Machiavelli: The Novel

by Joseph Markulin

  This was not the first time that trouble had arisen between Savonarola and Pope Alexander VI. From the pulpit, the friar gradually stepped up his attacks on what he saw as corruption in Rome, denouncing the church there as a disfigured harlot, worse than a beast, a sink of iniquity, and the new Babylon. Annoyed, but not exactly innocent of these charges, the pope quickly offered Savonarola a cardinal’s hat to stop preaching.

  The offer only fanned the flames of the friar’s moral indignation, and his denunciations became more vociferous than ever. Finally, the pope was left with no choice but to issue the bull of excommunication. Implicit in the sentence of excommunication was a prohibition against Savonarola celebrating mass, administering the sacraments, and, of course, preaching.

  For six months, Savonarola all but disappeared, giving rise to many rumors—he was a drunkard, he was keeping a boy, he had knuckled under to the pope, he had accepted bribes in exchange for his silence. In reality, he secluded himself to fast and pray for guidance. Suddenly, on Christmas Day 1497, he gave the pope his answer. Defying papal strictures, he celebrated mass and gave communion to the monks. In the sermon he preached that day, he left little doubt where he stood. “The thunderbolts of the church cannot strike me,” he said. “I am an instrument of God, and I fear only God. Those who criticize me would do well to look at the life of their pope! Lift up this excommunication on a lance and deliver it to him in Rome, to the antichrist, Alexander. It is he, not I, who lives outside the laws of God!” Invoking a higher authority, Savonarola had, in effect, excommunicated the pope.

  Sensing the danger that could come from the friar’s rebelliousness if it were allowed to continue, Pope Alexander moved quickly on a number of fronts. He authorized the Franciscans in Florence to attack Savonarola from their pulpits. To the Signoria, the Great Council, he delivered an ultimatum: Either send the “earthworm” friar to Rome under guard, or have him locked up as a criminal. If these conditions were not met, and soon, the pope threatened to place all Florence under interdict.

  At the mention of the word interdict, the Florentines trembled. They knew what it meant: no mass, no sacraments. If invoked, all offices of the church would be prohibited for the entire city. Children’s souls would be denied baptism; the dying would be sent to their graves without confession and last rights, and they would risk eternal damnation. The interdict was a spiritual death warrant.

  But there was another side to interdiction that was potentially even more troubling, especially to the city’s temporal powers. No Christian city was permitted to engage in trade or commerce with a city under interdict. In a Christian world, this amounted to throwing up a state of economic siege. Mercantile Florence, commercial Florence, the Florence of money and bankers would be utterly ruined.

  The Signoria vacillated. The compagnacci stepped up their anti-Savonarolan activities. On a Sunday when the friar was to preach in the cathedral, they smeared the pulpit with stinking, rancid grease and hung the skin of an ass around it. To buy time, the council reported to the pope that Savonarola had ceased preaching. The pope’s spies told him otherwise. This state of indecision could have ended in civil war had not the pope forced the Florentine hand. In March, he ordered the arrest of Florentine merchants and bankers residing in Rome and confiscated their property. More than any threat to their spiritual well-being, this step finally goaded the reluctant Florentines into action.

  Oddly enough, it was not the Signoria, but the Franciscans who took the initiative, and it was a bizarre initiative indeed. Many times, Savonarola had claimed that his words were substantiated by supernatural signs and wonders. The Franciscans called on him to prove this assertion and challenged the friar to an ordeal by fire! In a city with the most sophisticated and advanced constitution of its day, the most important legal question of the century was about to be settled by two men walking into a fire. Whoever emerged, if anybody, would be vindicated. This extraordinary turn of events had the blessing of the Great Council, who, deeply divided and with their backs against the wall, saw in it a convenient way of getting rid of Savonarola without their having to intervene and take sides. If he goes into the fire, he’ll be burned. If he does not, he’ll lose his support and tensions can be eased. So went the prevailing wisdom.

