Machiavelli: The Novel Read online

  Later that night, as the young man made his way home through the dark and blissfully quiet streets, he vowed never to return to the court of Ercole d’Este, duke of Ferrara.

  If the young Savonarola’s first severe disillusionment was the result of his experience at court, the cause of the second was Laodamia Strozzi. Lofty is the word that best describes Laodamia Strozzi. Born of a lofty family, she was tall and statuesque and haughty in her demeanor. Since childhood, she had been imbued with a set of lofty ideas about her origins, her place in the world, and her eventual destiny. Confronted with the spectacle of this irresistible loftiness, the awkward and unattractive Savonarola fell hopelessly in love with Laodamia Strozzi. Despite the revulsion that welled up in him when he thought back on the behavior of Ferrara’s enlightened nobility, he had by no means made up his mind to renounce the more discreet pleasures of worldly society, and he was eager to have firsthand experience of the miracles wrought by love. Didn’t he know quite a bit about love already? After all, he’d read his Dante and Petrarch. Hadn’t he learned from them about the glorious transformations love was capable of effecting, and about how love, in its purity, inspired in men and women alike true nobility of the soul?

  What’s more, from these two masters, and from many more that he had perused, he learned about the manner in which love takes root and grows. It always starts with a chance encounter, a furtive glance. And wasn’t that what had happened when he first saw his chaste Laodamia on the steps of the cathedral in the company of her father? Hadn’t she, just like Dante’s Beatrice and Petrarch’s Laura before her, gazed into his eyes for a brief second? And hadn’t that look, fleeting as it was, penetrated to the very bottom of his soul? There was certainly no denying that, by all the standards set by all the great poets of Italy, the lofty Laodamia Strozzi had fallen deeply in love with Girolamo Savonarola. He was convinced of it.

  Unfortunately, Laodamia was illiterate and somewhat crude in her tastes, and was therefore unacquainted with the high ideals put forth by Savonarola’s poets. So when he began to press his suit in the prescribed manner—admiring his lady from afar and sending her reams of poetry he had written on the uplifting effects of love—she was singularly unmoved. Of course, when she failed to respond to his entreaties in any way whatsoever, he was ecstatic. Everything was going according to plan! Her silence, according to the well-documented procedures he was following, was proof of her love for him. What is more, it was a sign of her unassailable chastity.

  When Savonarola judged that the courtship had proceeded to the point where neither of them could contain their passions any longer, he wrote to the girl’s father, Roberto Strozzi, with a proposal of marriage. Shortly thereafter, he received a summons to appear before the formidable Strozzi. Obviously, they would begin working out the mundane details of the marriage contract, including the dowry, the wedding date, and the many provisions regarding inheritance of property, titles, and the like. But Girolamo Savonarola was not greedy—he and Laodamia were marrying for love, because of an intense, spiritual bond that had already yoked them together for life, and beyond! He was sure that these practical negotiations would present no obstacle to their union. And furthermore, he knew that, since the Strozzi had been driven ignominiously out of Florence and were exiles in Ferrara, living in poverty, they would certainly have no cause to complain about a match with the son of an eminent man of science. He fully expected to be welcomed into the family.

  But what awaited the eager young suitor when he arrived at the palazzo where the Strozzi were temporarily housed was not what he expected. Roberto Strozzi strode pompously up and down as he delivered a vitriolic harangue. Behind him, the lofty Laodamia looked down upon her would-be suitor with undisguised contempt as her father poured abuse on the head of “this pretender, this fool.” Shaking his huge face, flushed with anger as much as with cheap wine, the blustering Strozzi enumerated the glories of the Strozzi family. In short order, he declared that his daughter was far too valuable a prize to be wasted on the sniveling son of a physician, and that in fact she had already been promised in marriage to a certain young man, a cousin of the powerful Medici family of Florence. As soon as the wedding ceremony could be arranged, Roberto Strozzi and his splendid family would be returning to Florence to reclaim what was rightfully theirs.

