with his father to Florence, where, after the father 
 had made his rounds of the shops and prepared his little 
 store of goods, they had visited the convent of San Marco, 
 and followed, through cloister and cell, the trail of Fra 
 Angelico's vision, as his angels and Madonnas shone in their 
 first glory of completion on the storied walls. It was at this 
 moment of revelation of the beauty of life that the visions 
 cast their first dim outline across the shadows, and the boy 
 began to dream, without daring to voice the vision in words, 
 for the padre had said, in that strong tone that none of his 
 sons had ever thought of resisting, "Girolamo, thy elder 
 brother shall bear our name forward to honor beneath the 
 banners of the house of Este; Bartolommeo shall care for the 
 stores and lands, and thou, Girolamo, must realize in thy 
 life the highest mission of our house: be a man of letters 
 and a physician, as thy grandfather, Michaele Savonarola — " 
 to dream of being an artist like unto a Fra Angelico, tracing 
 with the soft beauty the mingled glow and shadow of an 
 Italian sky as a background, the face of a wondrous Madonna, 
 from the light, the pictured beauty, that would some day 
 shine through the mists toward him. 
 
 Now, as Girolamo gathered the little Maria in his arms, 
 smoothing out the matted curls and wiping the dust from her 
 face, and then, taking the tiny hand, guiding her along the 
 way, for the first time he voiced the vision of the great picture 
 that hung so alluringly in the soft lights and shadows of the 
 mists that hovered over the valley of the Po, that morning, 
 and weaving a fairy story for the girl as they trudged along 
 the sandy path, with the jagged stones cutting Maria's 
 little slippers; of the wonderful face that he would paint 
 some time; of the gold that would gleam from the curls 
 haloing the brow of his pictured Madonna. 
 
 He paused as the clamor of the horses and footmen of the 
 festa drew nearer, then turned through a bypath, a shorter 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 9 
 
 way, toward the quiet via, where the villa of the De Strozzi 
 stood. It was not until they reached the great place, and the 
 little girl stood for a moment in the archway, with the heavy 
 stone pillars as a frame to her face, that the thought came 
 that this was the fairest face that he had ever seen. Per- 
 haps — it was only a glimmering thought that the boy could 
 not fully grasp — this face would be the Madonna of the 
 picture! But the thought was quickly lost, as the recreant 
 nurse, now thoroughly frightened for her little charge, came 
 hurrying toward the portals and, grasping the little Maria, 
 disappeared in the great hallway. 
 
 '*No! No!" the boy had argued with himself, as he stood 
 gazing toward the stone pillars where the face of the girl had 
 shone. "The Madonna must be a madre and she was only 
 a bambino," (a baby girl). With the unreasoning of the 
 child, he could see only the face of the little girl, not see that 
 she might grow toward the beauty of the womanhood, toward 
 the Madonna of the vision. Through the years that came; 
 the long hours out on the sun-warmed loggia, or beneath the 
 stone pillars of the villa, or again on the great festa days that 
 came every year, with their cloth of gold and gorgeous 
 pageantry; as the picture seemed to draw nearer to him, a 
 living thing out of the dream mists, he would whisper it over 
 and over to the girl each time revealing the deeper beauty. 
 She was the Httle Maria to him, the baby girl that he had 
 found under the colonnades in the great piazza, until there 
 came the first parting,, two years before, and the return 
 from her stay with her godmother, in one of the villas of the 
 house of Strozzi, on the heights overlooking Florence. 
 
 It was at the vestal service in the Cathedral, that Girolamo 
 saw Maria first again, as she moved slowly down the aisle 
 to the cadence of the "Ave Maria." The softened light 
 drifting from the altar through the dim spaces touched her 
 brow, and Girolamo, looking up, saw no more the little Maria, 
 but the face of the woman — the Madonna of his dream. 
 
10 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 There had been other meetings. A moment in the garden, 
 when old Tessa, the nurse, forgetting her charge, sat nodding 
 in the shadows; a pause in the piazza, when Maria Hngered 
 at the stall of the flower vender; then this morning tryst, the 
 hour that Girolamo had pleaded for, beneath the heights, 
 out on the far banks of the Po, where, in the far illusive 
 wreath of mist cloud, the vision hovered. 
 
 Now, as the words seemed echoings back from across the 
 drift of water, "And Girolamo — Girolamo! He has gold — 
 gold and power and the palace of Ferrara!" some lingering 
 cadence in the echo revealed really the voice of Maria. Yes, 
 it was the girl, and not some alien spirit that had spoken. In 
 one moment he seemed to cross the chasm of youth to man- 
 hood; all the passionate longing, the desire of the long years 
 of silence, of restraint, seemed to murmur in the one great 
 appeal of the man now that she might see the vision, realize 
 in life the beauty of the dream, as he raised his hand in that 
 supreme gesture of spiritual longing and authority, that yet 
 should point thousands toward the opening paths of light. 
 *' Maria, Maria, have you forgotten that day, so long ago, 
 when I found you beneath the colonnades in the great piazza, 
 and, as we trudged homeward through the little path that 
 led to the villa, I first told you the story of the picture; then 
 that other day, out on the dusty via, when we built with 
 stones a copy of the lodge — away on the further river banks — 
 where we would live the dream days out, framing the vision 
 that would show the world toward God." He paused a 
 moment; then in triumphant tones, as if he knew this final 
 word would prevail, "Maria mia, can you not see the face, 
 now in the far vista of light, lingering in the soft tracery 
 of blue and shadow? '* The girl did not look toward the way 
 that he revealed, but, covering her face with the scarf of 
 silken weave, fell with a little cry at his feet — a cry not 
 loud or shrill in its outreach, yet in its deep undertones 
 seeming to reach the answering note of Girolamo's appeal. 
 
II 
 
 THE SHADOW OF A PALACE 
 
 "A maze of corridors contrived for sin; 
 
 Dusk, winding stairs, dim galleries, 
 
 * * * and more strange — 
 
 A recess lurking here behind a range 
 
 Of banquet-rooms. Your finger thus you push 
 
 A spring, and the wall opens, would you rush 
 
 Upon the banqueters." 
 
 A great hush had fallen over Ferrara, from the 
 banks of the Po, up through the varied paths 
 that led to the city's heart, not a whisper of life 
 seemed stirring. The great piazza was empty; 
 and the heavy coverings were drawn over the stalls; save 
 with the one exception of Bernardo, the flower vender, who 
 was anxiously going over the clusters of lilacs, violets and 
 jasmine, cutting out the withered sprays, and refilling the 
 tall stone vases with fresh water; for the silence and the deep 
 underwaves of feeling that seemed to whisper through the 
 narrow viae were but the ominous prophecy of another hour, 
 which he could closely devine — the hour when the great 
 square would be wreathed with roses and the gullies run with 
 wine, while the chief via of the city trembles with the tramp 
 of the grand procession and the castle walls echo with the 
 refrain as the trumpeters acclaim the new master of Ferrara. 
 For in the great state chamber of the old palace, Duke 
 
 11 
 
n THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 Borso, the second of the natural sons that Niccolo III. had 
 caused to be legitimized that they might rule the realm 
 during the minority of his son Ercole, lay dying. 
 
 It was said of Borso : " He was the Magnificent of Ferrara, 
 as Lorenzo de Medici was of Florence; and was so renowned 
 for the splendor of his court, and for his abilities and influence 
 that in distant lands he was spoken of as the king of Italy." 
 
 In 1452 Frederick HI. had raised the Marquis to the ducal 
 dignity, then followed the years of regal power and glory; 
 when the palace halls shone as never before with the waxen 
 tapers in the great crystal chandeliers, beneath which shim- 
 mered the silver gleam of the glittering armor of knights 
 returned from tournaments; and the softer beauty of delicate 
 gold and Persian silk, as a group of ladies paused before the 
 glittering frame that mirrored their beauty in steel. 
 
 "The lady glanced at the mirroring steel, where 
 
 her form of grace was seen. 
 Where her eye shone clear and her dark locks 
 
 waved their clasping pearls between. " 
 
 But now the lights were dim, and only the muffled tread 
 of palefaced attendants could be heard in the halls. For 
 even now before the word had left the lips of the old court 
 physician — that death was hovering near — the grandees of 
 the court, had deserted the palace and were making forced 
 stages over the hills and valleys to meet Ercole in the moun- 
 tain pass, whither he was coming from Florence — Ercole, their 
 new master; Ercole, the son of another mother, the son of the 
 daughter of the Medici, whom Niccoli II., in the face of 
 every vow and trust had taken and declared with the sanc- 
 tion and authority of the church, his lawful wife. 
 
 The hush around the state chamber deepened; the silence 
 far away and unearthly, as the padre, slowly rising from 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 13 
 
 holding the sacrament — the wafer — to the dumb hps of the 
 dying man, paced the floor, almost unconsciously moving 
 his worn hand over the rosary, striving to breathe out a 
 prayer for the sin of the life that was ending in darkness and 
 despair. But above the word of petition came those words 
 of judgment: "Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the 
 children unto the third and fourth generation of them that 
 hate me." It was the thought of a great wrong as it had 
 shadowed and darkened the life of the son; of the hour when 
 the father Niccolo de Este, just raised to the place of power, 
 had used all the strength of the house of Este to crush the life 
 of the beautiful girl wife, whose face, with its soft frame of 
 curls, which pressaged in the tear mist that hovered before 
 the dark eyes, or the tremulous quiver of her hand when 
 moved by some deep hidden chord of feeling, a prophecy 
 of dim unknown sorrow, had been the dream of the wandering 
 musician or artist who lingered for a time beneath the shad- 
 ows of the palace. The padre was too lost in these dim 
 images of the past reflected in the hopeless darkness of the 
 Duke's life to see a dark-robed woman, with a veil thrown 
 over her hair and face, glide softly through the portal, and 
 kneel in the shadow of the heavy curtains and draperies 
 beside the dying man. 
 
 For hours there had not been a stir of recognition on the 
 face; only the dim perception of suffering and struggle was 
 pictured. Through the long moments of the deep night 
 watch, the woman knelt there, fearing to move, to whisper 
 through the dark, lest with the return of consciousness there 
 should be again the sting of the cruel word of alienation — 
 the cry from her child, transformed by the long years of 
 contact with the emissaries of his father's cruel court, and in 
 the hope and realization of supreme power, into an unnatu- 
 ral child, into a man in whose hardened face seemed alone 
 expressed the cold materiahsm that springs from a grasp out 
 
14 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 toward the outer things of sense; the cry even in this last 
 earth moment: "Put this woman forth! I do not call her 
 mother!" But suddenly the great form of the man was 
 wrought in one of the intense spasms of pain, and with a low 
 cry, that seemed an echo of the primal longings of childhood 
 he reached his hand out through the dark. And involunta- 
 rily the hand of the mother closed over that of her child. The 
 man's hand clutched a moment in dull pressure as if searching 
 out through the dark for the meaning of the strange sense 
 of peace that was being borne from afar. Then the momen- 
 tary recognition as he looked up into the face of the kneeling 
 madonna, who had been to him for so many years but an 
 outcast woman, and the word breathed more than spoken, 
 "Madre!" 
 
 How the empty things of life fall from us in the one su- 
 preme hour of vision! The palace that stretched, in its 
 turreted beauty, toward the skies; the long line of wall and 
 rampart, over the glistening Po, that marked the boundary 
 and strength of the city — all were forgotten now. Borso 
 was no longer the archcuke of Ferrara, in the great state 
 chamber of the palace, but once more a child out in the 
 gardens, looking up into the face of his kneeling mother as 
 she knelt over a cluster of lilies. It was only a moment of 
 recognition, of love, but in that moment the woman lived 
 over again all the gladness of her life, the beauty of her girl- 
 hood, the first joy of her motherhood; the short hour when 
 she dreamed herself the Princess of Ferrara in the palace 
 halls — all, all of life. 
 
 Slowly the earth vision grew dim and the man sank toward 
 the last stupor; yet the light of the love that recreates life 
 shone upon the silent face. The madre still lingered, hoping, 
 longing, for one other word from out of the dark voids, where 
 for so long her life happiness lay buried; yet there remained 
 only the deepening silence and the dark. Yet she lingered still, 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 15 
 
 till the slow step of the padre sounded nearer, and she could 
 almost feel his outreach toward the dying man as he touched 
 the heavy curtains. Then the harsh notes of the voice that 
 had banished her forever from the palace seemed to resound 
 again through the halls; the thought that this moment of 
 love's realization was but a part of the old dream, that she 
 was but an outcast woman, banished from church and 
 throne — that to-morrow, yes, to-morrow, the son of the 
 hated daughter of the Medici, she who had robbed her of her 
 lover and child, would mount the ducal throne! The light 
 faded, the way grew dark again; grief clutched at her throat 
 like a heavy mailed hand, and as the padre paused, with his 
 hand upon the curtain fold, to whisper another prayer over 
 the face of the man who he knew had been swiftly borne 
 through these moments far nearer the end, the woman, 
 drawing close around her the heavy robe and veil, that she 
 might be one with the darkness, and with one last pressure 
 of the hand that was now growing cold and still, passed 
 again with the flittering shadows, — unseen, unknown — 
 through the palace halls. 
 
 If some maid, shrinking alone in a shadowy recess, watch- 
 ing for the passing of the silence and the darkness of the 
 night of death, waiting for the dawning of the new reign, for 
 the voice of Ercole, the son of the daughter of the Medici, 
 to raise again the song of laughter, his touch to light again 
 the waxen taper and beneath their golden light recreate 
 the scenes of life and joy, discerned the lonely form as it 
 flitted past from the dim tracery of gold or silver sheen, she 
 only thought of it as some phantom from the past, some 
 spirit form wafted back to mingle in the dirge of death and 
 darkness. 
 
 The padre in the early morning watch, turning the glow of 
 the lighted taper toward the silent face of the Prince, knelt 
 in gratitude and praise, for was there not expressed in the 
 
16 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 lingering smile on the face some joy note, the aftermath of 
 penitence, of forgiveness? And slowly, as the "Ave Maria" 
 of the dawn stole through the silences, intermingled with the 
 first prayer for the soul that had passed through the far 
 portals, he whispered : " And shewing mercy unto thousands 
 of them that love me, and keep my commandments. " 
 
Ill 
 
 THE MADONNA AND MARIA 
 
 THE first rays of the dawn showed a group of men, 
 closely cloaked in their heavy mantles, silhouetted 
 against the dark walls of the palace. The elder of 
 the group as|he caught a glimpse of the strange 
 madre as she sped through the via, exclaimed, "That might 
 be the spirit of some fair life — some heavenly madonna come 
 to minister in the room of death!" 
 
 Another rejoined, '* More likely the living phantom of the 
 Monna Ghita, the real princess of the old Marquis, the out- 
 cast mother of Duke Borso, come to join her voice in the dark 
 chorus of avenging spirits around her son's bier — " 
 
 "A fantasy," the elder man interrupted; "yet how well 
 do I remember when the Marquis Niccolo, then in the first 
 glow of his youth, the strongest knight that drew a lance, 
 took the fair madonna from the beautiful villa of the Ghita, 
 that is situate on the slopes beyond Florence. The family 
 were neither noble nor of the contadini, but of those strong 
 men of the goldsmith craft, one of the many guilds into 
 which the great life of the city is divided. As long as Messer 
 Ghita lived, and his strong arm rested in the great hall of the 
 villa, the Prince was true to the madonna. It was only after 
 Ghita was slain by a sword thrust by an unknown hand, that 
 under cover of the perjured word of a false padre the Marquis 
 dared to bring the daughter of the Medici into the palace 
 of Ferrara. 
 
 17 
 
18 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 The man paused here and looked up the great via, the path 
 of the royal procession, with that dumb expectancy, that was 
 beginning to dawn on the people, of the coming through the 
 mountain fastnesses of Ercole and the full assertion of the 
 power, through the son's strong hand, of the daughter of 
 the Medici over the city. "And soon," he resumed, as if 
 the others had been following his unspoken thought, "Ercole 
 will wed Maria, of the house of the Strozzi." 
 
 "Ah!" Domenico hissed, just as the dark-robed figure 
 turned the angle of the walls, and then passed along the path 
 close beside them. "Though Maria be a natural daughter of 
 the Strozzi, she is not an acknowledged child. It is only 
 because of Piero de Strozzi's strong love for her mother, who 
 died at the child's birth, whom he might have made his wife 
 if she had lived, and because of her own rare beauty, that the 
 child has been cared for all these years in the marble villa 
 in the Via del Bardo. Even now Prince Ercole openly vows 
 to the embassy that has returned from Florence that the 
 marriage may not be publicly celebrated for two years, and 
 you know what that means with Piero de Strozzi, seized with 
 the first stroke of paralysis and the certainty of his death 
 within those years; you know by all the dark years of suffer- 
 ing, of anguish of the mother of our great Duke Borso, the 
 son that lies dying in yonder palace. " In a softer voice he 
 murmured: "O that the child woman might remain in the 
 marble villa of the Strozzi, in the Via del Bardo!" 
 
 "Might remain in the marble villa of the Strozzi, in the 
 Via del Bardo, " echoed through the lonely street, as the woman 
 hurried on. Ah! at last out of the dark night of her own 
 grief there shone the light of good that she might do, from 
 the marble halls of the villa of Strozzi, a beautiful life that 
 she might save from the hand of the Medici, from the en- 
 throned power and wrong that had wrecked her young 
 womanhood. 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 19 
 
 The first gold of the sunrise bathed the white pillars of the 
 great villa as the madre paused a moment in the portals, 
 then pressed resolutely forward into the open court, where a 
 group of noisy servants were chattering over the platters of 
 fish, garnished with almonds and spices, and the figs and 
 little chestnut cakes for the morning meal. They dropped 
 their work, huddling behind the low divan, as the strange 
 madonna appeared, with the rich dark tunic and the folds 
 of the soft veiling falling back from her silver gray hair, 
 disclosing a face with that pecuhar charm of beauty that is 
 crystalized by the spiritual, deepened by years of suffering 
 and heart grief. The vague awe and fear were only strength- 
 ened as the voice of the woman, which seemed in its 
 depth to reach some forgotten, far-away chord that they had 
 once heard, when the great cathedral chimes rang out in the 
 hush of the night, sounded piteous in its appeal: "Can you 
 lead me to the child Maria, of theStrozzi? I have a message." 
 
