Machiavelli Read online

  Savonarola’s confrontational attitude placed the government of Florence in an awkward position. No one had been more responsible for the successful transition from Medici to republican rule than he, and his followers (the frateschi or piagnoni) generally dominated in the Great Council he had done so much to establish. But while his popularity among the people remained undimmed—his sermons at San Marco and the Cathedral continued to draw thousands of tearful worshippers—his belligerent policies were threatening the profits of the international bankers and merchants who remained a powerful force in Florentine politics.

  As the confrontation with the Holy Father shattered the consensus that prevailed in the early days of the renewed republic, the prior of San Marco was unable or unwilling to address the growing divisions. Instead he focused on the spiritual rebirth of a city that had, in his estimation, long ago succumbed to luxury and vice. While their leaders quarreled in the Palazzo della Signoria, he organized young boys into religious confraternities and sent them marching about town to the sound of pipes and drums, carrying crucifixes and holy images and crying “Long live Christ and the Virgin, our queen.” While some of their parents were moved to penitence, many others—like Machiavelli himself—maintained a resentful silence. The culmination of this program of spiritual reform came on February 27, 1496, when the followers of Savonarola erected a huge bonfire in the Piazza della Signoria into whose flames Florentines were expected to toss their vanities: mirrors, jewels, silks, revealing gowns and lascivious books, indecent paintings and unnecessary adornments—in short all those inessentials that distinguished Florentine life from that of a dreary provincial capital.

  Savonarola, for all his personal virtue—his piety and incorruptibility—was a divisive figure. In curbing the worst excesses of life under the Medici, he also deprived the citizens of much that made life enjoyable. Savonarola himself, according to an early biographer, had found his true calling after a dream he had as a young man in which he was doused in icy water that “extinguished the carnal heat of desire, while its coldness froze in him every wordly appetite”—a remedy the preacher would no doubt have liked to apply to the Florentine population as a whole. As far as Savonarola was concerned, the greatest works of art and literature were little different from revealing gowns or ostentatious jewelry since both distracted impressionable minds from focusing on the important work of salvation. Some of his most violent opponents were young aristocrats who objected to his attempts to police their lifestyles, robbing them of the pleasures and privileges to which all wealthy young men feel entitled. Banding together under the title of the compagnacci, these well-born youths began a campaign of harassment and intimidation. Their boldest stroke came on May 3, 1497, when they sneaked into the Cathedral, dragging behind them the carcass of a dead donkey and smearing the pulpit with excrement just before Savonarola was set to deliver his sermon.

  But if these delinquents hardly inspire our sympathy, they represented the class that had fostered the great artistic achievements that made Florence celebrated throughout the world. Their fathers and grandfathers had been the patrons of Donatello and Leonardo. Under Savonarola’s more austere regime many men of genius fled or so transformed their art in response to the new mood as to become unrecognizable. The young Michelangelo was among those who hurriedly abandoned the city after the fall of the Medici, though this had as much to do with his close personal ties to the ruling family as to the uncongenial atmosphere created by Savonarola.xii Among those who remained and fell under the spell of the charismatic preacher was Sandro Botticelli, but the works he painted in this period, filled with religious fervor and dark foreboding, are a far cry from the sensual and joyous works for which he is famous.xiii To Florentines like Machiavelli—worldly, sophisticated, addicted to carnal pleasures, and fond of open intellectual debate—the moral astringents prescribed by Savonarola and his followers were unwelcome medicine for dubious maladies. “Thus,” wrote Francesco Guicciardini (whose own father was a supporter of Savonarola), “a great division and violent hatred had grown up in the hearts of the citizens, so that between brothers or between fathers and sons there was dissension over the question of the friar.”

  On June 18, Alexander’s bull of excommunication against Savonarola was read in solemn tones in the churches of Florence; candles were snuffed out to symbolize the friar’s exclusion from the community of Christian fellowship. Even devoted followers were shaken, torn between loyalty to their leader and their fear lest they, too, be cast out and denied the sacraments that were the only sure path to salvation. Luca Landucci, up until then a devoted follower, was disturbed when he witnessed the disobedient friar distributing the Eucharist: “[I]t seemed a mistake to me, although I had faith in him; but I never wished to endanger myself by going to hear him, since he was excommunicated.”

  The government was itself now almost evenly divided between the frateschi (followers of the friar), led by Francesco Valori, and an ever increasing number of citizens who were convinced that Savonarola’s intransigence was leading them over a cliff. When Alexander tried to force their hand by demanding that they forbid Savonarola from preaching in public, ferocious arguments broke out in the Great Council. The case against Savonarola was perhaps most succinctly put by the merchant Giuliano Gondi, who advocated that the friar be locked away in San Marco:

  This man preaches that the Pope is not the Pope, that we should have no belief in him, and other things of the sort that you would not even say to a cook . . . . Must we be against all Italy and the big powers of Italy and against the Supreme Pontiff as well? The Roman censures mean that we are in rebellion against the Holy Church, and many merchants have dispatched their goods to Naples and to other places so as not to be robbed or butchered.

