Note 16 — Chapter X · THE SAVONAROLA FALLACY

It will be remembered that his main items are slaughters, famines, and pestilences. There was famine and pestilence in Florence when he was prophesying in 1496; there was more in 1497;16 and a terrible pestilence had visited Venice during the Turkish invasions of 1477 and 1478. The preacher’s description of a plague in a city is an account of what had happened a dozen times in the history of Florence, before and after the Plague which figures in the forefront of Boccaccio’s Decameron. Preaching from the text of Amos, he arraigns Italy and Rome as Amos arraigns Israel and Judah; and his menaces are the menaces of the Hebrew prophet, immeasurable slaughters, famine, pestilence, and captivity, with the old corollary of regeneration and restoration, in the case of Italy and the Church as in the case of Israel. And his added detail of church desecration is at once a Biblical idea and a familiar item from Christian history.