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This chapter examines the place of the cross in the theology and preaching of the century leading into the Protestant Reformation. The writings of Vincent Ferrer and Girolomo Savonarola provide examples of the stress placed in preaching on an emotional identification with the sufferings of Christ and of Mary. The theology of Gabriel Biel exemplifies the nominalist approach to soteriology. The art of Frà Angelico, the young Michelangelo, and other early Renaissance painters shows the effect of humanism on the portrayal of the Passion.

The introduction provides a narrative overview and survey of the five generations of the Valori analysed in the book. It explains the principal actions, conflicts, and outcomes of the family's political careers between the late fifteenth century through the late seventeenth century. Additionally, the introduction provides an overview and survey of the family's primary intellectual patronage patterns, particularly their alliances with Girolamo Savonarola, a radical Dominican reformer and prophet, Marsilio Ficino, the city's leading Neoplatonic philosopher, and Niccolò Machiavelli, the most influential political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance.

Chapter One analyzes the career of Francesco Valori and the nature of and motives for his alliance with Savonarola. Francesco and Savonarola first encountered each other as opponents, the former advocating an elite‐dominated oligarchic republic and the latter lobbying for a more broadly‐based and inclusive popular republic. It provides a narrative of the main political events surrounding the expulsion of the Medici and the establishment of the Second Republic and argues that Francesco maintained a distinction between Savonarola's vision of moral reform and his vision of governo largo political reform. The former he followed faithfully and actively; the latter he rejected in favor of his own vision of governo stretto.

Chapter Two analyzes the family's relationship to Marsilio Ficino, their Platonic patronage, and the tensions it created for the family's relationship with Savonarola. Bartolomeo, Filippo, and Niccolò Valori all supported Ficino in notable ways: Bartolomeo and Filippo with financial and political support, as well as occasional minor collaboration, and Niccolò with financial and political support, as well as formally bringing Ficino into the family's alliance and patronage network by making him a godparent to Niccolò’s son. The sustained support of Ficino by the Valori family created tensions in their friendship and alliance with Savonarola, who was at the same time publicly condemning the value of ancient philosophers as a guide for engaged activity in the Christian world. En route, it provides an explanation of when and why the ‘myth’ of the Platonic Academy emerged for the first time in early sixteenth‐century Florence.

Chapter Four analyzes a further dimension of Niccolò Valori's patronage—his friendship with the humanist and biographer Luca Della Robbia. Luca della Robbia wrote two texts informed by his Savonarolan allegiances and close connections to the Valori family: an account of the last night prior to execution of Pietro Paolo Boscoli, an unsuccessful anti‐Medicean conspirator, and a biography of Bartolomeo il vecchio Valori. The chapter shows how della Robbia's biography of Bartolomeo Valori was a sustained defence of Savonarolism's impact on Florentine political life that implicitly demonstrated the credentials of the Valori family as the natural leaders of the Savonarolan movement.

In the century that followed the end of the Hussite wars religious warfare found a number of distinctive outlets. In Eastern Europe, the defence of the frontier against the advancing Turks by armies that were composed largely of peasants had a tendency, exemplified in Hungary by György Dózsa's crusading army of 1514, to mutate into social insurrection. In Iberia, the concluding stages of the Reconquest and the initial overseas discoveries and conquests were strongly influenced by prophecy and messianism. The first 20 years of the Reformation gave rise to extremities of religious belief and practice that reached a climax in the Anabaptist seizure of the city of Münster in 1534–5.

This chapter is concerned with Florentine thought during the century which followed 1434, when Cosimo de’ Medici established a sixty-year-long rule by his family, manipulating politics behind a republican façade. The last quarter of this century—from 1512—is that of the transforming writings of Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Giannotti, but the whole period can be treated in terms of the working out of the implications and contradictions inherent in civic humanism; and it can be shown how the thought of the Machiavellian epoch served to convey the Aristotelian-Polybian tradition to future generations and to lands beyond Italy. This chapter, however, focuses on the expression of the civic humanist outlook by the men of the quattrocento.

This chapter discusses the way in which 15th-century writers of canon law, theology, and medicine wrote about impotence magic. In particular, it traces how these authors were influenced by rising concerns about witchcraft and by the earliest witch trials. It argues that many discussions of impotence magic in canon law and theology copied earlier authors without mentioning contemporary witch trials, but that some writers in these genres emphasized the role of demons in magic more than their sources had. Medical writers, by contrast, responded more directly to the witch trials, mentioning cases of impotence magic that they had heard about. Their responses varied, however. Jacques Despars and Antonio Guaineri were sceptical of the demonic powers ascribed to witches. Giovanni Michele Savonarola, on the other hand, emphasized the demonic nature of many magical cures.

