haughty King of France obeyed the words of the preaching friar.

Piero had fled, Charles had retired,

will in Italy. And he shrank not from the task. He longed to seeChrist's kingdom established in the

earth a kingdom of truth and righteousness, with God as its su preme ruler and law-giver.

A Great Council, a Council of eighty, and a Court of eight magistrates were therefore appointed to administer the affairs of the city, on the model of the ancient Republic of Venice. Taxation was equalized, and a right of appeal secured to the Great Council of the people. Yet the prior of San Marco sought no personal power. "He was never to be seen in the meetings in the Piazza," writes his contemporary, Vellari, "nor at the sittings of the Signoria; but he became the very soul of the whole people, and the chief author of all the laws by which the new Government was constituted." From his bare and solitary cell his imperial spirit ruled the souls of men by the right divine of truth and righteousness.

"The authority of Savonarola," writes an unfriendly critic,* "was now at its highest. Instead of a republic, Florence assumed the appearance of a theocracy, of which Savonarola was the prophet, the legislator, and the judge." A coin of this period is still extant, bearing a cross and the legend, JESUS CHRIS TUM REX NOSTER-Jesus Christ, our King; and over the portal of the civic palace was placed the inscription, JESUS CHRISTUS REX FLORENTINI POPULI.

The great object of Savonarola was the establishment of Christ's kingdom in the earth. and the bringing into conformity thereto of all the institutions of this world. He began with his own convent of San Marco, putting away all luxuries of food, clothing, costly eeclesiastical furniture, and vestments. He enforced secular diligence among the monks, and assigned to the more gifted regular preaching duties. Hebrew, Greek, and the Oriental languages were seduloosly taught and San Marco became a famo78

• Roscoe, Life of Len X.

school of the prophets and propaganda of the Christian faith in foreign parts. Yet the prior's rule. was not stern, but kindly and gentle. He carefully cultivated the hearts and intellect of the youthful novices, and sought the inspiration and refreshment of their company. With a true philosophy he used to say, "If you wish me to preach well, allow me time to talk to my young people, for God often speaks. by these innocent youths, as by pure vessels full of the Holy Ghost."

The moral reformation of the people was the great object of Savonarola's preaching and prayer. And seldom, if ever, has such a general reformation ensued. A pernicious carnival custom of long standing was an obstacle to the completeness of this reform. The youths of the city had been wont, in masquerade costumes, to levy contributions on the citizens to be spent in convivial excesses around great bonfires in the public squares. Savonarola sought to turn this enthusiasm into a pious channel. He organized the youths into companies, and, dressed in symbolic white and crowned with laurel, they sang soft Tuscan hymns and begged alms, not for themselves but for the poor.

64

A new sort of bonfire, too, was substituted for those of previous carnivals-a bonfire of vanities." Troops of white-robed and impulsive young inquisitors, therefore, went from house to house asking for

vanities," whose proper place was the fire; and stopping the gally bedizened holiday-makers in the street. exhorted them, for their souls' health, to make a burnt werifce of the anathema GLseemly fineries upon their persons

The annals of the time repor many a seriseonie weene at thee mischief loving young Florentines sought out the abode 4 forlorn spinster or ansient dand and brought to light the 20 perfumes of rouge por

and masks and frippery with which they in vain attempted to conceal the ravages of age. The artist's studio gave up every picture that could raise a blush upon the cheek of innocence, and the vice-suggesting writings of Ovid, Boccaccio, and Pulci were heaped upon the growing pile. The heart of the city seemed moved by a common impulse to this moral purgation, as when at Ephesus, under the preaching of Paul fourteen centuries before, "many of them which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men."

In the great Piazza del Signoria, a pyramid of "vanities" was collected, sixty feet high and eighty yards in circuit. After morning communion, a vast procession wound from the Duomo to the Piazza. The white-robed children lined the square, and their pure, clear voices chanted the "lauds" and carols written for the day. Then the torch was applied; the flames leaped and writhed and revelled amid the things of folly and shame; and the trumpets blared, and the clangorous bells filled the air with peals of triumph and joy.

"Florence was like a city burning its idols, and with solemn ceremony vowing fidelity in all the future to the worship of the one true God. One more offering up of vanities' by fire took place in the following year. Then followed a burning of a different sort on the same spot, in which the person of Savonarola furnished food for the flame and excitement for the populace ; which burning ended the grand Florentine drama of the fifteenth century."

