Girolamo Savonarola

Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) was an ascetic Dominican friar from Ferrara whose prophecies made him the dominant voice in Florence. He gave up medicine to enter the Dominican friary in Bologna in 1475. After Pico della Mirandola helped bring him back to San Marco in 1490, his sermons on Revelation drew such crowds that he moved to the cathedral.

When Charles VIII crossed the Alps in 1494, many saw his prophecy fulfilled; the Florentines drove out Piero de' Medici and set up a Great Council; he preached that Florence would be the New Jerusalem. On 7 February 1497 a bonfire of the vanities burned paintings, jewels and clothes.

He ignored Pope Alexander VI's summons and was excommunicated on 12 May 1497. A rain-cancelled trial by fire in April 1498 turned the crowd against him; arrested and tortured, he was hanged with two friars on 23 May 1498, their bodies burned.