were so equally balanced in the _balia_ named by the
parliament, on December 2, 1494, that it soon became impossible to carry
on the government. Girolamo Savonarola took advantage of this state of
affairs to urge that the people had never delegated their power to a
balia which did not abuse the trust.

"The people," he said, "would do much better to reserve this power to
themselves, and exercise it by a council, into which all the citizens
should be admitted." His proposition was agreed to; more than one
thousand eight hundred Florentines furnished proof that either they,
their fathers, or their grandfathers had sat in the magistracy; they were
consequently acknowledged citizens and admitted to sit in the general
council. This council was declared sovereign on July 1, 1495; it was
invested with the election of magistrates, hitherto chosen by lot, and
a general amnesty was proclaimed, to bury in oblivion all the ancient
dissensions of the Florentine republic.

So important a modification of the constitution seemed to promise this
republic a happier futurity. The friar Savonarola, who had exercised such
influence in the council, evinced at the same time an ardent love of
mankind, deep respect for the rights of all, great sensibility, and an
elevated mind. Though a zealous reformer of the Church, and in this
respect a precursor of Luther, who was destined to begin his mission
twenty years later, he did not quit the pale of orthodoxy; he did not
assume the right of examining doctrine; he limited his efforts to the
restoration of discipline, the reformation of the morals of the clergy,
and the recall of priests, as well as other citizens, to the practice of
the gospel precepts. But his zeal was mixed with enthusiasm; he believed
himself under the immediate inspiration of Providence; he took his own
impulses for prophetic revelations, by which he directed the politics of
his disciples, the Piagnoni.

He had predicted to the Florentines the coming of the French into Italy;
he had represented to them Charles VIII as an instrument by which the
Divinity designed to chastise the crimes of the nation; he had counselled
them to remain faithful to their alliance with that King, the instrument
of Providence, even though his conduct, especially in reference to the
affairs of Pisa, had been highly culpable.

This alliance, however, ranged the Florentines among the enemies of Pope
Alexander VI, one of the founders of the league which