575. The Medici: The Bonfire of the Vanities (Part 4)

31:39I mean, you've hit now on his real target. That a curse advice for which you know Florence is infamous throughout Italy, he says in one sermon, December 1494, make a law I say without pity so that such persons are stoned and burned. And the Signoria then passes the most stringent laws of this kind in Florence's history. So there have previously been fines for sodomy and now they're replaced. You go in the pillory and then you're branded and if you're a repeat offender, you are sentenced to death. And Dominic, can I just say that on this topic, again, there is nothing novel about what Savonarola is doing because moral panics about sodomy are an absolute feature of the 15th century across Italy.

32:23So at the beginning of the 15th century, in 1418 in Venice, the government there had established what they called the Collegium Sodomitarum. So this is a magistracy that is specifically charged with eradicating what they describe as the crime which threatens a city with ruin. And we talked about Bernardino coming to Florence and having bonfires of vanities and things like that. And he had preached in the Duomo and had urged his congregation there to display their hatred for sodomy by spitting on the floor. and the sound of expectorations had rung throughout the vaults of the cathedral. So he is capitalising on what seems to have been a kind of consistent moral panic.

33:12And a panic actually, I think, born out of the fact that although the church teaches that homosexuality is shameful and illegal and a sin and whatnot, it actually seems to have been reasonably tolerated in mid-15th century Florence. so donald weinstein points out middle-class florentines generally got married quite late the men in their 30s and he says there are very few opportunities for them to basically have any relationships with women with respectable women before that so they resorted to female prostitutes or to young men and there were particular taverns that were well known as kind of cruising grounds where people would pick up young men yeah and this is why i think you know even in germany Florence has this reputation, a bit like maybe Amsterdam has had since the war for Europeans.

34:01And there's some historians who explain this. They say the reason this happens is basically because under Lorenzo the Magnificent, he allows this to flourish. There's a sense of sexual license because it's basically a way of distracting people from the fact that their political liberties have been severely curtailed. Basically, he'll control the elections. He controls the money and the power. And in return, you know, go to the taverns and do whatever you like. Now, the irony is that Savonarola's crackdown doesn't work at all. That's actually so often the case in history. These harsh new penalties are completely counterproductive because officials don't want to impose them.

34:36And people don't want to report their neighbours if they're worried they're going to be killed. So prosecutions actually fall in the 1490s under Savonarola's moral regime. And his rhetoric, therefore, becomes even more strident. Are there any councillors present? I would like to see you build a nice fire of these sodomites in the piazza, two or three, male and female. Make a fire that all Italy can see, he says in July 1495. And I guess that brings us to, well, two of the really celebrated elements, or celebrated is the word, much discussed elements of Savonarola's regime, both of which are often cited as anticipating, chilling things that happened in the 20th century.

35:19so the first one is the bonfire of the vanities and this i think is probably the one thing that there'll be a lot of listeners who've maybe vaguely heard of savonarola and if they've heard one thing about him it's that he had a bonfire of the vanities in the popular imagination it's a huge public bonfire of books and artworks anticipating the book burnings of the nazis but the truth as you've already mentioned you know so many of savonarola's aspects of his regime are not new and Florence has already had multiple bonfires of the vanities there'd been bonfires of the vanities under the Medici the only difference really with Savonarola's is that it feels more official it's held on the the date of carnival which always comes before lent and it's held on the piazza della signoria so not outside a church but outside the main civic building the center of civic power and they built it's in 1497 they built this huge wooden pyramid with eight sides and each of the eight sides there are 15 shelves and they fill the 15 shelves with and i quote well i'm not going to read all this but shameful pictures and sculptures gambling devices musical instruments music books masks you know playing cards dice uh lots of women's stuff diadems, hair pieces, cosmetic cases, perfumes, wigs.

36:40Interesting because the bonfires organized by Bernardino, the great anti-sodomite preacher, had specifically focused on clothing that was associated with gender fluidity, if you want to put it like that. So the kind of the sense that both sexes, they need to maintain a sobriety as well as a distinctiveness is kind of manifest in these great auto de fe yeah exactly now i think in the popular imagination you know if you imagine this you can sort of imagine the crowd looking on and shock a a gaggle of kind of hard-faced friars kind of pinched white faces setting light to these these things but this is actually not right there were huge processions because i remember it's it's it's basically coinciding with what would once been the carnival so there are thousands of people there are they're all singing hymns the The bells are ringing and the setting of the pyramid on fire is a great public spectacle.

37:38And destruction is fun, isn't it? I mean, if you and particularly if you feel kind of that right is on your side. So, again, I mean, the kind of, you know, Black Lives Matter parallel, pulling statues down, throwing them into the sea. It's great. People didn't weren't po-faced about that. It was a kind of whooping and cheering. Right. Which is exactly what they're doing at the Barn for the Vanities. The sources comment on how happy people were. They were loving it. It was a brilliant day out. Let's burn a load of perfume. Brilliant. Love it. Now, the second thing that Savonarola is well known for is his kind of roving bands of moral enforcers.

38:13Lots of societies have had moral enforcers, but Savonarolas are different because they are supposedly different because they're teenagers and children. So supposedly anticipating people like the Red Guards in Mao's cultural revolution. Now, again, the origins of this are more complicated. Florence was well known for its problems with gangs. They were gangs of boys called fanchuli. They fought in the streets and they were particularly infamous for assaulting women, sexually assaulting women in the streets. These are kind of boys and teenagers. And Savonarola wants to fix this. And he and his allies say, well, what we'll do is we'll get these boys, age six to 16, the boys on the streets.

38:52We'll make men of them. We'll form them into companies. We'll get them to wear plain clothes. We'll get them to cut their hair. We'll encourage them to elect their own officers. and their job, we will get them to set the moral tone of the city. So he's the Baden Powell of Renaissance Florence. Again, not new. Religious fraternities like this had flourished in Florence all through the 15th century. The difference is because it's him, it feels a bit more official and that his tone is always so aggressive and so impassioned. So by the middle of the 1490s, you can see these boys' groups everywhere in Florence.

39:28They all put up little altars at street corners and demand that you give them arms, and they'll be giving these arms to the poor. Now, there is an edge to this. If they see a woman with a tiara on her head, they're encouraged to snatch it off. If they see somebody walking down the street looking like a bit of a dandy, so a sort of Benjamin Disraeli figure in like a green suit or something, they'll harass them, and they'll harass drunkards and things. But they're not really beating people up or killing them or doing any of these things. Now, outside Florence, stories of these boys spread. And in Rome, in particular, people say, oh, Savonarola has set up a reign of terror.

40:07And these kind of gangs of youths roam the streets, making everyone's life a complete misery. But I think this is nonsense, actually, because we know that the boys asked the Signoria for the power to punish homosexuals and prostitutes so that we may purge the whole of our city of vice, they said. And the Signoria said, no, there's no way we're giving you that power. That's demented. So the civic authorities have not completely rolled over and given in to Savonarola and his moral shock troops. And are there people who are actively opposed to him? Yes. He does not rule with an iron fist. This isn't fascist?

40:48Nowhere near. So at this point in my reading and research on this, I was like, well, where's the reign of terror? Where's the evidence? this is one of the most evil men in history. And, you know, he doesn't actually seem to have killed anybody. I mean, some of his rhetoric is very unsettling, like the sort of anti-gay rhetoric and whatnot, but he doesn't actually have the power to kill anybody. And he's always challenged. So there are his supporters, the weepers, the wailers, as they're called, the pianioni, but there are always critics, and they're called the arabiati, the sort of the angry ones, the enraged, the furious.

41:26and they're probably a smaller group, but they are richer. They are more well-established. They're more kind of patrician, I suppose. And so ultimately they have deeper roots. Yeah, they probably do. Yeah. And I think his rule is always a so-called rule. I mean, he's setting the tone, but he's not sitting in judgment. His rule is always fragile for two reasons. Number one, as we've discussed, Florence is in a massive mess. Its trade has collapsed. The war has done terrible damage. People aren't collecting the harvests. Prices are through the roof. There are bread riots. You know, everything feels very, very fraught.

42:05And what is more, the international situation is incredibly dangerous. So Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, who we described as a man who loves a machination, he decides to change sides in 1495 and he forms a holy league to kick out the French. and the Holy League is the Papal States, Venice, Milan and Aragon, as well as the Holy Roman Empire. So Charles, who has captured Naples by this point, decides, oh, I'll go back to France. And he goes back to France, he fights his way back through Italy, fights a massive battle, beats the Holy League and goes all the way back to France. Now, the problem for Savonarola, for Florence is they're allied to the French now.

42:45And Savonarola has told everybody that Charles is the new Cyrus the Great and that he's going to sort of lead the world into this sort of new age of reformation. Which he's significantly failing to do. Yeah, which he's gone home. Yeah. So Florence is now completely isolated and Florence doesn't join the Holy League. And Pope Alexander, the Borgia Pope, says, this is terrible. Why have Florence, you know, Florence have let the side down? And he personally blames Savonarola. He said this is because this demented friar they've got in Florence. He's already been reading about Savonarola's apocalyptic prophecies.

43:18is denunciations of corruption in the church. And of course, if you're the Pope and you have this bloke in Florence who claims he's got the gift of prophecy, he's got the link with God, he knows what's coming, I mean, that could not be a more serious threat to papal authority. Of course. And this is why the papacy and the institutional structures of the church have always looked askance at apocalyptic preaching. Yeah. It's dangerous. Absolutely. July 1495 so quite early on in Savonarola's kind of regime as it were the Pope summons him to Rome says come to Rome he says look you know I don't mean you in your harm I receive you in love and charity I just want to hear from your own lips what on earth's going on over there and Savonarola says I mean this is where he could argue he makes his big mistake or would he have ended up like Martin Luther who can who can say Savonarola says oh I'm not coming to Rome I'm too ill I've got dysentery I mean to be fair he's got dysentery you don't probably don't want to see him I've got dysentery and I'm worried I might be assassinated on the way.

44:18Now his refusal to come to Rome is a very very serious step. You can see why he does it because he's worried that if he gets to Rome he'll almost be put on trial at the papal court. He'll either be made to admit that he's an imposter to back down or he'll be condemned as a heretic if he sticks to his guns. So he kind of thinks it's lose-lose I'll stay where I am thank you. But of course by not going to Rome he sets himself dead against papal authority, and he makes the confrontation pretty much inevitable. So then there's a long standoff. The Pope, at the end of 1495, he accuses Savonarola of falling victim to perverse dogma and insanity of mind.

44:57He bans him from public preaching. Savonarola completely ignores this. Preaching is his power, but it's his power base. If he stops preaching, he loses all his influence and as the time goes on his rhetoric becomes ever more aggressive he really openly condemns he's always talking about popes and prelates how corrupt they are he says i'm moses leading my people across the red sea which presumably makes the pope pharaoh exactly he's casting the pope as pharaoh the pope's not going to like that the pope hits on another wheeze he says um i want to reorganize all the sort of dominican authorities in italy and put Savonarola's monastery under a new kind of regional jurisdiction.

45:37If Savonarola agreed, that would mean they could transfer him out of Florence and put him in a different monastery. So Savonarola just completely ignores it and says, you know, I'm not even listening to you now. So this, I think, suggests that Savonarola really isn't a charlatan. He's not a con man because a con man at this point, he'd run away or he'd give in to the Pope or he'd find a compromise. Savonarola has drunk his own Kool-Aid. And also, Dominic, just to say, I mean, he's not corrupt. He's not using his position to make money or anything like that. Do you know, a funny thing is that people always say about Severn Auro in this sort of popular accounts, the great monsters of history, the one thing they always say is he's a hypocrite.

46:15And yet he's not in any way a hypocrite. I mean, this is the thing. There's a sort of assumption when somebody is a Puritan and a reformer, they must be a hypocrite. There's probably all kinds of stuff going on in the back office that we don't know about. But actually, in this case, there's nothing. There's no sexual decadence. There's no greed. There's no sort of, I mean, I'm not saying I'd have him around for dinner, but he's not in that sense an evil man. Yeah, I mean, if you wanted to reform Chipping Norton, you'd have him in, wouldn't you? He'd be the guy. Yeah, I suppose. I suppose. Yeah, I probably would.

