SAVONAROLA, GIROLAMO (1452–1498), was a Dominican preacher, reformer, and prophet. Savonarola was born in Ferrara, Italy, and under the eye of his grandfather, the distinguished court physician Michele Savonarola, was educated in religious and liberal studies before going on to medicine. A story that he was disappointed in love, and his early poem De ruina mundi give some insight into his decision to enter the Order of Friars Preachers in 1475. In Bologna he completed his novitiate and attended the Dominican Studium Generale. In 1482 he went to Florence as reader in the Observant Dominican convent of San Marco. The recently rediscovered Borromeo Codex, containing Savonarola's sermon notes, poetry, and other writings from this period, shows a young reformer in process of development rather than the born prophet portrayed by his hagiographers. The moralizing, ascetic sermon drafts contain none of the spectacular visionary themes, still less the millenarian themes...