intoxicated Savonarola. His fiery
temperament, strained to the utmost by the dead weight of Florentine
affairs that pressed upon him, became more irritable day by day. Vision
succeeded vision; trance followed upon trance; agonies of dejection were
suddenly transformed into outbursts of magnificent and soul-sustaining
enthusiasm. It was no wonder if, passing as he had done from the
discipline of the cloister to the dictatorship of a republic, he should
make extravagant mistakes. The tension of this abnormal situation in the
city grew to be excessive, and cool thinkers predicted that Savonarola's
position would become untenable. Parties began to form and gather to a
head. The followers of the monk, by far the largest section of the
people, received the name of Piagnoni or Frateschi. The friends of the
Medici, few at first and cautious, were called Bigi. The opponents of
Savonarola and of the Medici, who hated his theocracy, but desired to
see an oligarchy and not a tyranny in Florence, were known as the
Arrabbiati.

The discontent which germinated in Florence displayed itself in Rome.
Alexander found it intolerable to be assailed as Antichrist by a monk
who had made himself master of the chief Italian republic. At first he
used his arts of blandishment and honeyed words in order to lure
Savonarola to Rome. The friar refused to quit Florence. Then Alexander
suspended him from preaching. Savonarola obeyed, but wrote at the same
time to Charles VIII. denouncing his indolence and calling upon him to
reform the Church. At the request of the Florentine Republic, though
still suffering from the Pope's interdict, he then resumed his
preaching. Alexander sought next to corrupt the man he could not
intimidate. To the suggestion that a Cardinal's hat might be offered
him, Savonarola replied that he preferred the red crown of martyrdom.
Ascending the pulpit of the Duomo in 1496, he preached the most fiery of
all his Lenten courses. Of this series of orations Milman writes: 'His
triumphal career began with the Advent of 1494 on Haggai and the Psalms.
But it is in the Careme of 1496 on Amos and Zechariah that the preacher
girds himself to his full strength, when he had attained his full
authority, and could not but be conscious that there was a deep and
dangerous rebellion brooding in the hearts of the hostile factions at
Florence, and when already ominous rumors began to be heard from Rome.
He that would know the power, the daring, th