Savonarola in Francia: Circolazione di un'eredità politico-religiosa nell'Europa del Cinquecento (review)

{brt}Strangely enough, until now there has been no monographic study on Girolamo Savonarola in France. This lacuna is difficult to imagine, given that by Savonarola's time and in the decades that followed his execution, Florence as a state and Florentines as a business community had long been enjoying a very close relationship with France: suffice it to say that in Lyon (the second-largest city in the kingdom) the "Florentine Nation" was numerous, prosperous, and highly influential. There was also a longstanding political alliance between the French crown and the Florentine government, whether that be the republic's elected officials or the Medici family itself (who, in 1465, were granted the right by Louis XI to add the French royal fleur-de-lis to their coat of arms). And there is the attention Savonarola himself paid to Charles VIII, whom he welcomed as the scourge sent by God to cleanse Italy. In short, even a superficial knowledge of Florentine history would suggest that France would be the most likely recipient of Savonarola's thoughts and ideals. As Stefano Dall'Aglio's brilliant study shows, Savonarola did indeed cast a long shadow in France.

The first Frenchman to write about Savonarola was Philippe de Commynes (1447–ca. 1511), who actually made it a point to meet Savonarola when in Florence in the retinue of Charles VIII. Ironically enough, a few decades later de Commynes's notes and views on the friar were to echo back into Italy and be picked up by early Florentine historians such as the influential Jacopo Nardi or Dominican hagiographers of the friar such as Bernardo Castiglione and Serafino Razzi, all of whom appropriated several passages from the Frenchman's Memoires. Over the course of his monograph Dall'Aglio follows the various sixteenth-century leads and figures to provide us with an incredibly rich and thorough analysis of the variety of people in France who spilled ink on the friar. Some are perhaps to be expected — Innocent Gentillet, author of the highly influential Antimachiavel, or the untiring Michel de Montaigne — but others might come as a surprise, such as the doctor and astrologer Michel Nostradamus, who in the preface to his collection of prophecies (1555) shamelessly and silently plagiarized word-for-word Savonarola's introduction to the Compendio di rivelazioni. In surveying the literature, Dall'Aglio moves methodically through foreigners living and writing in France, and then through French Huguenot and Catholic writers to provide us with an analysis that is both comprehensive and detailed.

Before that survey, however, Dall'Aglio is careful to set the scene. His first chapter is an excellent survey of the myth of Savonarola in France. Dall'Aglio starts by looking specifically at Savonarola's use of the gladium dei image as a reference to Charles VIII (extended, after Charles's premature death, by later piagnoni into a reference to a future king of France). He then follows with a survey of the pro- and anti-Savonarolan elements at the French court, and an examination of the influence of de Commynes's comments on the friar. In his second chapter Dall'Aglio focuses on the often forgotten presence of Florentines in France; in Lyon, where they formed a powerful community; and in Paris, where they often had direct access to the court, if not also to the king. One of the most interesting points in this chapter (at least for this writer) was the extent to which the piagnoni movement was directly connected with the Florentine community in Lyon, to the point that many of the Dominicans from San Marco and other piagnoni convents in Tuscany eventually found their way, however temporarily, to Lyon.

The third chapter moves into book history and offers a thorough examination of the bibliographical fortunes of Savonarola in France. Here we discover that few...