THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA; K ILLUSTRATING THE PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION IN ITALY, DURING THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. "La vita sua, la dottrina, il soggetto che prese, erano sufficienti a "The World knows nothing of its Greatest Men."-HENRY TAYLOR. LONDON: WHITTAKER AND CO. AVE MARIA LANE. 1843. PREFACE. AT Naumberg, on his way to the diet of Worms, LUTHER made the acquaintance of a certain zealous priest, who carefully and reverentially preserved in his closet the portrait of GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, the monk of Florence, though more as a martyr to liberty and morality, than as a religious confessor. The good priest, however, perceived enough resemblance between the Italian and the German, to draw the attention of the latter to this sacred memento. Silently producing the cherished painting, he held the same awhile before the eyes of Luther, who as silently perused it; but nothing daunted, conceived rather courage than fear from the lesson it presented. The mighty Reformer seems in consequence to have studied the works of his less fortunate predecessor, and in the year 1523 published the Exposition by Savonarola, of the fiftyfirst and thirty-first Psalms; in the preface to it ex |