Nothing remained to the imprisoned and tortured friar but to prepare for his execution.  In his supreme trial he turned to the God in whom he believed.  In the words of the dying Xavier, on the Island of Sancian, he exclaimed, In te domine speravi, non confundar in eternum.  “O Lord,” he prays, “a thousand times hast thou wiped out my iniquity.  I do not rely on my own justification, but on thy mercy.”  His few remaining days in prison were passed in holy meditation.

At last the officers of the papal commission arrive.  The tortures are renewed, and also the examinations, with the same result.  No fault could be found with his doctrines.  “But a dead enemy,” said they, “fights no more.”  He is condemned to execution.  The messengers of death arrive at his cell, and find him on his knees.  He is overpowered by his sufferings and vigils, and can with difficulty be kept from sleep.  But he arouses himself, and passes the night in prayer, and administers the elements of redemption to his doomed companions, and closes with this prayer:  “Lord, I know thou art that perfect Trinity,—­Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; I know that thou art the eternal Word; that thou didst descend from heaven into the bosom of Mary; that thou didst ascend upon the cross to shed thy blood for our sins.  I pray thee that by that blood I may have remission for my sins.”  The simple faith of Paul, of Augustine, of Pascal!  He then partook of the communion, and descended to the public square, while the crowd gazed silently and with trepidation, and was led with his companions to the first tribunal, where he was disrobed of his ecclesiastical dress.  Then they were led to another tribunal, and delivered to the secular arm; then to another, where sentence of death was read; and then to the place of execution,—­not a burning funeral pyre, but a scaffold, which mounting, composed, calm, absorbed, Savonarola submitted his neck to the hangman, in the forty-fifth year of his life:  a martyr to the cause of Christ, not for an attack on the Church, or its doctrines, or its institutions, but for having denounced the corruption and vices of those who ruled it,—­for having preached against sin.

Thus died one of the greatest and best men of his age, one of the truest and purest whom the Catholic Church has produced in any age.  He was stern, uncompromising, austere, but a reformer and a saint; a man who was merciful and generous in the possession of power; an enlightened statesman, a sound theologian, and a fearless preacher of that righteousness which exalteth a nation.  He had no vices, no striking defects.  He lived according to the rules of the convent he governed with the same wisdom that he governed a city, and he died in the faith of the primitive apostles.  His piety was monastic, but his spirit was progressive, sympathizing with liberty, advocating public morality.  He was unselfish, disinterested, and true to his Church, his conscience, and his cause,—­a