Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet - Hardcover

Weinstein, Donald

 
9780300111934: Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0300111932 ISBN 13: 9780300111934
Publisher: Yale University Press, 2011

Synopsis

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.

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About the Author

Donald Weinstein is professor emeritus, University of Arizona. He is the author of several books on Italian history and is a world authority on Savonarola and the Italian Renaissance. He lives in Sonoita, AZ.

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Publisher
Yale University Press
Publication date
2011
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0300111932
ISBN 13 
9780300111934
Binding
Hardcover
Number of pages
352