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Note: The Excommunicant
Tag(s): Italy, Medici, Papacy
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KING CHARLES VIII entered Florence through the Porta San Freliano, on 17 November 1494, as though he were a conquering hero.
LOCATION: 2844

With crucifix in hand he urged the people to put to death all those who advocated the restoration of the Medici.
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fell without a struggle; and Ferrante’s son, King Alfonso II, terrified by weird dreams and portents, haunted by the ghostly victims of his brutality, and hearing the stones beneath his feet cry out ‘Francia! Francia!’, abdicated and fled to a Sicilian monastery. The French army crossed the Neapolitan frontier, massacring the people of Monte di San Giovanni
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The King settled down to enjoy the pleasures of his new domain and a succession of pretty mistresses, whose portraits he had bound together in a big book. But, as he languished beneath the Neapolitan sun, his rivals to the north were busily plotting his downfall. None of these rivals was more active than the new Pope, Roderigo Borgia, Alexander VI. He was fat and bald, plain and flamboyant, yet it was not only his riches and his influence that made him attractive to women.
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For II Moro was now deeply regretting the consequences of having enticed the French into Italy where the Duke of Orleans, jealous of Charles VIII’s success in Naples, was making claims upon the Duchy of Milan.
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When the French and Italian armies finally clashed by the banks of the river Taro in July 1495, the mercenary troops of the Holy League were no match for King Charles’s artillerymen and cavalry. The battle was short and ferocious,
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victory. But by the end of August Charles and his army, still a powerful force, though mauled and weary, were across the Alps and safely home in France, leaving the Italians shocked by the realization that for all their virtues, talents, wealth, past glory and experience, for all their skill as military engineers, they had been utterly unable to withstand the advance of the ruthless men from the north. In this traumatic campaign Florence had played no part. Firm in his allegiance to ‘God’s instrument’, Savonarola had declined to have anything to do with the Holy League.
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At length, in June 1497, the Pope took the final step and excommunicated him. For six months Savonarola pondered his dilemma, fasting and praying, until God guided him to the decision that it was his duty to defy the Pope.
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Savonarola’s supporters were losing ground in Florence where, indeed, they had been only partly responsible for the impermanent changes which had taken place in the government of the city. There had been poor harvests that year in Tuscany; starving people had fallen down and died in the streets; there had also been an outbreak of plague.
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Most members of the Signoria were horrified by this suggested reversion to the barbarism of past ages. One suggested that their ancestors would be ashamed of them if they could hear them even so much as discussing the propriety of the proposed ordeal.
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Savonarola took refuge in the library where, soon afterwards, a guard arrived from the Signoria with orders for his arrest. He was escorted through the streets, hooted and jeered at by the mob, and cast into the Alberghettino in the tower of the Palazzo della Signoria where Cosimo de’ Medici had been imprisoned sixty-five years before.
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Together with Fra Domenico and another of his most faithful disciples Fra Silvestro, he was found guilty of heresy and schism and condemned to death. A scaffold, surrounded by tinder, was erected in the Piazza della Signoria and on this Savonarola and his two companions were hanged in chains and burned.
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‘In a few hours the victims were burned, their legs and arms gradually dropping off,’ Landucci recorded in his diary.
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