  “And to think that this boy,” he boomed, “this pigeon-chested, beetle-browed, hawk-nosed cockroach of a boy, this pitiful, untitled, sniveling boy, to think that such a common boy, could aspire to the hand of my Laodamia!” His rage boiled over. His red face turned purple, then almost black. “I am Roberto Strozzi!” He rolled his r’s in his rage. He rolled his z’s. What followed was an unimaginative catalogue of the usual threats and abuses involving beatings, whippings, dismemberment, the putting out of little swinish eyes, unmanning, the slitting of throats. The collusion of various animals was invoked—dogs, wild horses, buzzards. In the end, what was left of the offender was destined to be dumped unceremoniously into the river Po.

  Shaken, Girolamo could find no words to reply. An infinite abyss seemed to open up before him, and he would have stayed rooted to that spot probably forever if the overbearing Strozzi had not commanded his men to throw the limp body out into the street. The scorned suitor was too dazed to hear the suggestion from his beloved that they put the dogs on him to hasten his retreat and provide some amusement.

  This rejection in love, so violent and so unexpected, caused young Girolamo to sink deep into despondency. His agony was inexpressible, his despair without end. He spent ever-longer periods of time alone now, contemplating the wickedness and cruelty of the world. Even as a youth, he was already leading the life of rigid austerity that he would observe all his days. His clothes, always plain, were now shabby and patched in places. He ate little, never touched the strong liquors that were so prized by his father and grandfather, and slept on a straw mattress laid on a wooden board. But he did not sleep well, so tormented was he by the pains of love and troubled by the feelings of utter helplessness and uncertainty that overwhelmed him.

  One night when he was twenty-two years old, he finally knew what he had to do. It came to him in the first of many, many dreams that Girolamo Savonarola was to have in the course of his tortured life.

  In his sleep, he was all afire. His body thrashed as it burned, and the pain was excruciating. Devils taunted him. Suddenly, the sky cracked open, and a torrent of freezing water spilled down upon his head. When he awoke, he felt a tremendous sense of calm, as though the fires of lust that had raged in his body for months, tormenting him day and night, had suddenly been extinguished. Savonarola knew then that he would never marry, that he would never again desire a woman or any other pleasure of the flesh. And so, without telling anyone, on the feast day of St. Joseph in 1475, he rose at dawn and left his father’s house. He traveled on foot to Bologna, a day’s journey, and there sought admittance to the monastery of San Domenico. Later, writing to his father, it was clear that Savonarola bore him no ill will, nor did he feel any bitterness toward the scornful Laodamia Strozzi. He explained that his decision to enter the novitiate was based on his own weakness and his inability to tolerate the wickedness of the world. For the time being, he explained, he would isolate himself and pray for guidance. “I too am made of flesh,” he wrote, “and I must fight with all my strength to keep the devil from jumping on my shoulders and riding me like a mad dog down into hell.”

  For seven years Savonarola studied and prayed and waited. In 1481, he was summoned by the abbot of San Domenico and told that his period of preparation had come to an end. He was to be sent back out into the world to preach the word of God, to help others fight the devil. The abbot must have chuckled to himself as he ushered his apprentice preacher out through the courtyard and sent him on his way to Brescia, to Genova, and to the villages of Tuscany and Lombardy. The Dominicans were an order of preachers, fierce preachers, aggressive men who knew the world and how wicked it could be. They were not like the orders of humble B
enedictines who maintained a rule of silence and withdrew into their isolated monasteries to fast and pray. The Dominicans, proud of their mission, perused it with fervor. It was not for nothing that they were called the Watchdogs of God.

  But the incongruous young man who left the abbey that day, Fra Girolamo Savonarola, was a pitiful excuse for a preacher. He was small and thin and ugly, still boyish, and the only part of his body that appeared to have grown and developed into manhood in the past ten years was his nose. His chest was so narrow that it looked hopelessly unsuited to the task of taking in great rushes of air and issuing thunderous and fearsome pronouncements. His gestures were uncouth and graceless, his voice annoying. All of Italy knows that Ferrarrese is one of the most unpleasant dialects on the peninsula, with its high-pitched nasal twang and singsong rhythm. His huge, hooked nose hung mournfully among the folds of his sad face over thick, fleshy lips. But his eyes! That is what the abbot had seen. That is why he sent this unlikely young friar forth to preach the word of the Lord. He had seen the relentless, unquenchable flames that could burn in those green eyes. Beneath eyebrows so heavy they looked like the wings of a blackbird, he had seen the fire of zealotry and conviction. And he knew that when his time came, Fra Girolamo Savonarola would know how to harness that fire and unleash its energy upon the world.

