Where had things gone wrong? Less than two years ago, they all had been so full of high hopes. The winds of change had scoured the city. It was intoxicating. The son of the Spider scuttled out of Florence, leaving her virtually untouched. The hateful, craven Piero was banished forever, and the city was free—free from foreign domination, free from tyranny. Niccolo never tired of reliving those heady, exhausting days. And how many times had he charted and reconstructed the fateful chain of events that led from those moments of optimism and exhilaration to the present impasse?
He doodled now, as he went over it all once again in his mind. He had written out the names of the most important players, arranged in chronological order—Medici, Charles, Capponi, Soderini, Valori. Over them all, in a thick, angry hand, he had scrawled, SAVONAROLA.
It was all his fault. And it wasn’t. As events had unrolled, the friar had become more and more mysterious, and more and more dangerous. On the eve of the French departure, he was acclaimed the miracle-working savior of Florence. Although Niccolo knew that the miracle was not as outright and effortless as it seemed to the popular imagination, Savonarola was nonetheless held solely responsible for saving the city from the French scourge. The people accepted the friar as their undisputed leader. He took the pulpit in all his glory. Niccolo still remembered his joyous declaration. “I announce this good news to the city, that Florence will be more splendid, richer, more powerful than she has ever been. Glorious in the sight of men and of God! From you, O Florence, renewal will begin and rebirth will spread everywhere, because you are the navel and the womb of Italy!”
Everyone believed him. Anything seemed possible. He could have made himself king if he had wanted to. But he didn’t. He brought forth his treatise on the governing of Florence. He worked hand in hand with hardheaded, practical men, with politicians like Pagol’ Antonio Soderini. And the Consiglio Maggiore was finally established—the Great Council. It was the pride of Florence, the largest body of elected officials in history—over three thousand representatives from every quarter and every walk of life.
Niccolo could still remember the ringing of hammers the day they tore the old Council Chamber apart. People cheered in the streets as saws chewed through the timbers and massive blows knocked out stone walls and splintered wooden partitions. In the days of the Medici, the chamber held only three hundred handpicked representatives. It had gradually evolved into a Byzantine labyrinth of rooms and antechambers clustered around a central common area. Business was conducted and policy made in the privacy of these screened off, partitioned, and closetlike confession booths where sins and abominations were whispered. Bodyguards were kept close at hand, behind the scenes, and assassins lurked in the recesses. Then, reform swept away the architecture of secrecy. A vast, lighted space was created for free and open discussion.
New blood flowed into the sclerotic governing bodies. The old names were still there, of course. The interests of the primati, Florence’s finest and oldest families, were well represented. And the men they sent to the council had experience, for better or worse, of politics. But new men also sat beside them now, representing new and broader interests.
Reforms followed. Men known to be in debt were excluded from public office. A new system of taxation went into effect, based on wealth and property. All of this with no bloodshed, no call to arms, no rioting in the streets. All because of the friar. He had acted as the peacekeeper. He had forced the lion to lie down with the lamb. He had established a truly representative assembly, an enormous council, the only one of its kind in all the world. He had set up the vast and complicated machinery of government—and then, quite inexplicably, he had walked away from it. He had given Florence a government worthy of her. He had created it. He saw that it was good. And confident of having created a new order that would endure with the help of the Lord, the friar turned his attentions once again to his real mission—moral reform.
Ruefully, Niccolo remembered how the friar had gradually distanced himself from the day-to-day workings of the council. When two years of bad harvests produced widespread starvation and demanded immediate action, he preached exclusively a doctrine of trust in the Lord. When unemployment stirred up discontent in the working classes, the friar was preaching against sodomy. When the revenue system faltered and Florence was being threatened from without by earthly enemies, Savonarola turned his eyes heavenward.
