CH. IV.

ELIAS AND CYRUS.

161

The good preachers are removed, the guidance of ecclesiastical affairs is not entrusted to them; good laws and manners are abolished; and, on the contrary, holidays and ceremonies introduced, which thrust out or destroy those which God has commanded. O Italy! for thy sins this trouble will come. O Florence! for thy sins this chastisement will come. O Clergy! because of thee comes this storm. I tell you, there will come a storm, like the vision of Elias, and the storm will shatter the mountains! Over the Alps will one come hither against Italy, like the Cyrus, of whom Isaiah wrote. O! ye high, ye wise, and ye also of low estate, the mighty hand of the Lord hangs above you! Therefore has the Lord visited you, that He may have mercy on you. Turn ye then to the Lord, your God, with all your heart; for He is gracious and merciful. But if ye will not obey, He will turn away his eyes from you!'

CHAPTER V.

THE INVASION OF CHARLES VIII.

Apparent prosperity of Florence at the death of LorenzoCivil contest-Savonarola's prominence-Pietro de Medici's feeble rule-Death of Pope Innocent VIII.—Infamous character of Pope Alexander VI.-Satan in the seat of Christ.-Charles the Eighth of France-Conduct of Pietro -Savonarola's speech to the king at Pisa-Pietro's expulsion from Florence-Charles VIII. and the PisansCharles VIII. and the Florentines-Savonarola's remonstrance-The departure of the French.

So flourishing and fortunate appeared the state of Florence in the last year of Lorenzo's life, that a contemporary writer maintains that no such happy condition of things had for a thousand years gladdened the whole of Italy; yet in reality, the bases of this seeming prosperity were insecure and feeble to the last degree.

So long as Lorenzo (who followed therein the fundamental principles of his grandfather, for the maintenance of a sort of balance of power between the Florentine republic and the other Italian states) could constitute himself the centre of the political system, the house of the Medici, whatever were the private necessities of the family, might support the

CH. V.

PIETRO DE' MEDICI.

163

external shows of magnificence for which it had been so long remarkable, and which shone with such peculiar intensity, being concentrated, as it were, in that last expense which adorned the death-bed of Lorenzo-that peculiar prescription so costly, yet so fatal. With the death of Lorenzo, however, the gorgeous spell is dissolved; nor may the remaining members of that once-powerful family escape the dreaded consequences. Not only the diminished influence and enfeebled power, but also the despicable government of the succeeding Medici, led men to predict an unavoidable storm, that was not long in discharging its accumulated terrors.

Now that Lorenzo was dead, Savonarola took a more prominent part in the civil contest which succeeded. Not only in the Duomo and in San Marco, which were crowded, but in the public squares he harangued assembled thousands. Bitterly-bitterly he inveighed against the corruptions of the pontifical court, the general depravity of manners, and the domineering spirit of the Medici. The orator was in the ascendant; nor was the prophet in abeyance. Visions and dreams came in aid of his argumentprophecies of the fall of the Medici and of future miseries, to the utterance and accomplishment of which friends and foes alike testify. The latter attribute them to his extraordinary sagacity and extensive information —the former to immediate inspiration; both, probably, considering as deliberate assertions many things which were but scintillations of his fiery eloquence, and which rather threatened than foretold the disastrous future.

Pietro de' Medici succeeded his father Lorenzo in the government of Florence, but was ill-calculated either to attain or preserve the sovereignty of the state. He held the reins feebly, and pursued a policy opposed to what his father had commenced,

164

POPE ALEXANDER VI.

B. III.

and adopted the counsels of the inexperienced and the young. He was himself not without talent and humane culture, but he was without reflection and decision. Too fond of idle parade and the free indulgence of sensual pleasures, he offended high and low by inordinate pride and insolence. He had committed the government into the hands of his own friends, among whom, his private secretary, Pietro da Bibiena, as if to make it more odious, exercised great influence. This naturally led to much disappointment on the part of those who had expected situations under the new government; yet these would not have so suddenly shown their resentment, if Pietro's undisguised efforts to assume the princedom of Florence had not made his rule so hateful, that men would rather submit to the dominion of a foreigner, than the tyranny of a fellow-citizen.

The vision of Savonarola concerning the sword of the Lord that was to come soon and suddenly upon the earth of the trouble that was prepared for Italy -the chastisement that awaited Florence-the storm that was to fall on the Church-of him who should come over the Alps, like another Cyrus, against Italy-had relation to the foreign policy of Florence. Shortly after Lorenzo's death, in July of the same year, died Innocent VIII., and was succeeded (as if to show that the moral apostacy had now passed its climax) by Alexander VI., who soon applied himself entirely to the secular business of his elevated position, and relinquished even the appearance of religious motives. As Roderigo Borgia, the new pontiff, had already made himself infamous for his debaucheries, and on the death of his predecessor felt no shame in actually purchasing the seat of papal power, now more temporal than spiritual, to which he had aspired, and which he but employed to the end of founding a great inalienable sovereignty for his family

CH. V.

CHARLES VIII.

165

in the domains of the Church; yet this man, who has been justly called the scourge of Christendom, and the opprobrium of the human race, was on his election by the people of Rome hailed as a deity. On no other occasion, it is said, had the Holy City arrayed herself in such splendour, or descended to such loathsome adulation as on that, when she placed in the apostolical chair the most profligate of mankind —a man in whom there was no sincerity, no shame, no truth, no honesty, no faith-a being of an insatiable spirit, an immeasurable ambition, of a more than barbarous cruelty, and a worse than natural lust-in short, an incarnation of the satanic spirit itself, who, having purchased the vacant chair of the apostate vicar of Christ, despised mankind too much to flatter their mock reverence of piety, by playing the hypocrite on the desecrated throne of superstition. But in the person of Charles VIII. such men as Savonarola recognized the divinely appointed opponent to the infernal usurper, who had dared to occupy the highest station in God's temple, now perverted to the performance of undisguised evil.

Charles VIII. was not to be amused by the artifices of Rome; but at length, finding Venetians, Florentines, Lanese, and the pope all against him, he was fain to abandon the project. But he was again incited thereto by the representations of the antiMedicean party at Florence, and by the suggestions of Ludovico Sforza, who counselled an attack on Naples, in order to revenge his own quarrels with Ferdinand. Pietro, too, had excited the jealousy of Ludovico, by secretly forming an intimate connexion with the king of Naples and the pope, and by letting it appear, that to secure the supreme dominion of his native place, he was willing to relax the authority that kept Italy under wholesome control. When, however, partly through his own carelessness, partly