is ugly, but not repellent; and, in spite of its great
strength, it shows signs of feminine sensibility.
Like the faces of Cicero and Demosthenes, it seems
the fit machine for oratory. But the furnaces
hidden away behind that skull, beneath that cowl,
have made it haggard with a fire not to be found in
the serener features of the classic orators. Savonarola
was a visionary and a monk. The discipline of
the cloister left its trace upon him. The wings
of dreams have winnowed and withered that cheek as
they passed over it. The spirit of prayer quivers
upon those eager lips. The color of Savonarola’s
flesh was brown: his nerves were exquisitely sensitive
yet strong; like a network of wrought steel, elastic,
easily overstrained, they recovered their tone and
temper less by repose than by the evolution of fresh
electricity. With Savonarola fasts were succeeded
by trances, and trances by tempests of vehement improvization.
From the midst of such profound debility that he could
scarcely crawl up the pulpit steps, he would pass
suddenly into the plenitude of power, filling the
Dome of Florence with denunciations, sustaining his
discourse by no mere trick of rhetoric that flows to
waste upon the lips of shallow preachers, but marshaling
the phalanx of embattled arguments and pointed illustrations,
pouring his thought forth in columns of continuous
flame, mingling figures of sublimest imagery with reasonings
severest accuracy, at one time melting his audience
tears, at another freezing them with terror, again
quickening their souls with prayers and pleadings
and blessings that had in them the sweetness of the
very spirit of Christ. His sermons began with
scholastic exposition; as they advanced, the ecstasy
of inspiration fell upon the preacher, till the sympathies
of the whole people of Florence gathered round him,[2]
met and attained, as it were, to single consciousness
in him. He then no longer restrained the impulse
of his oratory, but became the mouthpiece of God,
the interpreter to themselves of all that host.
In a fiery crescendo, never flagging, never losing
firmness of grasp or lucidity of vision, he ascended
the altar steps of prophecy, and, standing like Moses
on the mount between the thunders of God and the tabernacles
of the plain, fulminated period after period of impassioned
eloquence. The walls of the church re-echoed
with sobs and wailings dominated by one ringing voice.
The scribe to whom we owe the fragments of these sermons,
at times breaks off with these words: ’Here
I was so overcome with weeping that I could not go
on.’ Pico della Mirandola tells us that
the mere sound of Savonarola’s voice, startling
the stillness of the Duomo, thronged through all its
space with people, was like a clap of doom: a
cold shiver ran through the marrow of his bones, the
hairs of his head stood on end, as he listened.
Another witness reports: ’These sermons
caused such terror, alarm, sobbing, and tears that
every one passed through the streets without speaking,
more dead than alive.’