reat physician,
and devoted most assiduous care on the task of training his intellect.
But unfortunately the grandfather soon passed away, and Girolamo's
studies were then directed by his father, who began to instruct him in
philosophy.

The natural sciences were then only branches of philosophy, and the
latter, though employed as preliminary to the study of medicine, was
purely scholastic. The books which came into the hands of the young
Savonarola were the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Arabic
commentaries on Aristotle. He was specially fascinated with the works of
St. Thomas, but besides literature he studied music. He also composed
verses.

All particulars, however, of Savonarola's boyhood are unfortunately
lacking. But we can form a vivid idea of the surroundings which must
have influenced him. Ferrara was then the splendid capital of the House
of Este, with 100,000 inhabitants and a court which was one of the first
in Italy, and was continually visited by princes, emperors, and popes.
The lad must have witnessed gorgeous pageants, like the two which
occurred on visits of Pope Pius II., in 1459 and 1460. But during all
this period Savonarola was entirely absorbed in studying the Scriptures
and St. Thomas Aquinas, allowing himself no recreation save playing sad
music on his lute, or writing verses expressing, not without force and
simplicity, the griefs of his heart.

The contrasts that the youth witnessed between the magnificence
ostentatiously displayed and the evidences of tyranny in palaces and
castles in whose dungeons were immured numerous victims, clanking their
chains, made indelible impressions on his mind. Conducted once by his
parents to the ducal palace at Ferrara, he firmly refused ever to enter
its doors again. With singular spiritual fervour in one so young,
Savonarola surrendered his whole heart and soul to religious sentiments
and exercises. To him worldly life, as he saw all Ferrara absorbed in
its gaieties, became utterly repellent, and a sermon to which he
listened from an Augustinian friar determined him to adopt the monastic
life.

April 24, 1475, when his parents were absent from home attending the
festival of St. George, he ran away to Bologna and presented himself at
the Monastery of St. Dominic, begging that he might be admitted for the
most menial service. He was instantly received, and at once began to
prepare for his novitiate. In this retreat he submitted himself to the
sever