But it overcame him.  Like the Cassandra of AEschylus, he panted in the grasp of one mightier than himself.  ‘An inward fire,’ he cried, ‘consumes my bones and forces me to speak out’ And again:  ’I have, O Lord, burnt my wings of contemplation, and I have launched into a tempestuous sea, where I have found contrary winds in every quarter.  I wished to reach a harbor, but could not find the way thither; I wished to lay me down, but could meet with no resting-place.  I longed to be silent and to utter not a word.  But the word of the Lord is in my heart; and if it does not come forth, it must consume the marrow of my bones.  Thus, O Lord, if it be Thy will that I should navigate in deep waters, Thy will, be done.’

At another time he says:  ’I remember well that upon one occasion, in the year 1491, when I was preaching in the Duomo, having composed my sermon entirely upon these visions, I determined to abstain from all allusion to them, and in future to adhere to this resolution.  God is my witness that the whole of Saturday and the whole of the succeeding night I lay awake, and could see no other course, no other doctrine.  At daybreak, worn out and depressed by the many hours I had lain awake, while I was praying I heard a voice that said to me:  “Fool that thou art, dost thou not see that it is God’s will that thou shouldst keep to the same path?” The consequence of which was that on the same day I preached a tremendous sermon.’

These passages leave upon the mind no doubt of Savonarola’s sincerity.  If he deceived others, he was himself the first to be deceived, and that too not before he had subjected himself to the most searching examination, seeking in vain to escape from the force which compelled him to play the part of prophet.  Terrible, indeed, must have been the wrestlings and questionings of this strong-fibered intellect, alone and diffident, within the toils of ecstasy.

Returning to the details of Savonarola’s biography, we find him still in Lombardy in 1486.  After leaving Brescia he moved to Reggio, where he made the friendship of the famous Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.  They continued intimate till the death of the latter in 1494; it was his nephew, Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola, who afterwards wrote the Life of Savonarola.  From Reggio the friar went to Genoa; and by this time his fame as a prophet in the north of Lombardy was well established.  Now came the turning-point in his life.  Fourteen hundred and ninety is the date which determined his public action as a man of power in Italy.  Lorenzo de’ Medici, strangely enough, was the instrument of his recall in this year to Florence.  Lorenzo, who, if he could have foreseen the future of his own family in Florence, would rather have stifled this monk’s voice in his cowl, took pains to send for him and bring him to S. Mark’s, the convent upon which his father had lavished so much wealth.  He hoped to add luster to his capital by the preaching of the