The Historical Jesus

Chapter X · THE SAVONAROLA FALLACY

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The argument of Blass and others on this topic, confidently accepted and endorsed by Dr. Petrie, works out as sheer mystification. They lay special stress on the fact that in the sack of 1527 horses were stabled in the churches. It is likely enough: the same thing has been done a thousand times in the wars of Christendom. But the argument has been very negligently conducted. In the first place, though he tells of infinitely worse things, such as the wholesale violation of women, including nuns, the historian Guicciardini does not give the detail about the horses. That occurs in the document Il Sacco di Roma, ascribed latterly to his brother Luigi, which was first printed in 1664. Still, let us assume that the printing was faithful. If an interpolator had meant to vindicate Savonarola he would presumably have noted that the prophet specified not only horses but pigs, whereas the narrative says nothing of the latter. We are thus left with the item of the stabling of horses in the churches.

The historian is quite mistaken; the same horrors had been many times enacted, and even on a greater scale. At the sack of Constantinople by the Christian crusaders in 1204,

Notes in this chapter

Note 1 · Nor are we here concerned with the question of Savonarola’s “sincerity.” On that head it may be noted that Perrens the Rationalist and Lucas Note 2 · Lucas, p. 69 note. Compare the references of Lucas and those of Villari (p. 317) for researches on the subject. ↑Note 3 · Cp. Perrens, as cited, ii, 94. ↑Note 4 · 1 Mac. i, 47, 54, 59. ↑Note 5 · Refs. in De Potter, L’Esprit de l’Église, 1821, iv, 95–98. ↑Note 6 · Philology of the Gospels, p. 43. ↑Note 7 · Growth of the Gospels, p. 45. ↑Note 8 · Professed prophecies, that is, not political calculations. ↑Note 9 · The systematic deposition of ordure in the drawers of commodes in 1870, in beds and rooms and on piles of food in 1914, is a historical fact Note 10 · History of Sacrilege, 1698, p. 113. ↑Note 11 · Id. p. 122. ↑Note 12 · Zeller, L’histoire de France racontée par les contemporains, vol. 21, p. 102. ↑Note 13 · Id. vol. 22, p. 17. ↑Note 14 · Sismondi-Toccagni, Storia delle repub. ital., 1852, iv, 123. ↑Note 15 · Burckhardt, Renaissance in Italy, Eng. tr., ed. 1892, p. 23. ↑Note 16 · Villari, pp. 463, 532, 554–55. ↑Note 17 · “Slay all! God will know his own!” ↑Note 18 · Rev. W. Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, 1888, pp. 81–82. ↑Note 19 · Barante, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne, ed. 7ième, iii, 234. ↑Note 20 · Id. ib. p. 248. ↑Note 21 · Id. ib. p. 416. ↑Note 22 · This detail, from Niketas, is also given by Gibbon, ch. lx, near end, and by Michaud, Hist. des Croisades, iii (1817), 154–55. Mills omits i Note 23 · Rev. Sir G. W. Cox, The Crusades, 8th ed. p. 157. ↑Note 24 · Perrens, ii, 95. ↑Note 25 · Memoirs of Philip de Commines, Bohn trans. i, 158. ↑Note 26 · Hall’s Chronicle, Hen. VIII, ed. 1550, fol. 112. ↑Note 27 · Burckhardt, Renaissance in Italy, Eng. tr. ed. 1892, p. 29. ↑Note 28 · Perrens, Hist. de Florence, 1434–1531, i, 385. ↑Note 29 · Guicciardini, lib. x, c. 4. ↑Note 30 · Id. xvii, 3. ↑Note 31 · Though in reporting the sack of Rome he makes the Germans behave the more brutally as regards the cardinals. ↑Note 32 · Here we have to note that as regards the main event Savonarola is predicting a thing that had repeatedly happened in Catholic times, and tha Note 33 · But there was nothing new about a Catholic sack of Rome. The city had been hideously sacked and in large part destroyed under Gregory VII (1 Note 34 · Especially remarkable is this, that he [Savonarola] extends the devastation to the churches of Rome, which in any ordinary capture (!) by a Note 35 · And Dr. Petrie adds: “Such a detail seemed excessively unlikely before the rise of Lutheranism; yet it came to pass.”7 It is interesting to Note 36 · For centuries before Luther the desecration of churches was a regular feature in every Christian war of any extent. It is arguable, perhaps,Note 37 · Lutheranism can have had very little to do with the matter: the brutality of the German Landsknechts was notorious long before Luther was he Note 38 · It will be remembered that his main items are slaughters, famines, and pestilences. There was famine and pestilence in Florence when he was Note 39 · In the historic crusade against the Albigenses in 1209, when Béziers was captured and every human being therein slain, seven thousand were, Note 40 · in the rural districts of France the passage of the ravagers was traced by blackened ruins, by desecrated churches, by devastated fields, by Note 41 · In the wars of Burgundy and France in the fifteenth century Catholics habitually plundered Catholic churches. At the siege of Saint-Denis in Note 42 · the Germans, the Bretons, and the Gascons were as so many wild beasts. The Comte d’Armagnac himself could not restrain them. After having pi Note 43 · the three Western bishops had strictly charged the crusaders to respect the churches and the persons of the clergy, the monks, and the nuns.Note 44 · Savonarola was simply predicting for Rome, perhaps with his eye on the Turks, such a fate as befell Constantinople at Christian hands, regar Note 45 · If there was anything astonishing for Italians in the desecration of churches at the sack of Rome, they must have had short memories. The co Note 46 · Frederick Barbarossa anciently desolated this city; his vengeance spared neither the inhabitants, nor the edifices, nor the walls; but that Note 47 · Guicciardini testifies that the Spaniards of the emperor’s forces had been more cruel than the Germans,31 violating the women and reducing t