The republic that succeeded the Medici in 1492 was a peculiar political institution, having apocalyptic religious fervor as its driving force. Its leader was Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498), a friar of the Dominican order who had come to Florence as a preacher in 1481. His personality was so charismatic and his sermons so vivid and emotionally stirring that he soon had his audiences spellbound. He drew a varied group of disciples, including artists and members of noble families. Savonarola was a reformer who railed against the luxurious extravagances of the Florentines and the sins of Italy in general. He also claimed to be a prophet, having predicted the deaths of several rulers and a coming time of retribution when Italy would be conquered. When Charles VIII invaded, Savonarola declared it the punishment of God for the sins of the Italian people.
When Piero de Medici was deposed, Savonarola and his followers set up a kind of theocracy in place of the Medici government. To his credit, he reformed the institutions that the Medici had turned into props for their own power. But policy was directed by the will of God as Savonarola interpreted it, and disagreement with such policies was a sin. In an excess of reforming zeal, he commanded the Florentines to give up all vices and luxuries that tempted them to sin, and many of them happily did so. In 1497, an immense pile of artwork, literature, gambling equipment, fashionable clothing, carnival masks, jewelry, and other sinful frivolities was burned in a public square, an event known as "the Bonfire of the Vanities." Savonarola, preaching almost daily, vowed to make Florence the New Jerusalem, the city of God on earth, and foretold that when this was accomplished, the new age of universal peace would begin.
