Customer Reviews

Life And Times Of Girolamo Savonarola Part One

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anyone who has visited florence italy and doesn't know about savonarola missed the place...the "mad monk" influenced the renaissance city in enduring ways that will surprise most visitors. more than five centuries after he was burnt in the city's central square he's still controversial - was he a progressive who laid the groundwork for the reformation in religion and democracy in politics, or a repressed fanatic whose influence over the town's citizens led to the destruction of beautiful works of art? or maybe both at the same time? this two-volume account (hopefully the second edition) can be found in many libraries and gives a partial but fair view that enables the reader to make up her or his mind. villari shared the preconceptions of his time - the first edition was published when italy was about to go through the agonies of unification - and displays his own prejudices, but through plenty of quotations from the works of the man and his sermons, and from contemporary diaries, journals, letters and books makes it possible to form an independent view. worth a read if you're interested enough in other words, and much better than a "summary" account of the sort a more modern popular biography would likely be. villari really combed the archives...and it's all there, with the great personalities savonarola ran into and up against - the borgias, machiavelli, michelangelo, botticelli, ficino, pico della mirandola and of course lorenzo dei medici, the magnificent...it's hard to say savonarola's life was itself swashbuckling but the times were, and he was in there toughing it out with the great ones...and villari has it all...hope this helps.

I agree with the reviewer from Wellington. Villari's work is excellent and to my mind the best available on the subject. It is slightly partial and eager to take Fra Girolomo's side but that is a fair approach given the relentless attacks mounted against him over five centuries, including a vitriolic and wholly ill-informed piece by the London Times in April 1996. The one point I would take from this work is the treatment of the trial - whilst fully accurate and sedulous as always, Villari steers away from any analysis of the inquisitorial proceedure. For this I suggest H.C. Lea's peerless 'History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages' (a masterpiece by any measure and sadly out of print I believe) where the author deals with Fra Girolamo's trial in Vol.III - he also extends his thanks to Villari for the work he has done on the subject.

The interested reader may wish also to consult Roberto Ridolfi's very good work but I would leave any copies of the useless book by someone called Rachel Engler or Erlenger firmly on the shelves of the second hand book shop where it deserves to stay.