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- [00:00]
Dominic Sandbrook
Thank you for listening to the Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series and membership of our much loved chat community, go to thereestishory.com and join the club that is thereestishistory.com.
- [00:18]
Tom Holland
This episode is brought to you by US Bank. They don't just cheer you on, they help every move count with the US Bank's smartly checking and savings account to help you track your spending and grow your savings, your finances can and go further. Because when you have the right partner on your side, there's no limit to what you can achieve. That's the power of us. Visit usbank.com today to learn more. Member FDIC Copyright 2025 US bank this message is brought to you by Apple.
- [00:53]
Dominic Sandbrook
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- [01:04]
Tom Holland
Check out the Apple Card Daily Cash calculator to see how much daily cash you can earn. Visit apple.co card calculator. That's Apple Co CardCalculator today subject to credit approval.
- [01:20]
Dominic Sandbrook
Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecard.com.
- [01:38]
Tom Holland
I announce this good news to the city that Florence will be more glorious, richer, more powerful than she has ever been. First, glorious in the sight of God and of men. And you, O Florence, will be the Reformation of all Italy. And from here the renewal will begin and spread everywhere, for this is the navel of Italy and your councils will reform all by the light and grace that God will give you. Second, O Florence, you will have riches beyond number and God will multiply all things for you. And third, you will spread your empire and thus you will have power both temporal and spiritual, and you will have so many blessings that you will say, we want nothing more. But if you do not heed what I have told you, then you will have none of it. Stirring stuff from the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, who is addressing the people of Florence on 10 December 1492. And Dominic, he begins there sounding very much like a late 15th century preacher, and he ends up sounding a little bit like Donald Trump.
- [02:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
Everything's going to be great.
- [02:52]
Tom Holland
You're going to have loads of money.
- [02:53]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, so much winning, so much money. Big league. Yeah. Right, so this is Savonarola's first appearance on the show and actually he sounds like a great man. You know, he's promising more power, more glory, more money, riches beyond number than people have ever known.
- [03:10]
Tom Holland
Yeah, what's not to like?
- [03:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
But anyone who knows anything about Savonarola will know that his prophecies of unlimited success were to end in scenes of fire and torture that even he, with his powers of prediction, could perhaps not have anticipated. So we're going to be looking at Savonarola today, Tom. He's one of the most controversial characters, I think, in Renaissance history, in all Italian history. Some people see him as a saint, as a sort of early Protestant. Some people see him as a Catholic martyr. But do you know who has very strong opinion about Savonarola? The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, we both know. So he wrote a book called Monsters. Do you know what he said? He said Savonarola was one of the most evil men who ever lived. He said he presided over an intolerant, sanctimonious and murderous reign of terror. His very name is a synonym for mad monks and the crimes of theocracy and misguided virtue.
- [04:10]
Tom Holland
I think he sounds great.
- [04:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, we're gonna find out whether that's actually true. And a spoiler alert. I think the story is a little bit more complicated. Really? Actually will amaze you to discover, Tom, that I'm a little bit Team Savonarol.
- [04:24]
Tom Holland
Are you?
- [04:24]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. That one amaze you.
- [04:26]
Tom Holland
So you think John Lennon's a monster, but Savonarola's a saint.
- [04:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
Savonarola never laid hands on a woman in anger. And that is the difference between him and John Lennon. But anyway, I think the piquancy of Savonarola's story is that he's always contrasted with the man who precedes him. And that's the character who dominated our last episode, and that is the playboy head of the Medici family, Lorenzo the Magnificent. So, Tom, you remember where we were last time?
- [04:52]
Tom Holland
I do. We were in the dying weeks of 1479.
- [04:55]
Dominic Sandbrook
We were. So people will remember that Lorenzo, who's 29 years old, has just survived an assassination attempt by the patsy conspirators at the high altar of Florence Cathedral. And this had triggered a war with Pope Sixtus IV and his ally, the King of Naples, King Ferrante. King Ferrante's son, Alfonso, has been fighting his way through Italy towards Florence. And at the beginning of December 1479, Lorenzo made this dramatic decision. He wrote to the Signore of Lawrence, the Council, and he said, I've decided to sail for Naples immediately and put myself in our enemy's hands. So that's where we ended. Now, what happens next? First of all. All the councillors apparently burst into tears, but they said, you know what? That's fair enough. This is probably the best way to save the Republic. Go for it. So the next day, Lorenzo sails from the port of Vada, and a few days before Christmas, he arrives in Naples. There, King Ferrante's second son, Federigo, is waiting to greet him on the sort of quayside.
- [05:54]
Tom Holland
And Dominic, would it be fair to say that, like so many rulers in the story, Ferrante is a bit of a character?
- [05:59]
Dominic Sandbrook
He is a character, Tom. So King Ferrante belongs to the House of Aragon, who have ruled in Naples for a couple of decades. He is your classic kind of Renaissance humanist, which is to say, he loves a bit of Latin, but also he is sallow, brooding, ruthless and vindictive.
- [06:15]
Tom Holland
Nice.
- [06:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
We are told by one account that he liked to have his critics and his opponents always close at hand, preferably dead and embalmed, and, I quote, dressed in the costume which they wore in their lifetime.
- [06:27]
Tom Holland
So what'd he do? He'd have them killed and then have them stuffed, or what would he do?
- [06:31]
Dominic Sandbrook
I don't know. I haven't really looked into this, but I think you could easily. Let's imagine another Goal Hanger podcast. Let's imagine Willie Dalrymple. You could have him killed, have him embalmed, and he could be with you right now in your recording. Would you not enjoy that?
- [06:46]
Tom Holland
No, I wouldn't want to kill Willy.
- [06:47]
Dominic Sandbrook
I think I'd find that inspirational.
- [06:49]
Tom Holland
Right.
- [06:49]
Dominic Sandbrook
I think that's what's going on with King Ferrante.
- [06:51]
Tom Holland
Okay. As a thought, it's a bit odd, that's all I'm saying.
- [06:55]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, Lorenzo actually gets on quite well with King Frante. He doesn't find this as unsettling as you do. He's been in secret communication with the Neapolitan court. He knows that King Ferrante, he's a bit worried about tensions with France, in particular. Now, we'll come back to this in the next episode, which are brewing. They are brewing. And he knows that the Neapolitans ultimately would like the war over. They also have a lot in common, him, and not the embalming, but they like poetry and music. Ferrante was one of the first Italians to import printing technology. He's got a massive library and they both love the classics, like you. So this is something you would bond with them about. They love sitting around talking about Ovid or something.
- [07:34]
Tom Holland
I'd enjoy doing that, but I just wouldn't want kind of dead Stuffed people all around me.
- [07:39]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right, okay, fair enough.
- [07:40]
Tom Holland
That's all I'm saying. I'm just putting that on the record.
- [07:42]
Dominic Sandbrook
Fair enough. Now, actually, Lorenzo cuts a great dash. He spends a lot of money. He buys the freedom when he arrives of the galley slaves on the ship. He makes a great show of doing this.
- [07:51]
Tom Holland
So basically, he's just being magnificent.
- [07:53]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. What a tremendous fellow. He gives those of money to poor Neapolitan girls. But actually, and this is an important theme of this episode, he is paying for the trip by mortgaging his country estate in the Mugello for 60,000 florins. So his act, his magnificence. Well, it is just an act. It's just performative. It's smoke and mirrors. And this is going to run through this story. Anyway, it works. He gets a deal. Not a terribly good deal, I have to say. He has to give up a bit of territory and Florence has to pay a big indemnity. But he goes back to Florence in the following March, a great hero. There are kind of balls and fireworks.
- [08:28]
Tom Holland
Bells ringing, and he tosses out sweetmeats, doesn't he? This seems to be a big thing.