  The beginning of Savonarola’s career as a preacher was anything but auspicious. Later, in the days when he could boast that all Italy trembled at the sound of his voice, he was to say that in the early days he was scarcely capable of moving a hen. And, in fact, those who turned out to hear him preach in the pitiful villages where he was allowed to do so were scarcely more receptive than hens. They were pious old women more intent on pawing their rosaries and muttering their paternosters than listening to the preacher. It didn’t seem to matter that he had studied for years and committed to memory all of the rhetorical teachings and trappings of the ancient Roman and Greek orators. He had learned how to construct his arguments step by step, how to embellish his periods with a high-sounding Latinate vocabulary. He had learned from Cicero and Democritus how to pile up rhetorical effects—adnominatio, anaphora, enumeratio. He had learned to manipulate words, arranging them in clever chiastic and tripartite structures, but all this sophisticated, classical learning was lost on the poor farmwomen who sat before him, mumbling their quiet personal prayers and oblivious to the centuries of classical culture that had gone into the sermon of this learned young preacher.

  For almost ten years, Fra Girolamo plied the back roads of Tuscany and Lombardy. He preached in the poorer villages neglected by most of his Dominican brothers. He shunned the castles of the nobility and stayed in hostels, and often in the squalid huts of the peasants to whom he brought the word of God. With great humility and devotion, and with infinite patience, he pursued his calling, unaware that he would one day be the greatest preacher in all of Christendom, in all the world perhaps, and unaware too, that on the twenty-third of May, in the year 1498, he would find himself in the Piazza della Signoria of Florence condemned to death as a heretic.

  It was just before dawn when a fat little priest, still laughing, made his way down the worn stone steps and let himself out into the courtyard of the hospice. He walked quickly past the enclosure where the chickens were still asleep and stopped momentarily at the well. Grinning and shaking his head, he splashed cold water on his round, red face. He used his chubby hands to wet the ring of thick, dark hair that encircled his tonsured head and plaster it down. His morning ablutions complete, he wiped hands and face on his ample sleeve, saluted the uninterested chickens, and with a ceremonious sweep, turned and was gone.

  Hurrying through the stone arch and into the street, he almost fell when his stubby legs got tangled up in the folds of his billowing habit. The stones were still wet from the night’s rain, and his leather sandals slipped more than once as he hurried down the Via San Gallo on his way back to the monastery of San Lorenzo. A smile of satisfaction lit up his round face and he beamed like a cherub. “Ciccio,” that’s what Teresa had called him and, “Cicciolino”—my little chubby one. “Ooooo, Ciccio, No!” as he wrestled her into the huge, soft bed. He could still smell the thick linen mattress stuffed with straw. Feel the warmth of her body. The warm smell. The straw and Teresa. “Oooooo, Ciccio, not that!”

  Fra Pagolo Pulci was not a monk who took his vow of chastity all that seriously. Neither was he worrying about eternal damnation that May morning as he hurried, out of breath, through the gate of the cloister of San Lorenzo.

  “Lodato sia Gesu Cristo.”

  “Sempre sia lodato.” He exchanged the mumbled formula with the gatekeeper. “Praised be Jesus Christ.” “Let Him always be praised.” Standard monastic greeting. “Monks,” he thought, “why couldn’t they settle for ‘Buongiorno’ like everyone else?” Fra Pagolo rushed past the chapel where lauds were being conducted. Morning prayers. Only the novices attended them. He wondered why anyone would agree to get up before dawn and kneel, praying in that cold chapel for half an hour. The spiritually intense. Ha! What were they doing in a monastery here in Florence? Better go live as a hermit, out in a cave, out in the country like those crazy, filthy old bastards in the desert. Less distraction there. But here in Florence, oh, there were distractions. Like yesterday morning when he went down to answer the bell and there she was, Teresa Lenzuolo, eldest daughter of Giacomo Lenzuolo, purveyor of altar cloths and bed clothes to the friars of San Lorenzo. Ooooo Teresa! Lodato sia Gesu Cristo!