 "Madre mia, it must be the Mother of Christ, or some 
 madonna that she has sent, come to show the way to the 
 poor little Maria, for I heard her weeping last night when I 
 drew back the curtains of the couch and lighted the taper, " 
 the little maid Marie said as with one plump hand she 
 smoothed out her madre's thin white hair, and with the other 
 fingered nervously with the rosary hanging at her side; then, 
 rising, she touched the strange madonna's sleeve timorously 
 and led the way, past the heavy tapestries and hangings of 
 the inner court, up the marble stairway to the dimly lighted 
 apartment, separated by the heavy hangings into diminutive 
 chambers, to where the daughter of the Strozzi rested. The 
 little Marie moved cautiously lest some footstep might 
 rouse her master as she passed his chamber, and guided, 
 without speaking, to the furthest curtained recess, then 
 waited on the outside, for Maria must see only the face of 
 the heavenly visitant. 
 
20 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 For a long dream moment the woman gazed down upon 
 the softly shadowed face until the blue eyes opened. For a 
 moment there was that first bewilderment that comes on 
 waking, as the girl tried to separate the face of the kneeling 
 madonna from the dream; then a startled movement, as the 
 sight of the familiar furnishings, the morning light touching 
 the blue and the gold curtains, brought the reality of the 
 presence; then the frightened gaze grew tense and still, as of 
 one under a spell, as she looked down into the strange, dark 
 eyes of the woman. But as she spoke with the far note the 
 word "Maria de Strozzi, " as with the wave of a magic wand 
 the terrified look vanished. Again and again the woman 
 repeated "Maria de Strozzi — Maria de Strozzi," groping 
 through the spoken word toward the meaning of her message 
 to the girl life. 
 
 And then, as with a great rush of memories the full meaning 
 came, and with it mirrored in the fair face, in the soft languor 
 of the blue eyes, pictures of her own life twenty, thirty years 
 before — of the girl with the same glimmer of gold in her 
 hair, looking out toward the wonder, the beauty hidden behind 
 palace gates — the strong surge of feeling overcame her and she 
 fell forward with a little cry, burying her face in the folds of 
 the coverlid. Maria was by her side in a moment, throwing 
 her soft white arms, hanging bare from the loose morning 
 gown, around the black-robed figure, bending very near 
 mutely trying to enter into the woman's sorrow. At the, 
 touch of the girl's hand the thought of the wrong and anguish 
 that awaited her grew strong again, and, rising above the 
 flood tide of feeling of her own heart's deep sorrow, stretch- 
 ing her hand out first to the north casement from which the 
 turrets of the palace glistened in the morning light, then as 
 her voice came again, murmuring in a hoarse whisper, "It 
 is a dark, dark way that leads only to the valley of Despair!" 
 her voice rising out of herself toward the heights of pleading 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 21 
 
 as she finished, "Maria de Strozzi, my child, by all the love 
 of the Mother of Christ, can you not feel — see? " 
 
 Maria relaxed her grasp as the woman spoke and moved 
 slowly across the little space, her silken robe sweeping the 
 fur rugs and damask coverings, to the casement, where, 
 pulling aside the curtain, she looked out toward the far way. 
 The pure transparency of her beauty seemed marred, as 
 when some alien covering hides the perfect expression of a 
 picture or a floating cloud way shadows the blue heavens. 
 She turned again toward the woman. " But, madonna mia, 
 the way seems not dark. The morning light is working 
 colors of blue and amber over the far spires of the great 
 castle campanile" — ^her voice trembled as she continued, as 
 if the troubled spirit of the dark- veiled madonna was swaying 
 her. "I have the word of the Prince and of the padre that 
 the way within is touched with music and the glory of joy 
 and life. " 
 
 With a great wave of tenderness the woman reached her 
 arms out again toward the girl who seemed to stand across 
 a dark void of experience over which no word of hers might 
 reach. Then as she tried to whisper in pleading again, the 
 hand of the little maid Marie groped through the curtains 
 motioning that she must not linger. 
 
IV 
 
 PARTING WAYS 
 
 IT was the eve of a festa in Ferrara, the great piazza 
 was wreathed with flowers, and the triumphal arches 
 draped with gold and silver cloth, while from the 
 casements of a hundred homes floated the emblems 
 of the ducal power of Ferrara. In the midst of the main 
 square a pavilion of cloth of gold was raised, as the centre 
 point where Duke Ercole should pass in the procession of 
 grandees and churchmen, with the gray-cowled friars carrying 
 the sacred relics in honor of Saint George. As the evening 
 deepens from the casements of the castle flash a thousand 
 tapers, while, as a light breeze stirred through the silver 
 standards and ensigns of the far minarets and turrets of the 
 campanile, it seemed to breathe forth to the waiting city 
 the music and dancing within. Below the slight raise or 
 miniature bluff, where rose the heavy walls and slender spires 
 of the castle stretched a threaded path, the Via del Bardo, 
 and near the limit of its extent rose the pretentious villa of 
 Niccolo Savonarola, known as the son of the famous physician 
 whom the elder Marquis Niccolo de Este had invited to his 
 court. 
 
 Madonna Elena Savonarola, the wife and mother, had 
 gathered the servants in the rear courtyard and bade them 
 be merry there, with nuts and dried figs and a square of 
 chestnut cake. Then she moved with quiet yet eager step 
 through the villa, with her own hand putting the finishing 
 
 22 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 23 
 
 touch of beauty and repose to the dehcate hangings of 
 damask and purple weave, or arranging the roses the maid 
 had brought from the gardens in their silver bowls on the 
 marble pedestals. When she had finished she extinguished 
 all the candles but the one that glimmered beneath the blue 
 shade in the great court; then she sank down on a low seat 
 near the north casement, alone in the semi-darkness, looking 
 out toward the light that trailed down through the valley 
 from the old castle. 
 
 The Madonna Elena liked it best : the silence and the dark, 
 with the beauty of the far light touching all. For on these 
 festa eves there came back the haunting pictures of the old 
 life in Mantua, when she was a princess in the palace of the 
 great house of Bonaccorsi, beneath the heights of Mantua. 
 Not that the Madonna Elena regretted the hour when she 
 stole past the mirrored steel and glistening candelabra of 
 the silent halls, and out of the iron gateway, and then fear- 
 lessly crossed the mountain trail in the darkness of the night. 
 No, it was not that. She would not have them again, the 
 old days in palace halls. It was only the fond insistency with 
 which one eagerly watches a bit of blue sky over far ways 
 that recalls some sunlit picture of the past or the moment 
 when we linger over the dream, over the picture of a place 
 or face that once meant to us the joy of life. 
 
 In those moments when the images, the power of the old 
 life, came again the Madonna Elena always cared to have her 
 child Girolamo near her. Of all her children he seemed 
 nearer to the heart of the life that had once been given her 
 in the palace of Mantua. Something in the high, bold fore- 
 head, the blue eye that flashed through the dark, the deep 
 moments of quiet and abstraction, reminded her of her 
 princely father, Bardo Bonaccorsi. 
 
 On the old festa eves the boy always crept in unannounced, 
 when he knew, by the gHmmer of the one faint taper, that 
 
24 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 the madre was watching in the great north casement the far 
 glow of the castle light, and would throw himself down upon 
 the divan in a shadowed corner of the room, and mutely 
 follow her thought back through the years toward the glit- 
 tering picture of the old life in Mantua. Sometimes the boy 
 would take his lute and play some far-away strain that she 
 had taught him to reach toward. 
 
 It was only after Girolamo's return from Faenza with the 
 mysterious word treasured, which in after years he spoke 
 of thus, "While I was still in the world I went for amusement 
 to Faenza, and entering by chance the church of Saint Augus- 
 tine I heard a word from an Augustine preacher, which I 
 will not tell you now, but which to this hour I have in my 
 heart, " that he did not seem to see, with the madre, the beau- 
 ty of the palace ways. Some strange, shadowy form ap- 
 peared to mar the picture, to stand between the glory of 
 glimmering mirror and golden light. It was on the festa 
 eve the year before that the son had entered as before, and 
 sinking down in his old place on the divan tried to enter for 
 a dream moment toward the madre's vision; then an impulse 
 — strong, irresistible — moved him, and, rising, with a few 
 quick strides over the wide court, he had repeated; "Hora 
 novissima; tempora pessima, " (the world is very evil; the 
 times are waxing late). 
 
 The madre turned — ^her hands touching, with a tremulous 
 move, the folds of soft clinging silk at her feet — toward this 
 higher expression of a strange, unknown power in her son. 
 He seemed to her as one borne on the far waves of feeling and 
 vision toward a shore where she could not follow, each 
 moment separating them further; caught in the irresistible 
 current of the realization of a world's sorrow which neither 
 could stay nor hinder. 
 
 "Hora novissima; tempora pessima," was the hidden 
 word that morning from the lips of the dull Augustinian 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 25 
 
 in the great Cathedral of Faenza. Some chance picture 
 which the monk had caught, and now carelessly showed, of 
 the clank of heavy chains, as he explored the subterranean 
 cellars of a palace; the opening of a secret door, and the 
 looking down for an instant into the faces of men chained 
 to the damp floors, and even as he looked listened to the 
 strains of music and joy notes in the royal halls above. A 
 chance echo of the world-grief. 
 
 Through the long drawn out moments the madre waited, 
 stronger now than the fleeting pictures cotijured up by the 
 far light of the castle was the thought of her son; through the 
 year that she had mutely watched him drift away from her 
 there had been the unvoiced hope that he would return — 
 be again the child Girolamo Savonarola, listening at her feet 
 when the grand festa eve, with its silences and glistening 
 palace lights came again. Now, as he did not enter she 
 arose and, stealing softly across the room, lest a heavy 
 footfall might break the hush of the place, reached the south 
 portals, where, in the garden, just out from the rear court 
 she had watched Girolamo walking at dusk. Hoarse with 
 the note of appeal came the voice: "Girolamo! Girolamo! 
 Will you not come.^^" Then, fearing the answer to her own 
 word, she swiftly turned back again into the court toward the 
 window seat. After a moment there was the step upon the 
 portal; not the glad, eager step, but the movement of hesi- 
 tancy. Then for a time he rested, crouching in the old 
 pose, in silence upon the divan. 
 
 Now as the madre waited through the silence, there came 
 in one great moment of realization, no longer the sense of 
 drifting apart, but the sudden, irrevocable thought of separa- 
 tion; in some spiritual way the vast gulf had been passed, 
 the mooring cast, and no longer in vision and unity of thought 
 was Girolamo Savonarola her son. For him lay the far ways. 
 With a prophetic feeling out toward the morrow, the hush 
 
26 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 was broken by a sharp, fierce cry, as of a wild beast suddenly 
 bereft of its young, that deepened into a low, half -broken sob. 
 
 Without trying to answer the cry of the madre's heart that 
 he might come back, be once again the listening child, he 
 reached for the lute upon the pedestal above, and began 
 revealing one of those old strains that they had loved. First 
 the mingled notes of struggle and striving, slowly leading, 
 through the darkened way of suffering and of supreme 
 renunciation, toward the place of realization, of victory. 
 
 All the varied beauty of every festa day of the past 
 seemed merged in the glimmer of color and pageantry be- 
 neath the blue of the April sky this morning, as first came 
 the serving maids, in their bright costumes, and carrying 
 little woven baskets with fruits and flowers for the shrine 
 of Saint George, for the Madonna Savonarola was lavish in 
 her gifts to every young girl that served her, and delicate in 
 her directions of their thought and worship. Next came the 
 elder son, Ognibene, who was in the service of the Prince, 
 with his blushing bride on his arm, whom he had a fortnight 
 before wedded in Mantua, much to the delight of the madre, 
 who rejoiced to see this soldier son, with his clumsy gait 
 and heavy brogue, touched with the light and beauty of the 
 city she loved. Bartolommeo, the second son, came next 
 with his sister, Marie, carrying garlands of roses that she 
 was ostensibly taking to adorn the shrine of Saint George, 
 but really to heighten the beauty of her silken gown, as 
 she waited, with the flower maidens, under the canopy of 
 cloth of gold for the troops of knights who guarded their 
 chief to pass; among which to Marie, shone alone the one 
 with the dark eyes beneath the flashing steel. Last came the 
 madre, with the same delicate, illusive beauty, only deepened 
 by the touch of years, as when the son of the physician of 
 Ferrara stole her from the palace of Mantua; her beauty 
 accentuated to-day by the mist of tears that had veiled her 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 27 
 
 vision in the night of sorrow and foreboding. The father 
 had already found his place beneath the palace walls, with the 
 other leading men of the council, to give the finishing direc- 
 tions to designer and page. And no one remained save 
 Girolamo, standing beneath the rose hedge in the garden. 
 **I will follow," he had answered as the madre looked back 
 with the old pleading toward her child. 
 
 It was not until they all had gone, and the hours had 
 deepened toward the noon, the great moment of the festa, 
 that Girolamo did follow. First he went swiftly through hall 
 and court, and last to his mother's chamber, with its delicate 
 blue draperies. He lingered here the longest, as in some temple 
 where is enshrined part of the vision and the joy of life. He 
 took nothing save a haK-finished sketch, a Madonna that 
 he had tried to draw from the face of Maria de Strozzi in 
 that hour when he had first beheld her, after the return from 
 the two years in Florence. 
 
 Then, with a last fond look toward the villa and the en- 
 circling gardens, Girolamo followed, taking his solitary way 
 by the via, through which the others had already passed. He 
 first paused beneath an archway, near the glistening gold 
 canopy, where the great procession would reach its triumph- 
 ant climax of pageantry. Girolamo stood a little apart, 
 behind a group of dark-browed Moors from Granada, as 
 the clang of hoof and steel of the mounted soldiery, with the 
 Prince of Ferrara proudly towering on his great Arabian 
 steed over all, drew near. 
 
 The Prince was arrayed in the armour of a Knight Temp- 
 lar of the Crusades, and the dark eyes flashed from beneath 
 the ghttering steel with all the bravado and pride of a true 
 son of the Medici. His shield had a great diamond in the 
 center, and bore the device of the House of Este. He pauses 
 and the maidens in the mad enthusiasm throw the garlands 
 that were designed for the shrine of Saint George in the way. 
 
28 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 But for a moment, he does not see the beautiful upHfted faces 
 of the devotees of his power. The brilUant eyes peer beyond 
 the dusky faces of the Moors on the fringe of the crowd; 
 until they flash in one fierce light of recognition upon the 
 face of Girolamo Savonarola, the son of the physician of 
 Ferrara. It is a Haman searching amid the devoted throng 
 for a Mordecai, for the one man who will not bow the knee 
 or join the wild acclaim. The man whom the Prince knew 
 alone of that great throng, read beneath the glitter and glow 
 of flashing steel and jeweled ensign, the true sophistry, nay 
 more the innate cruelty of his life. 
 
 Duke Ercole when only a royal Prince, had cowered before 
 that fearless face, in the old days, when young Girolamo 
 Savonarola had gazed down upon him from his place in the 
 great cathedral, and the beautiful Maria de Strozzi as a 
 fair flower in some forbidden garden seemed to hover just 
 a little way beyond his reach. 
 
 All that the Prince had brooded over then, seemed now 
 with his accession to the ducal power, within his grasp. With- 
 in two months the bans of his marriage to the Princess 
 Eleanor of Arragon were to be proclaimed in the cathedral, 
 and who might protest, — the lips of the great Strozzi were 
 silent, the padre who stood by the altar in the lonely chapel 
 was but his menial whom he could lash into silence, and 
 Maria de Strozzi, — with the proud arrogance of his race, he 
 scarcely thought of fear of her for she was a prisoner 
 watched and guarded in his palace halls, and if she spoke who 
 would listen to the word of a poor nameless child-woman, one 
 who for some fancy or a promise so unusual to keep in that 
 age, Piero de Strozzi had chosen to protect while he lived, 
 against the word of a Prince. 
 
 And this Girolamo Savonarola, what was there to fear 
 from him now? For he had not heard one secret vow of 
 faithfulness; nor beheld the pitiful scene in the little chapel 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 29 
 
 of the convent. There was one thing yet, but in the utter 
 darkness of his own heart, Duke Ercole did not think of that, 
 as his gaze rested for a moment with the fierce fire of triumph 
 upon the face of Savonarola. Grasp what would mean more 
 to this son of the scholar of Ferrara, standing as he did on the 
 proud heights of truth and rectitude, than any outer tangible 
 proofs, his belief in the beauty and purity of the soul 
 of the girl, and that no difference how high this son of the 
 Este might pile the false structure, that enabled him to 
 stand upon a pedestal above her; he could see above and 
 beyond it, the vision of some lonely altar — of a broken vow. 
 
 Another moment and Girolamo Savonarola gave the swift 
 answering glance, looking down with the fierce fire of his 
 clear blue eye, past the mass of falsehood and outward com- 
 posure into the very soul of the man. As the steady gleam 
 deepened, the face of the young Ruler darkened, and then 
 with a muttered oath as he turned from the crowd he com- 
 manded the procession to move, realizing as his eyes swept 
 the pavement, that in some mysterious way, Girolamo 
 Savonarola had read the secret shame and cruelty of his life. 
 
 The crowded piazza, with the loud voices and glow of 
 color and light, and the powerful breath of perfume borne 
 from the rose garlands, cast a sickening maze over the man; 
 while the calm resolution of the night before to this day 
 forsake the city for the convent of Bologna now with the face 
 of the base ruler of Ferrara, with all his triumphant wrong 
 before him, became one wild surge of feeling, to flee from the 
 sense of the earthly and sin. 
 
 There were two viae that led out of Ferrara. One by the 
 great arena, the other through the winding way which led 
 through the new castle gates; and by one of its devious 
 by-ways which only a true citizen of the city might tread, 
 
30 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 through the terraced gardens under the very casements of 
 the palace chambers. It was toward this via, that Girolamo 
 pressed, for that which in the fierce conflict of his heart he 
 dared hope, one last look toward Maria de Strozzi, before 
 the step out into the silence of the earthly, toward which the 
 hand of the Highest was beckoning. There was only one 
 moment to pause beneath the casement, after he had passed 
 swiftly, unobserved, through the castle gates, but in that 
 moment he seemed to live through again all of the first joy- 
 notes of life. 
 
 Then as he reached that state of feeling where emotion 
 passes into fixed purpose, came the one thought that some 
 way in that great world of spiritual struggle toward the 
 realization of the Ideal, toward which the voices even now 
 were calling, and the light of the vision was beckoning, that 
 he might break the bonds that imprisoned, open the doors 
 that shut out the light, that hindered the expression of the 
 light and beauty of her life. 
 