- [08:32]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, he's always tossing out sweet meats. Exactly. In his slightly camp, hey nonny nonny kind of way.
- [08:38]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [08:39]
Dominic Sandbrook
So now he's come back to Florence and he's the hero of the hour and he seizes his opportunity. So until now, Lorenzo has acted very much like his grandfather Cosimo, of whom, you know, I'm a big fan. He has hidden his power beyond a kind of pretense of constitutionalism, very much like Augustus. But now he thinks, you know, Florence is slightly up against it financially and I can't take any chances. And he calls an emergency assembly and he sets up a new council called the council of 70 that gives him basically the power to veto any legislation he doesn't like. It gives him control of Florence's foreign policy. And it basically means that now every single appointment to office, Lorenzo has to approve.
- [09:23]
Tom Holland
And the council of 70, it's a very sinister sounding institution. The kind of thing that would feature in a Jacobean tragedy.
- [09:30]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly, exactly. So Lorenzo, now something has changed. He sort of still says, oh, I'm just a private citizen, you know, he doesn't hold any office, but in official documents, he is called the first man, the foremost man in the state. And there's a couple of very telling signs of this. So, number one, actually, he's the only man in Florence allowed to carry weapons. And he goes around now with a personal Bodyguard of armed mercenaries. And they actually sound like a splendid crew. There's Black Martin, there's Morgante the Giant, and there's also a man who's just called Mutant. So they sound great fun.
- [10:07]
Tom Holland
Very kind of superhero.
- [10:08]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. But also very tellingly, in the Palazzo della Signoria, there had always been sort of busts and stuff of great Roman Republican heroes, but now they are accompanied by kind of roundel portraits of Roman emperors. And I think that's indicative of a shift, that the political culture has changed from one that's very much identified itself with the Roman Republic to one in which the Medici are now thinking of themselves as akin to, you know, the Julio Claudians or something.
- [10:38]
Tom Holland
And isn't Cicero, who had been a great hero of the republic, kind of rebranded as the man who had foiled the conspiracy of Catiline in the way that Lorenzo had foiled the conspiracy of the Patsy?
- [10:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
That's exactly right.
- [10:51]
Tom Holland
I'm just wondering. I mean, this is exactly the kind of thing that Augustus does in his great temple of Mars, where he counterpoints people from his own family, the Julians, with the Republican heroes.
- [11:03]
Dominic Sandbrook
Oh, that's interesting.
- [11:04]
Tom Holland
Which I assume Lorenzo is aware of, and in one sense, he's kind of probably copying it because Augustus had done it. But of course, in another sense, he is learning from ancient history, isn't he?
- [11:18]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, he is.
- [11:19]
Tom Holland
And that idea that classical history provides lessons from which people in Renaissance Italy can profit is one that will be most famously exemplified in the writings of Machiavelli, a Florentine, who at this point, I think, is just approaching his teens.
- [11:40]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, he's a child at this stage.
- [11:42]
Tom Holland
So very impressionable age. Watching this. I mean, it must have had quite an impact on him.
- [11:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
I think you're absolutely right. I think Machiavelli. Yeah, he's steeped in that culture. Undoubtedly. The one thing I'd say about Lorenzo and Augustus. Augustus, of course, we know from your translation of Suetonius. Tom, nice bit of advertising there I've done for you.
- [11:58]
Tom Holland
Cheers.
- [11:58]
Dominic Sandbrook
Augustus projected an image, didn't he, of modesty?
- [12:02]
Tom Holland
Yes.
- [12:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
You know, he eats his cheese, plain clothes and all that kind of thing. Now, Lorenzo does not. Lorenzo projects an image of magnificence and I think that definitely is a difference. And that reflects the kind of princely culture of 15th century Italy. And we'll come back to that in a second. When we talk about art, there is, I have to say, a dark side to Lorenzo's Florence and the fact that he's accompanied by a man called Mutant, carrying a Very large.
- [12:22]
Tom Holland
That's not a good sign, is it?
- [12:24]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. So every few years, there are plots uncovered to assassinate him, and we can't tell whether these plots are real or imagined. And basically, if you're on the wrong side of one of these plots, you know, the vengeance is pretty brutal. So there's an account of a hermit in 1480 who was accused of wanting to assassinate Lorenzo. Men said the souls were stripped from his feet, which were then put over the fire and held over the logs until the fat ran. Then they stood him up and made him walk over coarse crusted salt so that he died of this. I mean, imagine the excruciating agony. But here's the crucial line. It was never really established whether he had sinned or not. Some said yes and some said no. So it's impossible for us at this distance to know whether this is score settling, whether this is making an example of somebody, whether there really had been a conspiracy. You know, what's the nature of this sort of quite repressive regime?
- [13:16]
Tom Holland
I mean, imagine thinking up that. That kind of torture.
- [13:20]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. There is a sort of sadism to Renaissance Florence that I think is sometimes lost. As Christopher Hibbett says in his sort of very jolly popular history of this period, most Florentines obviously didn't really care. Quote, they had food, they had exciting public holidays and they had justice.
- [13:36]
Tom Holland
So bread and circuses.
- [13:37]
Dominic Sandbrook
Bread and circuses. Now, they still had enemies. The Pope, Sixtus iv, he loathes Medici, but actually, Lorenzo is lucky throughout his career, because so often what's happening in Florence is affected by what's happening elsewhere, with actually bigger powers. So in 1480, the Ottomans landed in the south of Italy at Otranto, and there was panic across Italy. Everybody thought, my God, Mehmet the Conqueror, who's still in charge in Constantinople, he's going to add Naples and Rome to Constantinople. I mean, it's not implausible. Right. It's perfectly possible he could do that.
- [14:11]
Tom Holland
It's not. And also just to say that the atrocities in Otranto, whether they're amplified or not, but the reports are very, very alarming because the Archbishop gets killed in front of his own altar. There's lots of soaring in the cathedral, which gets turned into a mosque, and it's said that 800 people of Otranto are martyred. And this, as we will see over the course of this episode and the next, feeds into a massive mood of apocalyptic panic.
- [14:39]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [14:39]
Tom Holland
Kind of prophecies of the end of the world were already swirling around, in which the prospect of the Turks conquering Italy is an absolute staple. It's all kicking off.
- [14:47]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, you're dead right. All this time there is this sort of looming anxiety about the Ottoman advance and about the end of the world. And a lot of what happens won't make sense unless people keep that at the back of their minds. Anyway, basically, because of this, the Pope says, okay, fine, I suppose we should make up with Florence. There's a sort of comical scene where Florentine envoys go to Rome. They apologize, but very inaudibly so nobody can hear them. And then the Pope accepts their apology, but he also mutters it so no one can hear it because they're both so eaten up with mutual loathing. So he lifts all the sort of the interdict and stuff that it had on Florence. Lorenzo sends some galleys to help against the Ottomans. But actually, now, another stroke of luck. Mehmet the conqueror dies in 1481. So the Ottomans basically all go home to have a little succession crisis and Italy is safe. And then another great stroke of luck for Lorenzo. He's gone back to squabbling with the Pope. But then the Pope drops dead unexpectedly. The Florentines are not sorry at all. The Florentine envoy in Rome writes to Lorenzo today at five o' clock. His Holiness Sixtus IV departed his life, may God forgive him. And his successor is a guy called Innocent viii. Now, people who have a low view of the Renaissance papacy will be be unsurprised to hear that Innocent VIII already had seven children. So not so innocent, not so innocent. Two of which he'd somehow managed to legitimize. But he's a very. Everyone says he's actually not a bad guy, he's very worldly, he's kind of easygoing. Lorenzo is able to basically win him over by sending him loads of wine and fancy cloth. So Innocent loves all this. He's delighted. And as a result, Lorenzo is able to score two big diplomatic successes. First of all, he marries his daughter Maddalena to the Pope's son, Franceschetto.
