Gerolamo savonarola machiavelli biography

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Instead, he concentrated closely on the Bible and Church Fathers, which became his constant companion and guide. PC gamer. Losing his influence, Piero fled, leaving Florence without a government after the 60-year rule of the Medici family. The pope's demand to deliver Savonarola to Rome was not fulfilled. With 20-20 hindsight, he publicly claimed he had predicted the deaths of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Pope Innocent VIII, and the invasion of King Charles of France, .

He spoke about his visits to heaven where the Virgin Mary revealed the future to him. On that day he completed a written meditation on the Miserere, Psalm 51, entitled Infelix ego, in which he pleaded with God for mercy for his physical weakness in confessing to crimes he believed he did not commit.

gerolamo savonarola machiavelli biography

Ukulele and guitar player.

Biography

Early years

In his youth, he was preoccupied with religion, studying both the Bible and Aristotle. He wrote that, in his judgement, Savonarola was a hypocrite who,

…acts in accordance with the times and colors his lies accordingly.*

Savonarola played a seminal role in the development of Machiavelli’s political and moral thought; not only through what Machiavelli perceived of him, but in the way Savonarola organized the government of Florence during his leadership.

Savonarola had been well schooled in both biblical and classical studies.

But in April, the Frateschi’s political leader, Francesco Valori, was murdered, and the government started to unravel. Machiavelli’s own views on the role of the papacy and its involvement in temporal and political matters would be shaped in part of Savonarola’s ideals. On May 22, 1498, Savonarola, Fra Domenico, and Fra Silvestro were sentenced to death.

Godzilla and ERB fan. He made no impression on Florence in the 1480s, and his departure in 1487, went unnoticed. Jacopo Nardi, who recorded the incident in his Istorie della città di Firenze, wrote that his executioner lit the flame exclaiming, "The one who wanted to burn me is now himself put to the flames." Luca Landucci, who was present, wrote in his diary that the burning took several hours, and that the remains were several times broken apart and mixed with brushwood so that not the slightest piece could be later recovered, as the ecclesiastical authorities did not want Savonarola's followers to have any relics.

After several years, in 1490, he was assigned to the convent of San Marco, where Lorenzo de Medici (Lorenzo the Magnificent) met him, and decided to make him spiritual counsel for his family.

In Florence, his sermons against what he saw as tyranny and corruption grew increasingly strident, and Savonarola peppered them with prophesies about apocalyptic disasters, and Florence rising to become the “new Jerusalem.” Wikipedia notes,

In 1492 Savonarola warned of “the Sword of the Lord over the earth quickly and soon” and envisioned terrible tribulations to Rome.

This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. In April 1475, he entered the Dominican monastery in Bologna.