Note 16 — Chapter IX · BLASS AND FLINDERS PETRIE

Yet again, in 1498, he claims in a sermon that “a part has come to pass,” noting that “in Rome one has lost a son”—a reference to the murder of the Duke of Gandia, son of the Pope; and adding that “you have seen who has died here, and I could tell you, an I would, who is in hell”—supposed to be a reference to Bernardo del Nero.16 All this was in terms of Savonarola’s theological and Biblical conception of things, the ruling political philosophy of his age, as of many before. Wickedness and injustice, fraud and oppression, were dominant in high places, and God must of necessity punish, in the fashion in which he was constantly described as doing so in the Sacred Books, from the Deluge downwards. In Savonarola’s view the cup of Rome’s abominations was full, and punishment had been earned by the men then living, in particular by Pope Alexander.