Death in Florence
the Medici, Savonarola and the Battle for the Soul of the Renaissance City
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By the end of the fifteenth century, Florence was well established as the home of the Renaissance. As generous patrons to the likes of Botticelli and Michelangelo, the ruling Medici embodied the progressive humanist spirit of the age, and in Lorenzo the Magnificent they possessed a diplomat capable of guarding the militarily weak city in a climate of constantly shifting allegiances between the major Italian powers.
However, in the form of Savonarola, an unprepossessing provincial monk, Lorenzo found his nemesis. Filled with Old Testament fury and prophecies of doom, Savonarola's sermons reverberated among a disenfranchised population, who preferred medieval Biblical certainties to the philosophical interrogations and intoxicating surface glitter of the Renaissance. Savonarola's aim was to establish a 'City of God' for his followers, a new kind of democratic state, the likes of which the world had never seen before.The battle which this provoked would be a fight to the death, a series of sensational events - invasions, trials by fire, the 'Bonfire of the Vanities', terrible executions and mysterious deaths - featuring a cast of the most important and charismatic Renaissance figures.
This famous struggle has often been portrayed as a simple clash of wills between a benign ruler and religious fanatic, between secular pluralism and repressive extremism. However, in an exhilaratingly rich and deeply researched story, Paul Strathern reveals the paradoxes, self-doubts and political compromises which made the battle for the soul of the Renaissance city one of the most complex and important moments in Western history.
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Eschewing a one-sided approach, Strathern (The Venetians) fashions an engrossing portrayal of the two legendary 15th-century figures who shaped Renaissance Florence: Lorenzo (the Magnificent) de' Medici and Girolamo Savonarola. Lorenzo, self-indulgent yet capable, was head of the city-state's most powerful family, and used his "diplomatic skill" to cement Florence as a major power and forge an alliance with Pope Innocent VIII. Savonarola was a fiery monk whose severe shift toward a charismatic asceticism ironically placed him in direct conflict with multiple popes. Strathern demonstrates a thorough understanding of the city-state's internal and external influences, and he walks readers through the tumultuous transition from the Medieval era to the Renaissance's "new vision of humanism." In well-considered prose, Strathern argues that these two figures battled for the "direction that humanity should take," further illustrating the struggle for Florence's soul via Savonarola-convert Sandro Botticelli's artistic descent from exuberant classicism to brimstone imagery. This enjoyable and pleasantly articulate look into the inner workings of two larger-than-life entities (the de' Medici family and the Church) offers unexpected insight into the theology, philosophy, and society that eventually cemented Florence as a Renaissance center of political and cultural import. Illus.