 At first there was only the picture of the hanging of cloth 
 against the far casement, then a slight movement of the 
 golden weave; and as he looked in the intensity of longing 
 for one stir across the void that separated their life, there was 
 the tremor of a white hand against the fold of gold that 
 bound the curtain, a momentary movement as if groping out 
 from the dark toward something beyond. It was but for a 
 moment, then the heavy fall of the Sentry's footstep upon the 
 stone pavement. 
 
 It was far in the night of that day of the festa, that Messer 
 Niccolo Savonarola with the Madonna Elena and their 
 household from the little chatting contadini maid to the tall 
 soldier son, returned to their villa, and not until the full glow 
 of the hght of another morning that the madre read on the 
 bit of crumpled parchment on her marble stand, a message 
 of farewell. 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 31 
 
 Of that day the father wrote afterwards in sadness: *'I 
 remember how, on the 24th of April which was Saint 
 George's Day in 1475, Girolamo my son, student in arts, 
 departed from his home and went to Bologna, and entered 
 among the brethren of Saint Dominic, in order to become a 
 brother; and left me, me Niccolo della Savonarola his father 
 the under written consolation and exhortation for my 
 satisfaction. " 
 
 But of the mother's deep heart grief as she sat alone in the 
 shadowed room no whispered word could show. 
 
V 
 
 THE AFTERMATH 
 
 AFTER those first months of silence in the convent 
 of Bologna, came a mufiled message of subdued 
 sorrow to the lonely household in the Villa at 
 Ferrara. It was the aftermath of a spirit, that 
 had surrendered all, and was silently looking toward the as 
 yet dim vistas of the Eternal. "And dear father, instead of 
 weeping, you have rather to thank the Lord Jesus, who has 
 given you a son, and then has preserved him to yo for 
 twenty-two years; and not only this, but besides has designed 
 to make him his Knight militant, (militando cavaliero). * * * 
 "Do you believe that it is not a great grief for me to be 
 separated from you? But yet, considering that God calls 
 me, and that he does not disdain of us worms to make 
 Himself servants, I could not be so bold as not to incline 
 to his most sweet voice, which says, 'Come unto Me, all ye 
 that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take 
 my yoke upon you.' * * * I pray you then, my dear father, 
 put a stop to your lamentations, and do not give me more 
 sadness and grief than I now endure, — not for grief of that 
 which I have done, which I certainly do not wish to recall, 
 even if I thought I could become greater than Caesar, but 
 because I am still made of flesh, as you are, and the senses 
 fight against the reason * * * It only remains for me to pray 
 you, like a man, to comfort my mother, whom I pray, to- 
 gether with you, to give me your benediction: and I will 
 
 32 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 33 
 
 always pray fervently for your souls. Ex Bononia, die XXV. 
 Aprilis (Bologna, April 25), 1475 * * Hieronymus Sav- 
 onarola, filius vester. To the noble and excellent man Nicolas 
 Savonarola, the best of parents, (parenti optimo.) " 
 
 As the loved one, the padre, madre, and the others still 
 stand dumb, unanswering, still with the one longing for the 
 touch of the hand, the sound of the voice of the lost one. 
 Girolamo Savonarola cries out in one last appeal, that they 
 see his vision, hear the voices that beckon him on and on 
 to the supreme height of renunciation and suffering. 
 
 "Why do ye weep blind ones? Why do ye complain so 
 much? If our temporal prince had called me now to gird 
 a sword on my side in the midst of the people, and to make me 
 one of his knights, what joy you would have experienced! 
 And if I had then repudiated such an honor, would you not 
 have thought me a fool? * * And now the Prince of princes, 
 He who is of infinite power, calls me with a loud voice, 
 to gird a sword on my side, of the finest gold and pre- 
 cious stones, and wishes to place me among the number of 
 His Knights mihtant. And now, because I have not refused 
 so great an honor, although I am unworthy, — because I, 
 giving thanks to so great a Lord, since he thus wills, have 
 accepted it, — you all afflict me, when you ought to rejoice 
 and give thanks; and the more you do so, the more you show 
 that you love me." 
 
VI 
 
 THE UNKNOWN VOICE 
 
 SLOWLY the light had led through the long years 
 of that greatest of all struggle, the entrance into 
 work and life that other minds have planned for us, 
 until now it shone with the splendor of the place 
 of revelation, over the great monastery of Florence, San 
 Marco. 
 
 In those first days at Bologna, Girolamo Savonarola, had 
 asked only that he might be allowed to labor in the garden, 
 with a few hours given him each day, for deepest meditation 
 and solitude, that he might be far away from the touch of 
 the world, even from the company of his brothers in the re- 
 treat. But as his superior gifts were discovered, this was 
 denied him, and he was set over the small school, to instruct 
 the novitiates of the convent. Thus he was compelled to 
 impart to others, when his own life seemed poor and empty, 
 and when his heart was touched with the great longing of the 
 life that stands under the first revelation of the Highest, 
 that has felt the touch of the Divine and is breathlessly 
 listening through the earth voids for the flash of the deeper 
 vision, the unfolding of the truth that shines just before. It 
 was the cry of a life for solitude, for the hours alone with his 
 Lord, in meditation and devotion. 
 
 Yet unmurmuringly Girolamo took up his hard task; and 
 sought to lead others the little way that had even now 
 unfolded to him. 
 
 34 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 35 
 
 There was the changing path that led through these first 
 years from Ferrara to Bologna, Florence, Pavia, Brescia, 
 and again at last to the city of the Arno. 
 
 It was in the midst of these strange wanderings, and conflicts 
 of the spirit, that he was led to an assemblage of the Domini- 
 can chapter of Brothers gathered in the cathedral of Reggio. 
 The first stir of interest was directed toward Pico Delia 
 Mirandola, a young nobleman from the court of Florence, 
 who brought a message to the Brotherhood from Lorenzo 
 de Medici. Mirandola's commanding presence, accentuated 
 by the glare of jewel and insignia, attracted all, as it was 
 different from the sombre appearance of the monks. 
 
 In his short address the words rang clear and sonorous 
 in the well chosen Latin periods. He stood a man of the 
 world, the world of Italy of that day, with all the apparent 
 strength, the glitter and glow, the superficial knowledge, that 
 often appeals by its contrast to men who have lived through 
 long hours in the shadows. 
 
 Yet while he was speaking, the assemblage by some mystic 
 immaterial power seemed drawn from the ghttering person- 
 ahty of the nobleman toward another presence. A man 
 sitting apart from the others, with his gray cowl drawn over 
 his brow. There were other words, from various doctors 
 of the church, disputatioiis to the letter of ritual and law, yet 
 they seemed to fall unmeaningly on the air. A vast undertone 
 of unrest pervaded the room, and through it every soul 
 was listening for sonie utterance that would sound a note 
 of vision and of power. 
 
 The last point of casuistry is reached, and as the answer 
 fades into the empty spaces, Mirandola's authoritative hand 
 is again lifted over the assembly; '* There is a voice that 
 has not spoken, let us give audience. " 
 
 Slowly the silent monk arose from his shadowed place 
 beneath the altar and casting back his cowl, leaned forward, 
 
36 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 leveling his dark eyes with a free range over the assemblage; 
 for a full moment he stood thus, as if summoning from some 
 hidden recess of the soul, all the power of expression to voice 
 with intensity the message. 
 
 Then with this inward summoning of strength, came the 
 word clear and ringing through the dense room — so different 
 from the barren echoes of form that had sounded there, that 
 it seemed to break a silence: "The church has fallen! Yea 
 sunken to the lost estate of doomed Babylon ! There is none 
 that doeth good. Yea, the life of the teacher, the prophet 
 is unclean!" This last as his face shone with the terrible 
 force of his word, as it gleamed down upon the hearers. 
 
 For a moment they trembled under the strong blow, then 
 sat as if transfixed, fearing the next word might bring the 
 very thunderbolts upon their guilty heads. 
 
 As the speaker sank back into the shadowed place and the 
 silence came again, greater and more awesome because in its 
 meaning, every one felt the emptiness of their own words, 
 their conflict over the outer forms of things, the darkness 
 seemed to deepen over all, to overwhelm every life, and rising 
 one by one they withdrew into the gardens of the cloisters, 
 where the choir boys of the cathedral were singing. 
 
 Until all were gone save the monk with the mystic word, 
 and Delia Mirandola, the legate of Lorenzo de Medici. 
 Rising with a groping gesture through the spiritual dark, the 
 man reached toward the prophet's hand. No longer as in 
 that hand clasp he felt the touch of the prophetic that led 
 far out through the endless ranges of the spiritual was he the 
 Prince among men, the polished poet and wit of the Medici's 
 court, but the humble seeker after truth, groping through 
 the shadows toward the place of vision. 
 
VII 
 
 **A place for luxury, the painted rooms, 
 
 The open galleries, and middle court 
 
 Not unprepared, fragrant and gay with flowers." 
 
 IT was a popular saying in Florence at this time that 
 one man could move the life of Lorenzo the Magnificent. 
 Pico Mirandola and the proud Medici were as Jonathan 
 and David. Yet it was only the good of the ruler's 
 two-fold nature that went out to the young scholar; that 
 beauty that had touched Lorenzo's life from his poet mother 
 and was expressed in the soft cadence of the "Nenci 
 da Barberino. " "An idyl redolent of the Tuscan soil, 
 people and manners," and the "Respetti," which is still 
 sung on the far Pistozan hills; or the slow deep measure of 
 his spiritual hymns. 
 
 The coarse sensuous vein that had been bred through the 
 cruelty and deception of a father's life as he was fastening 
 his grip upon the heart of Florence, had deepened in the 
 son's life, and in a little while was to find great vaunted ex- 
 pression in the open hand of tyranny and the low sunken 
 orgies of shame in hidden palace halls, he had succeeded in 
 shielding from the face of the friend. 
 
 Other embassies, a message to the court of Mantua, and 
 gifts from a newly crowned Prince of a little dukedom among 
 the hills, had kept Mirandola away from the palace for long 
 months, and now on this November day of the year 1498, as 
 he halted at the portals and pressed up the marble steps into 
 
 37 
 
38 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 the hall that led toward the audience chamber of the j&rst 
 citizen of Florence, something — the place of a group of sta- 
 tuary behind a partial screen of palms, a scarf thrown over 
 a painting, as if to hide their full import from the casual 
 visitor, or a snatch of song wafted from the loggia above, 
 stirred in Mirandola a strange unrest. The spirit of change 
 seemed to pervade the place, that rapid transformation when 
 in a day, a week or months by a hurried development of 
 hidden inner forces those that we have thought we knew, 
 stand forth different in face and voice. Yet the light of 
 vision is so dim that we can not understand the meaning of 
 the new voice of life. 
 
 Now as Pica Mirandola entered the audience room, un- 
 announced, for the dark faced attendant had murmured to 
 himseK: "Is he not one of the nearest to the great Lorenzo?" 
 he heard the word strong and cutting with all the smothered 
 cruelty of the years that he now felt free to voice, as it seemed 
 to cleave the air; "A woman, a rejected child of the house of 
 De Strozzi ! why should I think of her life a moment when it 
 stands between my hand and the unification of the grand 
 league. " 
 
 Lorenzo started at the sound of his own words, as he looked 
 up and Mirandola stood in the portals, risen to unusual sta 
 ture, seeming to tower in his purity of life, far above him. In 
 that moment the Medici realized from the gleam in the other's 
 eye, that he had sounded the untrue note in his life, yet he 
 could not know how far the man had probed to the inner 
 meaning of it all. Then came the quick wave of reaction, 
 the resolve that the old forms must still be maintained. 
 And with an authoritative gesture, waving away the ambas- 
 sadors from the court of Ferrara, he advanced toward the 
 silent figure in the portal. "What is it for thee, my Pico? 
 This other is some troublesome business, connected with an 
 affair that I can not fully grasp, some other hour will suffice. 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 39 
 
 Is it a new rendering of Homer from the Greek, or some poem 
 of Poliziano's that you would have me note?" 
 
 *'It is of a monk with a message that I would speak. It 
 was at Reggio," his voice deepened in intensity as the image 
 of the prophet grew clear again, '* where the great chapter 
 of Dominicans were gathered in one solemn assembly, that 
 the unveiled spirit of the man freed from the confines of the 
 flesh, its selfishness, its avarice, seemed to speak to us, speak 
 of the mighty call of God to Judgment ! Judgment to begin 
 in the high places of Italy upon Priest and Prince if they do 
 not turn from the path of vice and wrong!" Mirandola's 
 voice sank now toward the intonation of petition: "O 
 Lorenzo, he made it so real, so living, that some who had 
 touched the far under ways of wrong almost felt the walls 
 swaying toward them, and to all it was the gateway of 
 Judgment! And O Lorenzo mio! Thou who art the 
 Magnus Padre of Florence, may not this prophet who can 
 uncover the dark ways of life, and then with prophetic 
 power reveal the trail of light, that leads upward toward 
 the Heavenlies, stand in the great Duoma, and proclaim the 
 truth to the people of Florence?" 
 
 At first a light smile of scorn, of pitying condescension 
 for his dupHcity curled around the thin lips of the Medici; 
 then as the voice of his friend deepened in petition, his mood 
 changed, and he seemed to be carried a little way toward the 
 young poet's frenzied feeling. The restless movement of 
 one of the embassy from Ferrara for the conclusion of the 
 audience, showed hina that Mirandola must be gotten away, 
 if he did not sound at this moment the full depth of the cru- 
 elty and wrong of the house of the Medici. And advancing 
 with a fawning smile, he answered, without fully measuring 
 what it might mean to have a prophet in the pulpit of the 
 Duoma: "Pico mio, thou knowest thy slightest wish is 
 mine; bring whom you will to the great Duoma, he may 
 
40 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 amuse the young Arrabbiatti with his thunders. And to- 
 morrow, yes to-morrow — " turning with an anxious eye 
 toward the restless embassy; "we will spend a full hour 
 in the garden with Poliziano's poems and translations." 
 
VIII 
 
 THROUGH SILENCES 
 
 "The solemn peaks but to the stars are known; 
 But to the stars and the cold lunar beams. 
 Alone the sun arises, and alone 
 Spring the great stream." 
 
 IT was in the year 1490, that a message came to Fra 
 Girolamo, from Pico Mirandola, as he was leading the 
 brethren in the morning chant in the convent chapel, 
 coupled with the word of Lorenzo de Medici. The 
 padre just paused long enough to take the document from 
 the hand of the agitated nuncio and to read across the face, 
 the signature of the first citizen of Florence. Then lifting 
 his hand in dismissal, he raised his voice toward the far 
 ways of the prayer song. 
 
 It was not until the chant was finished, and with bowed 
 head drawing the cowl tightly over his face, he passed before 
 the brethren, into the open space of the vestibule, that the 
 nuncio dared again to break the silence. Ejieeling before him 
 and clutching at his robe he murmured: "But Padre it is 
 from Lorenzo, the great Medici. Is there no answer? Pico 
 Mirandola the poet, bade me wait until you answered. " 
 
 Fra Girolamo for a moment studied the mosaic of the 
 pavement without speaking. The servant of the young 
 poet added by way of strengthening his appeal: "And my 
 master states that there will be horses waiting for you at the 
 beginning of the via, when you undertake the journey." 
 
 41 
 
42 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 Girolamo drew the piece of parchment toward him now, 
 and read half aloud the message. And again his gaze swept 
 the inwrought mosaic as if in deep study, then throwing back 
 his cowl and loosening the robe that cloaked his figure, he 
 rose to his full stature, and gazing down toward the nuncio 
 with the power that seemed ever waiting in vast hidden 
 reserves for his command he answered, "Tell your master 
 that I cannot accept his call now, that the dumb faces of the 
 sick and the hungry, and the dying in Brescia, and in Pavia 
 even to Bologna turn toward me with their unanswered 
 pleading, that yonder in the garden stand the novitiates 
 waiting to learn the truth more fully. Yea from Brescia 
 even to Bologna the need of human life that I must answer. 
 And then, if the far voices beckon there, I may follow 
 though I will not need the equipages of Lorenzo's court. 
 The servant must not be above his Master, as he trod the 
 narrow ways, so I must tread each foot of the earth path!" 
 
 "From Brescia even unto Bologna," meant a long way to 
 the brother of the Dominicans. It meant journeys over 
 mountain and plain to answer some call of need, and long 
 night watches, when as the padre waited through the dim 
 silences, he could hear that low cry, that to those listening 
 through earth voids is the mingled refrain of a world's 
 sorrow. 
 
 Thus it was not until the lapse of months, that a muffled 
 figure might be seen winding a solitary way along the via, 
 that leads through the mountain passes from Genoa to Bologna 
 and beyond toward Florence. 
 
 The early twilight in the heights, had touched the way 
 when the pilgrim rested for a moment as he looked out toward 
 the storied turrets of the city of the Arno. As he stood thus, 
 all the weariness of the years of struggle out toward the vision 
 of truth and beauty that had first glimmered in the mystic 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 43 
 
 shadowy tracery of the dream, that had floated out over the 
 Po, in those far Ferrara days; the conflict with the carnaUty 
 and passion of Ufe, as he had tried to lead men upward toward 
 the higher ways; the long night vigils; all the hunger, the 
 longing seemed to rise as one great burden, a living hand 
 before him — pressing him down to the earth. 
 
 For a long space of time, Girolamo knelt thus between the 
 dream and the real. In the after while he was never able to 
 measure the subdued depth of feeling. Now the sense of the 
 vision came nearer, above all earthly voice or longing. It 
 was one of those moments when the power of the spiritual 
 rises supreme. And far from the opening ways of light 
 streamed Heavenly messengers, that silently touched the 
 prostrate man — ministering unto him. 
 
 The padre rose in the power of the new strength, yet still 
 dazed by the glory of the vision. Then as the mist slow- 
 ly lifted, he saw a little way beyond, the face and form of a 
 man in bold relief against the chffs, as he bent in rapture 
 over some canvas resting against an easel of rock. 
 
 As the padre groped toward the man, he rose and came 
 quickly toward him : "Art thou one of the wandering Padre? " 
 He asked in a hoarse whisper lest some chance courtier in 
 the way might betray his secret; "One of the mystics who 
 in these mountain ways reach far toward the meaning of 
 life, away from the hollow mockery of things?" As the 
 padre did not answer to break the spell, that he was casting 
 over him, the voice of the artist grew tenser; "If thou art? 
 Listen. I am of the court of Lorenzo chief of the Medici, 
 sent by him to the palace of Ferrara, there to paint a great 
 picture of the Grand Duke Ercole. There on that 
 first morning Ercole himself took me through the main 
 apartments, pausing in the great state chamber which with 
 the hangings of cloth of gold and the richly sculptured pillars 
 I should give as a background for a portrait of the Duke 
 
44 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 sitting in royal state. Then the Duke let me wander at my 
 will through the apartments, guided by a half blind attendant. 
 
