fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

A New Revisionist Account of Savonarola Now Available

Here is some interesting news I discovered this morning: there is a new Savonarola book that has been published this year. It is called The Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence by Lauro Martines, and its dust jacket tells us that Prof. Martines offers a different, more […]

Here is some interesting news I discovered this morning: there is a new Savonarola book that has been published this year. It is called The Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence by Lauro Martines, and its dust jacket tells us that Prof. Martines offers a different, more sympathetic account for the 15th century Dominican friar of “bonfire of the vanities” fame.

There are possible pitfalls in any revisionist account of the friar’s career, which fall into the categories of the painfully anachronictic “forerunner of the Reformation” mythology with which Savonarola used to be more directly associated and the equally anachronistic “tribune of the people” or “voice of the oppressed” sort of interpretation that Marxists and postmodernists alike tend to apply to any “dissident” figure in pre-modern history. I am fairly hopeful that this will be neither, and will instead challenge the simplistic depiction of Savonarola as fanatic and demagogue and will attempt to understand the man in the context of his time and give a full accounting of the different aspects of his character and career. This will probably not make him out to be a saint, as some Dominicans have tried to make him out to be over the years, but it should show him as something more than the stereotype of a terrifying theocrat from Damon Linker’s nightmares. Those better versed in Italian history are in a better position to judge whether Prof. Martines has succeeded with this work, but I will offer my own meager assessment from my perspective as a student of another field of history once I have had a chance to read it.

If the new book is what I hope it will be, it will also go a long way towards confirming my more positive remarks about Savonarola and making this attack on Caleb Stegall look even more ridiculous than it already does.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here