in bold opposition to the reigning Pope, he had no desire to destroy the spiritual supremacy of S. Peter’s see.  Though he burned with an enthusiastic zeal for liberty, and displayed rare genius for administration, he had no ambition to rule Florence like a dictator.  Savonarola was neither a reformer in the northern sense of the word, nor yet a political demagogue.  His sole wish was to see purity of manners and freedom of self-government re-established.  With this end in view he bade the Florentines elect Christ as their supreme chief; and they did so.  For the same end he abstained from appearing in the State Councils, and left the Constitution to work by its own laws.  His personal influence he reserved for the pulpit; and here he was omnipotent.  The people believed in him as a prophet.  They turned to him as the man who knew what he wanted—­as the voice of liberty, the soul of the new regime, the genius who could breathe into the commonwealth a breath of fresh vitality.  When, therefore, Savonarola preached a reform of manners, he was at once obeyed.  Strict laws were passed enforcing sobriety, condemning trades of pleasure, reducing the gay customs of Florence to puritanical austerity.

Great stress has been laid upon this reaction of the monk-led populace against the vices of the past.  Yet the historian is bound to pronounce that the reform effected by Savonarola was rather picturesque than vital.  Like all violent revivals of pietism, it produced a no less violent reaction.  The parties within the city who resented the interference of a preaching friar, joined with the Pope in Rome, who hated a contumacious schismatic in Savonarola.  Assailed by these two forces at the same moment, and driven upon perilous ground by his own febrile enthusiasm, Savonarola succumbed.  He was imprisoned, tortured, and burned upon the public square in 1498.

What Savonarola really achieved for Florence was not a permanent reform of morality, but a resuscitation of the spirit of freedom.  His followers, called in contempt I Piagnoni, or the Weepers, formed the path of the commonwealth in future; and the memory of their martyr served as a common bond of sympathy to unite them in times of trial.  It was a necessary consequence of the peculiar part he played that the city was henceforth divided into factions representing mutually antagonistic principles.  These factions were not created by Savonarola; but his extraordinary influence accentuated, as it were, the humours that lay dormant in the State.  Families favourable to the Medici took the name of Palleschi.  Men who chafed against puritanical reform, and who were eager for any government that should secure them their old licence, were known as Compagnacci.  Meanwhile the oligarchs, who disliked a democratic Constitution, and thought it possible to found an aristocracy without the intervention of the Medici, came to be known as Gli Ottimati.  Florence held within itself, from this epoch forward to the