Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) by John Addington Symonds

discord, was also the city of frenetic piety. The names of S. Caterina, S. Bernardino, and Bernardo Tolomei occur to the mind. [2] _Storia Fiorintina,_ vol. i. p. 87. [3] _Arch. Stor._ vol. iii. p. 443. [4] Burigozzo, pp. 485-89. Enough has now been quoted from various original sources to illustrate the feverish recurrences of superstitious panics in Italy during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It will be observed, from what has been said about John of Vicenza, Jacopo del Bussolaro, S. Bernardino, Roberto da Lecce, Giovanni della Marca, and Fra Capistrano, that Savonarola was by no means an extraordinary phenomenon in Italian history. Combining the methods and the aims of all these men, and remaining within the sphere of their conceptions, he impressed a rôle, which had been often played in the chief Italian towns, with the stamp of his peculiar genius. It was a source of weakness to him in his combat with Alexander VI., that he could not rise above the monastic ideal of the prophet which prevailed in Italy, or grasp one of those regenerative conceptions which formed the motive force of the Reformation. The inherent defects of all Italian revivals, spasmodic in their paroxysms, vehement while they lasted, but transient in their effects, are exhibited upon a tragic scale by Savonarola. What strikes us, after studying the records of these movements in Italy, is chiefly their want of true mental energy. The momentary effect produced in great cities like Florence, Milan, Verona, Pavia, Bologna, and Perugia is quite out of proportion to the slight intellectual power exerted by the prophet in each case. He has nothing really new or life-giving to communicate. He preaches indeed the duty of repentance and charity, institutes a reform of glaring moral abuses, and works as forcibly as he can upon the imagination of his audience. But he sets no current of fresh thought in motion. Therefore, when his personal influence was once forgotten, he left no mark upon the nation he so deeply agitated. We can only wonder that, in many cases, he obtained so complete an ascendency in the political world. All this is as true of Savonarola as it is of S. Bernardino. It is this which removes him so immeasurably from Huss, from Wesley and from Luther. APPENDIX V. _The 'Sommario della Storia d'Italia dal_ 1511 _al_ 1527,'_ by Francesco Vettori._[1] I have reserved for special notice in this Appendix the short history written of the period between 1511 and 1527 by Francesco Vettori; not because I might not have made use of it in several of the previous chapters, but because it seemed to me that it was better to concentrate in one place the illustrations of Machiavelli and Guicciardini which it supplies. Francesco Vettori was born at Florence in 1474 of a family which had distinguished itself by giving many able public servants to the Commonwealth. He adopted the politics of the Medicean party, remaining loyal to his aristocratic creed all through the troublous times which followed the French invasion of 1494, the sack of Prato in 1512, the sack of Rome in 1527, and the murder of Duke Alessandro in