Description
In the 1490s Girolamo Savonarola, a visionary friar, dominated Renaissance Florence, terrifying the city with his uncannily accurate prophecies. Best remembered for his ‘burning of the vanities’ – the destruction of ‘profane art’ – he has often been caricatured as a hell-fire fanatic. Yet Victorian England saw him as an Italian Martin Luther while his career inspired George Eliot’s novel Romola. His unbdoinmg was his denunciation and attempt to overthrow the Borgia Alexander VI, one of the most corrupt popes in history: had he succeeded, he might have averted the Reformation. But Alexander turned the Florentines against him, and he was hanged in chains and burned. In this account of a great Renaissance tragedy, Seward portrays Savonarola as a surprisingly human figure.
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