O Triunfo da Cruz: Savonarola e o diálogo com as tradições na crise florentina do século XV

Abstract

This study seeks to analyse the use of political traditions by friar Girolamo Savonarola during he institutional crisis of Florence in the end of the 15th Century. Supported by an eschathological and reactionary perception, Savonarola preached the necessity of a moral renovation of religion, government and Society. With the invasion of Italy by the French King Charles VIII and subsequent downfall of the power of the Medicis in Florence, Savonarola assumes political protagonism in the city. In his prophetical discourses, of chiliastic and threatening nature, the dominican Friar exhorted his listeners to penitence and moral reform of Church, State and Society. The direct result of his intervention was the instauration of a republican regime of government, denominated by him governo civile or governo popolare. In spite of the apocaliptical underpinning of his preachings, the proposed reforms gained wide support of various strata of florentine populace, including famous humanist intelectuals, such as Pico Della Mirandola and Francesco Guicciardini. Supported by an extense documental corpus, composed of sermons, treatises, poems and letters, this research has seeked to comprehend the social reception of Savonarolas preachings, considering not only the crisis, but also the form in which humanist and dominican political traditions have been incorporated, and, overall, how these traditions were rethinked and updated in order to deal with the events of that historical time.