# Girolamo Savonarola



## VirginiaHuguenot (May 23, 2005)

Girolamo Savonarola, Italian (pre-Reformation) Reformer, was born on September 21, 1452 and died on May 23, 1498. He was burned at the stake for advocating ecclesiastical and civil reform. 

More on his life here.


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## rmwilliamsjr (May 23, 2005)

i taught a Sunday School class on Savonarola my notes are:
http://www.dakotacom.net/~rmwillia/savonarola.html

from those notes:


> Introduction:
> 
> I have had a hard time while studying Savonarola and trying to find things that are admirable and to be taken as an example. It is not that his message is wrong, but rather his techniques of accomplishing his vision are so contaminated by its use of political means and force as to be confusing at best. A preacher has only God's words and persuasion to accomplish internal change in his congregation, but Savonarola aligned himself early with a political faction that used young children as shock troops (for instance). Both this politicalness and his fundamental Roman Catholicism make him a less than heroic example for Protestants. But how do i present this? The issues of the separation of the institutional church and the state government are several hundred years in the future, to judge him but our standards is simply misguided. Additionally, despite many similiarities between those times and ours, much is very different and i am cautious of trying to draw too strong parallels to build a case for his anti-materialism. However this big issue of materialism and the analogy of Florence to America is still perhaps the best point of contact and the right place to begin our brief study, with the bonfire of the vanities being the main illustrative event. So start by putting these flaming trees into context.
> 
> ...


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## VirginiaHuguenot (May 28, 2005)

Here is a summation of Savonarola in Theodore Beza's _Icones_ (1580, trans. 1909):



> Thus died Girolamo Savonarola, in only the forty-fifth year of his age, at ten on the morning of May 23, 1498. A quarter of a century later Luther, republishing a _Meditation_ of the great Florentine, declared him to be a precursor of the Protestant doctrine and a martyr of the Reformation. That may be too strong a statement to make regarding one who to the day of his death remained faithful to the dogmas of the Church of Rome and avowed belief in Papal supremacy. But no one can study the career and the writings of the patriot monk of Florence, and not be ready to endorse the estimate of his countryman and biographer, Professor Villari, as expressed in these words: 'To his faith in virtue -- virtue sanctified by religion and sanctifying freedom -- he dedicated his whole life and he died in its cause. Superstitions, blunders, hallucinations, and weaknesses notwithstanding, he stands out from the Italian Renaissance, of which he is an essential part, in heroic proportions, and irradiated with the halo of martyrdom. And so long as men have faith in virture, so long will their admiration for him endure.'


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