Sword & Trowel 2017: Issue 1


a different purpose, agrees so totally with my views and expresses them in almost the same words.’ Fourth and lastly, Girolamo Savon-


arola. Savonarola was a native of the Italian city of Ferrara who in 1474 became a Dominican friar. After preaching in various Italian cities, in 1491 he was appointed prior of San Marco, a Dominican convent in Flor- ence, in many ways the capital city of the Italian Renaissance. Savonarola’s preaching in Florence was so effec- tive and popular that it gave him almost complete power over the city, especially after its ruling family, the Medici, fled from a French invasion force in 1494. Savonarola’s popu- larity was not because his sermons flattered people; no one denounced sin or warned of divine judgement as sternly as he. His moral reforms made Florence into a sort of holy city, where famously, in 1496, the en- tire body of citizens burned in a great public fire (the ‘bonfire of the vani- ties’) all their pornography, cosmetics, and things used for gambling – cards, dice, etc. Savonarola also carried out far-reaching political reforms, draw- ing up a new democratic constitution for Florence. However, a long and fierce quarrel


broke out between Savonarola and Pope Alexander VI. Alexander did not like Savonarola’s claim to be a Heaven-sent messenger of Christ, or the friar’s involvement in politics. (Alexander was also under the influ- ence of the Medici who wanted to regain their power in Florence.) Pope Alexander commanded Savonarola to cease from his preaching. Savon- arola refused to obey, denounced


Alexander as a servant of Satan, and began preaching against the corrup- tions of the papal court. Alexander excommunicated Savonarola in 1497. To cut a long and complex story short, in 1498 Savonarola’s popular support finally bled away, the politi- cal authorities turned against him, and he was arrested, condemned, and burnt at the stake. Savonarola was not really a theo-


logical reformer like John of Wesel or Wessel Gansfort. But Luther and oth- ers counted him a forerunner of the Reformation for two reasons. First, Savonarola was a strong Augustinian in his understanding of the sover- eignty of God’s grace in salvation. Second, he defied the papacy, and paid for his defiance with his life. A right study of the Reformation, then, shows us that, far from being an inexplicable bolt shot down from the blue, it was at every point im- mersed in the history of its times. It had roots and antecedents; it had identifiable channels of influence; it sprang from the soil of the Middle Ages, where many good seeds were sprouting. To summarise the view of the reformed scholars Nevin and Schaff, with whom I began, the Ref- ormation – rather than a mysterious and inexplicable miracle – was noth- ing other than the best elements of medieval Catholicism correcting the worst elements.


Dr Nick Needham is a lecturer in church history at the Highlands Theological College, and minister of Inverness Reformed Baptist Church. His lectures on the Reformation given at the 2017 School of Theology are available on the Tabernacle website.


Seeds of the Reformation page 33


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