Already the clouds were gathering which were to shroud in a dire eclipse of woe the glories of that auspicious day. There were many in the once gay and luxurious Florence who were not in harmony with the high moral tone to which society was keyed. There were also secret agents and friends of the fugitive Medici. These combined against

the Frateschi, or followers of Savonarola, and chief supporters of the Republic. A conspiracy for the restoration of Piero was detected. Five of its leaders were tried and found guilty, and suffered the inevitable penalty, in that age, of high treason. Savonarola was averse to their execution, would have preferred their exile, but was overruled by what were deemed necessities of State.

Under the civil disturbances, trade languished and idleness and poverty prevailed. Then famine and pestilence followed-the mysterious and awful plague of the middle agesand the sick, the dying and the dead were in every street and square. Savonarola remained at his post, although the plague entered the monastery, and was himself the chief source of succour to the terrorstricken community.

But the chief enemy of the intrepid friar was that " Nero of the Papacy," the infamous Borgia, Alexander VI. The Pope sent first a flattering invitation to "his muchbeloved son, the most zealous of all the labourers in the Lord's vineyard," inviting him to Rome, in order to deprive Florence of his wise counsels. Savonarola respectfully declined the invitation, urging his broken health and the need of his services to the new Government. Then the tiger-claws which stroked so smoothly in their silken sheath were shown; and "Gerolamo Savonarola, a teacher of heritical doctrine," was summoned under heavy penalties to the presence of the Sovereign Pontiff. The prior of San Marco refused to leave his post; when the enraged Pope, dreading the power of his eloquence, prohibited his preaching.

For a time Savonarola yielded obedience, but the sweet constraint of the Gospel compelled him to proclaim its truths. "Without preaching," he exclaimed, "I cannot live." His Lenten sermons, as his voice

would only cease from "prophesying." "Come to my sermon tomorrow," said the monk to the ambassador, "and you shall have iny answer." In the presence of a vast assembly in the Duomo, Savonarola, with burning words, refused the glittering bribe. "I will have no other crimson hat," he exclaimed, with a foreboding of his coming doom, "than that of martyrdom, crimsoned with my own blood."

When the bold defiance was reported to the Pope, for a moment conscience-stricken at the spectacle of such heroic virtue, he exclaimed, "This must be a true servant of God." But the strong vindictive passions soon awoke again. The terrors of the major excommunication were launched against his victim, and all men were commanded to hold him as one accursed. The Cardinal of Siena, afterward Pope Julius II., sent a secret message to the persecuted friar offering to have the ban removed for the sum of five thousand crowns. "To buy off the Pope's curse," was the defiant answer, "was a greater disgrace than to bear it."

The commission of an awful crime in his family again stung the guilty conscience of the Borgia to a brief remorse. The dead body of his son, the Duke of Gandia,' was found floating in the Tiber, pierced with many stabs, and the crime was traced to his brother Cæsar, a cardinal of the Church. The dreadful fratricide smote the world with horror; and Savonarola wrote the wretched Pontiff a letter of pious counsel and condolence. But the tide of worldliness soon overflowed again that sordid nature. The resources of the Church were lavished on the murderer, and the man of God was persecuted with still more bitter malignity.

Savonarola's last Lenten sermons seemed burdened with a foreknowledge of his near-approaching fate. They were more intensely earnest

than ever, like the words of a dying man, to whom the verities of the unseen were already laid bare. The light of his eye was undimmed, and the eloquent voice still thrilled as of yore the hearts of the multitude who thronged the vast Duomo. But the frail body was wasted almost to emaciation. An inward fire seemed to consume his outward frame. So intense were the emotions excited, that the shorthand reporter of his sermons narrates that "such was the anguish and weeping that came over him, that he was obliged to stop recording his notes."

The anathema of the Pope, at which conquering monarchs have turned pale, was upon him, but his high courage quailed not. "A wicked, unbelieving Pope," he said, "who has gained his seat by bribery, is not Christ's Vicar. His curses are broken swords; he grasps a hilt without a blade. His commands are contrary to Christian life; it is lawful to disobey them-nay, it is not lawful to obey them." And turning away from the wrath of man to the righteous tribunal of God, he inly said, like one of old, "Let them curse, but bless Thou."

One of his last public acts was a solemn appeal to Heaven in vindication of his integrity of soul. Taking in his hand the vessel containing the consecrated Host, he thus addressed the listening multitude:

You remember, my children, I besought you, when I should hold this sacrament in my hand in the face of you all, to pray fervently to the Most High, that if this work of mine does not come from Him, He will send a fire and consume me, that I may vanish into the eternal darkness away from His light, which I have hidden with my falsity. Again I beseech you to make that prayer, and to make it now."

Then, with rapt and uplifted countenance, he prayed, in a voice not loud, but distinctly audible in the wide stillness: