Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/241

 SAVONAROLA. 225 of God requires renovation ; II. The Church is to be scourged ; III. The Church will be renovated ; IV. After chastisement Flor ence will be renovated and will prosper; V. The infidel will be converted ; VI. The excommunication of Fra Girolamo is void ; VII. There is no sin in not observing the excommunication. Fra Francesco reasonably enough said that most of these propositions were incapable of argument, but, as a demonstration was desired, he would enter fire with Fra Domenico, although he fully expected to be burned ; still, he was willing to make the sacrifice in order to liberate the Florentines from their false idol.* Passions were fierce on both sides, and eager partisans kept the city in an uproar. To prevent an outbreak the Signoria sent for both disputants and caused them to enter into a written agree- ment, March 30, to undergo this strange trial. Three hundred years earlier it would have seemed reasonable enough, but the Council of Lateran, in 1215, had reprobated ordeals of all kinds, and they had been definitely marked with the ban of the Church. When it came to the point Fra Francesco said that he had no quarrel with Domenico ; that if Savonarola would undergo the trial, he was ready to share it, but with any one else he would only produce a champion — and one was readily found in the person of Fra Giuliano Rondinelh, a noble Florentine of the Order. On the other side, all the friars of San Marco, nearly three hundred in number, signed the agreement pledging to submit themselves to the ordeal, and Savonarola declared that in such a cause any one could do so without risk. So great was the enthusiasm that when, on the day before the trial, he preached on the subject in San- Marco, all the audience rose in mass, and offered to take Domeni- co's place in vindicating the truth. The conditions prescribed by the Signoria were, that if the Dominican champion perished, whether alone or with his rival, Savonarola should leave the city until officially recalled ; if the Franciscan alone succumbed, then Fra Francesco should do likewise ; and the same was decreed for either side that should decline the ordeal at the last moment.f — Villari, II. App. lxxi. sqq. t Landucci, pp. 167-8.— Processo Autentico, pp. 536-8.— Villari, II. App. xci.-xciii. III.— 15
 * Burlamacchi, p. 559. — Landucci, pp. 166-7. — Processo Autentico, pp. 535-7.