Читать книгу Rebels and Reformers: Biographies for Young People онлайн

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If we trust some of the accounts handed down to us, Savonarola can be accused of having shown weakness in the face of torture; he can be accused of having been too ambitious for political power and of having, in the fear of losing his authority, allowed without protest the execution of innocent men who were charged with conspiracy; he can be accused of having traded on the reputation of being a prophet who saw visions and to whom miraculous events occurred. He certainly placed too much confidence in the permanent effect of his eloquent preaching, and deluded himself in trusting in the loyalty of the people whom he had apparently moved. He may, no doubt, be called a fanatic—that is to say, a wild, odd man, who disregards every one and everything in his zeal to pursue the object he has in view. Such people are not frightened of making fools of themselves, and their peculiarities and their strange behavior can be very easily ridiculed. But apart from the contradictory accounts, and the incomplete records of history, we have Savonarola’s actual sermons and writings, without which he might indeed have been condemned as a charlatan. In them we can read in his own stirring language of his noble intentions and lofty aspirations, of his vigorous and single-minded pursuit of what he believed to be right, and of his uncompromising hatred of worldliness, wickedness, and crime. He was not immediately connected with the great movement known as the Reformation, in which Luther a few years later was the principal figure, when the Protestants broke off from the Roman Catholic Church. But Luther declared Savonarola to have been the precursor of his doctrine. And, indeed, his strong protest against the immorality and corruption of the Papacy and his fervent desire to increase the spiritual rather than the material authority of the Church—that is to say, its influence over men’s minds rather than its worldly power—helped to lay the foundations on which the great Reformers built. At the same time it must not be supposed that he himself had any desire to alter the creeds and traditions of the Roman Church.