The Elect Nation. The Savonarolan Movement in Florence 1494-1545

Abstract

A major preoccupation of the book is to show how the Savonarolans as a group managed to survive the execution of their leaders and to regain their strength and influence. The author traces their networks of support and analyses the way in which they infiltrated and restructured existing Florentine institutions to their advantage. He also reveals how they exploited spiritual counselling and lay and religious patronage to expand their influence and, in particular, how they ensured the survival of their movement by forming an anti-Medicean alliance of republican forces in Florence. The Elect Nation is the first comprehensive study of the religious, political and cultural movement inspired by Savonarola. Based on a thorough examination of the archival material and manuscript sources, the book argues that the followers of Savonarola exercised a profound influence on every facet of Florentine life during the important period of the city's transition from republic to principate. It is the author's contention that their ideology and activities provide the key to understanding not only the Florentine Republic, but also the nature of contemporary political debate and the characteristics of the emerging Medicean Principate. 1. 'Holy Liberty': The Establishment of a Political Tradition, 1494-1498 -- 2. The Piagnoni and Religious Reform -- 3. The Mystical Path to Reform -- 4. Reform through the Conventional Channels of the Church: The Conservative Approach -- 5. The Path to Radicalism -- 6. 'In Sodom and Gomorrah': The Piagnoni in Adversity and the Espousal of Radicalism -- 7. 'The New Jerusalem': The Last Florentine Republic -- 8. 'By the Waters of Babylon': The Death of a Movement -- 9. Epilogue.