of his life-drama. Upon this topic
Guicciardini, _Stor. Fior., Op. Ined._ vol. iii. p. 179; Nardi,
_Stor. Fior._ lib. ii. caps. 16 and 36, may be read with
advantage.

'I began'--Savonarola writes himself with reference to a course of
sermons delivered in 1491--'I began publicly to expound the Revelation
in our Church of S. Mark. During the course of the year I continued to
develop to the Florentines these three propositions: That the Church
would be renewed in our time; that before that renovation God would
strike all Italy with a fearful chastisement; that these things would
happen shortly.' It is by right of the foresight of a new age contained
in these three famous so-called conclusions that Savonarola deserves to
be named the Prophet of the Renaissance. He was no apostle of reform: it
did not occur to him to reconstruct the creed, to dispute the
discipline, or to criticise the authority of the Church. He was no
founder of a new order: unlike his predecessors, Dominic and Francis, he
never attempted to organize a society of saints or preachers; unlike his
successors, Caraffa the Theatine and Loyola the Jesuit, he enrolled no
militia for the defense of the faith, constructed no machinery for
education. Starting with simple horror at the wickedness of the world,
he had recourse to the old prophets. He steeped himself in Bible
studies. He caught the language of Malachi and Jeremiah. He became
convinced that for the wickedness of Italy a judgment was imminent. From
that conclusion he rose upon the wings of faith to the belief that a new
age would dawn. The originality of his intuition consisted in this, that
while Italy was asleep, and no man trembled for the future, he alone
felt that the stillness of the air was fraught with thunder, that its
tranquillity was like that which precedes a tempest blown from the very
nostrils of the God of Hosts.

To the astonishment of his hearers, and perhaps also of himself, his
prophecies began to fulfill themselves. Within three years after his
first sermon in S. Mark's, Charles VIII. had entered Italy, Lorenzo de'
Medici was dead, and politicians no less than mystics felt that a new
chapter had been opened in the book of the world's history. The Reform
of the Church was also destined to follow. What Savonarola had foreseen,
here too happened; but not in the way he would have wished, nor by the
means he would have used. It is one thing to be a prophet in the sense
of d