DOMENICO BURCHIELLO. -(139..-1448.)

Burchiello's name is often quoted by persons who have never read any of his poems. He was a barber by trade, and was doubtless one of those who helped to found the Barbers' Salon in Italy, a sort of club open to all the world, in which the latest news and gossip are retailed. A foreigner visiting Italy for the first time will be struck by the countless number of hairdressers' shops in which the modern Burchiello is awaiting his customers, and in the evening people meet there and converse, seated upon large sofas which are placed round the room.

Burchiello, a barber and the son of a barber, had his shop, in the first years of the fifteenth century, in the Calimara quarter, near the old market. He was so ready-witted and gay that his name became as synonymous for good-humor and quickness of repartee as that of Figaro did three hundred years later. Courtiers and townspeople repaired to his shop, and in the Medici Gallery may be seen a picture representing the establishment divided into two portions, in one of which customers were shaved, while the other was reserved for the regular frequenters, who chatted, or played, or recited verses when Burchiello's tongue was not going.

He wrote sonnets which passed through eight editions in various countries before the fifteenth century was over, though they are so fantastic and incomprehensible that it is difficult to understand what they mean : for all the learned commentaries of Vareld and Dona, Dandolo has no hesitation in pronouncing these sonnets to be unintelligible to those who do not understand the fishwife's vocabulary. The only thing to commend about them is that they are vivacious, and full of that fire which pleases the common people.

SAVONAROLA. -(1452-1498.)

Fra Girolamo Savonarola, monk of the Dominican order, was born at Ferrara on the 21st of September, 1452, and, though not properly speaking a Florentine, he belongs to the history of that city, so prominent a part did he play in the politics and intellectual movement of his day. With the ardor of a Peter the Hermit and the unabated fanaticism of a tribune of the people, which cost him his life, he sought to weaken the influence of the Medici, and to maintain the Republican form of Government in Florence. He did not scruple to call upon the Pope to suppress abuses, and even endeavored to put a check upon his temporal power, and, like the austere reformer that he was, set his face against the prevailing ideas in regard to art and literature, considering them to be infected with paganism, and denouncing them from the pulpit on this ground. His eloquence, his enthusiasm, and his fire, his sombre genius, his boundless courage, and the matchless audacity and coolness which denoted an immovable conviction, made him one of the most remarkable figures in the history of Florence during the close of the fifteenth century, and the flames which consumed his body have formed a halo of martyrdom around his head, though there were those who professed to regard him as an impostor.

His father's name was Niccolo, and his mother was Elena Buonaccorsi, the family being of Mantuan origin. Austere and serious as a child, there seemed to be something in him which foretold a stormy career. His earliest studies were theology and philosophy, and his favorite author was St. Thomas Aquinas, though he wrote a few poems in his youth which are still extant. He had his first vision at the age of two-and-twenty, when it seemed to him, one night, that a cold rain had penetrated to his very bones, and annihilated all the fermentation of youth, and allayed for ever the longings of the flesh. After this vision he went off to Bologna, without communicating his intentions to any one, and assumed the robe of a Dominican. He soon manifested his great gifts, and his superiors gave him the chairs of dialectics and metaphysics. He remained for seven years in Bologna, going from thence to Florence, where he at once took up his residence at San Marco, and made his debut as a preacher in San Lorenzo during Lent. He failed, however, to make any impression upon the Florentines, who were formed in the school of Boccaccio and Marsuppini, and finding this to be the case, he resolved to confine himself in future to expounding Holy Writ. Having been sent by his superiors to preach in Lombardy, he returned to Florence at the request of Lorenzo the Magnificent, to whom Pico delta Mirandola had described him as being a man of great promise, well versed in Holy Writ, and deserving of the highest interest.

In 1490 he commenced, in the church of San Marco, a series of lectures upon the Apocalypse, and basing his arguments upon the obscurity of this book, he declared that it foretold the immediate ruin of Florence, unless she reformed her ways. He called upon the Church to regenerate herself, and upon her clergy to give up the licentious life which so many of them led, threatening them with the Divine vengeance in the sentence engraved on the medallion: " Gladius Domini super Terrain, Ceto et Velociter." His preaching created a feeling of terror throughout Florence, but his threats of chastisement seemed to fascinate the people, and as St. Mark's was too small for the congregations which pressed to hear him, he preached the following year in the Duomo. For eight years he had the whole city at his feet, and when he came down from the pulpit on his way back to the monastery of St. Mark he had to be protected from the enthusiastic demonstrations of the ardent and impressionable crowd.

