>I recently gave a talk on Savonarola, prophecy, Florence, etc.--after all,
>1498
>deserves remembrance in 1998, even outside of Italy. But I seem to have
>mislaid
>my reference to his dedication of Florence to Christ, as far as I know a
>singular event in medieval Italian urban history (cf. Siena's dedication to
>Mary in 1260). What I'd like to know is (1) precisely when the dedication
>took
>place and (2) the inscription commemorating it on a Florentine public
>building
>(which?). It may be in P. Villari's old but classic biography, but I can't
>spot
>it there; nor in R. Ridolfi; nor in D. Weinstein who refers to a 16thc.
>re-dedication but fails to provide details on the original occasion. Any
>Savonarola people out there?
Lorenzo Polizzotto, _The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in
Florence, 1494-1545_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 28, tells the
story; it seems that the dedication was "not formally sanctioned by
legislation" in Savonarola's own time (though it "began to be acknowledged
in some of the records of the Republic" in 1496), but was made official on
9 February 1528 in legislation passed under the gonfaloniership of Niccolò
Capponi, re-confirmed in 1529 under Francesco Carducci. Polizzotto's
Chapter 7 deals with the 1520s in some detail. He further cites V.
Chiaroni, _Il Savonarola e la Repubblica fiorentina eleggono Gesù Cristo re
di Firenze_ (Florence, 1952). Nothing that I can see about inscriptions on
public buildings, though apparently the Florentines took to calling the
Sala del Consiglio Maggiore the "sala di Cristo" in the 1490s.
Steven Botterill
Associate Professor of Italian Literature & Romance Philology
Graduate Adviser, Department of Italian Studies
6303 Dwinelle Hall #2620
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-2620
(510) 642-6246 (voice)
(510) 642-9884 (FAX)
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