From his knowledge of history and a close observation of the doings in his own city, Niccolo concluded that the friar’s greatest strength, his faith, was also his greatest weakness. It prevented him from doing practical things like controlling elections and packing the council. Savonarola was convinced that moral reform was sweeping the land, making men righteous, and that righteous men would act and govern righteously. He pushed that moral reform. He preached it fervently and from the heart. He exhorted men daily to righteous behavior. He believed they were listening to him and following his advice. He thought a new age of justice and holiness was being born. But he gave the Florentines more credit than they deserved.
Left to its own devices, without strong leadership and direction, the Great Council had degenerated into a hundred bitter, bickering factions. In the face of mounting problems at home and abroad, the legislative process was stalled. The golden age was put on hold.
Savonarola still exerted tremendous moral authority, and he still held the populace in thrall, most of it anyway. But the results of his two years of leadership were not what he or anybody had expected. Despite popular support, the friar was no longer able to bring any significant pressure to bear on the badly fractured council. At the same time, he had mobilized a whole set of forces over which no one had any real control, so that now the streets were full of angels.
Niccolo’s candle sputtered and went out. Lethargically, he poked his finger in the puddle of hot wax on the writing table. The day was gloomy. He was cold and stiff, and his back and shoulders ached from bending over his books too long. Grudgingly, he decided to take some air. A walk would do him good, even if it meant wrestling with the angels.
In his general state of misery, Niccolo had been neglecting his appearance. He wore the same pair of red hose for the fifth day in a row, so that they were stretched out and baggy at the knee. He was unshaven and uncombed, and he was too dispirited to care. He tucked his straggling, unwashed hair behind his ears and up under a cloth cap. He covered his lack of sartorial splendor with an old cloak and drew it tightly around himself. Pulling on the boots that he left by the door, he stepped out into the joyless streets of a city he scarcely recognized.
Noise and spectacle and celebration had always animated these streets. Now these had been banished. The entire city was like a monastery, blanketed with silence. Fasting had replaced eating as the preferred form of entertainment. And everywhere there was the incessant, low rumbling of prayer. Niccolo thought of the name he had heard given to the friar’s followers. It was so apt—masticapaternostri, prayer chewers.
They were also called piagnoni, snivelers, but the fact was that, like it or not, the snivelers were having their way in the city. Niccolo once again had the sad proof of this when he passed through the Orsanmichele quarter. He loitered here a while, for old times’ sake. In the area of a few square blocks there had been fifty-six taverns. It was the only neighborhood in the city where the taverns had outnumbered the churches. Now they were all closed, every single one. Niccolo had read enough Aristotle to know that this did not qualify as a bona fide “tragic” occurrence. Still, to his way of thinking, it was very, very sad.
He moped around, recalling the rowdy pleasures of yesteryear and thought about how things could have turned out differently. Two years ago, the world was at his feet. He was a trusted confidant of Capponi and was on his way up. But Capponi had not played his cards right with the new regime. His fortunes quickly waned, and with them, the hopes of his protégé. In frustration, Capponi had gone off to fight in the troublesome little war against Pisa. At his age! Now he was dead
, and there was not an open tavern in the city where you could drink to his memory.
Lost in mournful self-pity, Niccolo was wandering aimlessly toward the river when he was brushed by an angel, then another. There was a whole line of them, filing out of a wealthy palazzo. They moved in step, at a jog, singing joyfully in their little, piping angelic voices. They had close-cropped hair and wore red crosses on the shoulders of their immaculate white robes. Watching them scamper past, Niccolo remembered the last time he had had the stomach to go and hear the friar preach. As powerful and as beatific as ever, he had said, “The church will be so full of love that angels will converse with men. You cannot believe how much charity and love the angels have for men. They never grow angry with us. And when they see us purged of our sins, they rejoice, and promise to remain with us always.” So here they were, like the poor, always with us, Savonarola’s legions of angels.
