Savonarola

On this episode of 5 Minutes in Church History we’re going to Italy. We’re going to Florence in fact, and we’ll look at the pre-Reformer Savonarola. Savonarola was born around 1452 and died in 1498. This is on the eve of the Reformation and though he did not live a long life, he certainly left quite a legacy. Early on, it looked like Savonarola was being prepared for a career in medicine. His father was a physician and he had hopes of becoming a physician just like his father. But as he was studying medicine he just felt that tug to the religious life and to pursue the religious life, and so he joined the Dominican order.

He began early in his career to preach publicly, and preached in a rather significant apocalyptic style we could say. It was an interesting blend of sort of political reform and ecclesiastical reform. He spent a great deal of time in the book of Revelation. And even went so far as to see Florence as actually a new Jerusalem—the center—as it were, of a new reformed movement that would spread across Europe and purify the church. He was a rather fiery preacher, was always expected to say rather provocative things. And huge crowds would gather in the cathedral there in Florence to hear him.

The holy Scripture contains that marvelous doctrine which more surely than a two-edged sword pierces men’s hearts with love which has adorned the world with virtue and has overthrown idolatry, superstition, and numberless errors. Well, as you can imagine, word of this very quickly made it's way to the pope not too far away down in Rome. And this just infuriated him. And so the pope began to go after Savonarola, and eventually Savonarola was excommunicated, and eventually he’d be martyred. Well before he was martyred in March of 1498 he wrote a wonderful little book called The Triumph of the Cross. It seems like in this book Savonarola is sort of moving off of some of his early more apocalyptic and rather interesting blend of political and church reform preaching, to a more solid focus on the Word, and a focus on what would come to be some of the doctrines that were so crucial to the reformation. He wrote this book The Triumph of the Cross in March of 1498. Two months later on May 23, 1498 he was hanged. And then, as if to prove a point, his body was burned.

Savonarola, though his life was over, his legacy was not. And not only did he fan the flame there in Florence and in other parts of Italy. But in the next century, Luther and Calvin and Cranmer and these other reformers would bring some of these ideas to full fruition that were present in Savonarola and the Reformation would sweep across these European lands.

I just want to read to you one section from his book The Triumph of the Cross. Here he’s talking about the Word and the power of the Word, and this is what he says:

For the preachers who discourse only on philosophical subjects and pay great attention to oratorical affect, produce scarcely any fruit among their Christian hearers. Whereas our forefathers who in past-times confined themselves to the simple preaching of the holy Scriptures, were able to fill their hearers with divine love, enabling them to rejoice in affliction, and even in martyrdom.

He goes on to say, “I speak from personal experience.” He talks about how he used to think it was about the subtle points of philosophy and sort of rhetorical flourishes in the sermon that would bring about a change in his hearers. Then he says this:

But as soon as I devoted myself to the exposition of the Bible, I beheld all eyes riveted upon me. And my audience so intent upon my words that they might have been carved out of stone. I found likewise when I confine myself to explaining holy Scripture my hearers receive much more light, and my preaching bore much more fruit in the conversion of men to Christ. For the holy Scripture contains that marvelous doctrine which more surely than a two-edged sword pierces men’s hearts with love which has adorned the world with virtue and has overthrown idolatry, superstition, and numberless errors.