- [16:35]
Tom Holland
I mean, that's amazing, isn't it? That's something to boast about. Yeah.
- [16:40]
Dominic Sandbrook
I've. I've married the Pope's son, who shouldn't exist. And I mentioned Christopher Hibbett. He's always very good at the pen portraits. Christopher Hibbett, he said Mattalena was a plain, sharp Featured girl of 16. And Franceschetto, almost 40, a portly, boring man, reputed never to have made a single interesting remark in his life. So that sounds Like a brilliant marriage. And then the other thing, Lorenzo again. This is. If Thomas Cromwell is listening, he'll be loving this. Lorenzo persuades the Pope to name his second son Giovanni a cardinal, and in return, he lends him 100,000 ducats, which is a massive sum. Giovanni is only 13 years old, but the Pope says, yeah, he sounds great, I'm sure he'll be brilliant. And he names him a cardinal, but he's only allowed to put on the gear when he turns 16.
- [17:28]
Tom Holland
That's something to look forward to, isn't it?
- [17:30]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, it is. What 13 year old doesn't dream of putting on that cardinal?
- [17:34]
Tom Holland
He doesn't dream of that. A red robe.
- [17:38]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. So it's good to see that there are still standards in the Catholic Church in the late 15th century.
- [17:43]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [17:44]
Dominic Sandbrook
So now, you see, because the cardinal's a prince of the Church, isn't it? Lorenzo can say, well, we rank alongside the princes of Italy. Now, this is, of course, something that Cosimo had not really dreamed of. Cosimo had just dreamed of basically piling up money. But Lorenzo really does fancy himself as the ideal Renaissance prince, and that's the image that endures today. And you know what? It would be tempting to say it's all a complete con and a fraud, but Lorenzo clearly does deserve that image in some ways. I mean, when he goes to the country, he does surround himself with kind of intellectuals and writers and philosophers and.
- [18:16]
Tom Holland
Things as Cicero had done.
- [18:18]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. He has this bloke called Angelo Poliziano who's one of the top scholars of the 15th century. 15th century Florence. He's one of his closest friends. Another really close friend is a philosopher called Pico della Mirandola. He wrote a book called the Oration on the Dignity of Man, which is often described as the kind of great Renaissance manifesto.
- [18:40]
Tom Holland
And he's like Luther, isn't he, that he loves a thesis.
- [18:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
Loves a thesis.
- [18:44]
Tom Holland
I think he publishes 900 theses or something.
- [18:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, 900 theses.
- [18:48]
Tom Holland
Enormous number.
- [18:49]
Dominic Sandbrook
And basically he said, I can reduce all knowledge to 900 theses. And actually he said, do you know what? All human knowledge, all philosophy is tending towards a single unified truth. That could be Jewish, the Kabbalah, it could be Arabic stuff, it could be everything. Like, put it all together and it all basically goes towards the same place.
- [19:09]
Tom Holland
Very thought for the day.
- [19:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, exactly this. Very ecumenical. Yeah. Ultimately, we're all, you know, we're all human.
- [19:16]
Tom Holland
We're all God's children.
- [19:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, we're all God's children. Now, a lot of people Listening to this now are saying, that's lovely. But actually, at the time, a lot of people say, that's demented, that's mad. So he's quite controversial. Anyway, there are these guys, there are musicians, there are poets. Now, Lorenzo writes his own poetry. I know Tabby's a big fan of Lorenzo's poetry. She said we should definitely mention it. So he writes in Tuscan, not Latin.
- [19:39]
Tom Holland
So like Dante had done and Boccaccio.
- [19:41]
Dominic Sandbrook
So he's a fan of Dante and Boccaccio.
- [19:42]
Tom Holland
And this is kind of part of what will make Tuscan become Italian, right? Become the dominant Italian.
- [19:49]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. Now, I thought you might like to read some of his poetry. Tom, I've chosen two examples for you.
- [19:54]
Tom Holland
Thank you.
- [19:55]
Dominic Sandbrook
Now, one was translated by Britain's poet laureate, Ted Hughes in the 1990s. Would you like to read this poem, which I think is quite moving.
- [20:01]
Tom Holland
How futile every hope is that we have our illusory, all our designs and our cram this world with ignorance we learn from our master grave.
- [20:12]
Dominic Sandbrook
So I think that's quite profound, but I think this one is a little bit less profound. This is called the Song of the Peasants.
- [20:18]
Tom Holland
Was this translated by Ted Hughes?
- [20:19]
Dominic Sandbrook
No. You can do whatever accent you choose.
- [20:21]
Tom Holland
Can I do it in a hey, nonny nonny way? Do we've all got cucumbers and big ones too. They may look old and knobbly to you, but they're great for opening up pipes that are closed. Use both hands to pluck them, then expose the top, peeling back the skin. Open wide your mouths and suck them in.
- [20:39]
Dominic Sandbrook
So this is the slightly more bawdy side, I think it's fair to say.
- [20:42]
Tom Holland
Seaside fun.
- [20:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, seaside postcard fun. All this stuff about big, knobbly cucumbers. Brilliant. Yeah. However much as we might laugh, I was thinking about comparing him with our top statesman, Renaissance prince, Renaissance man, Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer was interviewed by the Guardian and they said to him, what's your favorite book? And he said, well, I don't have a favorite book, actually. And he didn't have a favourite anything. He had no cultural interests whatsoever. Lorenzo would have had no trouble answering that question because he spent tons of money on the Medici Library, he sent agents to the Ottoman Empire and they brought back 200 Greek books, many of which had been completely unknown.
- [21:21]
Tom Holland
But, I mean, just to stick up for Kema, he's not roasting the feet of hermits over fires and then making them walk on salt.
- [21:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
No.
- [21:30]
Tom Holland
So you win some, you lose some.
- [21:31]
Dominic Sandbrook
I guess, but I think that would be a price worth paying to have a bibliophile Prime Minister.
- [21:35]
Tom Holland
Would you?
- [21:35]
Dominic Sandbrook
I would also. You see, Lorenzo gave a lot of money to universities, to humanities departments, and actually, the humanities are in crisis in Britain.
- [21:42]
Tom Holland
Yeah, we approve of that.
- [21:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
They're in crisis because of decades of philistinism in Westminster. The other thing, actually. So you've got this in common with Lorenzo, but not, I believe, with Keir Starmer. Lorenzo is a passionate collector of art and curios, to quote bronzes, medals, coins, ancient pottery, antique gems and Roman, Byzantine, Persian and Venetian vases. So that's very much like you. You love a Venetian vase, don't you?
- [22:08]
Tom Holland
I do, yeah. I really do. I'm torn now.
- [22:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, I know. It's difficult, isn't it?
- [22:12]
Tom Holland
I don't know whether I want Lorenzo the Magnificent to be Prime Minister or not.
- [22:14]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [22:15]
Tom Holland
I mean, he does blow all the Florentine's money, right? I mean, that's. That's one issue he does.
- [22:19]
Dominic Sandbrook
We're going to come on to this. So he's remembered as the great Renaissance patron. And you know what? That is wrong, because actually, he commissioned much less art than his grandfather Cosimo, and much less art than his cousin, who's confusingly called Lorenzo. So, basically, when you go to Florence and you say, oh, this belonged to Lorenzo de Medici, it's the wrong one. It's usually the other one, because this other Lorenzo is the bloke who commissioned Botticelli's Primavera and his Birth of Venus, Botticelli's most famous works, not Lorenzo the Magnificent, but what he is good at, he uses art as part of Florence's soft power. And basically the way he does that is by pimping out his artists to other Renaissance monarchs. So he sends Botticelli and a guy called Domenico Ghirlandaio to do the Sistine Chapel after he's made up with the Pope. And he's a talent spotter, to be fair, because he encourages the next generation of artists, including arguably the two biggest names of all. So one of them is an illegitimate boy from Tuscany, from rural Tuscany, who was apprenticed to another Lorenzo favourite, Verrocchio, and ended up living in the Medici palace for a time before going off to Milan. And this was somebody called Leonardo da Vinci. And the other, also from rural Tuscany, also apprenticed to another Medici favourite, Ghirlandaio. This bloke Lorenzo, in 1488, said to Ghirlandaio, I'm setting up a new art school because you recommend talented, promising young pupils. Ghisland, I Said, oh, this bloke's brilliant and his name was Michelangelo.
- [23:53]
Tom Holland
Would you know, Dominic, I reckon that if you are the guy who talent spots Leonardo, Michelangelo, I reckon you can claim to be a great patron of Renaissance art.
- [24:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. I think that's fair enough, don't you think? I suppose so. You may be not commissioning stuff, but you're spotting people. Exactly. You're like a scout.
- [24:08]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [24:09]
Dominic Sandbrook
One of those guys who's like a scout from Newcastle United who spotted Alan Shearer or something like that.
- [24:13]
Tom Holland
I was thinking more kind of, you know, a manager in the 60s going into clubs and spotting the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.
- [24:20]
Dominic Sandbrook
Okay, fair enough. Brian Epstein.
- [24:21]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [24:22]
Dominic Sandbrook
Whenever in doubt, you reach for the Beatles. Analysis.
- [24:25]
Tom Holland
Well, I did mention the Stones as well on this.
- [24:27]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, you did. So, anyway, you can see why foreign courts think of Lorenzo as a worthy peer. Basically, they see him as like them. He's not just a merchant, he's not just a banker. He's gone beyond anything that Cosimo did. He's the rich ruler of a powerful state and he's treated accordingly. So now, here's an interesting thing. I read in lots of books about the Medici that in 1487, the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II sent him a menagerie that included a lion and a giraffe. But, Tom, moments before this recording, you told me that these books were mistaken.
- [25:01]
Tom Holland
They are mistaken. And I know all about this because Lorenzo's giraffe is the single most interesting thing that happens in the entire history of the Renaissance.
- [25:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
Crikey.
- [25:12]
Tom Holland
I have so much information about the giraffe. It's a brilliant story. And I wanted essentially to hijack your episode, didn't I?
- [25:19]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [25:19]
Tom Holland
Just kind of go massively off piece and talk about giraffes. But you then suggested, in a magnificent tactical maneuver, that actually we do this in a bonus. So that's what we're gonna do. And it will be going out, if you are a member of the rest of the History Club, in two days time. If you're listening to this, when it's come out.
- [25:35]
Dominic Sandbrook
That's right. You'll be talking about this giraffe, you'll be talking about Renaissance animals, all of that. And your claim, Tom, I believe, is that this will be the most exciting, riveting and sensational episode the Rest is History has ever done.
- [25:46]
Tom Holland
If you don't sign up to the Rest Is History Club and listen, resthishistory.com, you're mad.
- [25:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
Okay, fair enough. So that's the draft that's coming on Wednesday, back to Lorenzo Machiavelli. Now, you mentioned Machiavelli. Machiavelli's verdict on Lorenzo. So Machiavelli's in his 20s when Lorenzo dies, he said he was loved by fortune and by God. And as a result, all his enterprises came to a successful conclusion. His way of life, his prudence and his fortune were known and admired by princes far beyond the borders of Italy. And I know this is reckless of me, I think Machiavelli was a fool. I think he was completely wrong.
- [26:18]
Tom Holland
What?
- [26:19]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, unbelievably, Machiavelli is blind and has not seen the realities of politics tomorrow. Can you believe that I'm making that claim?
- [26:27]
Tom Holland
Well, while Lorenzo is alive, everything goes well. Right?
- [26:30]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right.
- [26:30]
Tom Holland
I mean, it's not obvious that things are going to go disastrously. He's the kind of the Angela Merkel of Renaissance Italy.
- [26:37]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, he is. That's a very good comparison.
- [26:39]
Tom Holland
While he's in power, everything looks brilliant. The moment he leaves, everyone says, oh.
- [26:42]
Dominic Sandbrook
Rubbish, I want to eat the Tony Blair. So basically, the whole thing is based on spin and self promotion and it's built on a mountain of debt. So, unlike his predecessors, Lorenzo has totally and utterly mismanaged the Medici Bank. During his time, the offices in London and Bruges both collapsed because they had lost so much money. So, for example, the London office had basically lent money, loads of money, to Edward iv. And as we discussed before, Edward IV is the last man you want to lend loads of money to because he's just Elvis in Vegas.
- [27:15]
Tom Holland
Well, generally, English king's called Edward.
- [27:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, exactly.
- [27:18]
Tom Holland
Because Edward III had brought down a whole load of Florentine banks as well.
- [27:21]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. The Lyon branch, that runs into trouble, they have to send people from Italy to sort it out. The branches in Rome and Naples are actually losing money and then that really should not be happening. And part of the reason for this is that whereas Cosimo has been very good at lending money, Lorenzo is really only good at one thing, which is borrowing it. He basically starts dipping into his cousin's trust funds, which he's meant to be managing. He's their guardian and he's taking tens of thousands of florins from their trust funds. And in 1485, they come of age and they say, we'd like our money now. And he says, oh, oh, I don't actually have it. Not only that, but when they were young, he had blackmailed them into lending him money and he had said, if you don't lend me, like, hundreds of thousands of florins, I'll never let you have your trust funds. I mean, he'd behave very poorly. They basically file suit against him and he has to pay them off a with land in the Magello, so his country estates. But also he has to dip into the Florentine treasury, public money to pay these guys off. And in her book, very caustic take on the Medici, Mary Hollingsworth basically says he probably embezzled hundreds of thousands of florins in public money to cover his debts. She says Lorenzo's corruption is a sorry tale of greed and one that rarely makes it into the annals of medicine. Medici history.
- [28:40]
Tom Holland
But I suppose, again, sticking up for Lorenzo, he could have just nicked the money from his cousins.
- [28:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [28:46]
Tom Holland
And then never paid them back. To that degree, he remains subject to the law.
- [28:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
I suppose so, yes. I guess that's the point, isn't it? Florence is nothing like. It's not an absolute monarchy.
- [28:57]
Tom Holland
Yeah. He can't just screw money out of people and spend it without there being legal ramifications.
- [29:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
No, you're absolutely right. You're right. So it's not quite Vladimir Putin's Russia or something. You know, it's not an autocracy in that sense. Anyway, I think by the end of the 1480s, partly because of all this, you get a real sense of strain, and it's partly this financial strain on him, but it's also actually physical. So his wife died in 1488, Clarice. She died of TB and she was only 38 years old. He didn't go to her funeral. But this isn't because he hated her, it's because he was basically had big health problems himself. So running through this family is this issue of gout. They all have terrible gout. He's also got terrible eczema and he's really suffering with it.
- [29:37]
Tom Holland
I mean, that's not the image you have of Lorenzo, is it?
- [29:39]
Dominic Sandbrook
Not at all. Sort of weeping sores and aching joints. That's not the magnificence I'm looking for.
- [29:46]
Tom Holland
No.
- [29:47]
Dominic Sandbrook
So when he goes to the country, he has to be carried by litter because he can't walk. He just sort of lies there all the time, staring at his giraffe and reading.
- [29:54]
Tom Holland
No, he doesn't. He doesn't, because his giraffe is dead by this point. Oh, no.
- [29:58]
Dominic Sandbrook
The giraffe is dead.
- [29:59]
Tom Holland
Yeah. It has a tragic death, which we'll come to in the bonus.
- [30:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
Oh, my God. This is another trailer for your bonus episode. Brilliant. Love it.
