[1] This scheme was by no means utterly unpractical.  The Borgia had only just escaped deposition in 1495 by the gift of a Cardinal’s hat to the Bishop of S. Malo.  He was hated no less than feared through the length and breadth of Italy.  But Savonarola had allowed the favorable moment to pass by.

But while girding on his armor for this singlehanded combat with the Primate of Christendom and the Princes of Italy, the martyrdom to which Savonarola now looked forward fell upon him.  Growing yearly more confident in his visions and more willing to admit his supernatural powers, he had imperceptibly prepared the pit which finally ingulfed him.  Often had he professed his readiness to prove his vocation by fire.  Now came the moment when this defiance to an ordeal was answered.[1] A Franciscan of Apulia offered to meet him in the flames and see whether he were of God or not.  Fra Domenico, Savonarola’s devoted friend, took up the gauntlet and proposed himself as champion.  The furnace was prepared:  both monks stood ready to enter it:  all Florence was assembled in the Piazza to witness what should happen.  Various obstacles, however, arose; and after waiting a whole day for the friar’s triumph, the people had to retire to their homes under a pelting shower of rain, unsatisfied, and with a dreary sense that after all their prophet was but a mere man.  The Compagnacci got the upper hand.  S. Mark’s convent was besieged.  Savonarola was led to prison, never to issue till the day of his execution by the rope and faggot.  We may draw a veil over those last weeks.  Little indeed is known about them, except that in his cell the Friar composed his meditations on the the 31st and 51st Psalms, the latter of which was published in Germany with a preface by Luther in 1573.  Of the rest we hear only of prolonged torture before stupid and malignant judges, of falsified evidence and of contradictory confessions.  What he really said and chose to stand by, what he retracted, what he shrieked out in the delirium of the rack, and what was falsely imputed to him, no one now can settle.[2] Though the spirit was strong, the flesh was weak; he had the will but not the nerve to be a martyr.  At ten o’clock on the 23d of May 1498 he was led forth together with brother Salvestro, the confidant of his visions, and brother Domenico, his champion in the affair of the ordeal, to a stage prepared in the Piazza.[3] These two men were hanged first.  Savonarola was left till the last.  As the hangman tied the rope round his neck, a voice from the crowd shouted:  ’Prophet, now is the time to perform a miracle!’ The Bishop of Vasona, who conducted the execution, stripped his friar’s frock from him, and said, ’I separate thee from the Church militant and triumphant.’  Savonarola, firm and combative even at the point of death, replied, ’Militant yes:  triumphant, no:  that is not yours.’  The last words he uttered were, ’The Lord has suffered as much for me.’