46:50I don't think we'd have a lot to, I don't think we're natural soulmates. Well, you'd play the role of a kind of Medici prince. I suppose I would, yeah. You could retire and just let him crack on. Yeah, I'd use him against my enemies while I was on a night out in Dublin. after Arrested's History recording with Paul Rouse. That's exactly what would happen. So we get to 1497, and we haven't had enough bombshells in this episode, so let's have a few. First of all, Charles VIII, he really let Severo and God down. He signs a truce with the Holy League, so now the French are out of the war. I mean, that's a terrible blow to Severo's credibility.

47:26And he hasn't done his Cyrus the Great stuff. He hasn't done his Cyrus the Great, and also he hasn't given Pisa back to the Florentines, So the Florentines have lost peace and they've got nothing to show for it. Bad on every level. Then the summer of 1497, the Pope excommunicates Savonarola. And the order is read out across Florence and the churches. And Savonarola says, listen, nobody needs to take any notice of this. The Pope's based this on false information. And an excommunication based on false information is no excommunication at all. So it's interesting that unlike Luther in a similar situation, Savonarola isn't attacking it on theological terms.

48:00No, no, no. So see, it's interesting, he never gets into that kind of theological debate. That's not really his thing, which is a big difference with Luther. But there's a definite sense, I think, that momentum is shifting now because rival religious orders in Florence. And don't forget, a lot of these religious orders absolutely despise one another more than they do people who aren't even Christians. Like the Franciscans, the Franciscans can't stand Savonarola. And there are Franciscans who are calling him, and I quote, a hypocritical lying and false prophet. very openly. So the idea that he's got this reign of terror and censorship is just not right.

48:35You can see sort of obscene graffiti on street corners mocking him. They put nails into the pulpit or something so that he'll hammer down his fist and skewer it. Exactly, there's that. And they also fixed the rotting hide of an ass to the pulpit to sort of put him off. I think that would put you off, actually. And what's worse, the mood in Florence is really darkening. Basically, they've got nothing to eat. They've got no money. There are waves and waves of plague and disease. There's homeless people dying in the streets. There's all a general atmosphere of misery and paranoia. And do you think that Savonarola's tendency to harp on all the plagues and disasters and horrors that the apocalypse will bring is slightly starting to lose its appeal now that things are really getting terrible?

49:21You made the comparison with the mood of 2020, 2021. As we know, that only lasts so long because people ultimately get bored of it. i think and seven or less has a bad habit of blaming people themselves you see this is his message so when people are starving and they've got no money he says oh you repent of your sins people are like come on we want bread yeah we want bread exactly in march 1498 9th of march the pope sends an ultimatum to the signoria in florence he says right enough now shut this bloke down or else he says i will put you under interdict so that means no one can be born die or take communion or whatever in Florence.

49:59That's right, isn't it? You're basically cast out of the community. You can't live, you can't be born, you can't die. That's the joke. It seems likely he will call for foreign military intervention against Florence unless they put Savonara under house arrest. But what really frightens the Signoria are the reports that the Pope is preparing to arrest all Florentine merchants and bankers in Rome and to confiscate their assets. And at that point the Florentines are like what okay well that's you know the stuff about our immortal soul was one thing but the money that's no good so they formally order Savonarola to stop preaching that's on the 17th of March and then on the 25th of March a really sensational development a bloke called Francesco di Puglia who is a Franciscan friar at the rival monastery of Santa Croce he says to his congregation look we've all had enough of this let's settle this let's let god decide let us hold an ordeal by fire savannah roller and i will walk through the flames and if he can do this and come out unscathed then he will win but if he can't then he will be exposed as a liar so it's a friar off a friar and a fire off oh my word so exciting and actually the people at the time are even more excited than we are telling this story they it's like the it's like Christmas, the birthday, World Cup final, all in one.

