REBUTTAL OF SAVONAROLA BY A FORMER ACOLYTE
[SAVONAROLA, Girolamo.] Ambrogio Caterino POLITI.
Discorso … contra la dottrina, et le profetie di Fra Girolamo Savonarola.
Venice, Giolito, 1548.
8vo, ff. [viii], 100; roman and italic letter, woodcut printer’s device and numerous initials throughout; one or two instances of faint marginal dampstaining, but a very good copy in contemporary limp vellum, spine lined with printed waste; headband split, a few small chips at joints, ties perished.
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Discorso … contra la dottrina, et le profetie di Fra Girolamo Savonarola.
First edition of a condemnation of Savonarola’s theology, doctrine and prophecies by the former Savonarola acolyte Politi (1484–1553), ‘one of the most fiery Catholic polemicists of his times’ (Bongi, trans.), who four years earlier had published a confutation of Luther’s theology.
The first part examines the attractiveness, plausibility, and success of Savonarola’s preaching. Born Lancillotto Politi, the author became a Dominican friar at the Convent of San Marco in Florence in 1517, less than thirty years after Savonarola had been made prior there. Here, Politi relives the times of his own past sympathies for Savonarola, and offers, with all the benefits of an insider’s outlook, an analysis of the reasons for Savonarola’s rise and popularity. Yet he finds Savonarola’s depiction of a corrupt Church (‘almost embodying the Antichrist, as the Lutherans say’, f. 8v, trans.) grossly misrepresentative, and feels that heresy infiltrates Savonarola’s doctrines much as leprosy affects without remedy a body which might yet appear to have intact parts.
The second, more ponderous part is an examination of the hidden heretical qualities of Savonarola’s preaching. According to Bongi, Politi’s refutation displeased many members of his order who cherished Savonarola’s memory and example, and that it in turn provoked refutations, such as Tommaso Neri’s Apologia of 1564. Throughout the book, the author’s arguments and narrative are printed in italics, in contrast with the roman type used to reproduce ample excerpts from Savonarola’s own works, systematically referenced in the shoulder notes.
EDIT16 26141; USTC 850168; Bongi I, p. 209–10.
