The Unarmed Prophet: Savonarola in Florence

Rating:
Summary: Savonarola- prophet or political manipulator?
Review: part of a study to present to adult education class on missions at my church.
I'm obligated to give a short class on Savonarola and this is part of that study


I got the book more for it's accessibility then any other reason. It is the first full length book treatment of his life that i have read and therefore have precious little to compare it to factually. Two big problems stare out from the book. The first is that the author's bias seems to get in the way of good presentation. She appears to be interested in him primarily as a political character and has very little sympathy for the theological content of his life. The second is that the first 2/3 of the book are more detailed then they need to be and the last 1/3 (from the trial by fire) far less informative than the events warrant. It is like the 20-25 page papers i wrote in university. I'd often get to page 19 and logically be 1/2 done the paper, rather than redo the first 19 pages, i'd just move faster so i'd get just 25 pages. In the case of this book, i'd love to see the first 2/3 cut down into the first 1/2 and the last 1/3 expanded to the last half. It is really noticable and leaves an unpleasantness in my mind for the details of his last 6 months are those most appropriate to what he really believed and why. But almost none of this discussion is present: meaning, significance, etc haunt the first 2/3 and are virtually absent in the last portion.

Now about content. Who was Savonarola and why do so many people seem to desire to claim him as an antecedent?
First, he appears with Hus and Wycliffe in the Luther monument in Worms (pictures in the book). but he was not a crypto or early Protestant, he is throughly Roman.
Second, he is certainly apocalyptic, but did the success of his early sermons on these topics create him or did he create a market for these sermons through his preaching? Simply, what was the relationship of the times to Savonarlo? Left unanswered, even mildly unasked.
Third, just because he died a martyr's death, does these change the truthfulness of his preaching, either by adding to it or subtracting from it since it means he personally lost the battle? Lots of people die at the hands of people we believe ought to know better, but does the manner of one's death like this, have anything to do with the values of his life or is it something that really effects only how we think about that person's life? Luther didn't die on his way back from Worms, that gave him a successfulness denied to Hus, Wycliffe and Savonarola and many others of their ages, so what?
Lastly, he was a moral reformer, not a doctrinal one, who tried to use the political apparatus with a few new pieces (boys groups to collect the vanities) that look remarkably modern. This intertwining of the religious and the political make it hard to distinguish things that i would like to know about both him and his times. But i will have to look elsewhere for all those answers.

The man-the messenger, the message both content and technique of presentation(the media) and the audience. Florence looks a lot like modern western culture, it certainly was the up and coming Renaissance city. For this reason we find lots of parallels between them and us, i think this is the enduring legacy of those times. The bonfire of the vanities looks like something our materialistic, obsessed with beauty society ought to do to rid itself of superficial banalities. But it is the technique of his overall campaign that we find most interesting. The political involvement, the intertwining of religion and politics, the underlying economic causes: plague, failure of harvests, rapidly changing conditions that favor some and crush others. It is this semi-marxist (economic forces are primary and underlie everything else) that the author manages to transmit to us as a take home message. His theology and beliefs look like nothing more than a psychologized superstructure when compared to the reality of partisan power politics based on control of economic forces. This ends up telling us more about our time than Savonarola's, about our deepest ideals then about Savonarola's or his times, thus yielding a book that really doesn't illuminate him but plays at history telling.

I could have spent those few hours more profitably with another book, i haven't found it yet, but for a start it is ok background. But leaves me with far more questions than content to answer them with.

Rating:
Summary: Page turner
Review: This book was a real page turner for me. Whether or not a college history professor thinks it's a good history book, it is a fascinating read. I'm grateful to the Amazon organization for the ease in which I was able to obtain a copy through their third party service.

The author's account of tensions between the different social forces in Florence during that time cut through the centuries so it reads like it could've been happening here and now. It is the "uncritical" writing, not bogged down with the analysis of an uptight academic, that makes this book easy and fascinating to read. Leave the critical analysis to the experts...