51:25Oh, my God. Literally, people are running around the streets. They can't wait. People say, oh, I'd love to do it. I can't. I'll do it too. They're so excited. Now, when the news reaches the Palazzo della Signora, some of the councillors say, oh, my God, are you joking? This is barbaric. One of them actually says, our ancestors would be ashamed of us if we let this go ahead. See, the idea that everybody in the past is kind of sunk in superstition or not is obviously rubbish. lots of people say come on this is mad oh i reframe it i mean throughout history and into the present people love a hideous spectacle of suffering correct and lots of people the majority of people on both sides so pianoni and arabiati say oh i love the thought of this that's that brilliant this is the final like let's decide this now now savonarola is not keen he says why would i do this against this franciscan play he's not my enemy my real i mean he'd do it against the pope but he's not going to do it against this guy.

52:21So one of his cronies, Fra Domenico, he says, well, I'll stand in. I'll do it in your stead. Now, at that point, the original Francis says, well, I'm not doing it as some bag carrier. So he gets to stand in as well, who's called Fra Giuliano. And the deal is that if either of them dies and is burned, then their hero, the guy they're standing in for, will be banished. What nobody ever considers is they might both come out unhurt. What would happen then? penalty shootout for some description. It's a huge operation. I mean, imagine seeing this. This would have been so exciting. It's held on Saturday the 7th of April, 1498, in the Piazza della Signoria, in the heart of Florence.

53:04The place where they always have their little parlamentos, the place where they had the bonfire of the vanities. There it is. All foreigners are kicked out of the city. The gates of the city are closed. The streets are barricaded. There are armed guards everywhere. That morning, Savonarola and Domenico lead their supporters from the monastery of San Marco. They're holding crosses and they're singing psalms. Savonarola's put on a special white velvet robe. He looks splendid. And he's carrying the host, which is the body of Christ, isn't it, from communion. They get to the square. There are grandstands in the square filled with support fans.

53:39They're not women. Women are not allowed to watch this. So the women, if you remember, the women were allowed to watch a load of stallions going berserk over a mare. Remember that? Yes, they were for their entertainment. Yeah, people said it was especially good for girls. Educational. Yeah, but they're not allowed to watch this burning. They've built a long kind of brick platform from the Palazzo della Signoria into the square, and it's lined with kind of sticks and branches and brushwood. So this is the fire, and the fire will be on either side, and there's a very narrow gap, and you have to walk down the middle kind of through the fire.

54:15So kickoff approaches, which is moments from kickoff, and suddenly a massive row. It's like the 1978 World Cup final between Holland and Argentina, a dispute about somebody having a bandage on his hand. There's a huge row. Domenico wants to carry a crucifix, and the Franciscans say, you can't take a crucifix into the fire. Come on, that's poor. Stefano Rola says, you're right, actually, you can't. I think you should take the host instead. Now a huge row. The Franciscans go berserk at this. Take the host into the fire. Are you joking? Well, it's kind of like taking drugs, isn't it, if you're a cyclist or something?

54:49Doping. Of course, it's massive doping. It's like theological doping. The crowd are getting very restive. Come on, get on with it. Because time is passing and they're digging into the Bible to find precedence or whatever. And then, unbelievably, they hear thunder and it starts to rain. Oh, no. So actually, it's not a football match. It's a cricket match. It's a cricket match. It is a cricket match. It rains and rains and rains. and basically you get to mid to late afternoon and it's pretty obvious the rain is not going to stop. No, there'll be no play today. There'll be no play today, exactly.

55:23Now, as they all go back, the crowd are absolutely furious. They've given up their time at a weekend for nothing and the person they blame is Savonarola. All this nonsense about crucifixes and the host, you were just playing for time. You didn't even want it to happen because you knew you'd lose. And maybe he could see the storm clouds literally approaching. Maybe, yeah, coming over the mountains. As he goes back to his monastery, they're being jostled, he and his supporters, by the crowd. And it's only because they've got armed guards they're able to get back to the monastery. And that night, some of his supporters say to him, come to San Marco, and they say, look, mate, the city's turned against you.

