the times gave the form of presentiments: emotions which had
found a very remarkable utterance in the voice of a single man.

That man was Fra Girolamo Savonarola, Prior of the Dominican convent of
San Marco in Florence. On a September morning, when men's ears were
ringing with the news that the French army had entered Italy, he had
preached in the Cathedral of Florence from the text, "Behold I, even I,
do bring a flood of waters upon the earth." He believed it was by
supreme guidance that he had reached just so far in his exposition of
Genesis the previous Lent; and he believed the "flood of water"--emblem
at once of avenging wrath and purifying mercy--to be the divinely--
indicated symbol of the French army. His audience, some of whom were
held to be among the choicest spirits of the age--the most cultivated
men in the most cultivated of Italian cities--believed it too, and
listened with shuddering awe. For this man had a power rarely
paralleled, of impressing his beliefs on others, and of swaying very
various minds. And as long as four years ago he had proclaimed from the
chief pulpit of Florence that a scourge was about to descend on Italy,
and that by this scourge the Church was to be purified. Savonarola
appeared to believe, and his hearers more or less waveringly believed,
that he had a mission like that of the Hebrew prophets, and that the
Florentines amongst whom his message was delivered were in some sense a
second chosen people. The idea of prophetic gifts was not a remote one
in that age: seers of visions, circumstantial heralds of things to be,
were far from uncommon either outside or inside the cloister; but this
very fact made Savonarola stand out the more conspicuously as a grand
exception. While in others the gift of prophecy was very much like a
farthing candle illuminating small corners of human destiny with
prophetic gossip, in Savonarola it was like a mighty beacon shining far
out for the warning and guidance of men. And to some of the soberest
minds the supernatural character of his insight into the future gathered
a strong attestation from the peculiar conditions of the age.

At the close of 1492, the year in which Lorenzo de' Medici died and Tito
Melema came as a wanderer to Florence, Italy was enjoying a peace and
prosperity unthreatened by any near and definite danger. There was no
fear of famine, for the seasons had been plenteous in corn, and wine,
and oil; new palaces had been ris