Savonarola Effectively Rules Florence

1494

With the Medici expelled and Charles VIII departed south, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola effectively became Florence's spiritual dictator. His sermons drew weeping crowds. He preached republican government, moral reform, and the imminent scourge of God. For four years Florence became a laboratory of theocratic experiment before his burning. His bonfires of vanities, where citizens burned cosmetics, mirrors, and artworks, represented the most dramatic collision between Renaissance aesthetics and puritanism.