Now... the title for the first Iconoclast Of The Month goes to Girolamo Savanarola.
Why Him? Well I've liked Savanarola ever since I read a translation of one of his sermons that was in a sermon collection book my dad had. I personally think he gets a bad wrap in history too, the Catholics call him a heretic, and most Protestants (especially Baptists) won't touch him with a ten foot pole with a feather on the end. However Martin Luther credited his own conversion to Savanarola's ministry and it undoubtedly influenced Florence for the good.
Savanarola was born in Ferrara, Italy in 1452, he was executed in 1498. He became a Dominican priest and was well respected for his learning and preaching. Following a vision he saw of the sword of the Lord descending on the earth (Note the Latin quote in the title), he began to preach a message of repentance.
He definitely had a ministry of evangelism. People flocked to hear him as he denounced the sins that were so prevalent in Renaissance Italy. In the sermon of his that I read, he likens himself to the donkey in the story of Balaam and the donkey. He sees the Angel of the Lord ready in judgment and is striving to go to the field, which is the Word of God, but Balaam, the Catholic hierarchy is trying to drive him forward. He speaks in his own defence and says that like the donkey, they had known him and how he formerly acted and if was acting differently it was because he had truly seen something. He also stated in this sermon that no outward work could save a man, not even prophesy or working miracles, but only true faith coupled with the love of God in the heart.
He incured the wrath of Pope Alexander VI, when he wrote him a letter urging him to repent of hos wicked ways. The Pope forbade him to preach again, when he disobeyed that injunction he was excommunicated. For a while, the city of Florence stood with him, but eventually they turned on him. A trial by ordeal was ordered in which one of his underlings was to walk through a fire to prove that he was of God. There were delays over the details of this and in the meantime a rain storm put out the fire. This enraged the crowd who wanted the whole thing settled, Savanarola was arrested and tortured. During his torture he signed a confession to heresy, which he later recanted asking God to forgive his weak flesh. When he was ceremonially stripped of his priestly rank, the officiator said, "I separate you from the church militant and triumphant." To which he replied, "Militant not triumphant, you have no power to separate me from the church triumphant to which I go." He was suffocated and burned to death, with 2 of his followers and their ashes were then thrown in the Arno river.
Savanarola is a controversial figure and some of things he did such as his burning of the vanities and other measures were doubtless unwise and wrong. However he greatly resisted the spirit of immorality in his age, and fought for the true gospel as it had been committed to him. At his death a by-stander was heard to remark at how glad they were that now they could again live in their homosexual lifestyle now that he was dead. He is often criticized for his prophecies, but the majority, if not all were fulfilled thirty years later when French and German troops fought throughout Italy creating desolation everywhere.
Perhaps he was not the strongest light, but he found his hope in the One who promised that a bruised reed He would not break, nor quench a smoking flax. He was a mere comma, a brief pause in the moral decline of Renaissance Italy - the salt that retarded it's corruption.
You and I may not be periods, perhaps we are only commas, perhaps we cannot permanently effect those around us, but let us stand up for right. Let us be a comma, let us say, "You can do what you like when I'm gone, but while I'm here..."
God bless you and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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