  Niccolo saw his city convulsed and deeply divided, without effective leadership and with gangs of competing thugs running out of control. He rarely went out. When he did, everything he saw confirmed his dismal analysis—theocracy running amok and challenged only by the forces of anarchy. Reason seemed to have been banished from the republic. This was not the Earthly Paradise. This was not the New Jerusalem.

  Niccolo was toying with the idea of going abroad, to Venice perhaps, or France. He could not bear to see the city he loved thus served, in the sway of maniacs and fools. The final insult was this ordeal by fire! It was insane! A barbarism from the Dark Ages! But despite his abhorrence, the tug of curiosity drew him to the event.

  He had not been in the Piazza della Signoria since the night of the ignoble bonfire. The great public square of the New Athens seemed suited to only one type of activity these days—burning things. The first thing Niccolo saw was great piles of wood. He could smell the pitch and resin in which they had been soaked to make them burn more surely and furiously. Between the two rows of sticks piled ten feet high ran a gangway about thirty yards long. It was wide enough for two men to pass through, side by side.

  The debates in which the “rules” for the ordeal had been fixed were, to Niccolo, an exercise in absurdity. They had taken a ludicrous idea and made it even more trivial and ridiculous. When things were at an impasse, someone actually proposed that walking across the Arno without getting wet would be just as good a miracle. Finally, both sides agreed that not Savonarola and his challenger, the Franciscan Francesco di Puglia, but two surrogates would actually undergo the ordeal. As these champions along with their supporters were preparing themselves, Savonarola seemed oddly out of touch with the proceedings. Niccolo had never seen the friar so detached and unemotional.

  Meanwhile, enthusiastic last-minute challenges were being mounted. The lunatic Silvestro Maruffi, one of the friar’s most rabid adherents, had taken it upon himself to argue about the details—he insisted that both men be stripped naked, as their clothes might be enchanted. Howls of indignation were raised on the Franciscan side. After considerable argument, a compromise was reached. Both men removed their clothes, and submitted them to inspection by a neutral prelate. When they were found to be free of enchantment, the monks were allowed to redress.

  As the fires were about to be lit, the friar’s champion picked up a crucifix and clutched it to his breast. “Profanation!” shrieked his adversaries. “The crucifix will protect him!” More debate followed. It was decided that the crucifix was out of bounds and the Dominican had to capitulate. But just as things seemed ready, he declared that he would not go into the fires unless he were allowed to take the Holy Eucharist with him! “More profanation still!” The cries were raised again and yet another round of forensic activity ensued. Hours passed in dickering. Through it all, the friar stood stock-still, the only one of those involved who seemed to maintain any dignity during the proceedings. Niccolo was watching him and thought he saw sadness in his face, a sense of infinite sadness as these lesser men quibbled like angry dogs in front of him. When the fires blazed up, Niccolo could see that Savonarola’s lips were moving in the silent, barely perceptible movements of prayer.

  When the flames were deemed to have attained a sufficient degree of destructive force, the champions were led to the starting line. The crowds cheered. The presiding officials looked anxious and a little embarrassed. Niccolo was turning to go, having little desire to see two men roasted alive or smell their burning flesh. Suddenly, Savonarola’s head jerked to attention. He looked up at the sky. Then Niccolo felt it too. First one drop, then another. Within a minute, a cruel, drenching rain was falling. And shouts of “Miracolo!” filled the air.

  On th
e day of the great ordeal, another event took place that would have an impact on all of Italy, although news of it would not reach the preoccupied Florence for a few days yet. Charles VIII of France, the new Charlemagne, the would-be emperor of all the Christians and all the Turks as well, died suddenly. His quest for glory and dominion was brought to an abrupt and ignominious end when his small head collided with a door during a fit of apoplexy.

  Of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of women who had yielded to his ragged lust over the years, not a single one had conceived a child. Charles was sterile, and his royal bloodline, like his vain dreams of world domination, was without issue.

  Meanwhile, back in Florence, the effect of the miracle was short-lived, in as much as its significance was open to dispute. Both sides claimed victory; both sides claimed that the rain had saved their champion. Instead of dissolving tensions in the strife-torn city, the aborted trial by ordeal only exacerbated them. Angels ransacked the palaces of the impious wealthy and the compagnacci looted convents and monasteries.