 "By mistake, I knew it afterwards from the look of con- 
 sternation on the face of the great Prince, as he stood, when 
 we emerged, in the half dark of the passage way, summoned 
 there by the servant on the discovery of my intrusion, I was 
 admitted to a narrow apartment, one of the spaces formed 
 by the arches of the palace. As our eyes grew accustomed to 
 the dimmed light, the alcove formed the frame for the face 
 of a woman, bending over a rosary of pearl, and tracing the 
 rhythm of a prayer song as she seemed to follow with rapt 
 gaze the slow evolving of faces and the sound of voices — the 
 vision in far distances. 
 
 "It was a beauteous face, padre, the fairest I ever beheld 
 with the rare blending of light and shadow, of joy and sorrow 
 and for a full hour I groped in the shadows, unseen by her, 
 striving in a blind faltering way to interpret the dream face 
 upon my canvas. Yes, the form is there — " speaking half 
 to himself, half to the padre as he turned toward the canvas 
 upon the rocks; "but the touch of spirit is lacking, the deli- 
 cate tracery which only sorrow can evolve, in the blind plead- 
 ing of a life toward the soul of the Infinite. And now the 
 door of that palace seems forever closed — " The last 
 came in a tone wavering between despair and hope — "Have 
 you not heard voices in these far silences and from them 
 interpreted life?" 
 
 For answer the padre groped toward the rock, as a man 
 reaching out through unknown vacancies toward his own. 
 And for a moment held the portrait in still worshipful hands. 
 Then through his drawn tightly compressed lips came a cry. 
 The form was there, the oval face, and the ghnt of the gold 
 in the crown of curls. Yet the subtle touch of other world- 
 ism — the beauty of the spiritual that in those dream hours, 
 when Girolamo Savonarola had stood near the little Maria, 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 45 
 
 and all was joy and light and the shadows that he could see 
 hovering around, trailed back from future distances, was 
 lacking here. He did not speak, as the artist drew near 
 again, looking, wandering on. It was one of those great 
 moments, when the unsubdued longings of life, assert their 
 right, when the soul rising above the self imposed fetters of 
 monastery or fortress, involuntarily reaches out toward that 
 which to it expresses beauty and life. A moment when this 
 outreach from the trammels of self, constitutes in itself a 
 solitude vast and impenetrable. 
 
 The artist waited in reverence through the silence, it did 
 not seem strange to him that the story of the castle, the 
 touch of the unfinished picture should so move the padre; 
 that this torn fragment from the hidden life in the palace 
 of Ferrara, should touch the far, deep heart chords of the 
 man's life, that can only be reached by a kindred touch, by 
 the outreach of life that has once responded to our own, for 
 might not this fancied dweller in the rocks and caves, this 
 padre of the mountains, through some mystic medium be 
 cognizant with all life, know the threaded way from the 
 dweller in the squalid hovels of the contadini, upward 
 through the storied ways of Italy's palaces. 
 
 The padre broke the hush as the misty cloud ways of the 
 dream way faded again, and instead came the reality of the 
 rugged cHffs and steeps of the via toward Florence, with a 
 word that seemed cold and harsh, as it echoed through the 
 naked voids, that stretched before them, the voids which 
 through these moments of communion of vision, the padre 
 had passed as a thing apart; and as he came back again and 
 felt the cruel thraldom of their confines his own voice sounded 
 a thing apart from the true — the inner life: "Nay, Signor, 
 I can not bring the far ways toward you. Each soul must 
 step out toward the way of vision alone, — alone beneath the 
 hand of the great Eternal. Yea, give heed," his voice 
 
46 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 came hoarse and tense now, as if he were weighing a life in 
 the balances; "You have been given in one moment a vision 
 of the exceeding beauty, the subdued music of a life in its 
 outreach toward the Highest. Yet you could not grasp, 
 your hand was too weak to translate one trembling note of 
 that beauty — ^that music. To you still clings the heavy dross 
 of earth. If you would attain, there lies the long night- 
 vigils, the ceaseless prayer ! And then if it moves heaven and 
 earth the re-entrance into Duke Ercole's palace prison. And 
 the portrayal of her face, the pictured beauty of the 
 world's one true Madonna as it is. Ah, more as it will be 
 wrought out through the triumphant way of sjiffering!" 
 
 The artist did not answer, as if the padre's words were as 
 the far oft thunder of impending war, of conflict that can be 
 only understood through the great hours of realization. And 
 bending low the padre, replaced the picture upon the rocky 
 shrine, and drawing close his cowl and robe around, now 
 the strong man once more, upheld by the unseen comforters, 
 began the rocky descent toward Florence, toward the city 
 that in the far weird spaces of silence that stretched before 
 should hear in his voice the interpretation of life. 
 
IX 
 
 FLORENCE 
 
 "Somewhere a sudden bursting of pomegranate-hearted song 
 Such as to sultry-lover throats of Italy belong! 
 Ere o'er dome and palace night wraps her silken husk, 
 Fiesole's enchanted lights come twinkling through the dusk; 
 
 Already die the distant fires behind the cypress-trees — 
 The vesper bells fall silent as the sleeping centuries; 
 While empires sink to ashes in the ragged sunset bars." 
 
 THE glory of the sunset touched with glistening 
 gold, the far campaniles and castellos of the city 
 of the Arno, as the new Brother of San Marco 
 wended his way down the last of the Apennine 
 slopes. 
 Yet the deep vision of the monk of Ferrara saw but one 
 spire, the lonely tower of San Marco, that seemed to lift 
 itself beyond the other eminences into greater distances 
 through the blue of the Italian heavens, by that infinity 
 with which we invest temples that are to us the shrine of 
 sacrifice — of far devotion. 
 
 Now as the padre drew near the place of devotion, the 
 white square of the cloisters, and the arched pillars and col- 
 onnades, shone renewed and transcendent in the light that 
 had been wafted down "a wake of angel wings," as he sank 
 in weakness on the rocks in the far mountain way. 
 
 The gleam over pillar and glistening cross deepened as 
 
 47 
 
48 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 Fra Girolamo traversed the winding way across the grassy 
 inclosure, then up the stairway past the long corridor with the 
 dark roof upheld by the heavy rafters. On either side in 
 every available space in library, chapel, cloister, dormitory, 
 corridor and cell showed the glorified story of a hidden life's 
 devotion. Of one Fra Angelico who had wrought for the 
 love of his master, in those silences in the years before. 
 " Wrought those shadowy Christs, and drooping Madonnas 
 with prayers and tears. " 
 
 Each cell with its own picture gleaming through the shad- 
 ows, a separate dream caught from the far exalted range of 
 vision by the poet painter, and translated for the lonely 
 brother in his cell. "The link of fresco extends through all 
 that chain of tiny cells along the corridor, — the Sermon on 
 the Mount, with Judas wearing a black halo, as the symbol 
 of a dead virtue, after the Greek usage; watchful Magdalenes 
 and the lily of motherhood, the white Madonna, bending 
 to be crowned by her son amid the clouds. " 
 
 On, on until the footsteps of Fra Girolamo and his novitiate 
 attendant paused at a cell door, enshrouded in deeper shad- 
 ows if possible than the others; from which but one graded 
 casement cast a gleam of earth light over a low wooden desk, 
 and the vision that Fra Angelico had traced above. 
 
 But to Fra Girolamo as he stood a moment in silence, before 
 he consecrated the place with a primal prayer, it seemed lumi- 
 nous with light, the abiding presence of the vision, that had 
 arisen in the mist encircled ways of Ferrara, to follow through 
 valley and deepening trails to the final place of revelation. 
 
 During that silence the white robed young attendant, 
 slowly stole away, and as he told the gathered company in 
 the gardens below of the strange hush wrought with supernal 
 power, that rested over the new brother they drew the line 
 of demarcation that separated their life from the life of this 
 padre of power and vision, the line that should not be passed 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 49 
 
 until by his great words, he should waft them on the wings 
 of prophecy toward the heights. 
 
 Through the long days and nights of the first week Gir- 
 lamo Savonarola waited in the constant attitude of prayer; 
 the silence only broken in the deep watches by a cry when the 
 strong surge of desire seemed to break the bounds of life. 
 In prayer unheeding the light footed novitiate as he bore 
 the cruse of water and bread into the cell; in another hour to 
 withdraw the untouched morsel. In prayer that utterance 
 might be given, words freighted with the meaning and the 
 power of the vision to reveal the heart of life — life in its 
 uplifted beauty and power to sleeping Florence. Florence 
 as she lay in the stillnes of the night watches, the resplendent 
 glory of palace and cathedral reflected in the Arno's silvery 
 gleam. 
 
 At first it was the thought that through the medium of 
 another life the message was to be inwrought into the life 
 of the great city. Some pictured face showing in the dim 
 light of the Duoma; or a sweet voiced novitiate, sent forth 
 by the power of the message, to stand in the great chorus, 
 as they gathered to chant the Magnificat, and there in the 
 interlude of soul-less praise, to send forth one clear, one 
 silvery note that would touch resplendent chords, leading 
 a peoples' Hfe through the unseen ways of song toward the 
 heights of truth and glory. 
 
 It was on a day in April, that Fra Girolamo descended 
 into the place below, to the free spaces of the garden. There 
 beneath the blue sky that hung as a canopy over Florence, 
 and at the foot of "sotto un vosajo did rose damaschine," 
 as the old lines ran: "A rose tree of damask roses," he taught 
 the novitiates. And unannounced began the impassioned 
 appeal to the heart of Florence through the company that 
 gathered round. One has thus pictured that scene: "the 
 
50' THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 roses waving softly in the summer air above, and the lads in 
 their white convent gowns, with earnest faces lifted to the 
 speaker, what a tender central light do they give, soft heart 
 of flowers and youth, to the grave scene: For grave as life 
 and death were the speaker and the men that stood round 
 and pressed him on every side. " 
 
 When life is stirred to wondrous intensity by some great 
 opening vision, the voice in the first hour of expression can 
 but whisper out toward the limitless ways. The word came 
 now in a hoarse undertone, scarcely audible to the nearest 
 listener until through the hours of sympathetic nearness, 
 they came to feel out toward its meaning. 
 
 Soon the spaces of the garden were over reached, and the 
 permission of the old prior of the convent was given that the 
 word of the preacher might be heard in the chapel. For 
 hours Girolamo Savonarola hesitated to enter the larger 
 place of utterance, for still the far beauty of life, of vision 
 rose in a bewildering maze before, and he seemed unable 
 to reach the expression of simile or metaphor to figure forth 
 its meaning. 
 
 But the hour came when the great gateways seemed to 
 swing open, and before the mighty surge of feeling, the voice 
 floated out on the far range of figure and story for the listen- 
 ing ones. When a moment's calm came he lifted up his 
 hands and cried out: "Tomorrow at the vesper hour you 
 shall hear all!" 
 
 It was the evening devotion in the convent chapel, of the 
 first of August. The padre stood through a silence, his gaze 
 transfixed upon a crucifix, his face calm and motionless, with 
 that passionless look before a storm, as if throwing the whole 
 power of the human into the breach, against the mighty 
 voices that clamoured for expression, for already the dim 
 premonition of the end, of suffering and death if he revealed 
 all, stood in dim outline just before. He looked down at 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 51 
 
 the crowd as they thronged the aisles, above at the circle of 
 brothers crowding the walls of the choir, and the inner vision, 
 with the voices, came with a mightier force, and bursting 
 the bounds of the human rang clear. 
 
 In the aftermath of that hour, it was whispered in the 
 piazza and beneath the loggias of Florence by dark faced men 
 as they bent over their little stores of goods, or crossed 
 swords in the fencing arena : " Una predica terribile ! " '* One 
 terrible word!" With a superhuman earnestness, the monk 
 directed the three great propositions like sword thrusts to 
 the hearts of his hearers: 
 
 "The church of the living God must be cleansed — reno- 
 vated and that in our time. 
 
 "Italy is to be scourged before this renovation. 
 "All these things will happen very soon. " 
 
 For a terrible hour, he dwelt upon that first word, of the 
 sin that waged beneath palace halls; where the cries of out- 
 raged life, ascended unanswered toward the Heavens for 
 vengeance. Then he carried his hearers to the very portals 
 of the Holies of Holies of the Roman church, the See of Rome, 
 where in the shadows of the life of the Pontiff, wrong stalked 
 unrebuked. 
 
 And then bending his slender frame forward, as if peering 
 through unknown distances, his mantle falling at his feet, 
 the preacher drew one graphic portraiture of the brighter 
 hour, reaching toward the utmost simile of beauty and 
 peace of the Hebrew poet: "The lion and the lamb shall lie 
 down together," blending as he proceeded the soft hues of 
 subdued blue and gold that made the symphony of a golden 
 age. 
 
 Girolamo Savonarola paused as the picture glowed living 
 and real, then concluded, sweeping his hands with a prophetic 
 gesture over the poeple : " I shall continue to speak to Florence 
 yea to Florence, until the end of the appointed time. Until 
 
52 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 eight years have passed, until the Arno has risen three times 
 in its course, and until eight seed times and harvest have 
 swept over the land. " 
 
 Gradually the power of the life secluded in the convent of 
 San Marco began to be felt to the height and depth of the 
 life of the great city. Friends and foes, men of the world 
 and philosophers, as well as earnest and simple minded 
 Christians, continued to crowd around the pulpit of the 
 chapel, until it became evident that a larger arena must be 
 found for his work. 
 
 It was in the Lent of the following year, that Fra Girolamo 
 was called to preach in the Duoma, the great cathedral, and 
 now became at once the accepted teacher, and acknowledged 
 spiritual power of Florence. 
 
 Slowly the great portrayals, pictures of impending judg- 
 ment — impending fires through which a renewed city should 
 arise, came nearer to the great heart of the people, until 
 some — those who were drawn into the inner circle of his 
 life and power, could feel toward the clear vision of the 
 prophet, follow the inner struggle of the human with the 
 message of the divine. 
 
 During those first days of power in the cathedral, nearer 
 and nearer the disciples drew to the more than teacher, their 
 minister of the far unseen, and the populo called them in 
 scorn as they gathered in the public squares, "The Piagnoni. " 
 
 Now the premonitions of those first days in the convent 
 grew clearer and more intense, and the struggle between the 
 human and the spiritual deeper. Fra Girolamo finally 
 came almost to the fixed resolve, that he would not speak the 
 message. Long afterward he whispered of that hour: "God 
 is my witness, that during the whole of Saturday and through 
 the whole night until the morning I lay awake, and every 
 other way, every doctrine and word except that one was 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 53 
 
 taken from me. At day-break, wearied and depressed by 
 this long vigil I heard whil'st I was praying, a voice which 
 said to me: 'Fool, dost thou not see that God wills thee to 
 follow the same way?'" And so that day the word came to 
 the waiting ones with far greater power than before. 
 
 It was after that mighty word with power; when the great 
 Dunamis — (Powers) — of the first Apostles seemed to hover 
 over all, that Pico Mirandola, the poet and ambassador of 
 Florence who, touched by the word of the monk of Ferrara, 
 in the assemblage at Reggio, had led the way back to San 
 Marco and the city of the Arno, pressed near, followed by the 
 unsteady footsteps of another. Mirandola drew the preach- 
 er apart, and whispered: "Padre mio. It is one Bartolom- 
 mio an artist who wishes to speak to thee; he has come a 
 weary way through the mountain fastnesses." 
 
 The young scholar stepped aside now to give the artist 
 his place, who coming near, without a word as his gaze swept 
 the padre's face in piteous appeal, placed tremulously a 
 miniature painting with the face of a Madonna in the out- 
 stretched hand of the padre. Fra Girolamo held it up 
 before his strained vision, in the half shadow; then with a 
 strong constraining touch upon the arm of the man drew him 
 toward the place of prayer; "You have not reached all," 
 he murmured in the hoarse undertone of the shadows, 
 "You did not truly see her face. It is only one stricken cry 
 of grief, not the glorious symphony of joy and sorrow, toward 
 which I know — " the face of the padre shone clear with the 
 prophetic glow; "She has reached!" 
 
 Through a long silence they knelt, the prophet with the 
 soul of vision, of life — the far meaning of art. And the ar- 
 tist with the skilful hand for the outer images of things; 
 and then as the bell rang the hour for vespers in the 
 
54 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 convent halls, both without breaking the hush between 
 them arose and turned one toward the lonely cell in San 
 Marco; the other toward the devious via, that leads toward 
 the mountain heights. 
 
THE STRENGTH OF TWO 
 
 IN July, 1491, there came a great change in the outer 
 forms of the monk of Ferrara's relations to Florence 
 and the court of the Medici. The prior of San Marco 
 died, and Girolamo Savonarola was elected to fill his 
 place as head of the great convent. It was the custom for 
 the new prior to do homage to the House of Medici; for 
 Cosimo, the father of the Magnificent, had been the second 
 founder of San Marco. It was he who had given the library, 
 and endowed it with the great collection of Prince Niccolo 
 Niccoli. Leaving to the Magnificent to arrange the en- 
 circling gardens as a school of art, where he might mingle 
 with the pupils. 
 
 But the spirit of the new prior in its solitary greatness 
 rose above all power and patronage : "I acknowledge my elec- 
 tion, " he said ''as the act of God, and to Him I will pay my 
 homage. " As the brothers turned toward him startled and, 
 in great alarm, he simply asked, "Is it God or Lorenzo who 
 has made me prior?" 
 
 When the Magnificent heard of these bold words he was 
 greatly stirred. "You see," he exclaimed, "a foreigner is 
 come into my own house, and will not condescend to visit 
 me." 
 
 Before this hour, the son of the Medici, had looked upon 
 Fra Girolamo Savonarola, the monk of Ferrara, of whose 
 power in word and presence, Pico Mirandola, had declared 
 
 55 
 
56 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 in the audience chamber, as one of the wandering mystics 
 of the mountains. A prophet of that higher, far range of 
 life and feeling, whose message no difference how clear or 
 ringing, could not touch the real underworld through which 
 the men of the House of the Medici, moved toward their 
 ultimate purpose of greed and tyranny. A message that 
 would only stir the upper waves of Florentine life, well to 
 attract "certain of the young Arrabbiatti, " as he had lightly 
 told Mirandola, well even for himself in those moments of 
 abstraction, when the soul of another self seemed to move the 
 hand of the proudest son of Florence, and he would pen the 
 lyrics and spiritual songs which placed beside the wild carni- 
 val songs of another hour, seemed the product of not only a 
 different but a mind wholly at variance with the other. 
 Some said through whispers of awe, that it must be the 
 spirit hand of the poet mother, the beautiful Lucrezia Torna- 
 buoni, whose lauds, *'The Birth of Christ," and "The Adora- 
 tion of the Shepherds," had met a tender refrain in Flor- 
 ence, which moved the man in these other moments. 
 
