Savonarola, Fra Girolamo (Hist.)

A Dominican, Prior of the Convent of San Marco and head of the Piagnoni, or democratic party. "The tone was not that of imperious command, but of quiet self-possession and assur ance of the right, blended with benignity . . . His face was hardly discernible under the shadow of the cowl, and her eyes fell at once on his hands, which were folded across his breast and lay in relief on the edge of his black mantle. They had a marked physiognomy which enforced the influence of the voice: they were very beautiful and almost of trans parent delicacy . . . the hands seemed to have an appeal in them against all hardness ... In the act of bending, the cowl was pushed back, and the features of the monk had the full light of the tapers on them. They were very marked features, such as lend themselves to popular description. There was the high arched nose, the prominent under lip, the coronet of thick dark hair above the brow, all seeming to tell of energy and passion; there were the blue-grey eyes, shining mildly under auburn eyelashes, seeming, like the hands, to tell of acute sensitiveness." "There was nothing transcendent in Savonarola's face. It was not beautiful. It was strongfeatured, and owed all its refinement to habits of mind and rigid discipline of the body." "Fra Girolamo's mind never stopped short of that sublimest end: the objects towards which he felt himself working had always the same moral magnificence. He had no private malice—he sought no petty gratification. Even in the last terrible days, when ignominy, torture, and the fear of torture, had laid bare every hidden weakness of his soul, he could say to his importunate judges: 'Do not wonder if it seems to you that I have told but few things; for my purposes were few and great.' "Savonarola, the great religious and political reformer of Florence, is the central figure in the historical part of Romola, and also, through the influence which he exerts over Romola herself, an important figure in the fictitious part of the plot. Romola first sees him at her brother's death-bed, but his principal connexion with her is when he meets her, on her attempted flight from her husband, and influences her by his exhortations to return to Tito and take up work for others though her personal happiness is gone. The main events in his career which figure in the novel are his preaching in the Duomo and elsewhere, his purification of the popular life of Florence, and his Bonfire of Vanities, the challenge which he receives from Fra Francesco and the attempted Trial by Fire, his last sermon and his arrest and execution. Girolamo Savonarola, the great Florentine reformer, was born at Ferrara in 1452; he came to Florence in 1489, was excommunicated 1497, and arrested and executed 1498. George Eliot's picture of Savonarola's career and influence in Florence follows closely the account in the standard biography, that of Pasquale Villari, and is both historically accurate and sympathetic. The importance of her portrait is attested by the fact that Romola is mentioned seriously in the preface to the revised edition of Villari, and is cited frequently in the later biography by Lucas.

<em>Romola</em>

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