Florence the
weak policy of waiting upon France. This legacy bore bitter fruits in
the next century. If it was the memory of the Friar which nerved the
citizens of Florence to sustain the siege of 1528, the same memory bound
them to seek aid from inconsequent Francis, and to hope that at the last
moment a cohort of seraphim would defend their walls.[2]

[1] Segni, _Ist. Fior._ lib. i. p. 23, records a saying of
Savonarola's, _Gigli con gigli dover fiorire_, as one of the
causes of the obstinate French partiality of the Florentines in
1529.

[2] See Varchi, Segni, and Nardi, who agree on these points.

That Savonarola believed in his own prophecies there is no doubt. They
were in fact, as I have already tried to show, a view of the political
and moral situation of Italy, expressed with the force of profound
religious conviction and based upon a theory of the divine government of
the world. But now far he allowed himself to be guided by visions and by
words uttered to his soul in trance, is a somewhat different question.
It is just at this point that a man possessed of acute insight and
trusting to the truth of his instincts may be tempted under strong
devotional excitement to pass the border land which separates healthy
intuition from hallucination. If Savonarola's studies of the Hebrew
prophets inclined him to believe in dreams and revelations, yet on the
other hand the strong logic of his intellect, trained in scholastic
distinctions, taught him to mistrust the promptings of a power that
spoke to him when he was somewhat more or less than his prosaic self.
How could he be sure that the spirit came from God? We know for certain
that he struggled against the impulse of divination and refused at times
to obey it. But it overcame him. Like the Cassandra of AEschylus, he
panted in the grasp of one mightier than himself. 'An inward fire,' he
cried, 'consumes my bones and forces me to speak out' And again: 'I
have, O Lord, burnt my wings of contemplation, and I have launched into
a tempestuous sea, where I have found contrary winds in every quarter. I
wished to reach a harbor, but could not find the way thither; I wished
to lay me down, but could meet with no resting-place. I longed to be
silent and to utter not a word. But the word of the Lord is in my heart;
and if it does not come forth, it must consume the marrow of my bones.
Thus, O Lord, if it be Thy will that I should navigate in deep waters,
Thy