Savonarola, saying that he was the only honest friar he knew.  The magnanimity of the Medici was only equaled by the firmness of the monk.  Standing by the bedside of the dying man, who had confessed his sins, Savonarola said:  ’Three things are required of you:  to have a full and lively faith in God’s mercy; to restore what you have unjustly gained; to give back liberty to Florence.’  Lorenzo assented readily to the two first requisitions.  At the third he turned his face in silence to the wall.  He must indeed have felt that to demand and promise this was easier than to carry it into effect.  Savonarola left him without absolution.  Lorenzo died.[1]

[1] It is just to observe that great doubt has been thrown on the facts above related concerning Lorenzo’s death.  Poliziano, who was with Lorenzo during his last illness, does not mention them in his letter to Jacobus Antiquarius (xv.  Kal.  Jun. 1492).  But Burlmacchi, Pico, Barsanti, Razzi, and others of the Frate’s party, agree in the story.  What Poliziano wrote was that Savonarola confessed Lorenzo and retired without volunteering the blessing.  Razzi says the interview between Savonarola and Lorenzo took place without witnesses; Pico and Burlamacchi relate the event as they heard of it from the lips of Savonarola.  We have therefore to judge between the testimony of Poliziano, who held no communication with the friar, and the veracity of several narrators, biassed indeed by hostility toward the Medici, but in direct intercourse with the only man who could tell the exact truth of what passed—­the confessor, Savonarola, who had been alone with Lorenzo.  Villari, after sifting the evidence, arrives at the conclusion that we may believe Burlamacchi.  The Baron Reumont, in his recent Life of Lorenzo, vol. ii. p. 590, gives some solid reasons for accepting this conclusion with caution, and Gino Capponi expresses a distinct disbelief in Burlamacchi’s narration.

The third point insisted upon by the friar, Restore liberty to Florence, not only broke the peace of the dying prince, but it also afterwards for ever ruled the conduct of Savonarola.  From this time his life is that of a statesman no less than of a preacher.  What Lorenzo refused, or was indeed upon his deathbed quite unable to perform, the monk determined to achieve.  Henceforth he became the champion of popular liberty in the pulpit.  Feeling that in the people alone lay any hope of regeneration for Italy, he made it the work of his whole life to give the strength and sanction of religion to republican freedom.  This work he sealed with martyrdom.  The spirit of the creed which he bequeathed to his partisans in Florence was political no less than pious.  Whether Savonarola was right to embark upon the perilous sea of statecraft cannot now be questioned.  What prophet of Israel from Samuel to Isaiah was not the maker and destroyer of kings and constitutions?  When we call him by their title, we mean to say that he, like them, controlled by spiritual force the fortunes of his people.  Whether he sought it or not, this role of politician was thrust upon him by the course of events:  nor was the history of Italian cities deficient in precedents of similar functions assumed by preaching friars.[1]