Girolamo Savonarola: Biography, Achievements & Lasting Legacy

In 1495, when Florence refused to join Pope Alexander VI's Holy League against the French, the Vatican summoned Savonarola to Rome. He disobeyed, and further defied the pope by preaching under a ban, highlighting his campaign for reform with processions, bonfires of the vanities, and pious theatricals. In retaliation, Pope Alexander excommunicated Savonarola in May 1497 and threatened to place Florence under an interdict. A trial by fire proposed by a rival Florentine preacher in April 1498 to test Savonarola's divine mandate turned into a fiasco, and popular opinion turned against him. Savonarola and two of his supporting friars were imprisoned. On 23 May 1498, Church and civil authorities condemned, hanged, and burned the bodies of the three friars in the main square of Florence.

Savonarola's devotees, the Piagnoni, kept his cause of republican freedom and religious reform alive well into the following century. Pope Julius II (in office: 1503–1513) allegedly considered his canonization. The Medici—restored to power in Florence in 1512 with the help of the papacy—eventually weakened the Piagnoni movement. Some early Protestants, including Martin Luther himself, have regarded Savonarola as a vital precursor to the Protestant Reformation.