most eloquent friar in Italy.  Clear-sighted as he was, he could not discern the flame of liberty which burned in Savonarola’s soul.  Savonarola, the democratic party leader, was a force in politics as incalculable beforehand as Ferrucci the hero.  On August 1, 1490, the monk ascended the pulpit of S. Mark’s, and delivered a tremendous sermon on a passage from the Apocalypse.  On the eve of this commencement he is reported to have said:  ’Tomorrow I shall begin to preach, and I shall preach for eight years.’  The Florentines were greatly moved.  Savonarola had to remove from the Church of S. Mark to the Duomo; and thus began the spiritual dictatorship which he exercised thenceforth without intermission till his death.

Lorenzo soon began to resent the influence of this uncompromising monk, who, not content with moral exhortations, confidently predicted the coming of a foreign conqueror, the fall of the Magnificent, the peril of the Pope, and the ruin of the King of Naples.  Yet it was no longer easy to suppress the preacher.  Very early in his Florentine career Savonarola had proved himself to be fully as great an administrator as an orator.  The Convent of San Marco dominated by his personal authority, had made him Prior in 1491, and he was already engaged in a thorough reform of all the Dominican monasteries of Tuscany.  It was usual for the Priors elect of S. Mark to pay a complimentary visit to the Medici, their patrons.  Savonarola, thinking this a worldly and unseemly custom, omitted to observe it.  Lorenzo, noticing the discourtesy, is reported to have said, with a smile:  ’See now! here is a stranger who has come into my house, and will not deign to visit me.’  He forgot that Savonarola looked upon his convent as a house of God.  At the same time the prince made overtures of goodwill to the Prior, frequently attended his services, and dropped gold into the alms-box of S. Mark’s.  Savonarola took no notice of him, and handed his florins over to the poor of the city.  Then Lorenzo stirred up Fra Mariano da Genezzano, Savonarola’s old rival, against him; but the clever rhetorician was no longer a match for the full-grown athlete of inspired eloquence.  Da Genezzano was forced to leave Florence in angry discomfiture.  With such unbending haughtiness did Savonarola already dare to brave the powers that be.  He had recognized the oppressor of liberty, the corrupter of morality, the opponent of true religion, in Lorenzo.  He hated him as a tyrant.  He would not give him the right hand of friendship or the salute of civility.  In the same spirit he afterwards denounced Alexander, scorned his excommunication, and plotted with the kings of Christendom for the convening of a Council.  Lorenzo, however, was a man of supreme insight into character, and knew how to value his antagonist.  Therefore, when the hour for dying came, and when, true child of the Renaissance that he was, he felt the need of sacraments and absolution, he sent for