 But now as the monk of Ferrara, stood in his new place 
 of clerical power, and his voice rang clear, "I acknowledge 
 my election as the act of God, to him I will pay my homage ! " 
 the Medici felt the note of power, that echoed far beneath 
 the pretense and outer forms of things, the hollow mockery 
 of justice, to that lower depth of life where Lorenzo, no 
 longer the first citizen of Florence, but the dictator, the 
 destroyer of the ancient liberties of a free city, worked out 
 his cunningly laid meshes of tyranny and wrong. 
 
 Yet Lorenzo did not at first openly oppose. He would win 
 the man with his strength of spirit and expression to his 
 own purpose. He had not yet met the man whom he could 
 not at least blind, and in the darkness bend to himself. 
 
 The Magnificent was often to be seen now at mass in the 
 convent church; and he further attempted to throw himself 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 57 
 
 in the way of the prior by coming and walking in the con- 
 vent gardens. Once he came while the prior was deep in 
 his studies in the silence of the dimly lighted cell and a brother 
 came running to tell him of the presence of the great man. 
 "Has he asked for me?" inquired the prior. *'No, but — " 
 
 "Very well, then, let him continue his walk as he pleases, " 
 came the answer. 
 
 During those first days of conflict only once did the 
 Preacher of San Marco meet the Medici face to face in his 
 pathway; when a word or gesture of meaning was unavoid- 
 able. 
 
 It was the dim hour between the light and the dark in the 
 gardens of San Marco. Since the hour when the group of 
 white robed novitiates had risen from their place at his feet 
 on the grassy plot; and filed back through the long corridors 
 for the evening meal around the bare white tables, the prior 
 had been pacing through the narrow ways, with the thought 
 of the great morrow's struggle for the enunciation of the 
 living message, and the upturned faces of the eager multi- 
 tudes rising like a cloud before him; when as he gazed with 
 fixed intensity upon the white columns that bounded the 
 cloisters, a dark robed figure seemed to slowly rise out of the 
 shadows. 
 
 There was a quick step forward and the face of Lorenzo 
 de Medici gleamed toward him. Standing there in the 
 dusky hush, each soul aglow with the dominant purpose of 
 life, revealed in the silences, there was no need of word, 
 each knew, each understood by the great over power of 
 expression that reaches above and beyond human speech. 
 From that hour the Medici knew that he was unmasked 
 before this new found Seer of Florence. 
 
 It was only for a moment that the gaze of the two strong 
 men met in that searching out that reaches past the surfaces 
 
58 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 of things toward the realities of life. Then Girolamo Savon- 
 arola drew from his robe the sketch of a Madonna which 
 Bartolommeo had left in his keeping that prayer hour, when 
 they were alone in the great cathedral. 
 
 One moment the pictured face gleamed in the shadows 
 of the gathering night; another and the voice of the prophet- 
 monk probed to the heart of the life of the tyrant of Florence 
 and the strong power among the cities and dukedoms of 
 Italy, he who held in his hand the raveled thread of life 
 of the great courts. "You know that by every right of church 
 and state Eleanor of Arragon has no place in the palace of 
 Ferrara; that Maria, daughter of the house of Strozzi, by 
 a valid vow in some far, secluded place is truly the Princess 
 of Ferrara. 
 
 "It all came before me, in the still watches of the night — " 
 the prophetic glow once more burned forth from the face of 
 the padre; "yet not clear or distinct. I could not follow 
 all the winding way." There was a stir in the rose bushes 
 as Girolamo spoke this last; "Now naught remains, but that 
 Maria de Strozzi should be redeemed from the palace cell 
 where the power of the Este has sunk her, and stand in the 
 robes of her purity and truth, before the life of Italy freed 
 from the shadow of wrong. Lorenzo de Medici, you know! 
 In spirit I watched the course of the legates from the winding 
 mountain viae, even to Florence. " 
 
 A sardonic smile played on the dark face of the Medici, 
 as if he would say, "How can you read the souls of men?*' 
 
 The prior answered the unspoken question, "It was in the 
 far night watches, that all, all was given!" 
 
 There was a trace of pleading in the strong voice now, as 
 if some hidden way of the spiritual might yet change the 
 nature of a Medici; "Lorenzo, master of Florence, yours 
 may be that voice of freedom, through your secret chain of 
 agencies that reaches to the very heart of Italy! You can 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 59 
 
 not reclaim her soul, for no wrong has ever touched its 
 purity and truth, but you can grasp a Hfe from the darkness 
 of the night, and set it in the Hght of its own!" 
 
 Lorenzo made a step forward as if he would snatch the 
 sketch from the prior's grasp, as if it were some magic wand 
 of revelation of the very secrets of the soul. But Savonarola 
 with an authoritative gesture, his hand uplifted in the atti- 
 tude of prayer, held it high above his head. 
 
 Just at that juncture, the bushes parted, and a man 
 shrouded in a coarse robe, his hair hanging unkempt about 
 his shoulders, his face fixed with the lines of ceaseless vigils, 
 and fastings of the penitent, as of some hermit who had 
 dwelt for long months in the fastnesses of the mountains, 
 sprang forward and fell prostrate and prone at the prior's 
 feet. 
 
 Lorenzo now hastily drawing his scarf over his face, with- 
 drew through the winding ways of the garden. A hot flush 
 suffused his face, as he stood once again in the freer air of 
 the open square, surrounded by the retainers who ever hovered 
 near their master's presence, for had not some other life 
 heard the mad revelations of the prophet-monk of San 
 Marco? 
 
 It was a true place for a confessional, touched by the 
 other- world silences that crept like a zephyr over the winding 
 wind swept paths and above, through the white pillars of the 
 colonnade, and over the hedge of roses. 
 
 The Confessor heard naught but the whispered dirge of 
 the penitent; "It is the spirit of some fury that is pursuing 
 padre, for even beneath the shadows of an altar I betrayed 
 the fairest child of all Ferrara into the hands of the black 
 hearted Ercole! And before a world, I dare not declare her 
 innocence, and his guilt! Is there mercy for one who has 
 broken the vows of his anointing, and betrayed the highest 
 trust?" 
 
60 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 The Confessor heard naught else, and in the far afterwards 
 never knew the parting time, when the voice of the miserable 
 padre, sank into the depths and he was alone with the silences. 
 
 The sound waves of the novitiate choir, chanting the 
 Ave Maria of the Dawn, touched the kneeling figure in the 
 gardens of San Marco. An upturned face gazing through 
 the mists toward the vision of one and over all the light 
 that shines from the glory of fulfillment; for the prophetic 
 gleam, the vision of life had been given its full meaning 
 through the quavering notes of the Confessional — the living 
 voice of man. She was free from every touch of wrong, the 
 vision true. 
 
XI 
 
 THROUGH THE SHADOWS 
 
 YET still on the morrow, and the weeks that 
 followed, more from the old habit of driving and 
 bribing men toward his aims, than from any real 
 belief that the prior of San Marco could be 
 coerced; for the iron of the power of the prophet had entered 
 the Medici's soul, Lorenzo continued sending gifts to the 
 convent, which the prior without appearing to know the 
 sender, turned over into the general funds of the society. 
 
 "The good dog, " the prior thundered forth one day, in the 
 great pulpit of the Duoma when the approaches of the tyrant, 
 this perjurer of the liberties of Florence had become more 
 and more intolerable, "always barks in order to protect 
 his master's house and if a thief comes and throws him a 
 bone or anything else to put him off his guard, the good dog 
 takes it, but at the same time bites the thief. " 
 
 Lorenzo now directed a great sum of gold to be placed in 
 the alms box of St. Mark's church. The clear eyes of the 
 prior again recognizing the hand of the tyrant, separated 
 the smaller pieces of money, which had been given by the 
 humble worshippers to be used for the needs of the convent, 
 and sent the gold to the good men of St. Martin's, to be 
 distributed among the destitute of Florence. 
 
 Thus in spite of every advance made by the Medici, the 
 relentless prior went on and on, every day increasing the 
 fury of his cry against the vices of the hour, and drawing in 
 
 61 
 
62 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 burning letters the tribulation and avenge that he saw in 
 the far dim vistas of prophetic vision approaching the de- 
 voted city. 
 
 Then Lorenzo sent five citizens of Florence, as if they 
 came of their own volition to entreat the prior, for the good 
 of the city and the convent to change the tenor of his mes- 
 sage. When they came into the presence of the prior, all 
 save one lost courage to speak, and as he looking down into 
 the clear unclouded face of the man, the face that in its calm 
 depths of uplifted faith, had stirred the life of every man 
 in Florence who had dared look toward him, attempted to 
 frame the message, "Padre, we would not hear thy continu- 
 ous voice showing an impending — " could not go on for his 
 voice drew thick and hoarse, and trembling and voiceless, 
 the strong man waited for the prior to answer his unfinished 
 word. In the voice that at first seemed cold and austere, 
 yet as you listened was touched with an under wave of kind- 
 ness, of compassionate love, the prior spoke: "You are not 
 speaking your own thought, but the word of The Arch-des- 
 troyer of the liberties of Florence, whose hand touches the 
 deep springs of all the hidden life in this great city. Go 
 back and plead with your master to repent of his wrong for 
 even now — " the hand was uplifted in a far onward gesture — 
 "I see the spectre of darkness and despair — the form of a 
 sword impending o'er the wretched house of the Medici, and 
 through them over Florence!" 
 
 As the prior spoke, the face of the spokesman of the group, 
 who was none other than Francesco Valori, one of the boldest 
 of Florence, changed and a fire gleamed from his eye through 
 the haK dark of the room, as if some spark of life had entered, 
 lighting the way toward the higher ranges of faith and vision. 
 
 It was the moment of inspiration of a life. Francesco 
 Valori would yet stand as the Simon Peter of Savonarola's 
 cause; and his untamed zeal would lead toward great hazards 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 63 
 
 and apparent failures, and yet in the supreme hour cover all 
 with the glory of martrydom. 
 
 And still the power wrought by the prophet's word, 
 deepened over Florence, yet the Medici found three more 
 men to carry his message to the lonely cell of the prophet- 
 monk. And flung defiantly to the very heart of the tyrant, 
 came back the last message, "Tell Lorenzo from me that he 
 is a Florentine and the first man of the city, and I am a 
 foreigner, and a poor mean friar. Neverless tell him that 
 it is he who is to depart, and I who am to remain; he will 
 go, but I shall stay. '* 
 
 With one last burst of fury, mad to overthrow, and yet 
 like Herod of old, not desiring to touch with physical force 
 the life of the just man, Lorenzo stirred up the Augustine 
 Fra Genazzana, he who was reputed the most polished 
 preacher and rhetorician of Florence; yet of whom Burlamac- 
 chi aptly whispered — "A man endowed with more eloquence 
 than with holy doctrine. " 
 
 Ascending the pulpit of San Gallo, on Ascension day, the 
 Augustine preached from the text : '* It is not for you to know 
 the times or the seasons." Perverting the word he attacked 
 the prior of San Marco, denouncing his teaching and life as 
 false. So violent and untrue were Genazzano's charges that 
 his wrong was self evident and much of his popularity lost, 
 many of his former admirers turning away in disgust. 
 
 Girolamo Savonarola's strong answer came the next 
 Sunday, preaching from the same great text, showing that 
 all he had taught to the listening multitudes, was fully in 
 accord with the doctrine that Jehovah God was working out 
 in the mysteries of His own Providence, the far ways of life. 
 
 And now as Lorenzo felt the clutch of the fatal malady at 
 the heart of life, and the trivial things that had filled his 
 
64 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 days fell away before the meaning of Eternity, he turned 
 toward the man who alone in the great city had expressed 
 the far heights of a spiritual strength. 
 
 The hand that had held Florence in the hollow of its grasp 
 was trembling, and the bitter word in the mouth of the 
 mercenary Genazzano, was the last thrust that he might aim 
 at the great prophet-monk. 
 
 As the sickness increased, in April, Lorenzo retired to the 
 beautiful villa of Careggi, which was built by his great 
 father Cosimo, on the heights overlooking Florence. Here 
 his friends surrounded him, and tried to arouse the man 
 from the deep despair and darkness that was slowly envelop- 
 ing him. But in those hours there was but one cry. It was 
 for the presence of Savonarola, the prior of San Marco. 
 "Because," he pleaded, "I have never yet found a religious 
 like him." 
 
 "Tell him," said Savonarola, when he received the re- 
 quest, "that I am not what he wants, because we shall not 
 be in accord, and therefore it is not expedient that I come. " 
 
 "Go back to the prior," said the Magnificent, "and tell 
 him that at all events he must come; for I want to be in 
 accord with him and do all that he shall tell me. " 
 
 The twilight of another day was touching the ruler of 
 Florence, and the prophet of San Marco, as they looked 
 toward each other again, with the steady gaze, that wondrous 
 recognition, when the deep springs of the soul life responds 
 to another. But it was not far out in the freedom of the 
 convent garden, in the shadows of the white colonnades, and 
 clinging, damask roses, but in the heavy curtained apartment 
 of Careggi. And the Medici stood no longer in his proud 
 towering strength, but lay on the softly cushioned divan, 
 while around gathered the darkness of remorse and despair. 
 
 Again there were no words, but as the Medici reached his 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 65 
 
 thin hands out toward the padre, Giralamo Savonarola read 
 with the ready intuition, the prophetic power of him who is 
 not appointed but born to be the confessor of men — the one 
 petition — "Absolution — " and in the shadows of the great 
 chamber seemed to lurk the forms of men and women that 
 in the great hour of strength, the Medici had crushed and 
 trampled upon. 
 
 The pity and compassion of the prophetic life, was tremb- 
 ling in Savonarola's accents as he repeated over and over. 
 "God is good, God is merciful." 
 
 Then as he stood thus, half kneeling, the faces in the 
 shadows seemed to melt into the petition and longing of one 
 life whom the cruel soul of Lorenzo the Medici had strengthen- 
 ed the hand of Duke Ercole of Ferrara in darkening. 
 
 It was the clear voice of the prophet, the reader of the 
 hearts of men, that sounded now; "You must do three 
 things. " 
 
 "What are they Padre?" asked Lorenzo. 
 
 Savonarola answered, "First you must have a great and 
 living faith in the mercy of God. " 
 
 "In that I have the greatest faith," the ruler replied. 
 
 "Secondly you must restore all that you have wrongly 
 taken away, or instruct your sons to make restitution for 
 you. And — and — " the padre's voice came now hoarse with 
 the strong waves of pent up emotion : " Your life must reach 
 out toward the hidden chambers, reveal the wrong of one 
 who reigns in the great palace of Ferrara, against the fairest 
 child of Italy!" 
 
 Lorenzo hesitated now for a moment, then with an effort 
 signified his assent. 
 
 With terrible earnestness now, Savonarola continued: 
 "Lastly you must restore liberty to your native country as 
 it was in the early days of the RepubHc of Florence. " 
 
 Turning his face now from the padre, the dying ruler 
 
66 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 refused to speak another word; this last demand was touch- 
 ing the heart of the old Ufe of cruel remorseless pride and 
 ambition. 
 
 And the padre, with one last pitying look, departed 
 without pronouncing absolution. He passed the outer 
 portals, where Pico Mirandola stood and turned a pallid 
 face, for one word from the chamber of death. 
 
 It was a look from the unreasoning heart of love, from the 
 poet friend who could yet see naught but the good in the 
 life of Lorenzo the Magnificent, whose master hand had 
 seemed to touch the springs of beauty and light in Florence. 
 
 Girolamo Savonarola only drew the man toward the 
 clearer light for the moment, then in the trembling under- 
 tone of the confessional whispered — "For what is a man 
 profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own 
 soul.^ Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" 
 
XII 
 
 AN ALTAR-GLOW 
 
 " *Ricorditti di me' the sound, 
 Stole out of deep dumb days remote 
 Across the fiery and fatal ground, 
 Comes tender as a hurt bird's note 
 To where a ghost with empty hands, 
 A woe- worn ghost, her palace stands 
 In the mid city, where the strong 
 Bells turn the sunset air to song 
 And the towers throng. " 
 
 THE light of the prophet seemed to shine brighter 
 and clearer, as the darkness around deepened. 
 For though Lorenzo was gone, his weaker and if 
 possible more treacherous son Piero, filled the 
 place of the Medici, and at this hour the terrible Alexander, 
 whose surname the Borgia, has ever after been a synonym 
 for vice and wrong, ascended the papal throne. 
 
 To the padre who stood solitary and alone in the midst 
 of the great spiritual darkness, with face uplifted to the 
 heavens, "The vision did not tarry. In the very year which 
 had witnessed the death of the master of Florence and the 
 head of the church, (1492), while he was preaching the Ad- 
 vent sermons. In the midst of heaven he beheld a sword 
 under which the words were written: 'Gladius Domini 
 
 67 
 
68 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 super terrain cito et velociter,' (The sword of the Lord 
 upon the earth quickly and swiftly.) 
 
 *'At the same time he heard a multitude of voices clearly 
 and distinctly promising mercy to the good, and threatening 
 punishment to the wicked and proclaiming that the wrath of 
 God was nigh. Great thunderings were heard from heaven, 
 weapons and fire seemed to fall from the skies, and the whole 
 earth became a prey to wars, and pestilences and famine." 
 
 It was on a great morning in the Duoma, that the prophet 
 of Florence, gave full expression to this climax of vision, of 
 prophetic power. Loud and clear through the subdued 
 silence, the depths of the cathedral, freed for the moment from 
 the touch of the earthly, sounded the word of vision : " Glad- 
 ius Domini super terram cito et velociter." Then came in 
 swift climaxes, wave after wave of utterance, the fierce 
 arraignment of the wrong of Prince and people, and the 
 sure hand of the Avenger over all; but beyond, far beyond 
 the peace of the Highest. 
 
 The fierce word of the prophet-monk sank into the temple 
 silences, to become a part of the very cathedral walls — 
 there to form a unity with the whispered cadences of prayer — 
 the vast uplifted longings of life that form the spirit of place. 
 
 All the people had passed out of the portals now, save one 
 woman, who from her place in the back tier of seats, crept 
 nearer and nearer through the aisles toward the altar. 
 
