He was moved to preach. And how he preached! Clad always in a simple black robe symbolizing the virtues of simplicity and poverty, he verbally sketched the horrors that were about to descend on the unjust from God. Look skyward and tremble, you who love your silks and jewels, you who wallow in your villas decorated with naked bodies and hoary devils! The rain of lightning is on the horizon! And do you hear the tramping of Christ’s angelic army? I do! They wield gigantic barber’s razors, eager to slice the wicked to shreds! Your silks will be dyed with your heart’s blood, your jewels will stick in your throats! Soon! It’s later than you think! (Visuals of contemporary art spattering with blood. Mediaeval illustrations of "the triumph of death" theme – hordes of skeletons assaulting the panicking, defenseless living.)

With each sermon the crowd swelled. Savonarola felt his popularity was strong enough that he could attack the Medicis by name, despite the fact that they were the patrons of his own monastery. French troops under King Charles were pressing across northern Italy, and neither the Medicis nor the pope were on friendly terms with the king. Savonarola saw the French as God’s revenge on the faithless Florentines and Romans. Fear and chaos crested as the Medicis were forced to flee the city, and the French arrived in Florence. Savonarola impressed them; they left the city unmolested, and the Black Friar was hailed as its saviour.

But Savonarola wasn’t interested in preserving the Florence of the Renaissance. He wanted to purge the city of all corruption. In his "post-Renaissance" vision, Florentines would dress only in grey. There would be no images except Christian ones, no songs but hymns, no books but the Bible. No ornament or cosmetics or frivolity of any sort. Although technically Florence was a republic governed by a "signoria" of leading citizens, in practice Savonarola’s moral weight gave him supreme rule. A Renaissance ayatollah.

Gangs of holy thugs prowled the streets, stripping anyone foolish enough to wear a necklace or a ruffle or a scarf of silk. All were commanded to bring the "boils and sores" of Florence – the indecent art works, musical instruments, non-Biblical literature, beautiful clothing, games – to an immense pyre. Imagine the Black Friar stepping forward with his torch and igniting the heap to the cheers and chants of the mob. In the shadows of nearby windows others look on, weeping. The flames lick masterpieces painted by Botticelli, Signorelli, Pollaiuolo. The books of Dante, and Boccaccio, and Petrarch, and Plato, flap like burning birds. Thousands of tarot cards flutter alight in the updraft. At the top of the pyre Ficino’s lyre bursts ablaze, the Hymn to the Sun faintly heard as the strings flare and snap. This was the Bonfire of the Vanities.

The pope was not amused. Savonarola’s rhetoric cut too close to the bone. It was in fact similar to the critiques of the Catholic church offered by a number of "spiritual poverty" movements in the Middle Ages which were fond of pointing out that Jesus, unlike the bishops, had not dwelled in a palace, dressed in fine robes or demanded that people kiss his ring. These barbs had gotten so annoying that the church had issued an edict: anyone who believed that Jesus had been poor was a heretic.

For awhile Alexander and Savonarola maneuvered. The pope demanded that the friar stop preaching; he did, professing total obedience to the church; the pope eventually relented; the friar started attacking the church again. Inevitably Savonarola was excommunicated. He challenged the legitimacy of a pronouncement coming from one as soiled as Alexander Borgia. The world was about to end – Savonarola’s, that is.

By then the friar’s reign of oppression had made him many enemies in Florence, and they were emboldened by the excommunication. A Franciscan publicly challenged Savonarola to prove which of the two was on the side of God via a trial by ordeal. Both were to walk through a fire; the Lord would shield the righteous one from harm. The friar declined, and his support now crumbled.

Savonarola and his closest aides were nabbed by papal agents, tortured and condemned for their heresy and disobedience. On May 23, 1498, the main square of Florence, the Piazza della Signoria, was packed. (Use the anonymous painting The Execution of Savonarola here, despite some inaccuracies of depiction which we can note in the narrative.) In front of the town hall was a wooden platform piled with kindling; from the platform’s centre, a tall pole with crossbars at the top – the hanging post – was raised. The Black Friar and two of his deputies were marched past the howling crowd. Nooses were fastened to their necks. They would be hanged, then burned, their ashes dumped in the river. The Prophet of Florence gazed at the sun as the hangman readied to hoist him. Where was the rain of lightning? Perhaps he knew then that his foe, the hated Renaissance, had won. As the noose snapped tight, did he hear a choir of angels? Or could it have been the Orphic Hymn to the Sun? …