BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Girolamo Savonarola was born at Ferrara in 1452, and was admitted in 1475 into the novitiate of the Dominican Order, where he soon made himself conspicuous for eloquence, and in Florence attracted many hearers by his diatribes against corruption.  Florence, having lost its independence as a republic, was completely under the sway of the Medici, who became arrayed against Savonarola, who aimed at establishing an ideal Christian commonwealth.  When he attacked the Pope Alexander VI. his doom was practically sealed.  In 1495 he was forbidden to appear in the pulpit, and four years later was excommunicated.  He rebelled against papal authority, but the people of Florence grew tired of the strict rule of conduct imposed by his teaching, and he was imprisoned and tried for heresy and sedition.  On May 23, 1498, he was hanged and his body burned.  His puritanism, his bold rebuking of vice, his defiance of every authority excepting that of his own conscience, seem to anticipate the efforts made by Calvin to regenerate Geneva.  Both men failed in their splendid attempts at social reformation, but both left an example of heroic altho somewhat short-sighted unselfishness, which has borne fruit in history.

SAVONAROLA 1452—­1498

THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST[1]

[Footnote 1:  Reprinted by permission of Messrs. G.P.  Putnam’s Sons from “The World’s Orations,” the translation having been copyrighted by Messrs. Putnams.]

While he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.—­Luke xxiv., 51.

Beloved in Christ Jesus, the wise men of this world divide all created things into two classes; one class they name substances, the other accidents.  The substances are those things that exist through themselves without requiring anything else on which to rest, as the earth, water, air, the heavens, animals, stones, plants, and similar things.  The accidents can not exist by themselves, but only by resting on something else, as color, odor, taste, and other such things.  But because our knowledge is entirely through the senses, and we are able to know anything only when its accidents fall upon our senses, we have, therefore, knowledge of the accidents rather than of the substances.  The eyes are for colors, the ears for sounds, the nose for scents, the tongue for flavors, the touch for heat and cold, for hard and soft.  Each sense has its own sphere of knowledge and brings what it has perceived before the imagination, and this hands it over to the reason within, which reads and illuminates the productions of the imagination, judges them, and in this way comes to a knowledge of the substances.  But the reason has little light if it is separated from the body, for God has joined soul and body together; and so by means of the senses knowledge becomes definite and complete.  For if the soul out of the body were richer in knowledge, it would be in vain that it should be in the body.  God and nature have done nothing in vain, and therefore the soul’s union with the body ministers to its perfection.