The idea of the angels had begun with the “bands of blessed boys,” choristers who dressed as angles and sang Te Deums in the churches and in the increasingly frequent religious processions. But under the tutelage of Pietro Bernardino, a sniveler’s sniveler, the bands of holy innocents had gradually evolved into something resembling an unofficial police force. Their jurisdiction was entirely in the area of faith and morals, and they energetically set out to track down and eradicate impiety, wherever they might find it. From singing hymns and collecting alms for the poor, they moved into espionage, reporting on their elders, and in many cases on their own parents, for gambling, for ostentatious dress, and for lascivious behavior. The angels had become notorious as guardians and enforcers of the new moral order.
The band of angels that Niccolo had just encountered seemed to have expanded their range of pious activities to include what looked suspiciously like common looting. Dancing and singing the praises of the Lord, they were carting off paintings and statues, collections of gems and silver table service as well as books, clothing, and a variety of valuable-looking things. Niccolo quickened his step and followed them. As he went along, he encountered other bands of angels, similarly laden with all manner of interesting and expensive objects. He noticed that many of the “angels” were neither young nor particularly blessed of countenance. They had mean faces, set jaws, and hard little eyes. Without the white robes, Niccolo would have taken them for hoodlums. Recent recruits, no doubt, to the angelic ranks.
They seemed to be converging on the Piazza della Signoria, the main square opposite the Communal Hall where the Great Council sat. Another public display of their frenzy for the love of Christ, thought Niccolo. “No!” he groaned out loud, unable at first to comprehend exactly what he was seeing. This was no routine display of religious frenzy. It was an execution. Of sorts.
In the center of the square, a tremendous scaffold had been erected. It was higher than most of the surrounding buildings and shaped like a pyramid. Stairs ran along its sides, up to the top and these were filled with the scurrying ranks of what looked like senior angels, archangels, Niccolo supposed, supervising the ongoing construction. Their building materials were not ordinary timber but the countless precious objects that the jubilant worker angels were hauling into the piazza.
The sight was too mawkish, too unexpected, too endlessly complicated with visual detail to be taken in at a glance. Niccolo prowled around the pyramid, letting his eyes slowly dissect the infinite, jumbled variety of the structure, detail by detail. At the base was a tangle of wigs and false beards, hairpieces, carnival masks, and gaudy costumes and disguises. Above that came the books. Moving closer, Niccolo identified Boccaccio and Petrarch and hundreds of volumes of the Latin poets. He saw a leather-and-gilt-bound edition of the works of Lorenzo de’ Medici. There was Livy’s History of Rome, a complete one tied in a bundle with twine. Niccolo wanted that book badly, and he found himself staring at it, his hand involuntarily reaching for it. The stern, unforgiving glare of an angel warned him off.
Circling slowly, Niccolo continued his inspection. He saw reams and piles of illuminated manuscripts and parchments. As a lover of antiquity, he knew that many were irreplaceable, probably the last remaining copies of important works. Many were already ruined, torn or soaking through with the perfumes, unguents, and cosmetics that were seeping down on them from above. The next layer was composed of rouge pots and pomade jars and scent bottles, along with all the toilet articles women used to apply them. There was a proliferation of combs, brushes, mirrors, veils, headdresses, and the like. Above that, lutes and harps, then chess boards, playing cards, dice, and other accoutrements of gambling.
All the while, angels continued to pour into the square, adding to the pyre as the archangels shouted orders, directing the flow of incoming merchandise. The very top had been reserved for paintings, especially paintings of female beauties in poses that seemed lewd or provocative. Niccolo shook his head in disbelief and backed off from the pile to contemplate it in its dizzying, eclectic entirety.
Someone near him was weeping, “It’s such a shame; It’s a sin,” over and over. Without even turning to look, Niccolo identified the harsh rush of an accent as Venetian. He caught the man’s eye and communicated his sympathy with a sad nod. The Venetian approached with dismay written all over his face. “Can you tell me what’s happened to Florence,” he begged, “Can you explain what’s going on here?”
“No, I can’t,” was all Niccolo said.
