Excerpt from Savonarola: His Life and Times The life and character of Savonarola have been rightly supposed to present great difficulties to the historian. From the day of his death - nay, more, from the day of his power in Florence - up to our own times, opinions the most diverse have been entertained respecting his character, his motives, his conduct. While his enemies have denounced him as a rebel against the sovereign Pontiff - in later times they have hardly dared to call him a heretic - and as a disturber of the commonwealth, his followers and admirers have regarded him as a saint and a hero, and have venerated his memory as that of a martyr. The supporters of despotism, ecclesiastical and civil, have cherished a feeling of bitter enmity against the man who had such an ardent love of liberty; and they have been joined by the prophets of scepticism, who have had nothing but contempt and hatred for one who was so powerful a witness for religion and for God. According to the sceptic Bayle, he was a ridiculous and base impostor, who richly deserved the fate that befell him. According to Roscoe, who found it difficult to believe anything good of one who was so consistent and steadfast an opponent of his idolized Medici, he was an arrogant and ambitious priest, half impostor and half fanatic. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.