Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/359

Rh S A V S A Y 339 by his master's side ; Fra Silvestro, on the contrary, raved with despair. The only favour Savonarola craved before death was a short interview with his fellow victims. This, after long debate, the signory unwillingly granted, and meanwhile a monk was sent to shrive all the three. The memorable meeting took place in the hall of the Cinquecento. During their forty days of confinement and torture each one had been told that the others had recanted, and the false report of Savonarola's confession had been shown to the two monks. The three were now face to face for the first time. Fra Domenico's loyalty had never wavered, and the weak Silves- tro's enthusiasm rekindled at sight of his chief. Savonarola prayed with the two men, gave them his blessing, and ex- horted them by the memory of their Saviour's crucifixion to submit meekly to their fate. Midnight was long past when Savonarola was led back to his cell. Jacopo Niccolini, one of a religious fraternity dedicated to consoling the last hours of condemned men, remained with him. Spent with weakness- and fatigue he asked leave to rest his head on his companion's lap, and quickly fell into a quiet sleep. As Niccolini tells us, the martyr's face became serene and smiling as a child's. On awaking he addressed kind words to the compassionate brother, and then prophesied that dire calamities would befall Florence during the reign of a pope named Clement. The carefully recorded prediction was verified by the siege of 1529. The execution took place the next morning. A scaffold, connected by a wooden bridge with the magistrates' rostrum, had been erected on the spot where the piles of the ordeal had stood. At one end of the platform was a huge cross with faggots heaped at its base. As the prisoners, clad in penitential haircloth, were led across the bridge, wanton boys thrust sharp sticks between the planks to wound their feet. First came the ceremonial of degradation. Sacerdotal robes were thrown over the victims, and then roughly stripped off by two Dominicans, the bishop of Vasona and the prior of Sta Maria Novella. To the bishop's formula, " I separate thee from the church militant and the church triumphant, " Savonarola replied in firm tones, " Not from the church triumphant ; that is beyond thy power." By a refinement of cruelty Savonarola was the last to suffer. His disciples' bodies already dangled from the arms of the cross before he was hung on the centre beam. Then the pile was fired. For a moment the wind blew the flames aside, leaving the corpses untouched. " A miracle," cried the weeping Piagnoni ; but then the fire leapt up and ferocious yells of triumph rang from the mob. At dusk the martyrs' remains were collected in a cart and thrown into the Arno. Savonarola's party was apparently annihilated by his death, but, when in 1529-30 Florence was exposed to the horrors predicted by him, the most heroic defenders of his beloved if ungrateful city were Piagnoni who ruled their lives by his precepts and revered his memory as that of a saint. Savonarola's writings may be classed in three categories : (1) numerous sermons, collected mainly by Lorenzo Violi, one of his most enthusiastic hearers ; (2) an immense number of devotional and moral essays and some theological works, of which II Trionfo della Croce is the chief; (3) a few short poems and a political treatise on the government of Florence. Although his faith in the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church never swerved, his strenuous protests against papal corruptions, his reliance on the Bible as his surest guide, and his intense moral earnestness un- doubtedly connect Savonarola with the movement that heralded the Reformation. See Rudelbach, Hieronymus Savonarola vnd seine Zeit, aus den Quellen dargestellt (1835); Karl Meier, Girolamo Savonarola, aus grostentheils hand- sthnftlichen Quellen dargestellt (1836) ; Padre Vincenzo Marchese, Storia di S. Marco di Firenze (1855) ; F. T. Perrens, Jerome Savonarola, sa vie, ses predi- cations, tes e'crits (1853); R. R. Madden, The Life and Martyrdom of Oiliolamo Savonarola, etc. (1854)]; Bartolommeo Aquavone, Vita di Fra Oeronimo Savon- arola (1857); Pasquale VUIari, La Storia di Girolams Savonarola e de' tuoi tempi (1882). (L. V.) SAVOY. The history of the house of Savoy shows in a striking manner how the destinies of a nation may depend on the fortunes of a princely family. During eight centu- ries, and through all changes of fortune, the princes of Savoy have kept one end steadily in view, and, in the words of Charles Emmanuel III., have " treated Italy as an artichoke to be eaten leaf by leaf." The ambitions of princes and the interests of the people have fortunately tended in the same direction, and their work is now per- fected in the glory of their house and the freedom of the state. The descent of HUMBERT the Whitehanded, the founder of the family, is uncertain, but he was most probably a son of Amadeus, the great-grandson of that Boso of Provence (879) who was father of the emperor Louis the Blind. In reward for services rendered to Rudolph III. of Aries, Humbert obtained from him in 1027 the counties of Savoy and Maurienne, and from the emperor Conrad the Salic Chablais and the Lower Valais. His territories, therefore, all lay on the north-western slopes of the Alps. On his death in 1048 he was succeeded perhaps by his eldest son AMADEUS I., but eventually by his fourth son OTHO, who, by his marriage with Adelaide, sole heiress of the marquis of Susa, obtained the counties of Turin and the Val d'Aosta, and so acquired a footing in the valley of the Po. His wife's rank, too, as marchioness made the family guardians of the frontier by authority of the king of Italy, as they had been before by possession of territory, and was the foundation of their subsequent power as "warders" of the Alps. Otho was succeeded in 1060 by his son AMADEUS II., who maintained a judicious neutral- ity between his brother-in-law the emperor Henry IV. and the pope. In reward for his mediation between them he obtained from the former after Canossa the province of Bugey. The accession of his son HUMBERT II. in 1080 brought fresh increase of territory in the valley of the Tarantaise, and in 1091 this prince succeeded to the dig- nities of his grandmother Adelaide, when he assumed the title of prince of Piedmont. AMADEUS III. came to the throne in 1103, and in 1111 his states were created counties of the empire by Henry V. On his way home from the crusades in 1149 Amadeus died at Nicosia, and was suc- ceeded by his son HUMBERT III. This prince did not follow the example of Amadeus II., but took the part of the pope against Barbarossa, who accordingly ravaged his territories until Humbert's death in 1188. The guardians of his son THOMAS acted more discreetly, and reconciled their ward and the emperor. He remained Ghibelline all his life, and received from Henry VI. accessions of territory in Vaud, Bugey, and Valais, with the title of imperial vicar in Piedmont and Lombardy. He was followed in 1233 by AMADEUS IV., Avhose wife was the beautiful Cecilia of Beaux, surnamed Passe Rose. A campaign against the inhabitants of Valais ended in the annexation of their district, and his support of Frederick II. against the pope caused the erection of Chablais and Aosta into a duchy. In 1253 his son BONIFACE succeeded to his states at the age of nine, but, after giving proofs of his valour by defeat- ing the troops of Charles of Anjou before Turin, he was taken prisoner and died of grief (1263). The Salic law now came into operation for the first time, and PETER, the uncle of Boniface, was called to the throne. This prince, on the marriage of his nieces Eleanor and Sancha of Provence with Henry III. of England and Richard, earl of Cornwall, had visited England, where he had been created earl of Richmond, and built a palace in London afterwards called Savoy House. His brothers Boniface and William were also appointed, the former to the see of Canterbury, and the latter to the presidency of the council. In return he recognized the claims of Richard to the impe-