  This morning Fra Pagolo ate quickly, not lingering as he usually did over the crusty bread, still warm from the ovens, and the soft, white cheese, creamy and barely salted. Leaving the refectory hastily, he grabbed a generous length of salami, which disappeared into the folds of his habit. It was going to be a long day. He bounded up the stairs to the dormitory where the novices slept. Sure enough, Rinuccio Calvi was still sound asleep in his bed. “Eh! Dormiglione! I told you to be ready. Let’s go. Hey! Why aren’t you down with the rest of the novices, on your knees on the cold marble? Rinuccio! Sometime I question your vocation, you lazy son of a bitch. I worry about the strength of your commitment to the order and the work of St. Francis. Rinuccio!”

  The fat priest began to pummel the younger friar, who, suddenly awake, raised his arms to ward off the blows and, with a couple of sleepy, poorly aimed kicks, managed to force his assailant into a retreat. “Hurry, get dressed,” said Pagolo, throwing him his coarse brown habit.

  As Pagolo pulled him down the corridor, Fra Rinuccio was still cinching himself with the long white rope that was part of the Franciscan habit. The three thick knots reminded the friars of their duty to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Yawning and stretching, the lanky novice trailed along behind his rotund companion who had launched into a lecture on the history of public execution in Florence.

  Pagolo Pulci was the poor scion of a wealthy family. His father, Ubaldino, had squandered his share of the family fortune as well as the inheritance due his son. And so, as often happens with men of breeding and taste who are reduced to unfortunate circumstances, Pagolo turned to the clerical life. What better place for the noble son of an ignoble wastrel than the monastery? Here he would never have to worry about sustenance, for the friars lived extremely well. Besides, he had a talent that they could put to good use. Educated in the classical tradition, Pagolo could read and write exquisite Latin. And Latin was the language of all official business. The records of the Signoria, Florence’s governing body, were kept in Latin. Latin was used for legal transactions, diplomatic correspondence, judicial, medical, and scientific treatises. It was the official language of the church as well. In short, all learning, sacred and profane, was in Latin. And although he was a dissolute scoundrel, Fra Pagolo Pulci was a consummate Latinist. As such, he was of considerable value to his order, and his indiscretions were generally overlooked.

  It was Pagolo’s eloquence and his scholarship—not his piety—that had earned him the grudging respect o
f his superiors in the order. And it was the irrepressible desire to exercise that eloquence and display that scholarship that impelled him to launch into a rambling disquisition on the public execution of heretics in his native city. Not that the sleepy young friar with him was listening as the little priest, already winded, explained, between bites of salami, that nobody had been put to death in Florence for heresy in over 110 years:

  “Fra Michele da Calci was the last one, a ragged, saintly hermit—you know the type. He went to the stake, charged with the dissemination of inflammatory doctrines. Heresy indeed! His real crime was speaking out a little too enthusiastically against usury, gambling, and fornication. In the Florence of his time, that amounted to heresy.

  “As it does today, Rinuccio, as it does today,” said Pagolo, wagging an admonitory finger at his younger companion. “Haven’t you noticed that the partisans of sin always seem to get their way here, and that excessive saintliness eventually sticks in the craw of most good Florentines?”

  Pagolo stopped, pulled himself up to his full height and, with oratorical solemnity, produced the sort of roll call that Italians of all ages have always been fond of producing:

  “The city of Florence has given birth to artists and architects by the hundreds—scholars, philosophers, poets, and musicians. More than any other city, we have supplied the world with writers and historians, statesmen, politicians, bankers, merchants, even explorers!

  “But,” he continued in more studied, weighty tones, “In all of Italy, very few candidates for sainthood have emerged in the past two centuries. Do you know how many? Three, to be exact. The entire peninsula has produced only three saints. And according to our records, Florence, not a single one!