Not the man for it
John Bossy: The Death of Girolamo Savonarola, 20 April 2006
Scourge and Fire: Savonarola and Renaissance Italy
by Lauro Martines.
Cape, 368 pp., £20, March 2006,0 224 07252 8 Show More
by Lauro Martines.
Cape, 368 pp., £20, March 2006,
The Burning of the Vanities: Savonarola and the Borgia Pope
by Desmond Seward.
Sutton, 320 pp., £20, March 2006,0 7509 2981 2 Show More
by Desmond Seward.
Sutton, 320 pp., £20, March 2006,
“... a surprise: this is a city that we are encouraged to think of as a fountainhead of modernity. To Lauro Martines, who has seen Renaissance Italy as a spring of democratic authenticity diverted by wealth, aristocracy and a corrupt or bigoted Church into a stream of false consciousness and reaction, Savonarola has been something to keep fairly quiet ... ”