DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0377
THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE. 357
case he was a poor companion for the two nobler and
greater men who had preceded him there.
I have said that this night’s progress through the crowd
was Savonarola’s last authentic appearance till the moment
of his execution. He disappears here out of the common
daylight, and from the eyes of honest onlookers, to the
torture-chamber and prison where his fiercest enemies were
about him, and worse than enemies, a professional liar, Ser
Ceccone, the notary, found a place at his side as his sole
historian, bribed to furnish a record which should justify
the murder upon which all were bent. The signoria, no
longer restrained, even by a shadow of that public opinion
to which Savonarola had given form and power, appointed
on their own responsibility a council of seventeen citizens
to try him, among whom were his most implacable enemies,
that Delfo Spini, captain of the Compagnacci, from whose
sword he had been again and again rescued with difficulty,
among the others. But not even this furiously prejudiced
and unjust tribunal; not even the tortures to which his
quivering frame was subjected, are so great a stigma upon
the government of Florence as the willful falsification of
the records—into which public crime by universal consent,
they are acknowledged to have fallen. The miserable
chronicle of lies was printed, then with the precipitation
of shame withdrawn from circulation; but various copies
exist in various stages of elaboration, some ungrammatical,
incoherent, and betraying in every line the gaps left and
the additions made, some pared and shaped into an appear-
ance of unity. The reader who is interested in this dismal
chapter of history will find a careful examination of the
whole in Professor Villari’s book, which our space does not
permit us to follow. Ou the whole it would seem to be
allowed that Savonarola’s fortitude at some moments yielded
to the torture, and that in the delirium of pain he now and
then rejected his own pretensions to prophetical insight,
case he was a poor companion for the two nobler and
greater men who had preceded him there.
I have said that this night’s progress through the crowd
was Savonarola’s last authentic appearance till the moment
of his execution. He disappears here out of the common
daylight, and from the eyes of honest onlookers, to the
torture-chamber and prison where his fiercest enemies were
about him, and worse than enemies, a professional liar, Ser
Ceccone, the notary, found a place at his side as his sole
historian, bribed to furnish a record which should justify
the murder upon which all were bent. The signoria, no
longer restrained, even by a shadow of that public opinion
to which Savonarola had given form and power, appointed
on their own responsibility a council of seventeen citizens
to try him, among whom were his most implacable enemies,
that Delfo Spini, captain of the Compagnacci, from whose
sword he had been again and again rescued with difficulty,
among the others. But not even this furiously prejudiced
and unjust tribunal; not even the tortures to which his
quivering frame was subjected, are so great a stigma upon
the government of Florence as the willful falsification of
the records—into which public crime by universal consent,
they are acknowledged to have fallen. The miserable
chronicle of lies was printed, then with the precipitation
of shame withdrawn from circulation; but various copies
exist in various stages of elaboration, some ungrammatical,
incoherent, and betraying in every line the gaps left and
the additions made, some pared and shaped into an appear-
ance of unity. The reader who is interested in this dismal
chapter of history will find a careful examination of the
whole in Professor Villari’s book, which our space does not
permit us to follow. Ou the whole it would seem to be
allowed that Savonarola’s fortitude at some moments yielded
to the torture, and that in the delirium of pain he now and
then rejected his own pretensions to prophetical insight,