[Moo] Anniversary of the Death of Savonarola

[Marcolo DelMare]

  This day in 1498 Girolamo Savonarola was executed as a heritic. He
was a Dominican friar who after the De Medici's were ousted from
Florence his "City of Destiny" he rose to power as leader of his new
Theocratic Democracy. He was a passionate preacher of Puritan like
values and claimed testimony of visions and phophetic announcements of
doom and apocolypse. He claimed to be in direct communication with God
and the saints and that the world was going to end in 1500. In his
time as ruler he changed the punishment for sodomy from a fine to a
capital offense so that even a husband and wife discovered commiting
this crime in the privacy of their home could be executed.
Homosexuality was also punishable by death where it was formerly
tolerated in Florence. His favored form of execution was hanging. The
victim would be hung from a cross by chains and then have a huge fire
lit under their bodies. His most well known act was the "Bonfire of
the Vanities" where he and his followers collected; mirrors,
cosmetics, fine dresses, women's hats, lewd pictures, pagan books,
immoral sculptures, works of immoral and ancient poetry, gaming
tables, chess pieces, lutes and other musical instruments and
paintings with naked people on them. They then burned them all. He is
said to have personally thrown paintings by Botticelli onto the fire.
An uncountable number of works of art from the Rennaissance as well as
the ancient world were lost to his notorius bonfires.
   Due to his Ascension Day sermon in 1497 bands of youths rioted and
the riot became a revolt; dancing and singing taverns reopened and
public gaming reappeared. Avoiding the angry mobs Savonarola holed up
in the Convent of San Marco. Then Pope Alexander the VI (Aka: Rodrigo
De Medici) demanded his arrest and execution. It should of course be
noted that Savonarola spoke out often and vehemiently against this
Pope and his secular family. The stronghold was asaulted by a crowd
and several of Savonarola's supporters were killed before he and his
two closest associates surrendered. They were tortured on the rack for
weeks. Their right arms and hands were left unharmed so that
confessions could be written. They were then convicted and sentanced
to death for heresy and other crimes. Prior to his execution he
retracted his confession claiming they were given due to physical
weakness in the face of torture, but he believed he was innocent of
the charges. He asked forgiveness for having confessed to crimes he
believed he did not commit. On May 23rd all 3 were executed at the
site of his infamous bonfires hung by the neck with chains from a
single cross. A bonfire was lit under their bodies. The fires were
relit several times to ensure that the bodies were burned completely,
leaving no relics for his supporters to revere. The ashes were
afternwards thrown into the Arno beside the Ponte Vecchio.

Marcolo



-- 
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has
to be us.
  - Jerry Garcia

"In medieval times, people probably would have referred to me as
“Phlegmatic” and attributed this tendency to an imbalance of my
humors. These days people just think of me as an an irreverent
asshat."
 -- Patrick rothfuss