Michael de la Bedoyere's 'The Meddlesome Friar' 1957

Collins first edition - 1957

 I have had this book for more years than I can remember, but never read it until I took it on our trip to Tuscany and Florence ten days ago. Visiting the Chiesa San Marco, where Savonarola often preached, and standing in the Piazza della Signoria near the spot where his Bonfires of the Vanities occurred and where he soon after met his own death, gave added poignancy to my reading.

Half way through the book, I had to look up information about the author, Michael de la Bedoyere (1900-1973). I can't say I was surprised to read that he had been educated at Stonyhurst College, had planned to become a Jesuit priest, became editor of the Catholic Herold (1934-1962) and written a biography of St Francis of Assisi (1962).  In other words, a Roman Catholic to his core. It was mildly worrying that he had supported General Franco during the Spanish Civil War. De la Bedoyere almost bends over backwards to put the best possible angle on both Savonarola and the other extraordinary, and opposing, figure - Pope Alexander (Borgia) VI. In his Introduction, he does posit the questions - Was Alexander Borgia as bad as he has been painted? Was Savonarola justified in his holy defiance of the bad pope, and consequently was he as good as he seems?  My (Protestant skewed) answer is Yes, yes and no! It is almost impossible in this godless 21st century, to understand, let alone sympathise with, the religious fanaticism of the Friar, who hurtled pel mell towards his gruesome death.

Born in the self-governing city of Ferrara in 1452, one of four brothers and two sisters, Girolamo Savonarola was a solitary and melancholy boy. By the age of twenty, the path of his future life was well marked - not only would he seek sanctuary, but the passion within him for it must burst sooner or later into ardent expression. Moved by a sermon he heard, he ran away as a pilgrim to Bologna to join the black and white friars of his beloved Aquinas. Early letters to his mother included phrases such as, God flays his children lest they derive hope from earthly things...give yourself over to solitude, spiritual reading and prayer. Hardly a bundle of laughs in the local inn. His superiors sent him on missions to various towns of Northern Italy. The critical sermon of his life, after mainly failures, was preached at San Gimignano, near Siena. He prophesied that (1) the Church should be scourged; (2) that it should afterwards be renewed; and (3) that this should happen soon. His growing fame led Lorenzo de' Medici, ironically, to write to the General of the Dominicans asking that Savonarola be sent to San Marco in Florence. Little by little his audience grew, until he found it necessary to move to the church of San Marco on 1st August, 1489.

Many began to see him as a heaven-sent prophet. From San Marco he moved to the cathedral itself in the Lent of 1491. "Reflect carefully, those of you who are rich, for your punishment will come. Not Florence shall be the name of this city: it will be called but a den of thieves, of vice, of blood." And still they supported him! In 1491, he was elected Prior of San Marco. Lorenzo died; Ferrante of Naples died; Innocent VIII died. All, apparently prophesied by Savonarola. Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia was elected Alexander VI. The author entitles his Part Two: Clash and Martyrdom. It was inevitable that the increasingly fanatical Friar should clash with the worldly, back-sliding pope.

...whenever I went up into the pulpit again, I was unable to contain myself. I could do no other. To speak the Lord's words has been for me a burning fire within my bones and heart. It was unbearable. I could not but speak. I was on fire. I was alight with the spirit of the Lord... (part of his last Sermon in Florence cathedral). Over the next few years, Savonarola, becoming more powerful from his pulpit in Florence, preached ever more fiery sermons against the Church and, in particular, the state of the papacy and Rome. He was in many ways a precursor of Luther and other Protestant leaders, but the difference was he remained wedded to Roman Catholicism. 

In one of his Lenten sermons, he was more vehement than ever: You (the Church) have become a shameless harlot in your lusts. Once you were ashamed of your sins; now you are shameless...O prostitute Church, you have displayed your foulness to the whole world, and you stink to high heaven...

The Church is chock-full of abominations from the head to the souls of the feet, but you do nothing to cure the evil, being content to worship the cause of the evil which defiles it. The Lord is therefore angry and for some time past has left the Church without a Shepherd. I solemnly declare to you in the word of the Lord that this man, Alexander, is no Pope and cannot be held as such...I affirm that he is not even a Christian and that he does believe God to exist, and this scales the height of all faithlessness. (Letter to Kings of France, England, Spain and Hungary)

Though he avoided working out a theology of his position, his attitude amounted in practice to holding that no authority and power can be legitimate, either in Church or State, in the case of anyone who is not in a state of grace, who has not charity, who is not among the saints. He could not last. De La Bedoyere states that Alexander did not at first wish to destroy the Friar, but his patience finally ran out. In February 1498, Savonarola was excommunicated. Swift penalties followed. With two other friars, Fra Silvestro of Florence and Fra Domenico of Pescia, they were condemned to be hanged by a rope and their bodies burnt, that the soul may be separated from the body, in public in and on the Piazza of their high lordships. On 24th May 1498, this sentence was carried out; some of Savonarola's followers succeeded in cheating the authorities who had ordered the ashes to be thrown into the Arno. They gathered together relics of a prophet and a hero. Alexander Borgia died in Rome five years later, his blackened body, hideously corrupted, with his swollen tongue hanging out of his mouth. Divine justice? The Evil of his damned soul? Or just the result of the dangerous heat of a high Roman summer?