  Savonarola had not proven the divine nature of his mission, and many of his supporters wavered. On Palm Sunday, again defying the ban, he celebrated mass and preached. His sermon was directed against corruption in the church, as usual, but the fire was gone from it. Niccolo attended the mass and heard the tired, lackluster sermon. The man he saw in the pulpit was a defeated man, a man waiting for the end. Out of pity and fear and friendship, he decided to go to him, perhaps for the last time.

  Niccolo waited in the corridor that led from the chapel to the rectory, along the way the friar would have to pass to return to his cell. Savonarola came out of the church surrounded by a coterie of imploring, angry monks, all pushing themselves and their counsels upon him. For his part, he remained aloof, the undisturbed eye of the storm.

  When Niccolo stepped forward to greet the friar, two of the young monks threw themselves on the would-be intruder. Apparently, they were expecting danger. Flustered, Niccolo wrestled with his assailants for a moment before the friar intervened on his behalf. The pugnacious young monks withdrew, and Savonarola spoke to Niccolo in a voice that was almost a whisper. “Why have you come?” he asked simply.

  “To see you. To talk.” Niccolo replied.

  “There is nothing anyone can do,” said the friar resignedly. “And this morning I don’t want to talk to you. Please don’t be offended. I only want to go to my cell and play the madman, the fool. I want to pray. I want to be drunk with a holy drunkenness! With frenzy for the love of Christ.” His eyes shone as he talked. In a gesture of affection, he put his hand on Niccolo’s and squeezed. “Now let me rest a little,” he said and was gone.

  Dumbfounded, Niccolo left the Priory and made his way out into the streets to await the end. He did not have long to wait. That day the rioting intensified, and among others, Francesco Valori was killed. Valori, the old compatriot of Piero Capponi, had obtained a leadership position on the Great Council through working closely with Savonarola. He was the friar’s staunchest defender in the Signoria, and with his removal the last obstacle to the official censure and arrest of Girolamo Savonarola vanished.

  He was prostrate before the altar with the last of his disciples, singing psalms, when they came for him. He was allowed to take his leave of his brothers and receive communion. As the sbirri, the rough police officers, led him through the streets, one of the men struck him from behind. “Who hit you, Prophet?” snarled the officer with blasphemous satisfaction.

  Representatives of the pope were present at the trial, or the travesty of justice that passed for a trial. Using a combination of perjured witnesses and confessions elicited by torture, Savonarola and several of his followers were condemned to death for heresy. The man who had not confessed a mortal sin in over twenty years was declared guilty of a panoply of crimes that included even the spurious charge of giving communion with unconsecrated wafers.

  The indictment that was being drawn up in Niccolo’s mind in these days, however, was not against the friar, but against the city and the institutions and the process that had condemned him. In the end, they had acted only out of naked self-interest. The very body that this man had helped create, the Great Council, had arrested and tried him. There was no loyalty in them, only betrayal and treachery.

  Niccolo’s bitterness had effectively incapacitated him. Gone were his ambitions and his interests in history and politics. He had seen how it worked, once too often, and he wanted no part in this business of robbers and devils. He would take a long trip, see the world. Maybe things were better someplace else, better than in Florence, so full of promise, so hopeful, and in the end, so squalid.

  There was a knock at his door and someone came in. In his lethargy, Niccolo did not even turn to see who it was. Then, he heard the sweet voice of his sister, Primerana. “There’s a man downstairs asking for you, Niccolo. He seems agitated, in a hurry.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know him. But he looks too old and ugly to be one of your dear drinking companions.”

  “Alright,” said an unwilling Niccolo, “Tell whoever it is I’m coming down.”

  Standing in the kitchen was a tiny, nervous man whom Niccolo had seen before. Even without his angelic robes, Niccolo recognized Pietro Bernardino, the indoctrinator of angels and the unofficial chief of the child police. Niccolo loathed him and stood there, saying nothing, eyeing Bernardino with undisguised contempt.

