Savonarola; His Life and Times (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. MONASTIC LIFE AT BOLOGNA. When Savonarola arrived in Bologna, the city, after many variations of fortune, had become, in name at least, the second capital of the Papal States, although the family of Bentivoglio, by whom it was governed, held the papal supremacy very lightly. But the young novice had at this time no thoughts for questions which he afterwards felt to be of vital importance to the well-being of Italy. We may even doubt whether that splendid shrine in the convent church, one of the greatest works of Nicola da Pisa, upon which so many pilgrims have gazed with admiration, interested him otherwise than as the resting-place of the great founder of his order. During his novitiate, and indeed during his whole life at Bologna, he abstained, as far as possible, from all social intercourse with his fellow-men. Every hour that he could gain for the purpose he spent in silent meditation and prayer. His companions compared his manner and conduct to those of the ancient ascetics and hermits of Egypt, as they saw him moving about like a ghost, worn to a shadow by fasts and vigils. In every respect he kept his vow of poverty to the letter, or rather in excess. He ate only enough to sustain life. His garments were the roughest and the coarsest that he could procure, but always scrupulouslyclean. His shoes were long and turned up at the points, for, he said, " they would be full of precious stones in Paradise." His bed consisted of pieces of wood and sticks laid across so as to form a kind of lattice-work, on which were placed a sack of straw and a woollen sheet, with a coarse frock thrown over them. As regards his vow of purity, his biographers speak of his eminence in this respect as being represented in his writings, and as the reason for his being favor...