DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0378
358
THE MAK HRS OF FLORENCE.
and confessed himself to have founded his predictions, not
upon direct divine revelation, but “upon his own opinion,
founded upon the doctrines and study of the Holy Scrip-
tures.” Apparently this was the only distinct “ confession,”
so called, which even the rack could bring from his tortured
lips. But the trial altogether is so involved in doubt that it
is impossible to put faith in any part of it, except, perhaps,
in those portions which are wholly in Savonarola’s favor,
and in which with a melancholy pride he defends himself,
his purity, and honesty, against his adversaries—for this it
is evident could not have come from their hostile hands.
These tortures of mind and body continued for eleven
days, through all those memorial days of a still more divine
passion which he could have commemorated more fitly in
the services of his church, had he been at liberty. He
was entirely separated from his companions, being im-
prisoned by himself in the Alberghettino, a small chamber
in the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, that proud “ Rocca ”
which hangs suspended over Florence. There for about
six weeks, in the “little lodging ” which Cosimo de’
Medici had once occupied before him, the great prophet
lay, sometimes crushed and bleeding, sometimes perhaps
with miserable self-reproaches in his mind, not knowing
what words the torture might have wrung from him, a
severer torment than the rack itself. But his confessions,
if he made any, must have been meager enough, since the
signoria were compelled to write to the pope in the follow-
ing words1
“We have had to deal with a man of the most extraordinary
patience of body and wisdom of soul, who hardened himself against
all torture, involving the truth in all kinds of obscurity, with the in-
tention either of establishing for himself by pretended holiness an
eternal name among men, or to brave imprisonment and death. Not-
withstanding a long and most careful interrogatory, and with all the
help of torture, we could scarcely extract anything out of him which
THE MAK HRS OF FLORENCE.
and confessed himself to have founded his predictions, not
upon direct divine revelation, but “upon his own opinion,
founded upon the doctrines and study of the Holy Scrip-
tures.” Apparently this was the only distinct “ confession,”
so called, which even the rack could bring from his tortured
lips. But the trial altogether is so involved in doubt that it
is impossible to put faith in any part of it, except, perhaps,
in those portions which are wholly in Savonarola’s favor,
and in which with a melancholy pride he defends himself,
his purity, and honesty, against his adversaries—for this it
is evident could not have come from their hostile hands.
These tortures of mind and body continued for eleven
days, through all those memorial days of a still more divine
passion which he could have commemorated more fitly in
the services of his church, had he been at liberty. He
was entirely separated from his companions, being im-
prisoned by himself in the Alberghettino, a small chamber
in the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, that proud “ Rocca ”
which hangs suspended over Florence. There for about
six weeks, in the “little lodging ” which Cosimo de’
Medici had once occupied before him, the great prophet
lay, sometimes crushed and bleeding, sometimes perhaps
with miserable self-reproaches in his mind, not knowing
what words the torture might have wrung from him, a
severer torment than the rack itself. But his confessions,
if he made any, must have been meager enough, since the
signoria were compelled to write to the pope in the follow-
ing words1
“We have had to deal with a man of the most extraordinary
patience of body and wisdom of soul, who hardened himself against
all torture, involving the truth in all kinds of obscurity, with the in-
tention either of establishing for himself by pretended holiness an
eternal name among men, or to brave imprisonment and death. Not-
withstanding a long and most careful interrogatory, and with all the
help of torture, we could scarcely extract anything out of him which