  Among his fellow merchants, the core of the Florentine ruling class, these arguments struck home: while they might have been willing to gamble with their immortal souls, when it came to their worldly possessions they were less inclined to risk it all.

  The atmosphere of crisis was heightened by the continued machinations of Piero de’ Medici, who still deluded himself that the majority of Florentines would welcome his return. Backed by Venetian money and a papal blessing, he appeared on the morning of April 28 before the walls of Florence with about six hundred cavalry and four hundred on foot, expecting the grateful citizens to rise up against their oppressors, throw open the gates, and invite in their savior. When, after a few nerve-racking hours, the welcome failed to materialize, Piero turned tail and slunk away.

  In the aftermath of the abortive attack it was discovered that Piero had been counting on more than spontaneous enthusiasm. An informant told the state police that a number of prominent Florentines had been in close contact with the city’s former ruler and were plotting to seize the city gates and open them just as Piero’s army arrived. Only a preemptive strike by the frateschi, who dispatched their own loyalists to man the walls, averted disaster. The conspirators included some of Florence’s most distinguished citizens—men like Niccolò Ridolfi, Lorenzo Tornabuoni, and Bernardo del Nero. They were arrested, tried, and convicted of treason. Sentenced to death, they appealed the verdict to the Great Council on the basis of a law that Savonarola himself had advocated, but Francesco Valori and the other leading frateschi refused their petition, fearing that a prolonged trial would serve to rally the opposition. Ignoring the very law they had earlier promoted as a vital tool in the fight against despotism, they led the convicted men in chains to the Bargello where, in unseemly haste and in the dead of night, they had them beheaded. Even loyal followers of Savonarola were shaken by the brutal crackdown. The death of the young and handsome Lorenzo Tornabuoni in particular was mourned by all Florentines. “I could not refrain from weeping,” wrote the Savonarola loyalist Luca Landucci, “when I saw that young Lorenzo carried past the Canto d’ Tornaquinci on a bier, shortly before dawn.”

  In the short run at least, the pro-Savonarolan regime emerged from the incident intact, if not exactly covered
in glory. But in elevating expedience above principle the government and its spiritual leader lost much of their moral authority. The incident is perhaps most intriguing for the light it sheds on Machiavelli’s own attitudes. The self-serving reversal is exactly the kind of maneuver that he often recommends, and in other contexts one might well expect him to favor such a course. But in a discussion in The Discourses, Machiavelli takes a different position:

  When [the accused] wished to appeal they were not allowed to do so, and the law was not observed. This did more to lessen the reputation of the Friar than anything else that befell him. For, if the right to appeal was worth having, he ought to have seen that it was observed. If it was not worth having, he should not have forced it through. The event attracted more notice in that this Friar in not one of the many sermons which he preached after the law had been broken, ever condemned the breach or offered any excuse. For, since it suited his purpose, to condemn it he was unwilling, and to excuse it he was unable. Since this made it plain to all that at heart he was ambitious and a party-man, it ruined his reputation and brought on him much reproach.

  This is from a chapter with the unwieldy title “It is a Bad Precedent to break a New Law, especially if the Legislator himself does it; and daily to inflict Fresh Injuries on a City is most Harmful to him that governs it”—a context that helps explain the unexpectedly principled stand Machiavelli takes. Rejecting the medieval scholastic tradition in which political theories were based on the notion that human institutions should conform to God’s plan, Machiavelli was determined to test them in the harsh laboratory of experience. Savonarola’s policy was flawed not because it is inherently evil to turn against a law when it no longer suits one’s purpose, but because it undermined the source of his authority—his ability to persuade others of the righteousness of his cause. The man whom, in another context, he famously declared an “unarmed prophet,” had forfeited through his moral cowardice the one real weapon he possessed.

  In February 1498, Savonarola, defying the interdict placed on him by Pope Alexander, began to preach once again before expectant throngs in the Cathedral. “[T]his excommunication is a diabolical thing [and] was made by the devil in hell,” he thundered from the pulpit. The Signoria, hoping to assuage the Pope’s wrath while preserving its credibility among the still numerous frateschi, ordered him to retreat to the less public venue of San Marco. It is here that on March 2 and 3, Machiavelli attended two sermons, informing the Florentine ambassador to Rome that Savonarola was determined to force a confrontation. “[H]e seeks to turn all against the supreme pontiff and, using his own attacks against him, says of him as one would the wickedest person you could find”—a report that could hardly have encouraged Ricciardo Becchi, who, like the government he represented, was desperately trying to head off a violent clash.

  • • •

  As far as we know this is the only substantive contribution Machiavelli made to the dramatic events that led to the downfall of Savonarola. He did not play a prominent role in the opposition, but it is clear that he was sympathetic to their cause. Becchi, to start with, was an opponent of the frateschi whose appointment as Florentine ambassador to the Holy See was meant to demonstrate that the government had distanced itself from the rebellious friar. But despite their skeptical attitude toward Savonarola, neither Becchi nor Machiavelli belonged to the arrabbiati or the bigi whose hostility toward the popular party found expression in ever more brazen acts of defiance. Neither group would have appealed to Machiavelli since both were dedicated to reestablishing a more oligarchic form of government. Instead, Machiavelli should be counted among the growing number of citizens who cherished the popular democracy established after the expulsion of Piero de’ Medici but who now saw that the greatest threat to its continued existence was the increasingly erratic and fanatical behavior of Savonarola himself.