- [30:06]
Tom Holland
That's terrible. Poor giraffe.
- [30:08]
Dominic Sandbrook
So when people go to visit him. Maybe because the giraffe has died, they find him very disconsolate.
- [30:14]
Tom Holland
He's weeping.
- [30:15]
Dominic Sandbrook
His doctor gives him important advice. He says, beware of cold and damp feet, beware of moonlight, beware of the air at sunset, do not eat pears or swallow grapes. Pips. These apparently are very bad for you if you've got gout.
- [30:27]
Tom Holland
But if he's got to be aware of cold and damp feet, I mean, he'd be fine with the feet of that hermit, wouldn't he?
- [30:32]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, you're not wrong. That hermit's really got to you. You really feel for that hermit.
- [30:36]
Tom Holland
That's the most horrible thing I've heard, I think, in the whole course of the rest is history.
- [30:40]
Dominic Sandbrook
Wow. I mean, we've got seven Arola's tortures to come, remember? And I think Lorenzo's physical sickness seems to mirror, very pleasingly, for a historian, it mirrors the sickness of the body politic. Because the same year that, you know, the doctor's saying, don't eat any pears, they have to devalue the currency, they introduce a new coin behind this. Florence. Basically, everyone thinks Renaissance Florence, brilliant, you know, financially innovative, so much money. But actually, it's already past its peak, partly because of us, because of the English, because we had once sent Florence loads of our wool for them to process it and dye it, but now we're doing that ourselves. We don't need the Florentines, so they're making less money. Their banks are in trouble. People are going bankrupt just on the streets, partly because people haven't got so much money. They're more conscious now of the Medici election rigging and of the cronyism and the corruption and so on. And it is at precisely this point, with Lorenzo ailing, with Florence's economy in decline, with protests beginning in the streets, and guess what? The storm clouds gathering overhead, that people start to hear this new voice that begins to cut through. And this belongs to a Dominican friar who for the last few years has been telling his listeners that the Apocalypse, the time of the beast and of the Last Judgment and the. The last battle between Christ and Antichrist, that this apocalypse is at hand.
- [32:06]
Tom Holland
And that man, Dominic, is Girolamo Savonarola. And if you like heated apocalyptic rhetoric, come back after the break. This episode is brought to you by. Indeed. Now, speed can be very, very important at times.
- [32:25]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, speed's massively important, Tom. A great inspiration for me is the Battle of Cape St. Vincent in 1797, when Horatio Nelson really made his name. He went out of the line to attack the Spanish. His ship got entangled with a Spanish ship. He jumped onto the Spanish ship and captured it. And then he realized they'd become entangled with a Spanish ship and he leapt onto the next Spanish ship, captured that one as well. A tremendous example of quick thinking, saving the day.
- [32:50]
Tom Holland
And if you're hiring, it's also important to act fast. And thankfully, indeed sponsored jobs can help get things done. It moves your post to the top of the page so it can stand out to candidates. So speed up your hiring with indeed. Get your jobs more visibility with a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com that's indeed.com resthistory terms and conditions apply.
- [33:18]
Dominic Sandbrook
Hiring indeed is all you need.
- [33:23]
C
Hello, I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist.
- [33:26]
D
And I'm David McCloskey, CIA analyst turned spy novelist.
- [33:29]
C
Together we're the co hosts of another goal hanger show called the Rest is Classified where we bring you the best stories from the world of secrets and spies.
- [33:38]
D
We have just released a series on the decades long battle between the CIA and Osama Bin Laden. And this week we are stepping into the devastation of the 911 terror attacks to understand how Osama Bin Laden was able to carry out such a plot right under the nose of the CIA.
- [33:54]
C
It was a moment that changed global politics forever, shifting the focus of spy agencies away from nation states to towards hunting for terrorists and understanding the extremist ideology that drove them.
- [34:06]
D
We will then go into the decade long manhunt for Osama Bin Laden which culminated in a dramatic raid at his compound in Pakistan in 2011 which killed the world's most wanted terrorist.
- [34:17]
C
So if all of this sounds good, we've got a clip waiting for you at the end of the episode.
- [34:29]
Tom Holland
Hello, welcome back to the Rest Is History. And Dominic. It's all kicking off in Florence now. It's all turning very, very apocalyptic, isn't it?
- [34:36]
Dominic Sandbrook
It is. So at last, Tom, we come to Girolamo Savonarola and we set him up right at the beginning. He could be a forerunner of the Reformation. He could be a potential Catholic saint. He could be a kind of socialist revolutionary. That's how some people have seen him. Or he could be the ultimate mad monk bent on slaughter and bloodshed, one.
- [34:55]
Tom Holland
Of the great monsters of history.
- [34:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
One of the great monsters of history, according to Simon Seaboard, once a fury. So, shall we find out?
- [35:01]
Tom Holland
Let's.
- [35:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
Let's start at the beginning. He's not from Florence. Interestingly, he was born in Ferrara, which is about 90 miles north of Florence in 1452. He came from a professional mercantile family. He had a humanist education, so he learned Latin. He read classical poetry. He wrote sonnets in the style of Petrarch. He studied a bit of Plato. So this is the point at which Plato has really started to come in. Clearly his parents are quite pious. Later on people said, oh, he was very religious as a boy. I think that's just a formula, sort of saint's life formula.
- [35:34]
Tom Holland
But he might have been.
- [35:35]
Dominic Sandbrook
He might have been. You don't know. There's, I have to say, an absolutely brilliant book by an American scholar, the late Donald Weinstein, on Savonarola, which basically digs behind all the myths that you see in the popular histories. And I recommend it. It's one of those books that sort of turns everything you thought on its head, which I always really enjoy. So I've depended very much on that. And I think people should check that out if they're interested in it. He goes to the University of Ferrara, possibly to become a doctor. But then when he's in his late teens, he has some sort of crisis. And Weinstein thinks it probably had something to do, unsurprisingly, with sex, that he might have made overtures to a woman from the Strozzi banking family. And she said, no, she wasn't interested. And he just went into a massive kind of funk and depression and never really recovered.
- [36:22]
Tom Holland
He's a kind of incel.
- [36:23]
Dominic Sandbrook
He is a bit of an incel. I know people sometimes roll their eyes at that and they say it's a trite comparison, but I think actually it's a good comparison. This sense of frustration and repression and sort of seething subterranean passion. You see that running right through his life and career. He's a very, very intense young man, and in 1472. So when he's 20, he writes a poem called on the Ruin of the World. And he says, you know, I wish God would punish the world for its sins. And he's writing here about the Pope, Sixtus iv. And he writes, the hand of the pirate has grasped the scepter. St. Peter falls to the ground. Oh, look at that catamite and that pimp robed in purple. A clown followed by the rabble adored by a blind world. Do you not scorn that lascivious pig? He pleasures himself and usurps your high praises with sycophants and parasites while your followers are exiled from country to country. Don't know who you is. I think you may there be Jesus. It's hard to tell anyway, There's a lot going on there. He's an unhappy young man, basically. And after three years of this, of sort of staring into the middle distance, thinking about girls and wrestling with lust, he decides to go to Bologna and he joins the Dominican order. And his family were very shocked. And he writes to his father, I'm motivated by horror at, and I quote, the great misery of the world. The wickedness of men, the rapes, the adulterers, the thefts, the pride, the idolatry, the vile curses. So this sort of sense of a bloke is spending an awful lot of time in his bedroom, you know, making himself very unhappy on chat groups. Yeah, I mean, absolutely runs through this. Now, that might make it sound like he's retiring from the world, but the Dominicans are not one of those orders who kind of lock themselves away, are they? You must know all about the Dominicans, Tom.
