a guisa di teatro, e
cosi dalla parte di sopra all' entrata del coro e dalla parte
di sotto in verso le porte della detta chiesa.'

Such was the preacher: and such was the effect of his oratory. The theme
on which he loved to dwell was this. Repent! A judgment of God is at
hand. A sword is suspended over you. Italy is doomed for her
iniquity--for the sins of the Church, whose adulteries have filled the
world--for the sins of the tyrants, who encourage crime and trample upon
souls--for the sins of you people, you fathers and mothers, you young
men, you maidens, you children that lisp blasphemy! Nor did Savonarola
deal in generalities. He described in plain language every vice; he laid
bare every abuse; so that a mirror was held up to the souls of his
hearers, in which they saw their most secret faults appallingly
portrayed and ringed around with fire. He entered with particularity
into the details of the coming woes. One by one he enumerated the
bloodshed, the ruin of cities, the trampling down of provinces, the
passage of armies, the desolating wars that were about to fall on
Italy.[1] You may read pages of his sermons which seem like vivid
narratives of what afterwards took place in the sack of Prato, in the
storming of Brescia, in the battle of the Ronco, in the cavern-massacre
of Vicenza. No wonder that he stirred his audience to their center. The
hell within them was revealed. The coming doom above them was made
manifest. Ezekiel and Jeremiah were not more prophetic. John crying to a
generation of vipers, 'Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!'
was not more weighty with the mission of authentic inspiration.

[1] Savonarola's whole view of the situation and of the perils
of Italy was that of a prophet. He saw more clearly than other
people what was inevitable. But his disciples and the vulgar
believed implicitly in his prophetic gift in the narrower
sense, that is, in his power to predict events, such as the
deaths of Lorenzo and the King of Naples, the punishment of
Charles VIII, in the loss of the dauphin, etc. Pico says:
'Savonarola could read the future as clearly as one sees the
whole is greater than the part.' And there is no doubt that, as
time went on, Savonarola came to believe himself that he
possessed this faculty. After his trial and execution a very
uncomfortable sense of doubt remained upon the minds of those
who had been witnesses