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TWO MEMORIES OF SAN MARCO.
visions of innocence, holiness and purity. This gentle frate prepared a house for another frate, a mightier spirit, but one not more devout. "Their ways of serving were different, their inspiration the same."
Florence, once the freest of the free, was now spell-bound, under the sway of Lorenzo de Medici, absorbed in pomp and display of all kinds. False gaiety, false culture filled the city. From every part of Italy men of genius, writers and artists of reputation, flocked about the Magnifico. Pleasure, almost pagan jollity, reigned. "Poets of every kind, gentle and simple, with golden cithern and with rustic lute, came from every quarter. Whosoever sang of arms, of love, of saints, of fools, was welcome; he who drinking and joking kept the company amused." Art flourished, encouraged and patronized on every hand. If Florence was the Athens of Italy, Lorenzo was her Pericles.
Such was the aspect of Florence when Savonarola began his reform. His fervid, natural eloquence and the warmth and earnestness of his feeling produced great excitement among the Florentines. Multitudes came to hear him, young and old, among them many notable persons little likely to be led away by the common craze after a popular preacher. Several years passed away. Great political changes took place. The Medici were gone. Once more, after the lapse of years, the Florentines were free. Then came a reign more wonderful than Florence ever saw. Impelled by the spiritual necessity laid upon him to guide the people, Fra Girolamo passed in his daily sermon from the general to the special—"from telling his hearers that they must postpone their private passions and interests to the public good, to telling them precisely what sort of government they
must have in order to promote that good—from 'choose whatever is best for all' to 'choose the Great Council' and 'the Great Council is the will of God.'" For two years he ruled with kingly power. This sway, though noble, was impossible. The longthreatened excommunication was at last launched against him. The remainder of his life might almost be told in three great pictures, showing the eager multitudes as they gathered in the piazza waiting for a miracle, San Marco besieged at twilight, and the last tragic scene of all.
Such was the great preacher of Florence, the most powerful politician, the most disinterested reformer of his time. His distinction from the great mass of the clergy lay not in any heretical belief, not in superstition; but in the energy with which he sought to make the christian life a reality. He was passionately attached to Florence and to freedom. He used his wonderful power over the people in favor of the measures which he thought would make pure the government of Florence. He had for the object of his life the renovation of the church of the world. He had not private malice, he sought no petty gratification.
"With a convent for his court, a crucifix for his scepter, and a pulpit for his throne, he wielded a more than regal sway." Power rose against him not because of his sins, but because of his greatness—not because he sought to deceive the world, but because he sought to make it noble. And through that greatness of his he endured a double agony; not only the reviling and the torture, and the death-throe, but the agony of sinking from the visions of glorious achievement into that deep shadow where he could only say: "I count as nothing, darkness encompasses me, yet the light I saw was the true light."