Girolamo Savonarola (redirected from Jerome Savonarola)

Savonarola, Girolamo 

Born Sept. 21, 1452, in Ferrara; died May 23, 1498, in Florence. Florentine religious and political figure; poet.

Savonarola received a humanist education in the household of his grandfather, a famous physician and scholar. In 1475 he ran away from home and entered the Dominican monastery in Bologna. He delivered sermons in Ferrara beginning in 1479 and in Florence, San Gimignano, and Brescia beginning in 1482. In 1491 he became prior of the Monastery of St. Mark in Florence, where he restored the strict monastic rule. In his sermons Savonarola spoke out against the tyranny of the Medicis, denounced the social inequities dominating Florence, condemned the secular character of humanist culture, and strongly attacked the policies and way of life of the popes, demanding a fundamental reform of the Catholic Church in conformity with theapostolic ideal.

After the fall of the Medici tyranny in 1494, Savonarola helped establish a republican system in Florence and proposed a plan for social and political reforms reflecting the interests of the middle urban strata. He used a group of fanatical young people as an instrument of his policies, transforming them into a “moral militia” and organizing ceremonial “burnings of the vanities”—bonfires of everyday items, works of art, and books that contradicted the Christian moral code. Savonarola’s denunciations of papal policies brought him into sharp conflict with Pope Alexander VI, who banned his sermons and in 1497 excommunicated him. In response, Savonarola issued an appeal for the convocation of a church council to overthrow the pope. The Florentine Signoria (the city’s governing body), which did not want to break with Rome, arrested Savonarola on religious and political charges. Condemned by the Signoria, he was hanged and his body burned.

Savonarola wrote religious sermons and poems, many of which were in the form of carnival songs. His sermons were later used by supporters of the Reformation.

T. Mann portrayed Savonarola in the play Fiorenza.

WORKS

Poesie. Edited by M. Martelli. Rome [1968].

REFERENCES

Villari, P. Dzhirolamo Savonarola i ego vremia, vols. 1–2. [St. Petersburg] 1913. (Translated from Italian.)
Gramsci, A. Izbr. proizv., vol. 3. Moscow, 1959. (Translated from Italian.)
Il processo di G. Savonarola. [Bologna]-Milan, 1960.
Ferrara, M. Bibliografia savonaroliana. Florence, 1958.

A. KH. GORFUNKEL