It is difficult at this distance of time to form an idea of what his eloquence was like, but it apparently was marked rather by energy and natural inspiration than by elevation of ideas and finish. As he went straight to the hearts of the people, there must have been a tinge of vulgarity which touched the instinct of the masses, and a certain tone of tenderness which had its effect upon the strongest, for upon one occasion the whole congregation burst into sobs, beating their breasts and manifesting their contrition in other ways. Savonarola was an extemporary preacher, but one of the congregation took down his sermons, and manuscript copies of them were widely circulated until the art of printing enabled them to be reproduced with a wealth of illustration.

In July, 1491, he became prior of St. Mark's. It was a custom in the convent that on the election of a new prior he should go and do homage to the civil authority. As Lorenzo de' Medici was an intimate friend of Pico della Mirandola, who was the sworn ally of Savonarola, it might be supposed that the latter would have conformed to the general usage ; but instead of doing so he denounced the tyranny of Lorenzo, and accused him of undermining the liberties of the people. Lorenzo had on a previous occasion sent him a delegation composed of five or six citizens, begging him not to excite still more people which had always been the sport of its own passions; but his answer to this was a fresh tirade, in which he announced the early death of the chief of the State. The fulfilment of this, as of some of his other predictions, gave additional force to his fervid declamations and mystic utterances. In the life of Lorenzo the details of Savonarola's visit to him on his death-bed are given in full, and need not, therefore, be repeated here.

With all his fanaticism Savonarola was a true patriot, and on more than one occasion he proved his devotion to Florence. When Charles VIII. was advancing on the city the Dominican monk went forth to meet him, and adjured him so vehemently in the name of God that the king was induced to adopt a more conciliatory policy. The speech which Savonarola made is included in his " Revelazioni." It is true that Charles and his army were only gotten rid of through the fearless bearing of Piero Capponi combined with Savonarola's influence and the payment by the Republic of a large sum of money.

Savonarola was at one time very nearly being successful in his struggle against the Medici, for when Piero, the son of Lorenzo, had been exiled, he submitted to the Signoria the new form of government which, according to his views, would insure the supremacy of the people. It was at his instance that the first popular parliament was convoked in the Palazzo Vecchio, but, as I have shown in a previous chapter, it did not last long.

The political purpose which he was pursuing did not cause him to slacken his crusade against the Papacy. His constant theme was simony, the dissolute conduct of the clergy, the scandalous habits of the prelates, the cardinals, and the Pope himself, and the general looseness of ecclesiastical morals and discipline. The occupant of the Papal throne at that time was the infamous Alexander VI., the father of Cesar Borgia, of the Duke of Candia, who was murdered by his own brother, and of Lucretia Borgia; and as he felt these accusations to be true, and dreaded their effect when launched from the second city in Italy, he summoned the Dominican monk to Rome in order to reprimand him for his doctrines. Savonarola was able to excuse himself on the ground of ill-health from coming Rome, and was as a matter of fact obliged to renounce preaebino, and work of all kinds, and remain for some time in seclusion at San Marco.

But his silence did not last long, and when he again ascended the pulpit he spoke with even greater vehemence against the Pope, writing to all the sovereigns of Europe, and asking them to convoke a General Council for the deposition of the Pontiff, as guilty of crimes which he undertook to prove.

Alexander VI. offered him a cardinal's hat on condition that he would change the tenor of his discourses. Savonarola, however, treated the proposal with scorn, and made it the subject of a sermon in order to prove the charges of venality in connection with ecclesiastical offices which he had been preferring against the Court of Rome.

The city, however, was divided into two camps, upon the one side being the adherents of the Medici, who were the natural enemies of Savonarola, and who were styled the Arrabiati, while on the other were his partisans, known as the Piagnoni. The most fanatical of the latter were Fra Domenico da Pescia and Fra Silvestro Maruffi, the first named of whom succeeded Savonarola in the pulpit about 1496, and commenced a crusade against all kinds of profane objects, such as books, statuary, drawings, paintings, miniatures, jewelry, dress, musical instruments, and perfumes. The people of Florence were possessed of a frenzy, and condemned to the flames everything which was susceptible of exciting worldly thoughts, or which was used for the adornment of the person. There was a wild outburst of fanaticism, and, with a blind fury reminding us of the Iconoclasts, priceless works of art were destroyed in that year, when for the first time the tolerance for which Italy had always been conspicuous was forgotten. It is strange to note that in the fifteenth century, under the rule of the Medici, books and works of art should have been consigned to the flames.