BOOK TIDBITS

Fire in the city : Savonarola and the struggle for Renaissance Florence / by Lauro Martines.

Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) was a contemporary of Machiavelli and another one of the early reformers of the corrupt catholic Church. He was also another Fundie extremist, as you can see by this excerpt from a letter to his parents:

What are you crying about, you blind ones? Why so much weeping and grumbling, people without light? If our prince [of Ferrara], reaching out among the people, had asked me to strap on a sword and become one of his knights, to what jubilation and feasting you would have treated yourselves! And if I had rejected the request, which of you would not have thought me crazy? Oh you without common sense, oh blind fools and without a ray of faith!

Here's a little known fact about Florence in those days:

Savonarola’s fight against the practice of anal intercourse was directed against compliant women as well. He knew that this ‘vice’ was honoured in marriage, as well as in female prostitution. Homosexual males held no monopoly. Florence’s reputation for sodomy was so widespread that in the Germany of that day, to sodomise ‘was popularly dubbed florenzen and a “sodomite” a Florenzer. Savonarola reacted by insisting, in a number of his sermons, that sodomites deserved to be stoned or burned alive in public. He was a Biblicist, determined to keep to the letter of the Bible, and his inspiration was the Old Testament s horror of sodomy. The act in question, in seeking sexual pleasure as a thing frankly divorced from the will to procreate, seemed to sum up carnal debauchery. Everywhere in Italy, therefore, urban law codes prescribed harsh penalties against the crime, including capital punishment and death by fire for persistent offenders. Earlier in the century, San Bernardino and other popular preachers had often called for the fiery elimination of sodomites; and certain cities — among which Venice and Genoa — had seen the arrest and execution of groups of homosexuals. In practice, at Florence, capital punishment for sodomy was more likely to be reserved for homosexual rape.

Machiavelli attended a couple of Savonarola's sermons and wasn't very impressed:

Niccolò Machiavelli to Ricciardo Becchi
Florence, 9 March 1498

Now that our friar was in his own house, if you had heard with what boldness he began preaching and with how much he continued, it would be an object of no little admiration. Because, fearing greatly for himself and believing that the new Signoria would not be reluctant to injure him – and having decided that quite a few citizens should be brought down with him – he started in with great scenes of horror; with explanations that were quite effective to those not examining them closely, he pointed out that his adherents were excellent people while his opponents were most villainous, and he drew on every expression that might weaken his opponents’ party and fortify his own.
[snip]
So, he urges them to the union that was initiated, and he no longer mentions either the tyrant or the wickedness of the people; he seeks to set all of them at odds with the Supreme Pontiff and, turning toward him and his attacks, says of the pope what could be said of the wickedest person you might imagine. Thus, in my judgment, he acts in accordance with the times and colors his lies accordingly.