- [38:11]
Tom Holland
Yeah, well, we talked about them in the. The series we did on the Albigensian crusade. Yeah, they're founded by Dominic Dominicanis, the dog of the Lord, and they're going out there and they're trying to redeem heretics, those who have abandoned Christ, all of that kind of stuff.
- [38:26]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, exactly.
- [38:27]
Tom Holland
The shock troops of the Lord.
- [38:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
They're shock troops of the Lord, Exactly. So they thrive on the margins, don't they, of Europe. But also they. They really start to make a name for themselves and find a place in cities and towns that have boomed, that have, you know, got lots of new migrants, lots of new people. But where the established church is struggling to keep up with the demand, Weinstein calls them a disciplined core of militant gospel is. So they're. They're very militant, they're very austere often, and there's sometimes, in the late 15th century, there is this kind of mystical streak as well. And all of that, you know, basically is a perfect fit for Savonarola's character. All the time, he is obsessed with this issue of worldly corruption. He writes another poem called on the Ruin of the Church, and he says the church itself has fallen victim to greed and lust. So you can see in that why some people say, oh, there may be the seeds of Protestantism and all this kind of stuff. Although, of course, lots of people throughout history have said, oh, the church has fallen, that there's too much greed.
- [39:27]
Tom Holland
I think it's more specific than that. I think it's part of the. The urge to reform the church, but the world more broadly. Yeah, that has been a great convulsive instinct in the Latin West. Since at least the 11th century.
- [39:39]
Dominic Sandbrook
11Th century is Tom Holland. Bingo. We love it.
- [39:41]
Tom Holland
But it matters because it's true, because it. It gives to people in Latin Europe a kind of instinct that the world is there to be reformed and purified and cleansed.
- [39:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, I mean, that thing about cleansing, that's totally Savonarola. The sort of dirt and corruption on the one hand, and purity and virtue on the other. He really goes in for all this. Anyway, eventually, in 1482, he is sent to the Convent San Marco in Florence. Now, some people will remember we mentioned this place a lot in the very first episode of this series. It's important because it's a Medici place. It's the monastery that Cosimo had renovated on the advice of the Pope to save his soul so that he wouldn't be dragged into the burning sand in hell. He had spent all this money on the cloisters and on the library. This is the place that Fra Angelico had painted these mystical scenes in the cells of all the monks, you know. Now, it's one of the top attractions on the kind of Florentine tourist agenda. It's not a retreat from the world. It's very close to the center of the city. It's just a short walk from the cathedral. If you step out of the front door, you can almost see the Medici palace, the Medici Church of San Lorenzo. Even at the time, the monks are still depending on weekly remittances from the Medici family. People say the monks eat the bread of the Medici. In other words, he is moving to the central kind of axis of Medici power. He's right in the heart of Florence now. His job is to teach the novices logic and philosophy, which sounds, frankly to me, very boring.
- [41:18]
Tom Holland
Well, but, Dominic, I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? Because there is an obvious foreshadowing there of Luther, who likewise is a very intense ascetic man who has unexpectedly given up an alternative, more secular career and who becomes a teacher. And there are real points of resemblance there. But of course, a point of resemblance that is absent is the fact that Luther is teaching scripture and theology. So he is engaging with the absolute molten core of what it is to be a Christian in a way that I think Savonarola isn't.
- [41:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, I think that's true, which is.
- [41:53]
Tom Holland
Why there are aspects of him that seem to prefigure the Reformation. But he doesn't dive deep into the theology in the way that Luther does.
- [42:01]
Dominic Sandbrook
No, he doesn't. I think you're absolutely right. He doesn't at all that said. He does. He gets very het up.
- [42:06]
Tom Holland
Yeah, sure. For sure.
- [42:08]
Dominic Sandbrook
So I said it might be very boring when he's speaking to the novices. I mean, he gets so excited that he starts cr. Crying and tears running down his face. What he can't actually do, ironically, is give a good sermon. He's a bad preacher, so he's got a Ferrara accent, which clearly people in Florence think is hilarious. And he's got a very harsh kind of croaky voice, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I guess. Imagine him speaking like that. He's got a very sort of rasping voice, hasn't he?
- [42:35]
Tom Holland
Like a frog.
- [42:36]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. So when Savonarola speaks, you know, he'll give a series of sermons and people will stop coming after a while.
- [42:42]
Tom Holland
So I should have done that reading in a kind of voice.
- [42:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, exactly.
- [42:47]
Tom Holland
I might save that up for the next episode.
- [42:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, can't wait. God, that'll get people joining the rest is history club. So Sever himself said I had neither voice nor breath nor style. In fact, everyone disliked my preaching.
- [43:00]
Tom Holland
Ah.
- [43:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
So what changes? How does he become this fantastic preacher? The answer is that he finds a theme that really resonates, and you mentioned it before the break. He goes to this town called San Gimignano, another very popular tourist destination, Lovely Towers in 1485, and he gets stuck into the sin and corruption of the world. And there in the speeches he gives in San Gimignano, he develops this apocalyptic style. So it's all this stuff about the Four Horsemen are on their way, war, famine, plague and death, the Antichrist is coming, the end of the world, blah, blah, blah.
- [43:35]
Tom Holland
And there is so much of this. Yeah, I mean, he's not exceptional in this. So there's Johann Hilton is the famous one, the guy who predicts a reformer coming in 1516 that Luther associates with himself. And it's all about the Ottomans conquering Italy and Germany and then being converted and the end of the world coming and everything. It's absolutely boilerplate.
- [43:55]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. So I think the fall of Constantinople is massive in this. I mean, we are within, what, 20, 30 years of that. So it's really on people's minds. And of course, that thing about them landing in Otranto, but it's been turbocharged, I think, by a second thing, which is in the 1460s, the printing press arrived in Italy, and that means that Savonarola has grown up in a society that's absolutely awash with printed apocalyptic texts, but also astrological predictions and prophecies, which is actually in itself reflecting the humanism of the time. People are very interested in astrology. So basically, everywhere you look, people are talking about what's going to happen in 10 years time. You know, I've got a brilliant prediction here. The end of the world is coming. You know, the news is terrible, all of this kind of thing. And you mentioned Johannes Hilton.
- [44:47]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [44:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
But there's been examples of apocalyptic preachers in Florence. There's actually been a forerunner to Savonarola called Bernardino de Feltre, who's a Franciscan. Now, he also would give these sermons attacking lust and vanity. He has some very strange stuff about sexual excess. He has this extraordinary line. He says, woman, God gave you breasts so you could nourish your children, but your breasts feed the eyes of men.
- [45:13]
Tom Holland
And he's also obsessed by sodomy, which I think we'll be coming on to in due course.
- [45:18]
Dominic Sandbrook
We will be coming on to that. Yeah. Anyway, this guy Bernardino, he organizes these great bonfires called Bonfires of the Vanities. Again, we'll come back to this, where people will pile up jewelry and sort of lewd pictures and pagan books, kind of classical books. He has this line, which you should reflect on, Tom, each time we read Ovid, we crucify Christ.
- [45:42]
Tom Holland
Food for thought there.
- [45:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [45:44]
Tom Holland
And also he's very hostile to what we might today call gay fashion.
- [45:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
He is.
- [45:49]
Tom Holland
But again, we'll be coming to that.
- [45:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes. There's the whole issue of fashion.
- [45:52]
Tom Holland
Not a fan of the chaps.
- [45:54]
Dominic Sandbrook
No. And not a fan of interest or usury. So in 1488, he's actually kicked out of Florence, this guy Bernardino, after inciting a mob of boys to attack a Jewish pawnbroker's shop. So again, there's kind of some very dark themes here. So what that means is that at first, Savonarola doesn't actually stand out that much. You know, he's now doing the apocalyptic ranting and he's getting an audience, but he's not unusual. So when, at the end of 1487, he goes off to Bologna to finish his studies, no one really notices. It's later said, and you'll see it repeated in kind of popular history books. Oh, he was kicked out by the Medici because he was so unsettling. That's just not true at all. You know, he went back to do his degree, and then the next few years he works on his act. So if you went to see a Savonarola sermon, he's quite a short man. He's in his late 30s. He's got huge Dark eyebrows. His defining feature is this very hooked, beaky nose. And he has these glaring, slightly mad eyes.