 The brother came and lit the candles around the place of 
 prayer for the evening vespers, and then was gone, yet she 
 did not tremble or seem to hear the fall of a footstep. As 
 the chimes rang the note of petition, Girolamo Savonarola, 
 as the prior of San Marco, came in, followed by a group of 
 novitiates. 
 
 Softly again their laud of praise ascended, then touching 
 the last wavering sound, the voice of the prior rose toward 
 the far ways of prayer. 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 69 
 
 Nearer and nearer the woman crept now, toward the altar 
 and the prayer. Then through the long aftermath of 
 silence, of subdued prayer, she knelt at the feet of the man 
 of God. To her it was the groping out through the darkness, 
 toward the meaning of life. Life that she beheld in its 
 great abstract meaning, yet did not fully understand. 
 
 It was a picture that a Raphael in some rapt moment might 
 have translated for all ages; the hands of the padre uplifted 
 through the incense laden air toward the supreme attitude 
 of prayer; and the pale distraught face of the woman peering 
 through measureless voids of silence toward the meaning of 
 devotion. 
 
 The padre did not see the woman, nor feel her presence, 
 until he turned to guide the way back through the darken- 
 ing portals, and a hand touched his, and a voice sounded 
 that seemed to pierce through the far off ways of desolate 
 life; "Padre, did you truly mean that the sword of the Lord 
 will avenge, can that sword reach to the depths of suffer- 
 ing, of wrong?" Her hands were uplifted now, as if they 
 might touch the way she pictured. 
 
 Without a word of remonstrance, the wearied padre who 
 all day had been listening with sympathy, as he tried to 
 bring the heart of the multitude, to the meaning of the 
 vision of life in unison with the highest, beckoned the 
 waiting brother Dominican, to guide the novitiates away; 
 and then turned again toward the dimly lighted spaces of 
 the altar, where through the first watches of the earjy winter 
 night he listened to the sorrow of a life. 
 
 At the word, "It is Monna Ghita, speaking to you padre, 
 who was bereft in one dark night of children, home, all of 
 life!" The hand of the prophet, who had reached so far 
 in the calms of faith, toward the uplifted sorrow and heart 
 anguish of a people trembled and his face paled in the candle 
 glow, as through the depths of the cathedral, the refrain 
 
70 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 sounded the name that he had heard his mother whisper 
 in tones of pity and dread in the far mist-shadowed days 
 of Ferrara, when he had stood beneath the latticed casements, 
 and watched as she followed the wavering lights out toward 
 the palace of the Este. 
 
 Now bending low as if mutely bowing before the shrine 
 of a life's sorrow, came to the padre through the temple 
 silences the whispered struggle and longing of a life. The 
 long dream days when she stood before the little court of 
 Ferrara as Prince Niccolo's aflianced bride; that other hour, 
 when the great court of the palace was a bower of roses ; the 
 softened glow over all from the shadowed candelabra, while 
 one subtle note of joy whispered through court and 
 corridor. The after while that seemed one day of joy, the 
 touch of a baby hand, the outreach of supreme possession 
 in husband, child and court. Then the blindening moment 
 of sorrow and shame, the dark when in one hour, for the 
 awful lust of power, all was swept away, and the woman 
 stood a lonely exile in the night. 
 
 The hush, the silence in its depth seemed a being to be 
 reached out toward now, when the voice of the woman rose 
 almost exultantly, "Yet there was an hour between the 
 night and the morning light, when my son, he who lay 
 dying the great Duke of Ferrara, knew me, and with a 
 voice, deeper, higher than earth called me madre!" 
 
 There was another pause, then the voice of the woman, 
 seemed to trail backward toward the place of darkness; 
 "Is there vengeance for me.^^ You told of the sword of 
 judgment, the burning emblem hanging depths over 
 Florence, can it not reach beyond, O padre, even toward 
 the palace of Ferrara, toward the Prince who reigns in 
 the united house of Este and of the Medici, that has 
 robbed my life of all?" 
 
 When the padre spoke it was not in direct answer to the 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 71 
 
 woman's cry. For a moment the dim cathedral spread out 
 to the far open ways of the river banks; and a face ghmmered 
 through the mist ways; while within and yet above the 
 chimes that had now begun to sound again from the cam- 
 panile, came the rhythm of a voice from across the voids 
 that separated that hour of life from today. 
 
 The insistent pleading of the woman aroused the padre 
 now, as in a deeper cadence she whispered: "Can not the 
 sword of hope and vengeance reach even me?" 
 
 And the padre turned with one last upward look from the 
 old life toward the new, toward the press of the eager crowds, 
 and the touch of human need and longing. "Woman — " 
 his voice faltered, as if passing over voids of feeling toward 
 the meaning of her life; "Seek not vengenace for thyself, 
 but find the far meaning of sorrow, in love, in deeds of charity 
 towards others. Knowest thou the face and voice of Maria 
 de Strozzi? Yes, little Maria," his voice whispered the far 
 ways; "The fairest child of Ferrara, " clear and distinct he 
 gave now the word picture of the child-woman, — the gold of 
 her hair against the morning shadows. Then he continued, 
 "She who is crushed beneath a weight of shame and wrong 
 in the dark palace of the Este, whose young life has felt the 
 same iron hand, that has blighted thine own. " 
 
 Slowly now the woman, as if telling an unknown story, 
 repeated all the winding way of that morning hour, when 
 she had turned from the state chamber of the palace toward 
 the villa of the Strozzi. 
 
 As she finished the padre rising to his full stature reached 
 his hands out in an authoritative gesture toward the far 
 ways: "If thou wouldst find the meaning of thine own life, 
 the place where joy and sorrow meet, go seek her out, even 
 though in the searching thou be led to the gates of death. 
 With all the strength which thou possessest, be thou a com- 
 forter, a helper!" 
 
XIII 
 
 THE SWORD OF JUDGMENT 
 
 THE sword of judgment hovered near. Swiftly 
 came the great sequence of events. The historian 
 Gibbon speaks of the invasion of the French, the 
 expedition of Charles VIII, into Italy, as an event 
 which changed the face of Europe. 
 
 King Charles, having finally united the French kingdom 
 by his marriage with the Princess of Brittany, now thought 
 of eclipsing the renown of the great Saint Louis by an- 
 other crusade against the Turks. And took as a beginning 
 of the enterprise the vindication of his supposed rights to 
 the throne of Naples. 
 
 Urged on by the dissensions within the court of Naples, 
 and the constant conflict of parties in the other principalities, 
 Charles took the decisive step. "Piero de Medici, was the 
 devoted friend of the house of Arragon (of Naples), but the 
 city of Florence was equally devoted to the French, and the 
 most powerful voice among them only expressed the senti- 
 ments of the populace when it welcomed the coming of 
 Charles. Venice was neutral, Milan was with them, Naples 
 was almost in revolution." 
 
 And as the French king was encamped at Lyons, there 
 came the voice of Guiliano della Rooni, cardinal of San 
 Pietro in Vincoli, crying out against the cruelty and evil of 
 Roderigo, who had ascended the papal throne as Alexander 
 VI. The cardinal declared in impassioned tones that the 
 
 72 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 73 
 
 King by this invasion might strike a blow at the heart of 
 the man who had defied the truth and purity of the church. 
 Yet while all Italy stood thus, part expectant, others fearing, 
 one event occurred which showed the terrible cruelty of the 
 French armies. The Duke of Orleans repulsed the Neapoli- 
 tan fleet at Genoa, then suddenly taking Rapallo, put the 
 garrison to the sword, and slew all the inhabitants of the 
 town, including forty sick persons in their beds. The 
 country was terror-stricken, for though the cause of the 
 French avenger might be right, his hand was terrible. 
 
 Up to this hour, Piero de Medici, who was becoming more 
 and more but the nominal ruler of Florence, was in alliance 
 with Naples, and opposed to the French, while the great 
 heart of the Florentine people, always against the slow ap- 
 proaching tyranny of Rome, was with Charles in his advance. 
 
 But now in his terror and fear the Medici began to waver, 
 and he started toward the French camp, to plead abject 
 terms of peace. When Piero stood in the imperial camp 
 and beheld the great strength of the invaders, all courage 
 forsook him, and without communication with the ambassa- 
 dors from the people who stood a little way apart, in their 
 haughty silence, he surrendered all the great fortresses of 
 the realm, and gave the French real possession of the whole 
 country, changing in an instant the French from being 
 allies to the Republic of Florence, for the purging of wrong, 
 in the high places of Italy, to possible conquerors. 
 
 The cloud that had appeared on the far horizon upon the 
 swiftly wafted tidings of the massacre of Rapallo, deepened 
 toward the night. And through it all the semblance of a 
 sword — a burning incarnate expression of their prophet's 
 fiery word of judgment. 
 
 The populace turn now toward the prior of San Marco, 
 toward the one great life in whom they could repose. 
 
 As the multitudes thronged Fra Girolamo in the Duoma, 
 
74 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 he raised his hand out above them toward the dim ways of 
 prophecy, of revelation. "Now," he exclaimed, "the 
 sword has come, the scourges have begun. It is the Lord 
 who guides thine armies, O Florence! The time of songs 
 and dances has passed away; it is now time to bewail thy 
 sins with rivers of tears. Thy sins, O Florence! Thy sins, 
 O Rome! Thy sins, O Italy! are the cause of these stripes. 
 And now repent, give alms, offer prayers, become united, O 
 people! I have been a father to thee; I have wearied myself 
 all the days of my life to make known to thee the truth of 
 the faith and of holy living and I have had nothing but 
 tribulation, derision, and reproach. May I have at least 
 the reward of seeing thee do good works. My people, what 
 else have I desired than to see thee safe, than to see thee 
 united .f^ Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." 
 
 Then sinking into the deep cadence of prayer, he whispered 
 over the silent throng: "I turn to Thee, my Lord, who didst 
 die for love of us and for our sins. Pardon, O Lord, pardon 
 the people of Florence, who now desire to be Thine. " 
 
 On the fifth of November, independent of the Medici, 
 new ambassadors were elected to treat with the French 
 monarch. They were Jacopo de Nerli, Piero Capponi and 
 the Prior of San Marco, Girolamo Savonarola. The first 
 two ambassadors went on in state ahead while the padre 
 as was his wont on foot, with no retinue save two of the lowly 
 brothers of the convent. The first two, found the king at 
 Lucca and there they had an audience with him. 
 
 On the third day, Savonarola arrived at Pisa where the 
 French army had proceeded. His arrival was heralded 
 through the ranks, who were drawn up in martial array, 
 to impress the Florentines with their power. Dressed in the 
 simple garb of the Dominican, and with no attendant, the 
 prior of San Marco, passed unmoved through the multi- 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 75 
 
 tudes of armed men, with his face upHfted toward the vision, 
 lifted higher and beyond the floating banners of the French. 
 
 Arriving at the portal of the royal tent, the prior advanced 
 a few paces toward the seat where Charles sat enthroned, 
 and without the semblance of ceremony and form delivered 
 his commission. 
 
 Clear and true rang out the word: "O most Christian 
 king, thou art an instrument in the hand of the Lord, who 
 sendeth thee to relieve the evils of Italy, and chargeth to 
 reform the church which lies prostrate on the earth! But if 
 thou wilt not be just and merciful; if thou dost not respect 
 the city of Florence, its women, its citizens, its liberty; if 
 thou forgettest the work on which the Lord sends thee, 
 then He will choose another to fulfill it, and He will in anger 
 lay heavy his hand upon thee, and will punish thee, with ter- 
 rible scourges. These things I tell thee in the name of the 
 Lord!" 
 
 The power, the personality of this padre of Florence, with 
 his strange unearthly message, entered into the French 
 monarch's life that day, there to remain a constraining force, 
 and a hand deterring him from violence in the fierce days of 
 the invasion. 
 
 Piero de Medici, he who had been the autocrat of the city, 
 arrived in Florence on the eighth of November. He was 
 surprised at the coldness and indifference of the people, 
 yet not fully understanding its meaning. With his old 
 manner of insolent dictation he appeared at the palace where 
 the Signoria (the national council) was assembled. But 
 Jacopo de Nerli met him at the entrance and gave an imperi- 
 ous wave of his hand in dismissal, in the name of the people, 
 and summarily shut the door of the palace in the Medici's 
 face. 
 
 The bell of the Signoria then began to ring, and the whole 
 populace of the city rushed to the piazza. 
 
76 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 Now a new message flung out to the populace added fuel 
 to the flames. Francesco Valori, the tall commanding 
 figure among the five who were sent by Lorenzo on the em- 
 bassy to the solitary seer of San Marco, and there as he stood 
 boldly forth, yet speechless before the padre, received instead 
 of delivering a message that meant the spark of inspiration, 
 an enkindled zeal that should ever increasing, lead him always 
 in the fore front of the battle, there to risk all the apparent 
 safeguards in enfuried struggle, now appeared in the piazza, 
 covered with dust, having rode by forced stages from Pisa, 
 to reveal the full treachery of the Medici. 
 
 The populace were now fully roused by his message. 
 And raising the cry of "Abbasos le palle," (Down with the 
 balls), the rallying word of the Medici, they rushed to attack 
 their palace. 
 
 No power stayed the remorseless tide of popular 
 vengeance, until the Medici had been hurried from the city. 
 Then the clear voice of the prophet-monk sounded from the 
 heights of the great Duoma, calming and staying the hand 
 of vengeance, and preventing the horrors of massacre toward 
 the remaining followers of the Medici. 
 
 Fra Girolamo's counsels were seconded by the great Piero 
 Capponi, who caused the houses and the dark recesses 
 of the narrow streets to be stocked with munitions of war, 
 and prepared six thousand men to come forth at a moment's 
 notice. 
 
 Now when the advance guard of the French army entered 
 Florence, they were astonished at the grandeur of the palace 
 and cathedral. A chance happening showed the unknown 
 reserves of strength of the Italian city. A false rumor was 
 spread abroad that Piero de Medici was approaching, and 
 preparing to re-enter the city. Immediately, "The bells 
 sounded, the people crowded forth in multitudes clad in 
 armor and filled the piazza, the palaces were closed, the 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 77 
 
 towers were armed, fortifications began to arise. When the 
 mistake was discovered, instantly the former appearance of 
 calm was shown." 
 
 The palace of the Medici was prepared for the French 
 monarch, and all the first citizens of Florence stood in state 
 ready to receive him. Charles rode at the head of his splen- 
 did army; and at his side rode the Cardinal of San Pietro in 
 Vincoli. And upon a magnificent charger from Arabia, 
 touched with all the dazzling splendor as when the son of 
 the physician of Ferrara beheld him in that other procession 
 through the great via of Ferrara, rode the Duke Ercole, 
 
 The great army passed over the Ponte Vecchio, "in the 
 midst of floral decorations and to the sound of music, through 
 the piazza and so on to the cathedral, where they joined with 
 the Signoria in public prayer." 
 
 It was a scene touched with the wonder of worship, and 
 the rude barbaric clash of human power. The French 
 soldiery in a great mass, crushing through the temple aisles; 
 while their leaders, with the allied Princes shining like suns 
 in the glitter of armor and gold, lead the way toward the 
 altar of prayer. The first citizens of Florence crowded the 
 inner chapels, and in the centre upon the great pulpit of the 
 Duoma that commanded all, stood the prior of San Marco. 
 
 Calm and motionless, for an uncounted space of time, the 
 prophet stood thus, looking out upon the motley throng, 
 with their ill-concealed gleams of passion and struggle; then 
 his gaze swept to the group of leaders, the Princes of the 
 people. His look rested in pitying condescension upon the 
 face and misshapen form of Charles VIII., the ruler of the 
 French. He who might rise to vast heights of freedom and 
 truth in the deliverance of the people of God, yet who in the 
 crucial moment should fail. And then beyond, until in all 
 that crowded assembly he saw naught but the face of Ercole 
 of Ferrara, and the Duke with an answering glance beheld 
 
78 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 only Girolamo Savonarola, son of the physician of Ferrara, 
 who by a miraculous reach of power had attained to this 
 height of spiritual vision and strength. The one man in all 
 Italy whom Ercole knew by some magic of vision, had probed 
 to the heart of his wrong and cruelty, who beheld past the 
 seeming barrier of palace walls, the life that he had crushed 
 and darkened. The hush grew greater — denser until 
 trembling from the heart of the people came the un- 
 uttered petition — "One word?" 
 
 Now with the prophet's face directed toward the great 
 life of the people, as of the heart of longing of one man, came 
 the word. Clear and true its vibrant force rings throughout 
 the vast cathedral: "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord!" 
 
 It was a word that none but the prophet-monk on his 
 pinnacle of spiritual power could have dared to have 
 uttered, a word piercing the thin masks of pretended good, 
 a word breathed out to every potentate, every Prince of 
 Italy; and on till it reached the very heart of wrong, cloaked 
 under the forms of the church, even a Borgia entrenched 
 in the strong hold of the Vatican at Rome. 
 
 The words trailed out through the cathedral; and lingered 
 as though they were still living in spoken expression for a 
 long dream space; only the uplifted voice of the padre 
 leading in the Latin prayer, exiled them to the far silences — 
 there to become a glowing unit in the spirit of place. 
 
 There was now the word of benediction, and then the 
 clank of steel, as each armed man felt for his sword, the 
 martial tread on the pavement and the cry as the hosts 
 emerged into the great outer squares: "To the palace of 
 the Medici!" 
 
 The next day in the outer hall of the palace, the nego- 
 tiations between Charles and the ambassadors of Florence 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 79 
 
 began. The struggle was long and bitter. At first the 
 French monarch assumed the role of a conqueror with the 
 right to dictate his own terms to a defeated city. But the 
 representatives of the people stood strong, proudly resisting 
 his demands. 
 
 It was on the sixth day, the ambassadors gathered in the 
 great hall of the palace, and King Charles leaning against 
 a marble pillar, his hand resting upon a jeweled sword, in 
 in an attitude of defiance, that the king ordered the ulti- 
 matun to be read. The ambassadors again refused. Charles 
 in a passion of rage drawing his sword exclaimed, "Then we 
 will sound our trumpets!" 
 
 The proud spirit of the true Florentine, Piero Capponi, 
 now broke forth in reply, as he snatched the parchment 
 from the Secretary and tore it in pieces, exclaiming: "And 
 we will ring our bells!" 
 
 The courage of the strong man won the hour, and that 
 night in the softened glow of the great cathedral, the treaty 
 honorable to Florence was sworn. 
 
 It was in the aftermath of that hour, of confirmation, that 
 Charles desiring word with the man whose prophetic power 
 he vaguely felt, turned from the waiting attendants. There 
 in the softened light of the Altar-glow, the proud king 
 who boasted his right to the throne of the Romans through 
 the blood of Charlemagne and the padre whose spirit soared 
 above the world of his day knelt. 
 
