After four years dominating Florence with apocalyptic sermons and theocratic rule, Girolamo Savonarola fell from grace once his prophecies failed and Pope Alexander VI excommunicated him. Tried for heresy and sedition, he was hanged with two companions in the same square where he had once burned art and books, then his body was burned to prevent relics.
Girolamo Savonarola had once commanded Florence like a prophet-king, staging his famous Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497 where mirrors, cosmetics, and paintings by the city's finest artists went up in flames as penance for worldly sin. His sermons packed the Duomo, and for a time the Medici-less republic bent entirely to his vision of a godly city.
But his fortunes turned. He defied Pope Alexander VI's order to stop preaching, was excommunicated, and lost the political backing that had shielded him. A rigged trial by fire, which he dodged through delay, turned public opinion decisively against him. Florentine authorities, eager to appease Rome and end months of civic turmoil, arrested him and extracted confessions under torture.
On May 23, 1498, in the same Piazza della Signoria where his bonfires once blazed, Savonarola and two fellow friars were hanged from a single gibbet, then their bodies burned to ash and scattered in the Arno so no relics could survive. Machiavelli, who witnessed his rise and fall, later used him as a case study in the perils of an unarmed prophet.
Key people: Girolamo Savonarola, Pope Alexander VI