Note 3 — Chapter IX · BLASS AND FLINDERS PETRIE

But let us see what Savonarola actually did. He was, so to speak, a professional prophet, and while he predicted not only a sack of Rome but his own death by violence, he also, by the admission of sympathetic biographers, put forth many vaticinations of an entirely fantastic character. Here again he might very well have a Jewish prototype. For us the first question is, What did he actually predict in history, and how and why did he predict it? In 1494 he seems to have predicted the French invasion which took place in that year. Villari asserts that he did so in the sermons he preached in Lent, but admits that “it is impossible to ascertain the precise nature” of the sermons in question.3 Father Lucas goes further, and points out that there is no trace in them of the alleged prophecy4 which Savonarola in his Compendium Revelationum (1495) claims to have made but does not date. Villari further admits that the sermons of that year are so badly reported