56:04We need to crack down now. We need to get weapons. Otherwise, we're in real trouble. And Savonaro says, no way. You see, this again suggests to me he's not one of the most evil men in history because he says that's the last thing i want to have bloodshed on the streets of uh france i would hate i hate that idea isn't he kind so the next day is palm sunday services all day in the cathedral and a sense of tension and at vespers fighting breaks out between pro and anti-sever and the crowd starts chanting let's go to san marco and there's a real sort of sense of passion has reached a crescendo and the crowd becomes a mob and they surged through the streets all the way toward the monastery and there Savonarola is leading an evening service.

56:45Remember this is a man who's been excommunicated so he shouldn't really be doing this. He's actually kneeling before the crucifix when they hear the first kind of banging and crashing on the doors and shouting and people throwing stones. Basically they're under siege. Now some of his monks had thought this was coming and had been stockpiling weapons so they're like brilliant let's do this so they charge up to the roof and they're like firing down on the crowd they're hurling tiles bricks they get the big pinnacle from the roof and they drop it on the crowd there's bells ringing there's bodies everywhere people screaming so this must have made up for the lack of the fire walking yeah i think this is fun in its own way i think you'd ideally you'd have had both but one out of two is not bad anyway late that night the uh signoria the Grand Council votes.

57:34They decide, okay, Severo's got to go. And they send troops to secure the convent. There's now basically a full-scale battle. They bring up artillery and explosives. Some of the friars, I'm impressed to discover, had handguns and crossbows firing back at them. So it's a big, great film, this. The battle lasts about eight hours. The soldiers burst in through the kind of burning doors of the church. They find a lot of the monks sort of gibbering in terror. in the church, and Savonarela is in the library. He's praying on his knees in the Medici library, Tom. Performatively, do you think? No, I don't.

58:11Why would I? I think that's very cynical. That's Machiavelli speaking. Performative, perhaps the wrong word, but emblazoning a visual representation of his piety on the eyeballs of his attackers. Maybe, yes, maybe. Or is it a bit like the mission, the Jeremy Irons film? At the end, when the soldiers attack, he walks through the smoke and the slaughter, carrying a cross, doesn't he? And the kind of the oboe is playing and all that stuff, the moving music. It's a bit like that. It's like a last gesture of defiance. I think it is performative in a sense, but not in a cynical way. Does that seem fair?

58:45I would never be cynical about Samarone. That's good to know, because otherwise you wouldn't be yourself. So actually, they drag him through the streets, past jeering crowds to this Palazzo della Signoria, and they put him, do you know where they put him? they put him in the same cell that Cosimo de' Medici was put in 65 years earlier. But presumably not deliberately. They're not making a point there. No, they're not making a point. It's just they've probably only got two cells. Well, I don't know. The impression I'm getting of the Signora, I think they've probably got quite a lot of cells. So what actually follows is quite grim.

59:19Long days of interrogations and torture, something called the strapado. So the strapado is a terrible thing. Basically what they do is they bind your hands behind your back with a rope at one end of the rope. Then the other end of the rope, they put through a hook in the ceiling or pulley. Then people pull on this rope. And they basically, that pulls your arms back over your head, dislocates your shoulders, I imagine, and lifts you off your feet and breaks your arms. And you're hanging there in absolute agony. And they do this to him, you know, multiple times. They'll give him a turn almost with every question they ask.

59:55I'd rather do that than have my feet burnt off. Really? Yeah, that's horrible. Well, the guy died and Savonero didn't die of this, I suppose, but I don't know. It's not like Luther. They don't care about his theology. They just want him to admit that he was a fake and that all he wanted was political power. And what they get when you read through it, it's this dreadful kind of rambling series of confessions and retractions. Historians and biographers have always argued, you know, did he mean his confessions or not? And I mentioned this book by Donald Weinstein. he says he thinks Savonarelli actually did think he was guilty, that in his kind of agony he came to think God would not have deserted him without a reason and that therefore he must have been wrong when he said he was a prophet and that he's as sincere in his confession as he was in his original prophecies.

