Of this the meagre reports that
are left to us, which were taken down mostly on the spot, give us
evidently a very imperfect notion. It was not that he possessed any
striking outward advantages, for voice, accent, and rhetorical skill
constituted precisely his weakest side; and those who required the
preacher to be a stylist, went to his rival Fra Mariano da Genazzano.
The eloquence of Savonarola was the expression of a lofty and
commanding personality, the like of which was not seen again till the
time of Luther. He himself held his own influence to be the result of a
divine illumination, and could therefore, without presumption, assign a
very high place to the office of the preacher, who, in the great
hierarchy of spirits, occupies, according to him, the next place below
the angels.
This man, whose nature seemed made of fire, worked another and greater
miracle than any of his oratorical triumphs. His own Dominican
monastery of San Marco, and then all the Dominican monasteries of
Tuscany, became like-minded with himself, and undertook voluntarily the
work of inward reform. When we reflect what the monasteries then were,
and what measureless difficulty attends the least change where monks
are concerned, we are doubly astonished at so complete a revolution.
While the reform was still in progress large numbers of Savonarola's
followers entered the Order, and thereby greatly facilitated his plans.
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