  In a hoarse voice, the little fanatic said, “Are you Niccolo Machiavelli?”

  Niccolo did not deign to answer the obvious question.

  “Then please come with me. Come quickly. Everything’s been arranged.”

  Niccolo balked at the man’s presumption and his impatience. “Where do you think you’re taking me?”

  “Why to the friar, of course. To Savonarola. He wants to see you.”

  Niccolo’s shock and disbelief had still not worn off when they reached the Signoria. They were admitted after an exchange of whispers, and he began the long climb to the Alberghettino, the little chamber that served as an accommodation for prisoners of distinction. Guards at the doors let him pass upon a sign from Bernardino, and Niccolo was suddenly alone with Savonarola on the eve of his execution.

  The prophet was not kneeling or sitting, but huddled on a hard bench, his head resting on his knees. The great preacher who had rattled the rafters of the cathedral and made the ground tremble under a corrupt papacy was a small, harmless man again, much as he was on the first day Niccolo had met him.

  Niccolo touched his shoulder, and the friar lifted his head. He was smiling. “Now we will talk,” he said gently.

  And he talked, for over an hour, in a fluid, lucid voice. There was no wildness or raving in him, only the calm voice of the seer, of one who has seen much and has at last determined the significance of what he has seen.

  Exhausted, he asked Niccolo if he could rest, and his head sank once again to his knees. When Niccolo left him, full of the most profound misgivings, his head seething with doubts and contradictions, Savonarola was talking softly and laughing in his sleep.

  Three days after the execution, women could still be seen kneeling in silent prayer on the spot where he had been burned. They kept a constant vigil, this circle of bent, motionless guardians, clad in mourning and brooding over the blackened stones. In time, the spring rains would cleanse the spot of its stain and the tread of busy, indifferent feet would polish the stones to a tawny luster, so that they would be indistinguishable from those around them. But still, even many years later, there were those who dared not walk across the accursed, holy spot, and whether from superstition or respect, they gravely directed their steps around it, as if some reproachful specter stood barring their way.

  For the third time that morning, Niccolo found himself crossing the piazza and staring at the keepers of that mournful vigil. They were, he knew, the exceptions. The rest of the city was clamoring for entertainment. The pent-up demand for drunken public celebration had e
xploded, and signs of high revelry were everywhere. The gates had been kept open throughout the night while a steady stream of oxcarts laden with barrels of wine and beer rumbled into the city to supply the miraculously reopened taverns.

  “How soon they forget,” thought Niccolo as he identified a gang of the friar’s recent and most staunch supporters—now leering ex-angels in the company of ex-reformed prostitutes who had fallen happily again by the wayside. Niccolo did not consider himself an enemy of fun and high-times, quite the contrary. It was just that the present orgiastic excesses seemed to him, well, ill timed.

  More than anything else, he thought the graffiti that had cropped up everywhere on the walls and houses served as a sign of the times. One could read numerous, strident injunctions to fornicate and blaspheme, and even one joyful encouragement to practice that peculiarly “Florentine” vice: Let sodomy flourish again! The reign of the prophet, in spirit as well as in fact, had truly come to an end.

  While Niccolo could not exactly condemn the merry rabble, neither could he join them. His present disposition and his memories prevented him from doing so. Oppressive thoughts weighed heavily on him, and difficult decisions demanded his attention. But most of all, still ringing in his ears were the last words of a condemned man. He did not want to think about them—not now, not yet—and still, he could not put them out of his mind. In a not entirely successful effort to do so, he had filled the last three days with a careful attention to the mundane details of life, the distracting, time-consuming mechanical details with which he had somehow managed to fill the hours between his morning headaches and his lapsing into an uneasy, sodden slumber.

  Now he was on just such a fool’s errand, to keep busy and avoid thinking. But this afternoon, he had solemnly to promised to himself. He would reserve the afternoon, the entire afternoon, for thinking. At present, he was concentrating intently on crossing the Piazza Maggiore with an armful of books, books on history and government that for months now had lain unopened and unread.