1:00:49That both times actually he's not cynical, he really means it. And I think that's perfectly plausible psychologically. He feels his own failure and his own humiliation prove to him that he must have been mistaken and he was a sinner all along. So that's pretty bad for him. And then to make matters worse, there's kind of a knock on the door one day and in came some interrogators from Rome. The last people you want to see in Severn Rhodes' situation. And they have a go too. And they do the same thing with him for days. And this is really terrible. I mean, his confessions now are just rambling, contradictory.

1:01:20He's begging for mercy, sort of sobbing. It's really, really awful. And the end finally came on the 23rd of May. He and his two cronies, who were called Domenico and Silvestro, they were publicly stripped of their clerical robes. They were hanged in the central square. Everybody was expecting that Savonarolo would make a final kind of resounding speech. But he didn't really say anything at all. And the crowd were very disappointed. And is that because he's broken or because he feels his prophetic voice has now gone? I think both, Tom. I think both. He has actually, he wrote sort of commentaries on the Zams while he was in prison.

1:01:55That's impressive considering his arms are broken. Yeah. Well, I don't know how he did it. You're doing it with his teeth. I don't know how he did it, but apparently, I mean, I'm not really, I'm not a man for such things myself, but people say they're very moving and very well done. Anyway, they're hanged. When they're dead, the platform was set on fire and there were little explosives put on the platform basically to blow up their bodies. and then people came on with carts, swept up all their ashes and threw them in the River Arno, so there'd be no relics. However, that wasn't quite the end of Savonarola.

1:02:26The authorities tried to erase his legacy completely, so they banned his books, his writings. I mean, this is the irony. He's the person who's always thought of as the book banner, but his books were banned. Even the bell of his monastery was whipped through the streets and withdrawn from sight for half a century. but as you will know the first protestant reformers you know the sort of generation i guess that follow him they couldn't get enough of savonarola martin luther called him and i quote a holy man a godly man of florence calvin compared to calvin calvin was a big fan of savonarola and the first kind of histories of protestantism often mentioned him as a forerunner and said oh there was this bloke in Florence.

1:03:10He was brilliant. Well, because he denounces the Pope, I suppose. Yes, that's exactly what it is. So anyway, he's dead. What do I think of him? I think it's pretty clear what I think of him to the listeners. I actually feel quite sorry for him. I don't think he was one of the most evil men in history. What do you think, Tom? I mean, the whole way through the Middle Ages, from the 11th century onwards, you have these reformers who summon Christians to repentance and to often targeting wealth specifically. and sometimes they become saints and sometimes they're condemned as heretics. And in a way, Savonarola is the last of these because he is also serving to kind of presage the Reformation, which will take Europe into a very different world.

1:03:53All right, now Theo wants us to wrap up because he says we're running quite long. So just two last loose ends. The Medici. The Medici did get back to Florence eventually under Lorenzo's brother Giovanni, the cardinal. He recaptured the city with papal troops in 1512. The Medici ended up becoming hereditary dukes of Florence and then grand dukes of Tuscany, and they ruled until the 18th century. And Tom, as you pointed out, in the first episode or the second episode, I can't remember, they produced a couple of popes and a couple of queens of France. Catherine de' Medici. But I think it's telling that the Medici who really dominate the world's imagination, the first ones, Cosimo and Lorenzo, and that is because of the other loose end, which is Florence.

1:04:31Florence never recovered really from the turmoil of the 1490s because by the time the Italian Wars were over in the middle of the 16th century Florence basically lost its reputation for financial innovation and economic prosperity and was becoming a bit of a backwater And that of course is great for its future as a tourist attraction because it means that the glorious architecture of the 15th century is kind of preserved Yeah, I think that's dead right So nobody really cares about the later Medici and we probably won't do them, but we will do another Italian family on this podcast who we've already mentioned.

1:05:06And they are, of course, the Borgias. And you can look forward to that perhaps next year. First, before we come to them, the next series we'll be doing much nearer in time because we are crossing the sea from Britain to Ireland, to Dublin, to explore the Irish War of Independence against Britain in the aftermath of the Great War going into the 1920s. And as always, of course, members of the Restless History Club will get early access to those six epic episodes and you can sign up for them at therestlesshistory.com. So thank you, Dominic. Thank you, everyone, for listening and goodbye. Arrivederci.