SAVONAROLA.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 127, 8 October 1875, Page 16

SAVONAROLA.

The Italians have been inaugurating a splendid monument to Savonarola. Their chief object in bo doing is of course to insult the Pope indirectly, of whose power they hold Savonarola was the mortal enemy. They seem to forget that this is by no means the first monument erected to the memory of the great Dominican. The Vatican itself contains many pictures of him painted by order of Popes who were nearly his contemporaries. Thus Raphael was commanded by Pope Julius 11. to paint Savonarola in the same picture with St. Thomas of Aquinas, and St. Gregory the Great, Paul 111., Clement VIII. and Benedict XIV. caused his memory to be observed with great, respect. In his " Triumph of the Cross " Savonarola says : "It is certain that the Bishops of Rome are the successors of St. Peter, and also that the Church of Rome is the mistress and teacher of all others, and that all the faithful ought to unite in obeying the Bishop of Rome, because he is the head of the Church. All who refuse him obedience cease to belong to the mystical body of Christ." Is it not amusing, when one knows the truth of history, to observe those foobsh"Ttalians erecting a monument to a man who thus emphatically condemns them, for they profess openly to despise the Holy See, and actually call the orthodox Savonarola a predecessor of Luther. The probabilities are that if Fra Savonarola were living now and acting as he acted in his days, the Italian government would shut him up in prison for endeavouring to get up jubilee processions and other public exercises of religion. They would certainly prohibit those famous penitential processions in which he persuaded 50,000 men and women to walk. The truth is, Savonarola was a great missionary, and had nothing in common with the anti-Papal ideas of modern Italy.