When the vitality of the Word of God is missing from the pulpits, the vacuum has always been filled, sometimes by eloquence, by joke-telling, by man’s philosophies, or by anecdotes. Almost anything has been pulled in to fill the void, but the godly have shunned such froth. In many ways, the setting that Savonarola spoke to was like ours. The Florence of Renaissance Italy was the capital of every diversion the world offered. Michelangelo and daVinci strolled the plaza in Florence. People’s appetites demanded entertainment.
But just because people have itching ears does not mean we should obligate ourselves to scratch them. Paul spoke “not with enticing words of man’s wisdom” (1 Cor. 2:4).
Savonarola thought it better not to preach at all, than to pretend to preach. Early in his career, a young friend advised him that his manner of preaching did not compare favorably to that of a great (but now forgotten) orator of his day. “To which Savonarola made reply, almost in anger, ‘These verbal elegancies and ornaments will have to give way to sound doctrine simply preached.'” Savonarola did not aim to impress the people with his preaching, but with the truth. In fact, his early attempts at preaching were flat and nondescript, but in time, by means of “sound doctrine simply preached,” his delivery became so eloquent it both stung and stunned the world.
Sound doctrine, simply preached, in the power of the Holy Spirit will not only inform men’s minds about the truth, it will make them feel what they know. This is why strong emotions are expressed when the gospel is preached in power. How much to be dreaded is the orthodoxy which is as clear as crystal, but as cold as ice.
Today it seems many preachers are really only stand-up comedians. They attend Sunday morning preaching meetings to spend their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new joke. No matter how searching the Bible text under examination, the solemnity is lost amid the sarcasm, clever gags, and witticisms.
Does any Christian who has read the Bible have to be told that the church was never called by God into the entertainment business? Silliness coupled with a lack of tears, even a dread of tears, characterizes this lukewarm day. “This is a rebellious people . . . which say . . . speak unto us smooth things, prophecy deceits” (Isa. 30:10-11). But lest we despair, so also was Savonarola’s time. And yet we read of whole congregations of people, ungodly people, including the most hardened sinners, weeping uncontrollably under the searchlight of God’s Word.
“Words fail to describe it; he was, as it were, swept onwards by a might beyond his own, and carried his audience with him. Men and women of every age and condition, workmen, poets, philosophers, would burst into passionate tears, while the church re-echoed with their sobs. The reporter taking notes of the sermon was obliged to write: ‘At this point I was overcome by weeping and could not go on.'” His biogragher tells us that many of his sermons are partially preserved, with a similar notation.
Girolamo Savonarola was born at Ferara in 1452. The slender, nervous youth could have been set up for a grand business career by his grandfather, but he ran away from home to Bologna and became a Dominican monk. Writing back of the depravity of the world, he said, “There is nothing left for us but to weep and to hope for better things yonder.” Fourteen years he lived in the convent studying theology. There he realized that monastic walls do not deliver from sin and the world. Moving to Florence to teach the young men in the convent of St. Mark, he began his scorching denunciations of the sins of the church that would earn him excommunication, torture and a bonfire in the plaza of Florence.
In 1489, he gave expositions of the book of Revelation in the convent chapel. It was during this series of messages that revival swept through Florence. Immodest dress was shunned, men and women weeping in the streets were not uncommon. Why they were so affected is open to question. Were there really mass conversions, or just mass excitement? But at the bottom of all that happened is this fact: the hidden fountains of feeling had been opened. They were roused from careless apathy. The Word of God preached in power did this.
Besides preaching repentance, he was apt to warn of temporal calamities. But in spite of Savonarola’s eccentricities, the people were brought face to face with the realities of life and death, eternity and God. They might have known before, but they did not think about these things. Afterward they could hardly think of anything else. Before they thought of nothing but striving to succeed in this world, afterward they thought of nothing but striving to enter in at the narrow gate. They were moved.
Savonarola said the Scriptures led to Christ and not to the priests. He said when he preached doctrines of human invention he pleased an impatient and fickle people, but when he turned to the Bible, he shook men’s souls. He preached against Lorenzo, and when advised to “change his style,” he sent word for Lorenzo to “change his ways.”
There was a strong mystic element in his warnings. In one message we find the following description of the plague he thought would come upon Italy: “Believe ye this friar, that there will not be enough men left to bury the dead; nor means to dig the graves. So many will lie dead in the houses, that men will go through the streets crying, ‘Send forth your dead!’ and the dead will be heaped in carts and on horses; they will be piled up and burnt. Men will pass forth and say, ‘Here is my son, here is my brother, here is my husband!'” (from the Life and Times of Savonarola, by Villari).
He was convinced that Italy was ripe for severe judgment and suggested that a military defeat at the hands of the king of France was imminent. Shortly thereafter, Charles VIII of France crossed into Italy, driving out the son who succeeded Lorenzo. He received Savonarola as a prophet, and left the Florentines to direct their own affairs. Then followed a time when Savonarola exercised sweeping influence over the city.
In 1496 he was forbidden by Pope Alexander VI to preach and then excommunicated. His failure to meet the challenge of an “ordeal by fire” turned the people against him temporarily. His enemies took advantage of the public mood, taking him prisoner. He was tortured shamefully, and finally hung May 23, 1498, between his two companions. His body was burned on the gallows, the ashes being cast into the Arno.