Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780300111934)

A deeply considered new biography of the visionary Dominican by a leading Renaissance scholar

Girolamo Savonarola, the fifteenth-century doom-saying friar, embraced the revolution of the Florentine republic and prophesied that it would become the center of a New Age of Christian renewal and world domination. This new biography, the culmination of many decades of study, presents an original interpretation of Savonarola's prophetic career and a highly nuanced assessment of his vision and motivations.

Weinstein sorts out the multiple strands that connect Savonarola to his time and place, following him from his youthful rejection of a world he regarded as corrupt, to his engagement with that world to save it from itself, to his shattering confession--an admission that he had invented his prophesies and faked his visions. Was his confession sincere? A forgery circulated by his inquisitors? Or an attempt to escape bone-breaking torture? Weinstein offers a highly innovative analysis of the testimony to provide the first truly satisfying account of Savonarola and his fate as a failed prophet.

Author: Donald Weinstein
ISBN-10: 0300111932
ISBN-13: 9780300111934
Publisher: Yale University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/22/2011
Pages: 400
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.55lbs
Size: 9.49h x 6.42w x 1.11d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 12/01/2011 pg. 129
Choice 06/01/2012