Chapter 4 focuses on another synchronic visualization of elements of the Book of Revelation: Botticelli's Mystic Nativity of 1500/1. Botticelli's possible links to Savonarola himself and particularly to the piagnone movement are discussed as an important part of the cultural, artistic, and reliaious context of the painting. The unusually personal Greek inscription at the top of the painting in which Botticelli explicitly links the painting (superficially a Nativity scene) with Rev. 11. 12, and possibly 20 provides the focus for the hermeneutical discussion of the work. Possible links with the roughly contemporaneous Mystic Crucifixion are also discussed in an extended consideration of The Mystic Nativity's contemporary function and meaning within its early sixteenth‐century Florentine context. The exegetical implications of the painting are also touched upon in this chapter and returned to in Chapter 6.

This chapter presents a study of an often-ignored confessor's manual written by Girolamo Savonarola which reveals the friar at work in a role quite different from that of fiery preacher. It argues that the manual, which advises priests on questions of pastoral care, shows a “kinder, gentler” Savonarola. It explores one of Savonarola's least studied and, apparently, least regarded writings, the Confessionale pro instructione confessorum. The Confessionale is a short, succinct treatise, some forty-four folios. Confessors should interrogate married people about their sexual practices. The Confessionale's special focus on the problems of marriage, sexual behavior, and usury suggests that Savonarola was an attentive observer of life as it was lived by laymen and laywomen, that he knew at first hand which restraints chafed them most and which questions they most frequently brought before their confessors.

In later years, the development of wider musical and diplomatic contacts broadened the motet literature available to the chapel. So did the increasingly international character of the chapel itself, as it came under the leadership of musicians of the stature of Josquin and Obrecht. Among the handful of motets by Martini himself, one can distinguish several types. His wedding motet for Ercole and Eleonora, “Perfunde coeli rore”, is a four-voice tenor motet with absorption of the cantus firmus into the active texture. Meanwhile, the motet “Virgo salutiferi” is one of the largest and most fully developed of Josquin’s Marian motets. The later Ferrarese tradition of motets using the “Miserere” refrain involves not only the authority of Josquin but the continued veneration of Savonarola, especially in the 1530s and 1540s.

This chapter presents translations of the following documents: Amos and Zacharias, Sermon XL; Girolamo Benivieni, “Viva ne nostri cuori, o Florentia”, a song about the graces promised to the city of Florence, composed for use in the prescribed solemnity and procession [Palm Sunday]; Luca Landucci, A Florentine Diary (27 March 1496); Piero Parenti, Storia fiorentina; and La vita del Beato Ieronimo Savonarola, previously attributed to Fra Pacifico Burlamacchi, Chapter XXXIX, Concerning a procession arranged by the servant of God.

This chapter presents translations of the following documents: Letter from Pope Alexander VI to Savonarola (21 July 1495); letter from Savonarola to Pope Alexander VI (31 July 1495); lletter from Pope Alexander VI to the Brothers of Santa Croce (8 September 1495); letter from Savonarola to Pope Alexander VI (29 September 1495) and letter from Pope Alexander VI to Savonarola (16 October 1495).

This chapter presents translations of the following documents: Open Letter to All the Elect of God and Faithful Christians (8 May 1497); letter from Savonarola to Pope Alexander VI (20 May 1497); Open Letter to All Christians and Those Beloved of God, against the Surreptitious Excommunication Newly Made (19 June 1497); letter from Savonarola to Pope Alexander VI (25 June 1497); Open Letter against the Recently Imposed Sentence of Excommunication (end of June 1497); letter from Savonarola to Pope Alexander VI (13 October 1497); and letter from Savonarola to Pope Alexander VI(13 [3] March 1498).

This chapter describes the fate of Girolamo Savonarola following his arrest. Savonarola was imprisoned in the Alberghettino, the “little hotel,” a maximum-security cell at the top of the Palazzo Vecchio. Over the course of the following weeks (April 1498), he was subjected to repeated interrogations and torture. Savonarola and his two companions were later convicted of heresy and schism, and were hanged on 23 May 1498. Despite the zeal of both Church and State to eradicate all trace of their moral antagonist, the incendiary power of his words and example was not extinguished. The chapter also discusses Savonarola's reputation after his death.

This chapter presents a translation of Savonarola's Good Friday sermon on 1 April 1496. He begins by citing his biblical text for the day, which he quotes in Latin before translating or paraphrasing it in Italian; he then expounds it by comparing the authority of the Old and the New Testaments, explaining Christianity in terms of its humanity (here, Christ's sacrifice upon the Cross) and its naturalism (the natural instinct, shared with plants and birds, being to strive towards self-preservation and perfection).

This chapter presents a translation of Savonarola's All Soul's Day sermon on 2 November 1496. Interior devotion was the main theme of the sermon, which used similar arguments and devices as his Good Friday sermon earlier in the year to make its impact. He initially embarks on the theme of naturalism and how difficult it is to get people to think about death when the desire to live is our most natural instinct. His solution to the problem is to offer a set of practical rules to avoid sin and the danger of Hell, which he expounds by using visual images and analogies: the evocative image of “the spectacles of death” and a detailed description of three pictures to be hung at home as a perpetual aide mémoire.