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Girolamo Savonarola (; 21 September 1452 – 23 May 1498) was an Italian Dominican friar and preacher active in Renaissance Florence. He was known for his prophecies of civic glory, the destruction of secular art and culture, and his calls for Christian renewal. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule and the exploitation of the poor. He prophesied the coming of a biblical flood and a new Cyrus from the north who would reform the Church. In September 1494, when Charles VIII of France invaded Italy, and threatened Florence, such prophesies seemed on the verge of fulfilment. While Savonarola intervened with the French king, the Florentines expelled the ruling Medici and, at the friar's urging, established a "popular" republic. Declaring that Florence would be the New Jerusalem, the world center of Christianity and "richer, more powerful, more glorious than ever",〔 Text in Weinstein, ''Savonarola The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet'', p. 122〕 he instituted an extreme puritanical campaign, enlisting the active help of Florentine youth. In 1495 when Florence refused to join Pope Alexander VI’s Holy League against the French, the Vatican summoned Savonarola to Rome. He disobeyed and further defied the pope by preaching under a ban, highlighting his campaign for reform with processions, bonfires of the vanities, and pious theatricals. In retaliation, the Pope excommunicated him in May 1497, and threatened to place Florence under an interdict. A trial by fire proposed by a rival Florentine preacher in April 1498 to test Savonarola's divine mandate turned into a fiasco, and popular opinion turned against him. Savonarola and two of his supporting friars were imprisoned. Under torture, Savonarola confessed that he had invented his visions and prophecies. On May 23, 1498, Church and civil authorities condemned, hanged, and burned the three friars in the main square of Florence. Savonarola's devotees, the Piagnoni, kept his cause of republican freedom and religious reform alive well into the following century, although the Medici—restored to power in 1512 with the help of the papacy—eventually broke the movement. ==Early years== Savonarola was born on September 21, 1452, in Ferrara. His grandfather, Michele Savonarola, was a noted physician and polymath. Savonarola's mother Elena claimed a lineage from the Bonacossi family of Mantua. She and her husband Niccolo had seven children, of whom Girolamo was third. His grandfather was a very successful physician who oversaw his education. His family had amassed in his grandfather's footsteps. At some point, however, he abandoned his career intentions. In his early poems, he expresses his preoccupation with the state of the Church and of the world. He began to write poetry of an apocalyptic bent, notably "On the Ruin of the World" (1472) and "On the Ruin of the Church" (1475), in which he singled out the papal court at Rome for special obloquy.〔"English translations in Savonarola ''A Guide to Righteous Living and Other Works'' ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2003) 61–68〕 About the same time, he seems to have been thinking about a life in religion. As he later told his biographer, a sermon he heard by a preacher in Faenza persuaded him to abandon the world.〔Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, ''Vita Hieronymi Savonarolae'' ed. Elisabetta Schisto (Florence, 1999) 114.〕 Most of his biographers reject or ignore the account of his younger brother and follower, Maurelio (later fra Mauro), that in his youth Girolamo had been spurned by a neighbor, Laudomia Strozzi, to whom he proposed marriage.〔Reported by fra Benedetto Luschino in his ''Vulnera Diligentis'' ed. Stefano Dall' Aglio (Florence, 2002) pp. 22–3, 301.〕 True or not, in a letter he wrote to his father when he left home to join the Dominican Order he hints at being troubled by desires of the flesh.〔"Like you, I am made of flesh and my sensuality wars against my reason; I have a cruel fight to keep the devil from my back." Translated from Girolamo Savonarola, ''Lettere e scritti apologetici'' eds. Ridolfi, Romano, Verde (Rome, 1984), p. 6.〕 There is also a story that on the eve of his departure he dreamed that he was cleansed of such thoughts by a shower of icy water which prepared him for the ascetic life.〔La Vita del Beato Girolamo Savonarola ed. Roberto Ridolfi (Florence, 1937) p 8.〕 In the unfinished treatise he left behind, later called "De contemptu mundi," or "On Contempt for the World," he calls upon readers to fly from this world of adultery, sodomy, murder and envy. On April 25, 1475, Girolamo Savonarola went to Bologna where he knocked on the door of the Convent of San Domenico, of the Order of Friars Preachers, and asked to be admitted. As he told his father in his farewell letter, he wanted to become a knight of Christ. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Girolamo Savonarola」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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