1 Prime pagine ok.indd - accademia degli intronati

92
John Koenig
year, they “offered the entire city to God and commended [themselves]
to the queen of Florence,” before “presenting” the money 88 .
[Double Space]
The New Republic, which was given life by the expulsion of the
Medici in May 1527, was in many ways the offspring of the Savonarolan
republic that had perished fifteen years before. It did not, however, aim to
establish the godly state that he had prophesied and labored to achieve; its
passion was freedom, its goal to preserve Florence from Medici tyranny
– whatever the sacrifice. This did not mean jettisoning the friar’s moral
reforms, which were eminently adaptable to this earthly purpose; but there
was no crusade for total reform, nor could there have been without the
friar’s charismatic leadership 89 . Still, his vision of a special destiny for a
Florence blessed by God continued to reassure and embolden its people,
particularly those most active supporters, the Piagnoni or Frateschi, as
they were also known. Too, under Savonarola, republicans had come to
depend on religion, their appeals for divine assistance having become
second nature (which could also be said of Sienese republicans, who
had no Savonarola to inspire them) 90 . He used religion to defend the
88 “Offerirono a Dio tutta la città et alla Regina di Firenze raccomandorno.” ANONYMOUS, Vita
del Beato Ieronimo Savonarola, 131, 134; and see SAVONAROLA, Prediche sopra Aggeo, 421; and
Prediche sopra i Salmi 1, 293.
89 Still, Savonarola’s “blue laws” against sin and vice (for which see n. 65) were reintroduced by
the New Republic. In the view of one observer, tyranny and the republic were two modes of rulership,
the former relying on “forza” and the latter on “religione;” and the head of the republic, Gonfaloniere
Francesco Capponi, had made exemplary use of religion, introducing “many measures to repress the
vices in the city from the time of the previous tyranny,” which included the harshest punishments
for blasphemers, closing the city’s taverns, sentencing murderers to perpetual exile, and regulating
expenditures on the clothes and ornaments of both men and women – “et tutto per publica provisione,
come in uno stato è conveniente.” C. FALLETTI-FOSSATI, Assedio di Firenze 1 (Palermo 1885), 452 (the
text begins on p. 444); ROTH, Last Florentine Republic, 64.
90 Pratiche discussions provide particularly good evidence of this. Here, from the Savonarolan
Republic, is a foretaste of the sort of advice on this matter that we shall find in the siege pratiche.
References are to Consulte e pratiche della Repubblica Fiorentina 1495-1497, ed. D. Facard (Geneva
2002). In some cases, an expectation of divine assistance was based on a belief in a past history of
such assistance, which sometimes elicited expressions of gratitude from the speaker, pp. 82-87, 95,
110 (five examples), 112, 143, 309, 397, 414, 430-34 (10 examples). At the pratica of Christmas Eve