[1] Engravings of the several portraits may be seen in
    Harford’s Life of Michael Angelo Buonarroti (Longmans, 1857
    vol. i.), and also in Villari.

[2] Nardi, in his Istorie di Firenze (lib. ii. cap. 16), describes the crowd assembled in the Duomo to hear Savonarola preach:  ’Per la moltitudine degli uditori non essendo quasi bastante la chiesa cattedrale di santa Maria del Fiore, ancora che molto grande e capace sia, fu necessario edificar dentro lungo i pareti di quella, dirempetto al pergamo, certi gradi di legname rilevati con ordine di sederi, a guisa di teatro, e cosi dalla parte di sopra all’ entrata del coro e dalla parte di sotto in verso le porte della detta chiesa.’

Such was the preacher:  and such was the effect of his oratory.  The theme on which he loved to dwell was this.  Repent!  A judgment of God is at hand.  A sword is suspended over you.  Italy is doomed for her iniquity—­for the sins of the Church, whose adulteries have filled the world—­for the sins of the tyrants, who encourage crime and trample upon souls—­for the sins of you people, you fathers and mothers, you young men, you maidens, you children that lisp blasphemy!  Nor did Savonarola deal in generalities.  He described in plain language every vice; he laid bare every abuse; so that a mirror was held up to the souls of his hearers, in which they saw their most secret faults appallingly portrayed and ringed around with fire.  He entered with particularity into the details of the coming woes.  One by one he enumerated the bloodshed, the ruin of cities, the trampling down of provinces, the passage of armies, the desolating wars that were about to fall on Italy.[1] You may read pages of his sermons which seem like vivid narratives of what afterwards took place in the sack of Prato, in the storming of Brescia, in the battle of the Ronco, in the cavern-massacre of Vicenza.  No wonder that he stirred his audience to their center.  The hell within them was revealed.  The coming doom above them was made manifest.  Ezekiel and Jeremiah were not more prophetic.  John crying to a generation of vipers, ‘Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!’ was not more weighty with the mission of authentic inspiration.

[1] Savonarola’s whole view of the situation and of the perils of Italy was that of a prophet.  He saw more clearly than other people what was inevitable.  But his disciples and the vulgar believed implicitly in his prophetic gift in the narrower sense, that is, in his power to predict events, such as the deaths of Lorenzo and the King of Naples, the punishment of Charles VIII, in the loss of the dauphin, etc.  Pico says:  ’Savonarola could read the future as clearly as one sees the whole is greater than the part.’  And there is no doubt that, as time went on, Savonarola came to believe himself that he possessed this faculty.  After his trial and execution a very uncomfortable sense