Savonarola

Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98)

Savonarola was an important transitional figure in the history of Christianity. It could be argued that he was a pre-Reformation thinker and writer. Many of his ideas and concepts foretold the more "protestant" approach of Luther and Calvin. He didn't advocate for biblical translation, but thought of faith as an important component in Christian thought. He believed strongly in the concept of grace so important to later reformers, but maintained the standard Catholic position that it can be earned rather than remaining "irresistible," and not subject to human will, as Augustine had, and Luther did in the sixteenth century.

Arguably, Savonarola was "puritanical." He dedicated himself fanatically to asceticism and reform. He was evangelical, in the sense that he liked to preach the Gospel and comment on the Apocalypse, though again, he was not an advocate of Biblical translation into the vernacular.  He was a fiery preacher, reaching his apex of popularity in the last decade of his life, most of his sermons delivered from the pulpit at the Church of San Marco.  Savonarola began as a convert and then became a Dominican friar. He offered himself at a Dominican monastery without informing his parents, thus fulfilling the injunction to leave all and follow Christ.  He came to Florence in 1486 and eventually attracted a wide popular following. He came from the city-state of Ferrara, which seemed provincial or
"country" to the Florentines, and his accent always remained that of his native land.

Though Savonarola inveighed against the worldliness of the Church and state, both institutions tolerated him to a remarkable degree. Pope Alexander VI became an enemy, mostly because Savonarola attacked him for his louche life: the mistresses, children, and patronage of the arts. Similarly, Lorenzo di Medici, who dominated Florence and made it spectacularly wealthy and powerful because of his institution of banking, found himself a target. However, he was supremely patient and in his final illness, summoned Fra Girolamo to his deathbed for final counsel.

Savonarola attracted powerful friends, who realized that they could raise their prestige by associating with him. Though he distrusted humanism, he knew that its tenets made his own learning possible. He was a talented intellectual who studied philosophy, poetry, and medicine. He wrote poetry. Pico della Mirandola, Sandro Botticelli, and Marsilio Ficino were among his allies, as well as Lorenzo., at first the Medicis, and well-regarded by Botticelli, Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, and others. Naturally, he was not averse to pride himself, and decided that his was the only voice worth heeding. His "Bonfire of the Vanities" in 1497 in the public square in Florence encouraged mobs to bring paintings, jewelry, clothing, priceless metals and sculptures and disagreeable literary texts to the flames, such as Ovid's Ars amatoria and Boccaccio's Decameron.

Savonarola's activities eventually annoyed the Pope and the magnifici of Florence, and when attempts to rein him in failed, he was arrested with two of his followers, tortured, tried, and burned in the same public square where he held his Vanities bonfire. Those who exulted in his fall wished to visit cruelties upon him, to the extent of modifying the twofold hanging and burning so that he would be alive throughout the entire experience, like his two companions. Fortunately, however, all three were dead when the flames reached them.  It is said that the force of the fire caused Savonarola's arm to wave up and down so that he appeared to be blessing the crowd who had watched him die. His ashes were scattered in the Arno, but his real legacy was the spread of his reformist ideas, and virtually all major reformers cited his widely-translated sermons and credited him.

Sources:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13490a.htm