Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/353

Rh S A V S A V 333 500 workers. Some 500,000 or 600,000 yards of silk stuffs arc woven throughout the department by some 850 workers ; and wool-spinning and wool manufactures are also carried on. In the iron industry 1921 tons of cast-iron and 1956 tons of malleable iron were manufactured in 1882. Clock-making, taught in two special schools, employs 2000 hands. Tanneries, paper-mills, tile-works, and flour-mills are numerous. About two-thirds of the cantons have the advantage of belonging to the neutral customs zone that is, have the right of introducing foreign goods duty free, with the exception of powder and tobacco. Coal, cotton, metals, and provisions are imported ; cheese, cattle, timber, leather, asphalt, building stone, and calico are exported. The national roads make a total of 193 miles, other roads 3100 miles, and the railways Annecy to Aix-les-Bains and to Annemasse, on the line from Bellegarde to Evian 96 miles. With its 274,087 inhabitants (1881), who all speak French and are almost exclusively Roman Catholics, Haute-Savoie is only about one-tenth below the average density of France. It forms the diocese of Annecy; the court of appeal and the university academy are at Chambery, and the department is included in the 14th corps d'armee district (Grenoble). There are 4 arrondissements Annecy (population of town 11,000), Bonneville (2270), St Julien (1500), and Thouon (5440), 28 cantons, and 314 communes. SAVONA, a city of Italy, in the province of Genoa, 25 miles west of that town, and 91 miles south of Turin by rail, is after Genoa and Nice the most important of the cities of the Riviera. The greater part of the town is now modern, consisting of handsome gardens, boulevards, and well-paved broad streets lined with massive arcades and substantial houses, built in enormous square blocks from four to five stories high. It is surrounded with green-clad hills and luxuriant orange groves. On the Rock of St George stands the castle built by the Genoese in 1542, now used as a military prison. The cathedral (1589-1604) is a late Renaissance building with a dome of modern con- struction. In the Cappella Sistina stands the magnificent tomb erected by Sixtus IV. to his parents. Facing the cathedral is the Delia Rovere palace erected by Cardinal Giulio della Rovere (Julius II.) as a kind of university, and now occupied by the prefecture, the post-office, and the courts. San Domenico (or Giovanni Battista) built by the Dominicans, occupies the site of the very ancient church of Sant' Antonio Abate. Several of the churches have paintings of some merit, and there is a municipal picture-gallery occupying part of the extensive buildings of the civil hospital of St Paul. The Teatro Chiabrera, erected in 1853 in honour of the lyric poet Chiabrera, who was born in Savona, and is buried there in the church of San Giacomo, has its fa9ade adorned with statues of Alfieri, Goldoni, Metastasio, and Rossini. The town- house (with the public library founded by the bishop of Savona, Maria di Mari, in 1840), the episcopal palace, and the harbour tower surmounted by a colossal figure of the Virgin also deserve mention. As early as the 12th century, the Savonese built themselves a sufficient harbour ; but in the 16th century their rivals the Genoese, fearing that Francis I. of France intended to make it a great seat of Mediterranean trade, rendered it useless by sinking at its mouth vessels filled with large stones. The modern harbour, dating from 1815, has since 1880 been provided with a dock excavated in the rock, 986 feet long 460 wide and 23 feet deep ; and other extensions are in progress. In 1884 1012 vessels (349,462 tons) entered and 988 (346,337 tons) cleared the steamers being respectively 298 (273,237 tons) and 294 (270,953). The opening of the railway to Bra (1878) at once gave Savona an advantage over Genoa as a port for supplying Turin and Piedmont. A large import trade has since grown up, especially in coals (300,000 tons from Great Britain and France), which can be loaded directly from the ship into the trucks. The exports are confined to the products of the local industries, fruit, hoop-staves, &c. The potteries which have been long established at Savona export their earthenware to all parts of Italy; and there are glass- works, soap-works, and one of the largest iron-foundries in North Italy. Shipbuilding is also carried on. The population of the commune, which includes the suburbs of Fornaci, Lavagnola, Legino and Zinola, and San Bernardo, was 19,611 in 1861 and 29,614 in 1881, that of the city at the latter date being 19,120. Savona is the Savo where, according to Livy, Mago stored his booty in the Second Punic War. In 1191 it bought up the terri- torial claims of the Marquises Del Carretto. Its whole history is that of a long struggle against the preponderance of Genoa. In 1746 it was captured by the king of Sardinia, but it was restored to Genoa by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Columbus, whose ancestors came from Savona, gave the name of the city to one of the first islands he discovered in the West Indies. SAVONAROLA, GIKOLAMO (1452-1498). The roll of Italian great men contains few grander names than that of Savonarola, and the career of this patriot-priest, re- former, and statesman is one of the strangest pages of Italy's history. Amid the splendid corruptions of the Italian Renaissance he was the representative of pure Christianity, the founder and ruler of an ideal Christian republic, and, when vanquished by the power of Rome, suffered martyrdom for the cause to which his life had been dedicated. His doctrines have been the theme of interminable controversies and contradictory judgments. He has been alternately declared a fanatic bent on the revival of mediaeval barbarism and an enlightened pre- cursor of the reformation, a true Catholic prophet and martyr and a shameless impostor and heretic. It is enough to say here that his best biographers and critics give satisfactory proofs that he was chiefly a reformer of morals, who, while boldly denouncing Papal corruptions, preserved an entire belief in all the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. Girolamo Savonarola was born at Ferrara 21st September 1452, the third child of Michele Savonarola and his wife Elena Bonaccossi of Mantua. His grandfather, Michele Savonarola, a Paduan physician of much repute and learning, had settled in Ferrara at the invitation of the reigning marquis, Nicholas III. of Este, and gained a large fortune there. The younger Michele was a mere courtier and spendthrift, but Elena Savonarola seems to have been a woman of superior stamp. She was tenderly loved by her famous son, and his letters prove that she retained his fullest confidence through all the vicissitudes of his career. Girolamo was a grave precocious child, with an early passion for learning. He was guided in his first studies by his wise old grandfather the physician ; and, in the hope of restoring their fallen fortunes, his parents intended him for the same profession. Even as a boy he had in- tense pleasure in reading St Thomas Aquinas and the Arab commentators of Aristotle, was skilled in the subtle- ties of the schools, wrote verses, studied music and design, and, avoiding society, loved solitary rambles on the banks of the Po. Grass-grown Ferrara was then a gay and bustling town of 100,000 inhabitants, its prince Borso d'Este a most magnificent potentate. To the mystic young student all festivities were repulsive, and although reared in a courtier-household he early asserted his individuality by his contempt for the pomp and glitter of court life. At the age of nineteen, however, he had as yet no thought of renouncing the world, for he was then passionately in love with the child of a friendly neighbour, a Strozzi exiled from Florence. His suit was repulsed with disdain ; no Strozzi, he was told, might stoop to wed a Savonarola. This blow probably decided his career, but he endured two years of misery and mental conflict before resolving to abandon his medical studies and devote himself to God's service. He was full of doubt and self-distrust ; disgust for the world did not seem to him a sufficient