Manuscript 348 (Otto di Guardia Decision of 23 May 1498 and San Marco Convent Deliberation of 1495)

The Uffizi Galleries conserve a copy of the minutes of the Otto di Guardia, the ancient Florentine magistracy that attended to criminal affairs. These minutes wrote the sad epilogue for Savonarola, with the friar and his companions sentenced to death. The decision is dated 23 May 1498 and another specimen with identical content is held at the State Archives of Florence.

After an unjust trial held with the excessive use of torture, the three friars Girolamo Savonarola, Domenico da Pescia, and Silvestro Maruffi were brought before the Apostolic Commissioners who read them the decision condemning them as heretics and schismatics. The irony is that Savonarola was convicted of offences that not even a trial under torture had proved; in fact, the criminal proceeding, albeit falsified, still found him innocent. After the religious sentence, the three friars were handed over to the secular arm, where the Otto di Guardia e Balìa voted unanimously to convict. Only Francesco Cini dissociated himself, refusing to render the unjust decision – indeed, the beginning of the decision indicates he is absent.

The sentence was read to the accused: “The Otto, having thoroughly considered the trials of the three friars, and the highly unspeakable crimes committed by them, that are contained herein; and having considered the decision pronounced by the Pope’s commissioners who handed them over to the secular tribunal, deciding they be punished thusly: that each of them be first hanged at the gallows, then burnt, so that their souls might be separated from their bodies...”.

Along with the 15th-century copy of the death sentence, the Library conserves an autograph document of Savonarola that more or less begins: “Ricordo come oggi, Ego frater Jeronimus de Ferrara….”

The text is a decision of the chapter of the Congregation of San Marco, and is composed of about ten lines followed by twelve signatures of the Dominican friars. The first signature is in fact Savonarola’s. The folio bears the date 12 June 1494 (1494 according to the Florentine year that began on 25 March; 1495 according to the Gregorian calendar).