Note 15 — Chapter X · THE SAVONAROLA FALLACY

Lutheranism can have had very little to do with the matter: the brutality of the German Landsknechts was notorious long before Luther was heard of. But there was nothing specially German in the matter either. The Italian condottieri in general were “full of contempt for all sacred things.”15 It is instructive to note that Savonarola predicts nothing of the wholesale violation of nuns and other women which was to take place at Rome as it had done in a hundred other sacks of cities: he must have known that these things happened; but the thing that appealed to his imagination was the theological pollution resulting from putting horses and pigs in churches. He was not predicting: he was remembering. Long before his time, besides, Church Councils had to pass edicts against the use of churches as barns in time of peace.