“They call it the bonfire of the vanities,” sobbed the Venetian. “At sundown they’re going to light it and burn everything. It’s madness! Madness! Madness!” Before Niccolo could reply and before he could restrain him, the Venetian was pushing his way through the angels, shouting, “Who’s in charge here? I must speak to the man in charge.”
A particularly surly archangel collared him, and with angelic menace, sneered, “Whaddaya want?”
“I’ll buy it,” babbled the Venetian. “I’ll buy everything!” I’ve got 22,000 florins. I’ll give it all to you. Enough to build a chapel, a whole church if you want!”
In response, one of the angels tore off the poor man’s truly incredible fur hat and sailed it into the funeral pyre of the vanities. The last Niccolo saw of the well-intentioned Venetian, he had been strapped into a chair where an artist was sketching his likeness. They told him that it would be burned along with the other effigies of whores and lechers.
Distraught, Niccolo sat on a low stone bench, mesmerized by the never-ending flow of his fellow Florentines filling up the piazza, eagerly throwing the tools and devices of pleasure and beauty on their magnificent, preposterous sacrificial altar. The processions started filing in, more angels and monks crowned with olive branches. Hymns of rejoicing sounded, and bells pealed. He made himself leave before they lit the thing, too embarrassed, too bewildered, and too humiliated to see the ludicrous spectacle through to its fiery climax.
Niccolo trudged back across the river to his own neighborhood. He had to fight the crowds pushing toward the piazza, eager to get a look at the glorious bonfire. Half-consciously, he made his way toward the Piazza Santo Spirto, knowing that in these days of increasing furor and frenzy, it would be a quiet spot. The events and zeal of recent weeks had been orchestrated primarily by the monks of the Dominican order, of which Savonarola was Prior and prime mover. The Franciscans, the traditional rivals of the Dominicans in everything from the purity of dogma to the collection plate, had fallen on hard times. They were out of favor with the volatile populace and with the political leaders who thought it prudent not to oppose Savonarola and his followers too vocally. Santo Spirito, being a Franciscan church, would be exempt from the day’s celebrations. It would be a haven of peace and inactivity. Or so Niccolo thought. To his chagrin, he saw the piazza buzzing with people hurrying into the church. “Not here too,” he thought. “Isn’t there any place where you can get away from it?”
At first he thought they might be angels intent on looting the church. But then he saw these were ordinary citizens and some friars—Franciscans. There were ar
med guards at the door. Caught up in the rush, Niccolo whisked past them without arousing any suspicions. People were crowding around the pulpit, but no one appeared to be preaching from there. They were pushing and shoving, craning their necks. Occasional gasps of disbelief issued from the tight knot of those closest to the speaker’s platform. Shaky hands made the sign of the cross. Niccolo wormed his way through the press of bodies. He got close enough to see that a document of some sort had been nailed to the front of the pulpit. It was flanked by two brightly burning torches. Edging still closer and consumed with curiosity, he was able to make out that it was no ordinary announcement or denunciation. The abundant seals and ribbons, the profusion of red and gold and white, could mean only one thing—a papal bull.
Trying not to be overly rude, Niccolo pushed on toward the front. A papal bull was the most official of official documents, the last, dreaded word of the church, from which there was no appeal on earth, nor, according to many, in heaven. The trepidation of those milling around him was contagious. Finally, from between the rows of bobbing heads, he was able to make sense out of the dancing, flickering script. In the glowering torchlight, Niccolo read, to his amazement, that Savonarola had been excommunicated.
When word of the excommunication spread, all hell broke loose in the city. The friar’s supporters were incensed, and their frenzied devotion reached frantic new heights. On the other side, with the weight of papal authority now behind them, Savonarola’s enemies, so long cowed and cowering, were emboldened. The balance of power began to shift in their favor. To counteract the influence of the notorious bands of angels, squads of young men calling themselves compagnacci—bad boys—sprang to life. Made up mostly of the spoiled sons of wealthy families, the compagnacci waged open war in the streets against the forces of piety.
Machiavelli: The Novel Page 28
