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82
John Koenig
when he made prayer, fasting, alms giving, and sin reduction the means of
assuaging an enraged, punishing God. He also promised the Florentines
earthly rewards – wealth, prosperity, and the re-conquest of Pisa – when
their Christian living had brought them God’s favor 67 . Thus, the republic
was also serviced by religion.
It was in the last of his Advent sermons on Haggai at the end of
1494 that Girolamo introduced the novel notion that Florence should
have Christ as its king. He urged his audience, “take Christ for your king
and live under his law and be governed by it;” and he assured them that,
having made peace among themselves (the “pace universale,” for which
the “six bean” legislation would soon provide the necessary political
foundation) and with Christ as their ruler, a glorious future beckoned 68 .
Thus, this unique kingship would be theirs, as an ideal Christian
community, for the asking.
A year later, the friar’s sermons of October 1495 registered a
renewed interest in this divine monarchy. On Sunday the 11 th , he
reassured his audience that in these difficult times Christ their king
would be at their side (“a tutti vi dico che non abbiate paura, perchè
abbiamo uno buono Re”) 69 . He told them that God had always intended
that Christ should be king of the great and lesser folk alike and of both
67 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, Prediche sopra Ruth e Michea, ed. Vincenzo Romano 2 (Florence
1962), 305 (28 Oct. 1496); idem, Prediche sopra Aggeo, 166, where the friar announced that the reform
of Italy would commence in Florence, which was Italy’s “navel,” and that it would have “ricchezze
innumerabili, e Dio vi multiplicherà ogni cosa.” For another similar statement of these promises, ibid.,
213; and see below, at n. 76.
68 “Orsù, Firenze, Iddio ti vuol contentare e darti uno capo e uno re che ti governi. E questo
è Cristo: ecco el psalmo nostro che lo dice: ‘Ego autem constitutus sum rex.’” Also, “Tu, Firenze…
piglia Cristo per tuo re e sta sotto la sua legge e con quella ti governa;” and “Cristo sia tuo capitano,
e lui sia quello che ti dia la reforma del vivere santo. Quella reforma… non è altro che la unione, cioè
l’amore di Dio e l’amore del prossimo. Questo non è altro ch’el comandamento di Dio e di Cristo.”
Prediche sopra Aggeo, 422-23. And, from an earlier sermon on Haggai, “non dubitate, vi dico, chè
vogliamo fare una città di Dio e non di Firenze,” ibid., 168. My analysis of what Savonarola meant by
naming Christ king of Florence differs from that of L. MARTINES, Fire in the City: Savonarola and the
Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence (Oxford 2006), 107.
69 SAVONAROLA, Prediche sopra i Salmi 2, 201.