  On March 25, 1498, the struggle for the soul of Florence took an unexpected twist when a Franciscan brother, Francesco da Puglia, issued a challenge from the pulpit of Santa Croce to Savonarola: to walk with him through a gauntlet of fire to test the friar’s claim that he was the appointed mouthpiece of God. For the past four years the Franciscans had watched helplessly as their rivals, the Dominicans, dominated the city’s spiritual life and pocketed the lion’s share of bequests from wealthy Florentines who believed that Savonarola and the order he led were in close communication with God. Once the bull of excommunication had been issued, and pronounced with ill-concealed joy in the Franciscan church of Santa Croce itself, those monks who had endured years of frustration and humiliation saw an opportunity to strike back.

  This trial by fire—which quickly caught the imagination of the Florentine people, who were themselves perplexed as to how to judge Savonarola’s claims—was a throwback to the more superstitious Middle Ages when supernatural intervention into the lives of the faithful was believed to be a normal occurrence. If God had recently cut back on such overt signs of his favor, the pious still believed in the possibility of miracles, and the climate of near religious hysteria fostered by Savonarola’s sermons made the test proposed by Brother Francesco all the more plausible. The monastery of San Marco was itself the center of disquieting visitations. In the winter of 1495, one monk wrote, “diverse figures and monstrous animals would appear to disturb the sweetness of their prayers, and they often spoke ugly, dishonest, and filthy words to the friars, along with certain expressions exhorting them to seize the sensual pleasures of this life.” This was to be expected in a city on its way to becoming a new Jerusalem as the demonic spirits, finding themselves under attack, made one final attempt to steal back the souls they had lost.

  Given Savonarola’s long-standing claim of prophetic powers, the challenge was difficult to dismiss. While Savonarola knew it was a cheap stunt meant to discredit him in the eyes of his followers, many of those closest to him enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to prove their faith. Among the most eager was his chief lieutenant, Fra Domenico da Pescia, who offered himself in place of his revered leader.

  Now events proceeded with their own momentum. The trial had captured the public imagination not only, as some cynics claimed, because of excitement over what promised to be an entertaining spectacle, but because it was likely to relieve the almost unbearable tensions that had been building over the past months. For those Florentines, perhaps the majority, who were genuinely perplexed as to where righteousness lay, the trial offered a way to resolve their dilemma. Even the government, initially skeptical, ultimately agreed to give the test its sanction, setting up the pyre in the great square before the Palazzo della Signoria.

  On April 7, 1498, the Saturday before Palm Sunday, the citizens of Florence flocked to the Piazza della Signoria to witness the great event. Snaking across the square was a large structure of pitch-soaked timber forming a tunnel more than seventy feet long. Once set ablaze, two men—Fra Domenico on behalf of Savonarola, and Fra Giuliano Rondinelli for the Franciscans (Brother Francesco having found a willing substitute)—would enter and proceed along the length of the two-foot-wide passage. Should Fra Domenico survive the ordeal unscathed it would be declared a miracle; Savonarola would be vindicated and the Pope, who had denied him the protection of the Church, would be exposed as an impostor and a fool.xiv

  The Franciscans arrived first, two hundred of them gathering beneath the portico on the south side of the square. Then came the Dominicans, 250 monks from San Marco, trailed by Fra Domenico holding aloft a large crucifix. Finally came Savonarola himself, flanked by two monks who offered some protection from the restless mob that lined the street. With the arrival of the principals, all now seemed ready for the ordeal to begin. But as minutes lengthened to hours with no sign of action, the crowd grew increasingly hostile. A soaking spring rain did little to improve the collective mood. When, after hours of delay, heralds announced that the trial had been called off, the citizens who had gathered hoping for a cathartic release turned ugly. They felt cheated and sought out someone to bla
me.

  Though they focused their rage on Fra Domenico and Savonarola, the truth was that it had been the Franciscans rather than the friars of San Marco who were responsible for the fiasco. While the citizens of Florence waited in the rain, both Fra Francesco da Puglia and Giuliano Rondinelli were inside the palace quibbling over every detail—objecting, for instance, that the consecrated Host Fra Domenico intended to carry with him into the fiery tunnel might offer spurious protection—intending to drag negotiations out so long that the trial would have to be called off.

  The Franciscans were certainly playing a cynical game, but who could blame the public for turning on Savonarola? It was he, after all, who had promised that the coming of the New Age would be marked by divine portents. For eight years he had preached his doctrine of trial and redemption to a people eager to accept his verdict that they were indeed God’s new chosen people. If he could not even pull off the minor miracle planned this afternoon for their edification, what good was he? Even Luca Landucci, who was aware of the duplicitous role the Franciscans had played, was disillusioned: “[W]hen the dispute ended in the Franciscans leaving, the Dominicans soon followed them, causing great perturbance amongst the people, who almost lost faith in the prophet.”