Savonarola, GIROLAMO (JEROME), religious and political reformer, was born of a noble family at Ferrara, September 21, 1452. He was educated at home, and at a very early age became deeply versed in the philosophy of the schools; but his disposition was from the first tinged with religious asceticism, and in 1474 he formally withdrew from secular affairs, and entered the Dominican order at Bologna. Having completed his novitiate and the studies of the order, he seems to have made his first public appearance as a preacher in 1482, at Florence, where he had entered the celebrated convent of his order, San Marco, and where he preached the Lent in that year. His first trial, however, was a failure; his voice was harsh and unmusical, and his simple, devout earnestness failed to interest his hearers, so that, after a time, the course of lectures was entirely deserted. Some time afterwards Savonarola was sent to a convent of his order at Brescia, where his zeal began to attract notice, and the disadvantages of manner and address ceased to be felt under the influence of his sterling genius and irresistible enthusiasm. In 1489 he was once more recalled to the convent of San Marco at Florence. His second appearance in the pulpit of San Marco was a complete success. The great subject of his declamation was the sinfulness and apostasy of the time; and in his denunciation of the vices and crimes of his age he took as his theme what has been the topic of enthusiasts in almost every age, the mystical visions of the Apocalypse. These he applied with terrible directness to the actual evils with which, as with a moral deluge, the age was inundated; and for his half-expositions, half-prophetic outpourings his followers claimed for him the character of an inspired prophet. Under the rule of the great head of the Medici family, Lorenzo the Magnificent, art, literature, and philosophy had all followed the common direction of that elegant but semi-pagan revival which the scholars of the 15th century had inaugurated; and the whole spirit of the social as well as intellectual movement of which Florence, under the Medici, was the centre was utterly at variance with the lofty Christian spirituality and severe asceticism in which Savonarola placed the very first conditions of the restoration of true religion and morality. His preaching, therefore, in its spirit, as well as in its direct allusions, was no less antagonistic to the established system of the government than to the worldly and irreligious manners of the age; the visions and predictions ascribed to him had quite as much of political applicability as of religious significance; and thus, to the aristocratic adherents of the Medici, Savonarola early became an object of suspicion, if not of antipathy and dread. It is said by Pico de Mirandola that he refused to grant absolution to Lorenzo when the latter lay dying in 1492 as the Magnificent declined to accede to the demands made by his confessor.
Up to this time, however, Savonarola's relations with the church were, if not of harmony, at least not of antagonism; and when, in the year 1493, a reform of the Dominican order in Tuscany was proposed under his auspices, it was approved by the pope, and Savonarola was named the first vicar-general. About this date, however, his preaching had assumed a directly political character, and the predictions and denunciations which formed the staple of many of his discourses pointed plainly to a political revolution in Florence and in Italy as the divinely ordained means for the regeneration of religion and morality. In one of his discourses he pointed plainly to the advent of the French under Charles VIII.; and when this prediction was fulfilled by the triumphant appearance of the French expedition, Savonarola was one of a deputation of Florentines sent to welcome Charles VIII. as the saviour of Italy, and to invite him to Florence. Very soon, however, the French were compelled to leave Florence, and a republic was established, of which Savonarola became, although without political functions, the guiding and animating spirit, his party, who were popularly called Piagnoni, or 'Weepers,' from the penitential character which they professed, being completely in the ascendant. It was during this brief tenure of influence that Savonarola displayed to the fullest extent both the extraordinary powers of his genius and the full extravagance of the theories to which his enthusiastic asceticism impelled him. The republic of Florence was to be the model of a Christian commonwealth, of which God Himself was the chief ruler, and His Gospel the sovereign law; and thus the most stringent enactments were made for the repression of vice, and of all the sinful follies by which it is fomented and maintained. All the haunts of debauchery were suppressed; gambling in all its forms was prohibited; the vanities of dress were restrained by sumptuary enactments; and, under the impulse of the popular enthusiasm which the enthusiasm of the prophet engendered, women flocked in troops to the public square to fling down their costliest ornaments, and his followers made in the piazza an immense 'bonfire of vanities,' destroying in one hecatomb large numbers of cards, dice, masks, carnival costumes, and probably some books of licentious poetry and indecent pictures. There seems no ground for the charge often made that he and his disciples destroyed in indiscriminating zeal valuable statues and rare manuscripts.
