In margine alla questione savonaroliana

Abstract

The multiplication of recent studies on Savonarola shows to what extent the Dominican preacher poses a problem whose complexity is still difficult to address. The crucial element of interpretation is determined by the relationship between politics and prophecy. These two aspects are perfectly intertwined in Savonarola, without any opposition. Starting from the crisis of his personal history, which coincides with the tragedy of the Italian wars, Savonarola traces the conditions of a regeneration which is both moral and civic. The ethical rebirth becomes therefore the condition for creating a renewed political order, in which the universal good eventually triumphs. Savonarola embodies, in an exemplary way, the tension between the utopia of the idea and earthly events. Even if he acknowledges the impossibility to find a perfect translation of the former into the latter, he claims the necessity of a reciprocal interaction between them.