 Vaguely the prophet pictured the onward course of the 
 armies of the French; of the leader who might be for all 
 ages styled the defender of the persecuted remnant of God's 
 people. His voice sank to a whisper now: " Listen there- 
 fore, to the voice of the servant of God. Go forth upon thy 
 way without delay. Do not cause the ruin of this city, and 
 excite against thee the wrath of the Lord. " 
 
 In the pause that followed, Fra Girolamo looking up toward 
 
80 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 the face of Charles in its blackness and deceit, as in that 
 great hour of prayer with the assembled hosts in the Duoma, 
 Duke Ercole of Ferrara seemed gazing down upon him, and 
 beckoning a little nearer toward the altar light, he produced 
 a roll of parchment, a secret order from Lorenzo to his son 
 Piero de Medici, that the beauty and the honor of one Maria, 
 child of the great house of Strozzi should be vindicated, that 
 through the hidden machinations of their power, the Duke 
 of Ferrara should be forced to right his wrong. It was a 
 writing found after the riot, when the palace of the Medici 
 had been sacked. The padre read the words now in the slow 
 measure of the chant; and lifted his voice as he finished until 
 its note seemed to pierce the very inner life of the Prince 
 "This last thou must fulfill, if thou wouldst not join the 
 accursed!" 
 
XIV 
 
 THE DREAM CITY 
 
 "Rose like an exaltation, with the sound 
 Of dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet, 
 
 "From the arched roof, pendant by subtle magic, many a row 
 
 Of starry lamps and blazing cressets fed 
 
 With naphtha, and asphaltus, yielded light as from the sky. " 
 
 IT was easy for the Florentines, under the stir of a 
 united impulse to throw off the yoke of the Medici, 
 but a very difficult problem to meet the demands of 
 the hour, the new conditions of life and government. 
 In the midst of the general excitement and discussion 
 two great divisions appeared among the people. They were 
 led by two eminent doctors in law, — Vespucci and Soderini. 
 Soderini advocated the aristocratic form of government 
 of Venice, with the great and smaller council. One a popular 
 assembly, the other a conservative body, that should decide 
 all questions that could not well be brought before the 
 public. While Vespucci urged the adoption of a purely 
 democratic form of government. 
 
 Now the people, when there was no man in their great 
 outer world in whose word they could rest, turned toward the 
 dark recesses of the Duoma, toward the pulpit throne for 
 help from the solitary soul who seemed to grasp as none 
 other the far ways of life. At first the answer came in the 
 
 81 
 
82 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 minor notes of compassion for the multitudes that were 
 destitute and in great suffering because of the pressure of 
 the hour. "This is the time," he cried out, "in which 
 words must give way to deeds, and vain ceremonies to true 
 sentiments. The Lord hath said: T was an hungered, and 
 ye gave me no meat. I was naked and ye clothed me 
 not.' " His hand reaching out as he spoke in a great out- 
 reach of compassion toward a veiled, kneeling woman near 
 the altar, who as she swayed to and fro in the anguish of 
 an unuttered grief, seemed the very expression of the need 
 and longing, the heart of the multitudes. Then he reached 
 forth toward the real lords of the people, the heads of the great 
 Guilds: "He never said. Ye build not a beautiful church 
 or a fine convent. He speaks only of works of charity. We 
 must begin in our work of renovation then with charity, 
 with devotion toward the suffering of earth. " 
 
 And then in the long hours of soul struggle, as the prophet 
 waited in the silence of the convent cell, for the word to give 
 to the listening throngs, there came through the dark, the 
 delicate tracery of a dream city, the shining domes and far 
 glistening spires of that which should be the outward form 
 of beauty, of the soul — the spirit of a state, when the Ideal 
 should triumph. It was on the third Sunday in Advent, 
 1494, that again clear and true came the voice of the vision. 
 Before had been the prophecy of the burning sword of 
 judgment, now the positive beauty and strength of the true 
 state. "The only government that can suit us, " he showed, 
 " is the government of the citizen, and that which is universal. 
 Woe to thee, O Florence, if thou makest to thyself a head, 
 a chief who can oppress and domineer over the rest! From 
 these heads arise all the evils that can ruin a city. And 
 therefore the first law which thou shouldst make will be this : 
 That no one must ever, for the future, be made head over 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 83 
 
 the city; otherwise thou wilt be cast down into the dust. 
 Those men who wish to elevate themselves above all others, 
 and who can not endure civil equality, are the worst of all, 
 they seek the ruin of their own souls and that of the people. 
 
 "O my people!" he cried out, "purify your hearts, give 
 heed to the common good, forget private interests; and if 
 you reform your city in this disposition it will be more glori- 
 ous than it has ever been before. " 
 
 Step by step this higher government was evolved in the 
 thought and expression of the prophet leader. Now in a 
 great convocation at which only men were present, he put 
 forth these four points embodying the principles of true 
 government : 
 
 I. "The fear of God and the restoration of good manners 
 and customs. 
 
 II. "The love of popular government and of the public 
 good, setting aside all private interests. 
 
 III. "A general amnesty, by which they should 
 absolve the friends of the past government from all faults, 
 remitting all fines, and showing indulgence towards those 
 who were indebted to the State. 
 
 IV. "To constitute a form of universal government, 
 which should comprehend all the citizens, to whom according 
 to the ancient ordinances of the city the government be- 
 longed. " 
 
 On, and on opened the way of vision and of power. It is 
 said that "Every step in the reconstruction of the edifice 
 of Florentine government was introduced by a sermon 
 from Savonarola, so that the history of the period can be 
 traced in his successive discoures. " 
 
 It was wonderful the flight of this solitary life, upwards 
 toward the far ways of vision and of power; and outward in 
 expression and meaning toward the heart of the people. 
 
84 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 Majestic the rearing of the ghstening campanile of the dream 
 city. 
 
 Yet none could see with the clear vision of the prophet; 
 and all could not follow toward the far ways of expression. 
 The outward forms of the vision, the ideal, in their delicate 
 tracery of mist and light, their outreach through the shimmer- 
 ing beauty of the heavens, were yet shadowy and prophetic. 
 The full fulfillment of the prophet's word, waited for the 
 unfolding years. 
 
 The first outreach of the prophet statesman, as in this 
 troublous hour, his voice rang clear from the Duoma, had 
 been toward the heart of the poor and the needy. Now when 
 the constitution of the state stood in its seeming completion, 
 he proposed the formation of a Monte di Pieta or Compas- 
 sionate Bank, where money might be loaned to the poor of 
 the city. 
 
 In 1495, a general decree of mercy was extended to all 
 the great conflicting parties, that had been driven hither and 
 thither by the various decrees of exile. One example shines 
 out: "Considering that Messer Dante Alighieri, great- 
 grandson of Dante the poet, is unable to enter the city in 
 consequence of not having been able to pay the tax imposed 
 by the magistrates of last November and December and 
 judging it well to show some gratitude to the descendant of 
 that poet who was so great an ornament to this city, they 
 decree that the said Messer Dante shall consider himself 
 to be, and shall, be free from every restriction or hindrance 
 whatever. " 
 
 Two great monuments stand forth of this hour of the new 
 birth of the Republic; of the far outreach of the vision over 
 the heart-life of Florence. The erection of Donatello's 
 great statue of Judith slaying Holof ernes; and the comple- 
 tion of the Sala del Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred), 
 a chamber 170 feet in length and 15 in breadth, which was 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 85 
 
 adapted at the word of Savonarola, from a portion of the 
 Palazzo Vecchio left unfinished by the Duke of Athens, 
 for the accomodation of the great council. Here centuries 
 later, the first Parliament of United Italy, was held under 
 King Victor Emanuel; thus blending the dream of a prophet 
 with the struggle of his people through the dark years. 
 
XV 
 
 THE BURNING OF THE VANITIES 
 
 "By the promise of noon's blue splendor in the dawn's 
 
 first silvery gleam 
 By the song of the sea that compelleth the path of the rock 
 
 cleaving stream, 
 I summon thee, recreant dreamer, to rise and follow thy 
 
 dream. 
 
 At the inmost core of thy being I am a burning fire 
 
 From thine own altar-flame kindled, in the hour when souls 
 
 aspire. 
 For know that men's prayers shall be answered, and guard 
 
 thy spirit's desire." 
 
 IT was just that hour in the calendar of the year, when 
 all Florence was wont to be given to the dances and 
 songs of the great Carnival. The force of the prophet's 
 truth and inward purity, and the vision of the far ways 
 of uplifted beauty, had been felt to the very center of Flor- 
 entine life; and even this Carnival season, when every 
 passion in the old days ran riot, was touched and subdued. 
 
 Yet the spirit of the past was strong, and the power of the 
 "Arabbiati," the band of young noblemen and courtiers who 
 demanded a return to the old days of lawless pleasure, and 
 of pitiless exactions from the people, a force. 
 
 86 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 87 
 
 Now to Savonarola came the consciousness that if he could 
 gather the children in bands, and slowly open to them the 
 ways toward the beauty and joy that hovered far above the 
 glitter and glow that masked the coarseness and greed of the 
 Carnival days, that the heart of the city might yet be purged 
 from the wrong. And then in the days of the Medici, had 
 not the boys of the city ran mad in the tumult, and with 
 clubs and stones committed the gravest offences. 
 
 With wondrous force to the prophet came the word: "A 
 little child shall lead them;" might not the children touched 
 and illumined by the vision, lead the men and women toward 
 the light. His thought was soon expressed, and gathering 
 the children in the convent chapel after hours of teaching, 
 all arrayed in white, they were sent on a pilgrimage through 
 the viae of Florence, pausing at the door of villa or palace, 
 asking for the vanita, for the gold and silver or picture that 
 masked evil. 
 
 All through the long days of the Carnival season, this work 
 of love proceeded, until when the great day appeared, the 
 day for the burning of the vanita, the people were stirred as 
 on the celebration of some great festival. 
 
 In the early morning of that day, Fra Girolamo Savonarola, 
 stood in the dim glow of the altar-light, administering the 
 sacrament to the multitudes of men and women. 
 
 On the outer edge of the throng, stood the tall figure of 
 a man gowned in the garb of a wandering artist. He did 
 not move, apparently unlistening. As the padre paused and 
 looked out over the people, he seemed to see but this one face, 
 silhouetted against the dark of the portals. Something i'< the 
 trace of a night of struggle from the bounds of self toward the 
 Ideal — the mute appeal shadowed forth upon the artist's 
 face — rose above the eager touch of the multitudes 
 
 The picture shone clear to the padre again, of that other 
 morning in the cathedral, when the artist held the face of 
 the Madonna before his strained vision. 
 
88 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 But the touch of the multitudes was near now, and 
 when a pause came again, the dark face against the portals 
 had vanished. 
 
 Now the multitudes gather again, forming a solemn pro- 
 cession. Burlamacchi pictures that scene: "In the procession 
 the boys carried a bambino, full of splendor, which gave the 
 benediction with the right hand, and with the left held out 
 the crown of thorns, the nails and the cross ; it was of stupen- 
 dous beauty, being the work of that most rare sculptor Dona- 
 tello. This was supported by four most beautiful angels 
 upon a portable altar, very rich and wonderfully adorned, 
 and over it a most beautiful baldacchino was supported by 
 twelve children. Around these were other children, who 
 sang psalms and hymns with sweetest melody. Before went 
 the other children, walking two and two in order. Behind 
 came the guardians with their officials, men who bore silver 
 vessels to receive alms for the poor of St. Martin's who 
 received more in that day than they ordinarily did in a 
 whole year. Behind these came the men with small red 
 crosses in their hands. Last of all came the girls and the 
 other women." 
 
 They traversed the narrow streets, taking their way first 
 to the Duoma, where was held a service of praise, then to 
 the piazza where the great work of the day was to be 
 consummated. 
 
 "A huge bonfire had been erected in the centre of the 
 square in the shape of an eight-sided pyramid, which rose 
 to the height of thirty braccia, or sixty feet, and measured 
 at its base one hundred and twenty braccia or two hundred 
 and forty feet. Each side had fifteen steps, upon which were 
 deposited all the vanita collected during the Carnival; and 
 a huge image surmounted the pyramid, which was filled with 
 inflamable material." 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 89 
 
 The piazza was thronged. The children were grouped 
 on the Ringhiera and under the Loggia de Lanzi, and above 
 the turmoil in the square their voices were heard singing 
 Psalms. 
 
 Now a signal is given, and the four guardians step forward 
 to set fire to the four corners of the pyramid. Just at this 
 moment a man, rushing breathlessly forward, having trav- 
 versed the long city via toward the great piazza, raises his 
 hand in a gesture of authority for the guardians to wait one 
 moment before the torch is applied. Then he raises high 
 above the people his vanita. 
 
 The multitudes stand speechless for an instant, for it 
 is the first artist of Florence casting his work into the flames. 
 Some even step forward as if they would deter him, but he 
 motions them away, with a sweep of his proud hand, and 
 throwing the work into the centre of the pyre, he waves 
 the guardians to proceed. Then reaching toward the Loggia 
 de Lougi, where Fra Girolamo Savonarola stood a minis- 
 tering spirit over all, he rends his robe and casting himself 
 at the padre's feet murmurs: "Padre mio, it is finished! I 
 have destroyed all the old vanita of the empty years ! " 
 
 At that moment as if in answer to the voice of the man, 
 "The smoke and flames leapt up into the air and the trump- 
 eters of the Signoria blew a blast, the bells of the Palazzo 
 rang out, " and the multitudes gave vent to the suppressed 
 shout of rejoicing. 
 
 And against the fire-glow the face of the Prophet of Flor- 
 ence; and the wandering artist — the man who had struggled 
 through the dark toward the seer's place of vision — shone as 
 if transfigured. 
 
XVI 
 
 THE TRIAL BY FIRE 
 
 SLOWLY the way was being prepared toward the 
 place of supreme devotion. The clash of opposing 
 parties raged around; while in the dim vistas of vision 
 shone the word: "Greater love hath no man than 
 this, that a man lay down his life for his friend," for the 
 truth, for God. 
 
 The vision of the Cross, had glimmered before the prophet 
 in those days when all Florence listened to catch the least 
 sound of his voice and now as it grew nearer, and nearer, 
 there was no hesitancy or fear. 
 
 Alexander VI, the infamous Borgia in the Vatican at Rome, 
 had stretched forth the utmost power of excummunication 
 against the prophet of Florence, against the purest life in 
 all Christendom. And the Signoria forbade him for a time, 
 to minister as of old in the great Duoma. Yet the soul of 
 the solitary man of God rose triumphant over all. 
 
 And it was in this hour, amid the tumult and agitation, 
 that Savonarola was preparing the "Trionfo della Croce, " 
 one of the first great works giving the accord of the Gospel 
 of the Christ with the reason of man, " showing that while 
 it is above reason it is not contrary to it. " 
 
 Now a chance happening brought quickly forward the 
 hour of suffering. Fra Domenico Buonivicenti, Savonarola's 
 devoted disciple and brother in the convent, was preaching 
 and teaching at Prato, when a certain Fra Francesco di 
 
 90 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 91 
 
 Puglia, a Franciscan who was preaching in the same town, 
 violently attacked the prior of San Marco. Domenico with 
 his warm nature all ablaze with zeal, made an immediate 
 defense of his prior. This led to other hot words, until 
 Francesco declared that he was ready to undergo an ordeal 
 by fire with his opponent, to show the world the justness of 
 his attack upon the great teacher of Florence. Era Domeni- 
 co quickly accepted his challenge and a day was set, but the 
 Francescan managed to evade, by pleading that he must 
 depart elsewhere upon important business. 
 
 This incident would have been forgotten but in the Lent 
 of 1498, the same Francescan at Santa Croce, again attacked 
 the prior of San Marco, declaring that he was a heretic, a 
 schismatic, and a false prophet. And now challenging the 
 great padre himself to the ordeal. Era Domenico's brave 
 voice was again heard, declaring that he himself should be 
 allowed to take the challenge, as it was a controversy between 
 he and the Francescan and not with his prior. The enemies 
 of the prophet-monk now caught at what seemed the great 
 opportunity of forever silencing the mighty voice that had 
 been raised against them. Savonarola himself must be made 
 to undergo the ordeal. They whispered; "If Savonarola 
 ventures to enter the fire, he will be burned. If he refuses 
 his credit with the populace will be gone forever." 
 
 The shadows deepened, until an actual order from the 
 Signoria declared that the event must be enacted. The 
 prior of San Marco, must show the truth of his great utter- 
 ances. Though it was not clear in Girolamo Savonarola's 
 mind that this was the hour in which God would show a 
 miracle, he could not hesitate when a great ordeal of faith 
 seemed to arise. 
 
 The morning of the Sixth of April, the day chosen by the 
 Signoria slowly dawned. "The place appointed for the 
 
92 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 ordeal was a platform about eighty feet in length, ten in 
 breadth, and three in height, which extended from the Tetto 
 di Pisono, on the western side of the piazza, to the Marzocco, 
 the marble lion, which stands in front of thePalazzaVecchio. 
 The platform was covered with earth and bricks, and was 
 piled up with wood and other more combustible materials, 
 leaving a passage in the middle, four feet in width, for the 
 two men to walk in. It was arranged that it should be light- 
 ed at one end, that they should enter at the other, and that 
 then the pile should be lighted behind them. " 
 
 In the early morning, just as the sun rose over the northern 
 hills, the chimes called the brethren of San Marco to prayer. 
 They obeyed the call, their faces aglow with triumph, which 
 came from the hope of certain victory. 
 
 Yet to the great leader as he stood in the dim shadows of 
 the altar, it was an awful moment opening toward vast 
 mystic ways of suffering and sorrow. " I know not, " he said, 
 his voice rising above the hush of prayer, down the silences 
 of the aisles, *'That the ordeal will take place, because this 
 matter does not depend upon us; but I am able to tell you 
 that, if we come to the event, the victory will certainly be 
 ours. O Lord, we have no need of these miraculous proofs 
 in order to believe in the truth; but we have been challenged, 
 and we could not refuse to defend Thine honor! We go to 
 do battle for Thee, — O Lord this people wishes only to serve 
 Thee !" Then with one great outreach toward the listening 
 ones he pleaded; "My people, are you willing to serve God?" 
 Every voice answered, "Yes!" 
 
 In a lower voice the padre besought the kneeling women 
 to continue in devotion until they returned from the place 
 of trial. In the shadowed recesses of the 'chapel they knelt, 
 their faces uplifted in the supreme devotion of unuttered 
 prayer. 
 
