people were struck dumb with
horror, for those who could not hear the friar by reason of the crowd,
listened with no less fear to the reports of others. At last he preached
a sermon so awful that the congregation stood like men who had lost
their senses; for he promised to reveal upon the third day how and from
what source he had received this prophecy. However, when he left the
pulpit, worn out and exhausted, he was seized with an illness of the
lungs, which soon put an end to his life. Pitti goes on to relate the
frenzy of revivalism excited by this monk's preaching, which had roused
all the old memories of Savonarola in Florence. It became necessary for
the Bishop to put down the devotion by special edicts, while the Medici
endeavored to distract the minds of the people by tournaments and public
shows.

[1] See Prato and Burigozzo, _Arch. Stor._ vol. iii. pp. 357,
431. It is here worth noticing that Siena, the city of civil
discord, was also the city of frenetic piety. The names of S.
Caterina, S. Bernardino, and Bernardo Tolomei occur to the
mind.

[2] _Storia Fiorintina,_ vol. i. p. 87.

[3] _Arch. Stor._ vol. iii. p. 443.

[4] Burigozzo, pp. 485-89.

Enough has now been quoted from various original sources to illustrate
the feverish recurrences of superstitious panics in Italy during the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It will be observed, from what has been
said about John of Vicenza, Jacopo del Bussolaro, S. Bernardino, Roberto
da Lecce, Giovanni della Marca, and Fra Capistrano, that Savonarola was
by no means an extraordinary phenomenon in Italian history. Combining
the methods and the aims of all these men, and remaining within the
sphere of their conceptions, he impressed a role, which had been often
played in the chief Italian towns, with the stamp of his peculiar
genius. It was a source of weakness to him in his combat with Alexander
VI., that he could not rise above the monastic ideal of the prophet
which prevailed in Italy, or grasp one of those regenerative conceptions
which formed the motive force of the Reformation. The inherent defects
of all Italian revivals, spasmodic in their paroxysms, vehement while
they lasted, but transient in their effects, are exhibited upon a tragic
scale by Savonarola. What strikes us, after studying the records of
these movements in Italy, is chiefly their want of true mental energy.
The momentary effect produced in great cities like