1. The longer Savonarola remained in Florence, the more he was dismayed by the lightness of character and paganism he saw all around him.

2. However, he later also spoke of Savonarola with great respect in his discussion of politics and religion in the Discourses on Livy (1.2 ).

3. Girolamo Savonarola was born in Ferrara in 1452, the son of a jobless and extravagant father.

4. Savonarola a kind of theocracy in Florence, a sort of Christian republic of virtue.

5. Michelangelo's way of attacking a block of marble and the burning of Savonarola are described with real feeling.

6. That is to say, the first family of Florence, and lived to see them deposed by a Dominican friar by the name of Savonarola.

7. Think of the so-called Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497, when Girolamo Savonarola and his band of religious followers roundly collected and set fire to mounds of "pagan" literature.

8. We don't need anyone to tell us what to do. Not Savonarola, nor the Medici. We are free to follow our own path.