challenged the fire to
prove it. It was too much for the Signoria; they agreed. It was the
Franciscans he had to meet; whether or no they meant to persist with the
"trial by fire" we shall never know, but when, on 7th April 1498, the
fire was lighted in Piazza della Signoria, it was Savonarola who
refused. A few minutes later, amid the uproar, a deluge of rain put out
the flames. Savonarola's last chance was gone. The people hounded him
back to S. Marco, and but for the Guards of the Signoria he would have
been torn in pieces. On 8th April, which was Palm Sunday, in the
evening, the attack that had been threatening all day began: through the
church, through the cloisters the fight raged, while the whole city was
in the streets. At last Savonarola and Fra Domenico, his friend, gave
themselves up to the guard, really for protection, and were lodged in
Palazzo Vecchio. There the Signoria tortured them, with another friar,
Silvestro, and at last from Savonarola even they seem to have dragged
some sort of admission. What such a confession was worth, drawn from the
poor mangled body of a broken man, one can well imagine; but that
mattered nothing to the wild beasts he had taught to roar, who now had
him at their mercy. The effect of this on the city seems to have been
very great. "We had thought him to be a prophet," writes Luca Landucci
simply, "and he confessed he was not a prophet, that he had not from God
the things he preached.... And I was by when this was read, and I was
astonished, bewildered, amazed.... Ah, I expected Florence to be, as it
were, a New Jerusalem, ... and I heard the very contrary."

The Signoria which tortured Savonarola was presently replaced by
another; and though, like its predecessor, it too refused to send him to
Rome, it went about to compass his death. Again they tortured him; then
on the 23rd May, the gallows having been built over night in the Piazza,
they killed him with his companions, afterwards burning their bodies.
"They wish to crucify them,"[101] cried one in the crowd; and indeed,
the scaffold seems to have resembled a cross. Was it Florence herself
perhaps who hung there?

FOOTNOTES:

[97] Not without protest, for the Sylvestrians appealed to the
schismatic counsel at Basle, but got no good by it; and a whole series
of lawsuits followed.

[98] See p. 256.

[99] Cf. L. Landucci, _Diario Fiorentino_ (Sansoni, 1883), p. 80.

[100] It would be wrong to conclude that Savonarola att