"Fire in the City"

Paper Summary:

The paper looks at how Lauro Martines provides insight into the life of Savonarola, a zealous religious reformer of the Renaissance, in the book "Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence". The paper shows how this work is not only a biography of the friar but is also a biography of the city of Florence and the conflicts between the Italian city-states, the European powers and the powerful political families, and factions within the Roman Catholic Church.

From the Paper:

"Understanding the religious fervor of a bygone era can be difficult. However, in the book Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence Lauro Martines attempts to provide insight into the life of a zealous religious reformer of the Renaissance. Because of the images we possess of the Renaissance, such as the paintings of God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo's statue of "David," it is tempting to think of this era as more religious than our own. However, the Renaissance was marked, despite such iconography, by increasing secularization and focus on the glorification of humanity and the arts, rather than God. Politics as much as piety marked the machinations of the papacy, and in Florence, the infamously wealthy (and corrupt) Medici family controlled political power and stifled republican dissent."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Martines, Lauro. Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

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