- [46:54]
Tom Holland
Kind of bulge, don't they?
- [46:55]
Dominic Sandbrook
Bulging eyes. When he gets up, he'll get up. And in his rasping voice, he speaks very plainly and very fiercely. A lot of sermons at the time are very kind of scholastic and intricate and a bit boring. He. Not at all. There was a friar who heard him in Brescia and he said, I remember him saying that a great scourge was coming to Italy, particularly to Brescia. Fathers would see their children killed horribly and pitilessly, torn apart in the streets.
- [47:22]
Tom Holland
And people love this, don't they?
- [47:24]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, this is the thing, right?
- [47:25]
Tom Holland
They find it exciting.
- [47:26]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, this is absolutely the thing. There's a market for it. Why wouldn't you love this? It's like a show kind of horror film. Yeah, precisely. And then in the summer of 1490 comes what might seem an incredible twist. He is invited to go back to Florence. And the man who invites him is Lorenzo de Medici. And some people might think what? I mean, he's the last person who would want to hear all this. Why would he have any interest in this stuff? And Savonar and his biographer Feinstein offers three possibilities. He says, first of all, remember we said that Lorenzo had this mate called Pico della Mirandola. He's the sort of aristocratic, humanist intellectual. He loves apocalyptic prophecies. He's all over them. He loves astrology, he loves magic.
- [48:09]
Tom Holland
He does the Kabbalah, doesn't he?
- [48:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes.
- [48:11]
Tom Holland
Jewish mystical system. And he introduces it into Christian practice.
- [48:15]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. So he's probably really interested in what Savonarola's got to say. Secondly, Savonarola might be a useful person for Lorenzo to have if he ever falls out with the Pope, because he could use Savonarola, who's already a great critic of kind of clerical corruption, to slag off the Pope without having to do it himself. And final reason, which is actually a serious reason, the Medici have always had a real interest in this monastery of San Marco, but it's become a little bit sleepy and a little bit kind of, you know, in the doldrums. Lorenzo probably wants to turn it into a powerhouse, into a kind of cultural and spiritual powerhouse. And he thinks, well, this guy's a star. It's like buying a star striker or something. I'll bring him in and, you know, lots of people will come and hear him talk, and I'll look good. Florence will look good. It'd be brilliant.
- [49:00]
Tom Holland
And again, such a Pre figuring of Luther, isn't it? And his relationship to the Elector of Saxony, who's kind of sponsoring Luther for exactly those reasons.
- [49:07]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. So Savonarola returns to Florence in the summer of 1490. And as you said, Tom, he's great box office at this point. So you'll go and hear one of his sermons. You know, you might not even be massively into sermons, but your friends might say, God, he's a great turn. You know, it's exciting stuff because he will tell you, Christ was born almost 1500 years ago. The world is coming to an end. There's going to be this massive crisis. The Turks and the Jews are going to return to the true faith. It's all going to kick off. He says it in a very exciting way and clearly the public love him. There's a rival friar from a rival Dominican house who didn't like Savonarola at all, who said, it's a very good quotation, actually. He said the common people liked what he made of it. Visions of ruin, voices, trumpets, precious stones, terrible thrones, marvellous damsels, dragons, angelic battles and many other things, all loaded with spiritual meanings. Gates and walls and lightning bolts and hail over the earth he described so elegantly as to persuade all doubters. And thus his sermons inflamed everyone's mind. Now, there are people who don't like it and they sneer at his followers. They call them the Wailers or the Weepers, the Piagnoni. And the Piagnoni. There is a sort of class element, I think, possibly. So the people who are drawn to Savonarola are people who perhaps feel a bit alienated, they're a bit left behind, a bit left out, angry, you know, disaffected in some way, maybe disaffected from.
- [50:39]
Tom Holland
The Medici regime, blue hair, anxious about the environment, all that kind of thing.
- [50:45]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, I think if you're. If you're a successful, contented, settled person, you're not really interested in all this stuff. You want to go and count your money and kind of put on some androgynous clothes and caper about while thinking about Botticelli. But if you're left out of that, you know, if you're resentful, if you're frustrated. Savonarola's message, which is, the rich will one day burn. Why wouldn't that appeal to you? Of course it would appeal to you.
- [51:09]
Tom Holland
But also that you can prepare for the end of the world by giving up your wealth. And if you're already poor, then you're in pole position, aren't you?
- [51:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
You are in pole position. And also, I think if there's. There's a culture war element that we're actually really familiar with today. Savonarola attacks people who spend all their time reading and writing poetry, people who waste their time on philosophy. He says people who are reading lewd and obscene materials quote artists who paint naked Venuses.
- [51:37]
Tom Holland
So, I mean, that's interesting, isn't it? Because, of course, the famous painting of a naked Venus is by Botticelli.
- [51:42]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [51:43]
Tom Holland
And Botticelli is said by. I think by Vasari to have become a follower of Savonarola.
- [51:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. Isn't that interesting?
- [51:51]
Tom Holland
He also criticizes artists who paint the Virgin looking like a whore.
- [51:55]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [51:55]
Tom Holland
And I think Botticelli's paintings of the Virgin do become slightly less racy. That's the wrong word. But they become more sober, perhaps, is the way to put it.
- [52:05]
Dominic Sandbrook
I would never describe them as that racy, to be honest.
- [52:08]
Tom Holland
No, you're right. But they become more sober.
- [52:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
They do become more sober. Exactly. So what does Lorenzo make of all this? I mean, he's fine with it. Savonarola never names him personally. He's basically doing what he was brought in to do. So for the next two years, his brand builds and builds. His rhetoric is ever more extravagant, sort of. His attacks on sexual decadence ever more lurid. In May 1491, he's elected the prior of the monastery of San Marco and he starts to build a team. So he's a little bit like Goal Hanger podcasts. He's building his team with every extra million downloads or whatever.
- [52:44]
Tom Holland
Yeah. You don't want to miss an episode, do you?
- [52:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
No. So you've got a bloke called Fra Domenico. He'll be coming back in the next episode in an excitingly fiery way. He's meant to be very stupid and believes everything Severa tells him. And a man called Fra Silvestro, who interestingly has apocalyptic visions while sleepwalking.
- [53:01]
Tom Holland
Do people come and watch that?
- [53:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
People really believe that. And it's very useful to Savonarola. He says, look at this bloke. He's like sleepwalking around. He's having all kinds of visions. So now we reach the crucial year of 1492. Lorenzo is now very ill. He can't walk, he can't hold a pen. He does have some good news. Giovanni has turned 16.
- [53:20]
Tom Holland
Oh. So he gets his cardinal's robes.
- [53:22]
Dominic Sandbrook
He gets his cardinal's robes and hat. Now, this is a big deal for the menity because Tom. Giovanni will become Pope Leo X.
- [53:32]
Tom Holland
So Luther's palace, right?
- [53:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
Luther's great antagonist. And here's the thing, it's Giovanni who, in a very Medici way, decides he wants to rebuild St. Peter's and he does this by flogging indulgences. This is what, you know, drives Luther into a rage and kick starts the Reformation. Unbelievable.
- [53:50]
Tom Holland
Very Medici.