 Savonarola's party formed their procession in the piazza 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 93 
 
 of San Marco "First came the acolytes, and after them the 
 friars; last of these Fra Domenico, attired in a red vestment 
 with a crucifix in his hand, a deacon and a sub-deacon walk- 
 ing on either side of him. Last of all came Savonarola, in a 
 white cope, bearing in his hand a silver reliquary which con- 
 tained the blessed Sacrament; on one side of him Fra Frances- 
 co Salviati, on the other Fra Malatesta Sacramoro, also 
 wearing copes. Behind them came a great multitude of 
 men and women, carrying lighted tapers in their hands. 
 The singers led off, in a loud voice, the 68th Psalm : * Exurgat 
 Deus, et dissipentur inimici Ejus'! 
 
 The great Loggia de Lanzi had been arranged for the 
 ordeal; the Dominicans to occupy the western part; the 
 Francescans the eastern. But though the great body of the 
 Francescans were there when the party of San Marco 
 marched in to the thunder of their Psalm, Fra Guiliano 
 Rondinelli the champion of the Francescans who it had 
 finally been arranged should enter the fire with Fra Domenico 
 Buonivicini of the Dominicans was not there. He was 
 somewhere in the palazzo in consultation with the Signoria. 
 
 Now the enemy began to invent every excuse to delay. 
 They said that the red vestment worn by Era Domenico 
 had been enchanted by Savonarola; when that was removed 
 they objected to his habit, and when that was exchanged with 
 one of the brethren of San Marco, they objected to his 
 standing beside the great padre, he might enchant the other 
 garment; and they continued in this way until the day began 
 to wear away; and the populace restless for the beginning of 
 the Sperimento, cried out in unreasoning passion that the 
 party of San Marco should ascend the platform alone. 
 
 The Signoria had caused to be placed a guard of soldiers 
 upon the piazza, to prevent a riot, yet each party had their 
 own armed adherents. Dolfo Spini was there with five 
 hundred men under Marcuccio Salviati. 
 
94 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 The Arrabbiati had planned in case of tumult to rush 
 forward and kill Savonarola at once, now they believed was 
 there opportunity and they began to advance; but Marcuccio 
 Salviati, in a quick glance seeing all, keeping his men in their 
 place in front of the Loggia, made a line on the ground with 
 his sword, and shouted, "Whoever passes this line shall know 
 the strength of the arms of Marcuccio Salviati!" and the 
 treacherous men dared not come nearer. 
 
 Now a heavy thunder-storm broke over the scene, but the 
 people unmovable in their purpose to behold the great ordeal 
 would not depart. There was another dispute over Fra 
 Domenico carrying a crucifix and at last a final disagreement 
 upon the sacrament being carried within the flames. 
 
 The Francescans now had the excuse they had wished for, 
 to refuse to actually undergo the test. And in the midst of 
 the conflict, the Signoria sent their final command that the 
 ordeal should not be enacted. The people were enraged, 
 had they not waited through the long hours, waited through 
 the blindening storm, for the word and life of the prophet of 
 Florence to be put to the final test for the fiery vision of the 
 miracle. 
 
 At this moment, Salviati, the brave soldier disciple, rushed 
 forward, forming a crescent (luna) of his men and crying out, 
 '* Padre follow me, for I will defend you as long as my life 
 shaUlast!" And so guarded the padre and the Dominican 
 brothers, as they trod the dark way back to the convent of 
 San Marco. 
 
 There the padre groped alone down the terraced walk to 
 the chapel, where the women were still kneeling in prayer, 
 and slowly repeated to the dim silences more than to the 
 kneeling ones, all the struggle and longing of the day of 
 Trial. 
 
 When one arose from her place nearest the altar, and cast- 
 ing herself at his feet, waited until his voice had trailed away 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 95 
 
 into the majestic stillness, then spoke answering the un- 
 uttered cry of his life. 
 
 "Padre, I have fulfilled all, followed the French legate to 
 where he placed a paper, in the hand of Ercole de Este. 
 Yes even Duke Ercole the son of the hated daughter of the 
 Medici! Beheld it all from a covert as they stood in the 
 dusk of the palace garden! Beheld the Duke's face as it 
 grew darker than the approaching night!" Her voice sank 
 to a low, deep note as if the pent-up longing of her life 
 struggled for expression; "O Padre, it was good to see that 
 darkness, to know that the Avenger had touched the house 
 of Este, and to see the look of dark when Ercole de Este 
 knew that his villainy was unmasked!" 
 
 The approach of the brethren through the portals at that 
 moment, silenced the woman's voice. And the prophet 
 turned to his sohtary cell, crushed with that supreme weari- 
 ness when all the minor notes of life are forgotten. From 
 below came the wild surge of the disappointed mob that 
 filled the piazza of San Marco, with no uncertain note in 
 their low dirge of madness, but he heard them not. 
 
 Even Florence was forgotten, and afar through the im- 
 penetrable mountain walls, floated the shimmering mirage of 
 a dream, from the banks of the river Po, upward toward the 
 glittering campanile of the palace of Ferrara. And the face 
 of a girl was one with the hovering mist- ways. Once more 
 the far-off chimes sounded the notes of beauty of truth — of 
 supreme faith that they were to whisper forth to a world. 
 
XVII 
 
 THE OPENING PORTALS 
 
 "And when the imprisoning years 
 
 Shall fetter me no more, 
 
 Than open wide thy door, 
 
 O heart! the secret door of unshed tears!" 
 
 THE shadows of earth were deepening, hour after 
 hour the storm grew in momentum, until it be- 
 came one mad whirlwind of passionate fury 
 against the prophet-monk who had so long led 
 from his high pinnacle of vision the spiritual longing of a 
 great city. 
 
 It was on the evening of the next day that the cry was 
 raised; "To San Marco! and with fire!" and caught up in 
 every quarter of the city. It was one of those hours when 
 the Demon of Hate seems to enter into the very heart of a 
 people, and to lead them on toward the utter dark. 
 
 Gathering in the great piazza, the mob rushes furiously 
 through the narrow streets, two of the known followers of 
 the padre, alone in the way, meet the first touch of madness 
 with instant death. Now they crowd into the narrow clois- 
 tered enclosure of the convent. The assault is begun with a 
 great shower of stones poured into the chapel where a little 
 company are still at prayer. 
 
 Without the knowledge of the prior, some who had beheld 
 the gathering storm, had stored a quantity of arms in the 
 recesses of the convent. Now a few prepared for a defense. 
 
 96 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 97 
 
 Soon "Fra Benedetto, with a helmet on his head and a breast- 
 plate over his Dominican habit was rallying his forces; and 
 shouts of Viva Cristo! were heard mingling with the noise 
 of armor, disturbing the quiet of those cloisters so long the 
 abode of silence, prayer and meditation. " 
 
 The prior with Fra Domenico attempted to appease the 
 tumult, to persuade the brethren to lay down their arms, 
 but in vain. Then the prior putting a cope over his robe, and 
 with a crucifix in his hand purposed to go forth and give 
 himself to the mob, but for a time was held back by the 
 pleadings of his friends. Now he took the Sacrament in his 
 hands, and asking the brethren to follow, went in procession 
 around the cloristers, thence to the altar choir. There with 
 a voice that swept in its outreach of faith far beyond the 
 surgings of the mob, he whispered, "Oh, my children, prayer 
 is our only weapon!" and all answered with the song prayer, 
 "Salvium fac populum Teum, Domini," (Save thy people O 
 Lord!)" 
 
 The assault deepened, fire being apphed to burn down the 
 doors. And Francesco Valori, he who had ever been the 
 Simon Peter of the prophet's cause, now in his great zeal 
 ventured out into the streets to get help and was slain at 
 his own door, by some of the Tornabuoni and the Ridolfi, who 
 had long held a feud with him. At this crises the treacherous 
 Signoria demanded that the prior give himseK up to them to 
 answer the false charges of his enemies. And though there 
 were still strong hopes of defense, the great leader could be 
 restrained no longer from the sacrifice: "Ought not the 
 shepherd to lay downi his life for the sheep?" he murmured, 
 and gathering his brethren roimd he gave his last word to 
 them: 
 
 "My children, before God with the enemy already in the 
 convent, I confirm to you my doctrine. That which I have 
 spoken I have received from God, and He is my witness in 
 
98 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 heaven that I do not lie. I did not know that the whole city 
 was to turn against me; but the will of the Lord be done. 
 My last counsel is this : let faith, patience, and prayers be 
 your arms. I leave you with anguish and grief, to put my- 
 self into the hands of my enemies. I know not whether they 
 will take away my life; but I am certain that if I must die, 
 I shall be able to aid you in heaven more than I have been 
 able to do on earth. Be comforted, embrace the cross, and 
 with that you will find the harbor of safety." 
 
 Now as the prior paused for a moment, in the attitude of 
 prayer, in the library of the convent, one approached, his 
 face disfigured beyond recognition by the blood from an 
 undressed wound, one arm hanging limp at his side, and 
 kneeling down pleaded that even now, he might be received 
 into the Brotherhood. Something in the pleading note of 
 his voice, and the uplifted gesture of one strong arm, revealed 
 to the prior the lonely artist in the far mountain fastnesses. 
 He who had struggled through the long days toward the face 
 of the Ideal; he who had reached the great hour of devotion, 
 as he stood by the padre's side, when the smoke of the Vanita 
 ascended to the Heavens. 
 
 "Padre," the artist whispered now; "It is realized, the 
 picture in its beauty, its divine harmony glows just before 
 me — ^perfected if only I can work here in this place of prayer — 
 — of vision!" 
 
 The prior only answers with his benediction, his prayer 
 out over the far longing of a life, then with the brave Fra 
 Domenico, goes forth into the midst of the mob, who with 
 curses and shouts of derision hurry them through the night 
 toward the Palazza. Where they are brought before the 
 magistrates of the city, the Gonfaloniere, and after a mock 
 show of justice committed to cells in the prison house. 
 
 Then on the next day and the next, came the trial of cruel 
 mockery and scourgings. There was the torture of the 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 99 
 
 Medieval court, and the unjust disquisitions, all to bring 
 him to deny his vision and his life. 
 
 The tenth of May came, the day the Monna Ghita, had 
 whispered, that she could bring the sure word from the palace 
 prison of Ferrara. Through the long hours Girolamo Savon- 
 arola had watched from the narrow casement of the cell, 
 unheeding all else, the way down the long white corridors. 
 Yet no word, Charles of France, had expired in his great 
 palace, the very day of the Ordeal by Fire; and Savonarola 
 felt by all the deep intuition of sympathy, the unity of suffer- 
 ing, that without a word today, it meant the outer darkness 
 for the earth — life of Maria the child of the Strozzi. 
 
 The morning found the padre, crouched in a corner of the 
 cell, in a low stupor of despair, when they called again to 
 the judgment chamber and to torture. 
 
 And now at the touch of the torture, the rope around him 
 again, by which he was drawn with great violence to the 
 ceiling, and there suspended, there came no other thought 
 but that of Maria, the fairest child of all Ferrara — of her 
 alone in the dark of the living tomb of the palace prison. 
 
 And when the mocking tones of the enemy asked again 
 of his prophecies whether they were of God or of man, the 
 voice of the strong man wavered, the vision seemed blurred 
 and marred in the vast unknown spaces of life. And this 
 wavering tone was put down by the prevaricator, the hired 
 scribe, Cecconi, as denial of his great life-mission. 
 
 It was on the thirteenth day of the trial, between the 
 night and the breaking of the dawn, that a woman might 
 have been seen, creeping along the via near the portals of 
 the prison. She paused a moment to view the accesses to 
 the formidable place, then drawing from her bosom a bag of 
 gold, counted over the glittering coins, as if they were the 
 beads of a rosary prayer; "Yes gold," she muttered to her- 
 
100 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 self, "It can buy all, it can pave the way to any hidden 
 chamber! was it not through it, that I reached past the 
 guard of a palace, to my child? My child, the greatest 
 Duke of Ferrara, " she repeated the words over and over, 
 as if the sound were comforting; "the boy that they, the 
 house of Medici, had robbed me of, — ^yes to where he lay 
 dying. " 
 
 The woman put her hand to her heart, as if to keep back 
 the great surge of feeling, that she might reach forward 
 toward this great service toward a life that had been crushed 
 and darkened by the same dread power. Then a quick step 
 through an unbarred portal, the glimmer of gold as her hand 
 passed to the outstretched palm of the porter. The stealthy 
 stride through the long corridors — the clink of the cell door, 
 and the kneeling figure of the woman before the couch, where 
 the prisoner lay in the dim light of the dawn. 
 
 A gleam touched the face of the padre, when he recognized 
 the woman of Ferrara, and he sprang up, eagerly grasping 
 for the message. 
 
 "Padre," she said slowly, "Maria de Strozzi the fairest of 
 Ferrara is free — ^forever free from the bondage of the House 
 of Este and the Medici! The order of Charles of France, 
 was fulfilled. But the legate with the direct command, was 
 detained in the mountain fastnesses coming toward Ferrara. 
 Yet he must have reached the palace before the death of his 
 master. " 
 
 In the next hour of that day, the summons came again 
 to the judgment hall and to torture, but now the touch of 
 the utmost torture could not move Era Girolamo Savonarola, 
 the machinations and cross questions of the perjured jurists 
 cause him to waver, nor all the craft of Ceccone the scribe, 
 to subscribe one word of weakness. And as the throng of 
 dark-browed men turned toward him they caught a vision 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 101 
 
 that they had never beheld upon the face of mortal man 
 before — the triumphant light of fulfillment. 
 
 It was on the twenty-second day of May, 1498, that Fra 
 Girolamo Savonarola, prior of San Marco, was condemned 
 to die, by the supreme Tribunal of Florence, the Gonfaloniere 
 and the Eight. On the morning of the twenty-third, the 
 Vigil of the Ascension, the prior with his two faithful Domini- 
 can brothers, Fra Domenico and Fra Salvestro, were led 
 forth to meet death upon scaffolds erected on the western 
 side of the great piazza, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. 
 The same spot that had had been chosen for the Ordeal by 
 Fire. As the prophet-monk stood upon the scaffold, tower- 
 ing again in his great spiritual vision and power above the 
 multitudes, below stretched the valley of the Arno, and 
 beyond in gleaming distances the snow crowned mountain 
 heights. There was a whispered prayer over Florence, as 
 the vision of the dying man swept over the uncounted multi- 
 tudes. Florence that he had loved, toward whose deep 
 heart-life he had spoken the voice of the Divine. Then be- 
 yond, past barriers of life, to where on the banks of a river, 
 a boy and girl had stood together, weaving from the hovering 
 mist-ways, a dream of truth and beauty towards a world. 
 And above toward the unknown worlds of light and glory 
 where the face of the vision lingered. 
 
 For the fairest child of Ferrara, was indeed free from every 
 shadow of earth. The night of the Tenth, the Duke of 
 Ferrara to escape the mandate of the dead king, and to hide 
 his wrong and shame, had caused her to be slain by the hand 
 of an assassin in a secret chamber of the palace. 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 THE villa of the Savonarola in the Via del Bardo, 
 of Ferrara, was shrouded in darkness, as the Mon- 
 na Ghita stole through the halls toward the 
 shadowed place where the mother of the martyred 
 Prophet of Florence knelt alone. There was no word as 
 Ghita, touched haK reverently the silken gown of the 
 woman whom the world declared true and beautiful, and who 
 had known the unstained joy of love — of motherhood — of 
 life, — who now looked toward the utter dark. 
 
 Then as a low, hoarse sob of grief broke the silences, the 
 unknown woman whispered, "Madonna do not weep, for 
 the glory of the Heavens was over your child, — the bitterness 
 of death had departed, and there was only the joy of the 
 Eternal in that last hour. 
 
 "Listen — " then through the hush, she repeated the way 
 that had led into the inner sanctum of the life of the great 
 prophet-monk, murmering; "If you could have seen the 
 joy, when he knew her free from the shadow of darkness — 
 beheld the joy that only deepened on the face of the martyr. " 
 Now again and again she whispered that word of the 
 prophet through the calms of the great Duoma; "Find the 
 far meaning of sorrow, in love, in deeds of charity toward 
 others. " The message now not alone to the forsaken Monna 
 Ghita but to the weeping mother of a prophet. 
 
 Again the mystic mist-ways were hovering over Ferrara, 
 as through the Via del Bardo the Madonna Elena Savonarola, 
 
 102 
 
THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 103 
 
 and Monna Ghita passed, their hands laden with fruit and 
 cakes for the sick and the forsaken in the dark viae of 
 the city. 
 
 As the day deepened, and the noon day sun shone upon 
 the face of the mother of Era Girolamo Savonarola, Duke 
 Ercole de Este, with a troop of soldiers pressing along the 
 narrow via, drew his charger back in sudden terror; "Piero, 
 it must be some heavenly visitant! Some Madonna of the 
 skies! Sent, — " Only the darkness of his own soul heard 
 that final word. 
 
 In the year that followed the night of turmoil in the con- 
 vent. Era Bartolommeo the artist, painted only a fresco 
 for the cemetery of Santa Maria Nuovo, and the portrait 
 known as "The Prophet of God." There followed months 
 of darkness when he could not whisper a thought of beauty, 
 until he found peace in the cloisters of San Marco. There 
 the clear vision came, that he had reached out toward through 
 the far mountain ways; and he gave to the world the "Vision 
 of the Madonna to St. Bernard," for a chapel in the Badia. 
 The great works for the Cathedral in Lucca, and the paintings 
 that are now shown in the galleries of Florence. But to 
 those who had followed through the shadows, the greatest 
 expression was the rapt face of a Madonna, uphfted toward 
 a mist of cloud, painted on the outer wall of the place 
 of prayer where Era Girolamo Savonarola had lived and suff- 
 ered. 
 
 Marchese has given the word — "On the walls of San 
 Marco, the observer may see the revival of the Florentine 
 school of painting in its best days in the works of two artists 
 only Era Bartolommeo Angelico, and Era Bartolommeo — 
 the one the painter of the Ideal, the other of Form. The 
 first embraces and closes the old school of Tuscany. * * * 
 The second represents and expresses the modern school. 
 
104 THE PROPHET OF FLORENCE 
 
 and in him we may see Masaccio, Lorenzo de Credi, Andrea 
 del Sarto, Buonarrotti. * * * Great men both, noble 
 ornaments of the retreat they adorr^d and almost conse- 
 crated by their genius and virtues. " 
 
 107 89 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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