of
Savonarola's confessions under torture with good sense. He
says: 'Avendo domandato il frate quello che diceva e affermava
delle sue esamine fatte infino a quel di, rispose, che cio ch'
egli aveva ne' tempi passati detto e predetto era la pura
verita, e che quello di che s'era ridetto e aveva ritratto, era
tutto falso e era seguito per il dolor grande e per la paura
che egli aveva de' tormenti, e che di nuovo si ridirebbe e
ritratterebbe tante volte, quante ci fusse di nuovo tormentato,
percio che si conosceva molto debole e inconstante nel
sopportare i supplicii.' Burchard, in his Diary, reports the
childish, foul, malignant gossip current in Rome. This may be
read in the 'Preuves et Observations' appended to the _Memoirs_
of De Comines, vol. v. p. 512. See the Marchese Gino Capponi's
_Storia della Firenze_ (tom. ii. pp. 248-51) for a critical
analysis of the depositions falsely ascribed to Savonarola.

[3] There is a curious old picture in the Pinacoteca of Perugia
which represents the burning of the three friars. The whole
Piazza della Signoria is shown, with the houses of the
fifteenth century, and without the statues which afterwards
adorned it. The spectator fronts the Palazzo, and has to his
extreme right the Loggia de' Lanzi. The center of the square is
occupied by a great circular pile of billets and fagots, to
which a wooden bridge of scaffolding leads from the left angle
of the Polazzo. From the middle of the pile rises a pole, to
which the bodies of the friars in their white clothes are
suspended. Sta Maria del Fiore, the Badia tower, and the
distant hills above Fiesole complete a scene which is no doubt
accurate in detail.

Thus died Savonarola: and immediately he became a saint. His sermons and
other works were universally distributed. Medals in his honor were
struck. Raphael painted him among the Doctors of the Church in the
Camera della Segnatura of the Vatican. The Church, with strange
inconsistency, proposed to canonize the man whom she had burned as a
contumacious heretic and a corrupter of the people. This canonization
never took place: but many Dominican Churches used a special office
with his name and in his honor.[1] A legend similar to that of S.
Francis in its wealth of mythical details embalmed the memory of even
the smallest details of his life. But, above all, he lived in the h