- [53:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
Very Medici. That Lent, Savonarola preaches in the Medici's own church of San Lorenzo. And he's in an absolute apocalyptic frenzy, is at the height of his form. The fifth age is approaching, he says. The fifth angel is about to blow his trumpet, announcing the tribulations of the Church. This is the time of the terrible beast. And he says to the people of Florence, look, it's make your mind up time. Either you repent now and lead virtuous lives, or, and I quote, the streets will run with blood. So that's at Lent. Now we move to the beginning of April. Lorenzo has been moved to the countryside. He's now very ill indeed. He's got kidney failure, he's got constant fever. His doctors, I don't think they're making it better. They're giving him his medicine, a mixture of crushed pearls and precious stones, which again, is very Medici. But I don't think it's. It's not efficacious. There are terrible reports from the city. Omens. The two lions of the city, the symbols of the Republic, have turned on one another. And one of them was so badly mauled that it had to be put down. On Thursday 5th April, out of nowhere, I genuinely believe this happened. Lightning struck the lantern of Florence Cathedral. A great stone came crashing into the square. And Lorenzo, when he hears it, says, which side did it fall on? They told him the side and he says, oh, no, that's the side nearest my house. I'm a dead man. The next day, Friday the 6th, three men visit Lorenzo's bedside. One of them is his son, Piero. He's weak, he's entitled, he's arrogant. But he's the successor as head of the family.
- [55:31]
Tom Holland
And he's only 20, right?
- [55:32]
Dominic Sandbrook
He's only 20. The second is that philosopher, Pico della Mirandola. Loves a bit of magic and astrology. And the third, it's Savonarola. And it's later said that Savonarola asked Lorenzo three questions. Do you believe in God and repent of your sins? Yes. Will you renounce your ill gotten wealth and restore what's been wrongfully taken? Yes, says Lorenzo. Will you Restore the liberties of Florence. Lorenzo turns his head away and doesn't answer, doesn't give a reply.
- [56:04]
Tom Holland
Is this true?
- [56:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
Do you know what? No, didn't happen at all. No, totally made up. So actually, there's a humanist there, Lorenzo's mate, Poliziano. He wrote about their meeting straight afterwards. He doesn't mention this at all. He just says they prayed together and, like Tavonaroli, gave him his blessing and then went away again.
- [56:19]
Tom Holland
Oh, how disappointing.
- [56:20]
Dominic Sandbrook
It is disappointing. But Savonarola clearly is in a great kind of state, because two days later, on the Sunday the 8th, he gives his most apocalyptic sermon yet. He says, I have seen a hand in the sky holding a sword. And the sword had an inscription, the sword of the Lord over the earth, swiftly and soon. And everyone's like, oh, what does that mean? That evening, that very evening, Lorenzo the Magnificent lapses into a coma. The priests hold a crucifix to his lips and he kisses it. But then his breathing slows and he dies. And his doctor, faced with the wreckage of his medicine, goes out and throws himself down a well and dies.
- [57:08]
Tom Holland
Is that true?
- [57:08]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, that is true. Apparently.
- [57:10]
Tom Holland
That doesn't sound true.
- [57:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
I think that's totally true, yeah. Piero Leone. Every single book describes that happening. I'm not going to argue with the scholars of the Renaissance, Tom. So two days later, Lorenzo is buried in the Medici Church of San Lorenzo next to his brother Giovanni, who had been murdered in the Pazzi conspiracy. There are crowds in the streets. The bells are tolling. People are watching in silence. That night, Tom, people see bolts of flame in the sky. They hear wolves howling in the night.
- [57:39]
Tom Holland
Again, I don't believe that that's lifted from Virgil.
- [57:42]
Dominic Sandbrook
At the church of Santa Maria Novella, a woman became possessed. She shrieked out that a bull with horns of fire was about to burn down the city. And then a week later, on Good Friday, Savonarola tells the congregation in San Lorenzo where Lorenzo has been buried. He says he's had an amazing, extraordinary vision. He saw a black cross stretching out its arms to cover the earth. And on this cross were written the words crux eridei, the crux of the wrath of God. The sky was pitch black, lit by flickers of lightning. Thunder roared, and a great storm of wind and hailstorms killed a host of people. But then he saw the sky clear and a cross rising from the center of Jerusalem. And on this cross, the words were written, the cross of the mercy of God, and all nations flocked to adore it.
- [58:38]
Tom Holland
I mean, it's Thrilling stuff, isn't it?
- [58:40]
Dominic Sandbrook
Of course. Very thrilling.
- [58:41]
Tom Holland
You can see why it's box office.
- [58:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
Totally. But Tom, what's it mean? And what does God have in store for the people of Florence?
- [58:47]
Tom Holland
Well, we will find out next time when. And spoiler alert here, the story gets stranger, darker, madder, and of course bloodier. And this is very exciting for me because it's the first thing I did for my history. A level?
- [59:03]
Dominic Sandbrook
No way.
- [59:03]
Tom Holland
The French invasion of Italy. Savonarola becomes the master of Florence. You get bonfires blazing in the city squares. And of course, all the while, the end of the world is approaching. And Dominic, members of our own apocalyptic order can hear that episode right now. And on Wednesday, of course, they'll be able to hear the exciting episode we're doing on the Medici giraffe. The only way you can hear about that. And if you would like to hear the next episode and their episode about the Medici giraffe and you're not a member of the rest of the history club, then you can go to therestishistory.com and sign up there. So thank you, Dominic. Thank you everyone for listening. Bye bye.
- [59:42]
Dominic Sandbrook
Grazia river daci.
- [59:54]
C
I'm Gordon Carreiran.
- [59:55]
D
And I'm David McCloskey.
- [59:56]
C
Together we're the co hosts of another goal hanger show called the Rest is Classified.
- [60:00]
D
Here's that clip we mentioned earlier on.
- [60:05]
C
When I look back on it now, you still see that, you know, there's plans, there's memoranda, there's notifications, there's all these things, but they're never actually executed. They never actually kind of pull the trigger on anything, do they?
- [60:20]
D
I'm a little bit of two minds on this because I agree with you that the theme of this episode really is a series of missed opportunities to get Osama bin laden prior to 9, 11. Yeah, but we should also note that once Tenet and the CIA understand that Osama bin Laden is coming for us, in particular after the East Africa bombings, there is a push to improve our collection and our understanding of Al Qaeda pretty significantly. I mean, there's a bunch of human sources who get recruited in this period. There's a lot more technical collection. Alex Station is beefed up to more than 40 people. There's a bunch of connections with foreign partners in Al Qaeda that hadn't existed before. I mean, Interestingly, there's a PDB President's Daily Brief in December, December 4th of 1998, which is titled quote, Bin Laden preparing to hijack US aircraft and other attacks. And so there's a lot of strategic warning, I think you could say, about what Al Qaeda is up to. And yet there's an inability, I think, to translate that into practical efforts and operations to stop these attacks and just stop Al Qaeda from ultimately carrying out 911.
- [61:38]
C
If you want to hear the full episode, listen to the Rest is classified. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [61:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
Hi everybody. You're still here right at the end of the episode. I'm very impressed by your commitment. But listen, I have a question for you. I want to ask you something in confidence. Do you sometimes listen to the adverts on these episodes and do you sometimes think, do you know what? I wish that the listeners to this podcast, I wish they were listening to an advert about my brand rather than the other stuff that Tom and Dominic had promoted promoting on here. If you have thought that there is of course only one way to find out what that would be like, you can disrupt the procession of adverts. You could be the next HSBC premier or the many other tremendous companies that have advertised on the Rest Is History. And you could put your brand in front of millions of like minded listeners by advertising on the Rest Is History and indeed the other shows on the Goal Hanger Network. Now you may be thinking, I don't know what the Goal Hanger Network is. Goal Hanger are the company behind this very show. And if you are in the market to increase the value of your brand, Goal Hanger would love to hear from you. You can register your interest or indeed your company's interest by going to gohanger.com right now. And that is goal G O A L Hanger H A N G E r dot com.