Savonarola spoke in the pulpit with the authority of the profoundest personal conviction, and his hearers were impressed by his preaching with the feeling that they listened to one who knew whereof he spoke.  Whenever he preached there was a crowd to hear; people came three or four hours before the time, and they came in throngs from the surrounding country.  He held separate services for men, for women, for children, in order that all might hear.  And this eagerness to listen to him was not for a few weeks, but it continued for years.  The greatest enthusiasm was awakened by his influence, the people were melted into tears, every person listened with bated breath to his words.  Thousands were converted, and among them many of the most learned of the poets, artists and statesmen of the time.  The most remarkable changes in the modes of life took place, money was restored, and contributed freely to buy bread when famine threatened, and the confessional was daily crowded with penitents.  One of his biographers says that “the most remarkable change that was apparent in the manners of the people, in their recreations and amusements, was the abandonment of demoralizing practices, of debauchery of all kinds, of profane songs of a licentious character which the lower grades of the people especially were greatly addicted to; and the growth of a new taste and passion for spiritual hymns and sacred poetry that had succeeded that depraved taste.”

On one side of his nature, Savonarola seems to have been of a remarkably pure and noble character, with high aims, noble ambitions and a clear moral insight.  Looked at on its better side, his religious reformation was wholesome and salutary, and dictated by a genuine desire to elevate worship and to purify faith.  There was a very different side to his life and work, however, and in some features of his character he seems to have been a fanatic and enthusiast of the most dangerous sort.  He was credulous, superstitious and visionary.  He had no clear, strong and well-reasoned purpose to which he could hold consistently to the end.  An earnest Catholic, he only sought to reform the Church, not to supersede it; but his moral aims were not high enough to carry him to the logical results of his position.  Involved by his visionary faith in claims of miraculous power and supernatural communication, he had not the intellectual honesty to carry those claims to their legitimate conclusion.  Weakness, hesitation and inconsistency marked his character in his later years, and have made him a puzzle to modern students.  These inconsistencies of character have led to widely divergent conclusions about the man, his sincerity of purpose and the outcome of his work.