Meanwhile, the extremes of his rigorism; the violence of his denunciations, which did not spare even the pope himself (Alexander VI.); the assumption by him, or attribution to him, of a supernatural gift of prophecy; and the extravagant interpretation of the Scriptures, and especially of the Apocalypse, by which he sought to maintain his views, drew upon him the displeasure of Rome. He was cited, in the year 1495, to answer a charge of heresy at Rome; and, on his failing to appear, he was forbidden to preach; the brief by which the Florentine branch of his order had been made independent was revoked; he was offered a cardinal's hat on condition of his changing his style of preaching—an offer he indignantly refused; and he was again forbidden to preach. Once again Savonarola disregarded this order. But his difficulties at home now began to deepen. The measures of the new republic proved impracticable. The party of the Medici, called 'Arrabbiati' ('Enraged'), began to recover ground. A conspiracy for the recall of the exiled House was formed; and although, for the time, it failed of success, and five of the conspirators were condemned and executed, yet this very rigour served to hasten the reaction. The execution of these conspirators was afterwards laid to the charge of Savonarola, who was said to have been the chief opponent of the proposal to grant them an appeal—a charge for which there seems to be no foundation. But all circumstances seemed now to count against the once all-powerful Savonarola. At the critical point of the struggle of parties came, in 1497, a sentence of excommunication from Rome against Savonarola. Savonarola openly declared the censure invalid, because unjust, and refused to hold himself bound by it. During the plague Savonarola, precluded by the excommunication from administering the sacred offices, devoted himself zealously to ministering to the sick monks. A second 'bonfire of vanities' in 1498 led to riots. In the same year, when the new elections took place, the party opposed to Savonarola, the Arrabbiati, came into power. He was ordered to desist from preaching; and the struggle was brought to a crisis by the counter-denunciations of a preacher of the Franciscan order, long an antagonist of Savonarola, Francesco da Puglia. In the excited state of the popular mind thus produced an appeal was made by both of the contending parties to the interposition of divine providence by the ordeal of fire; and one of Savonarola's disciples agreed to make trial of the dread ordeal along with a Franciscan friar. But at the moment when the trial was to have come off (April 1498) difficulties and debates arose, and nothing was actually done. The result of this was to destroy with the populace the prestige of Savonarola's reputation, and to produce a complete revulsion of public feeling. In the midst of this reaction he was cited before the council, and brought to trial for falsely claiming to have seen visions and uttered real prophecies, for other religious errors, and for political insubordination. He denied the charges; but, put to the torture, he made avowals which he afterwards withdrew. The conclusion was a foregone one; he was declared guilty of heresy and of seditious teaching, and of being an enemy to the peace of the church. The acts of the trial were sent to Rome, where the sentence was confirmed; he, with two disciples of his order, was given up to the secular power; so on May 23, 1498, this extraordinary man and his two companions, brothers Domenico and Silvestro, were strangled, and their bodies burned by the executioner. They died professing their adherence to the Catholic Church, confessed and received absolution, and on the morning of the execution Savonarola administered the last communion to his two companions and himself. There seems no doubt that Savonarola firmly believed in the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church; and it is only as a moral and religious reformer, and not a theological teacher, that he can in any way be regarded as a forerunner of the Reformation of the 16th century.
His works, mainly sermons, religious essays, theological treatises (of which the chief is The Triumph of the Cross), some poems, and a political discourse on the government of Florence, were mainly written in Latin. An edition in 6 vols. appeared at Lyons in 1633-40; and one by Baccini of his Sermons at Florence since 1889. The principal work on him is the Life by Professor Villari (1863, Eng. trans. by Horner; 2d ed., much altered, 1887; Eng. trans. by Linda Villari, 1888). There are also English works by R. Madden (1854), W. R. Clark (1878), and Herbert Lucas, S.J. (1899); see also Mrs Oliphant's Makers of Florence and George Eliot's Romola.