Prediche del reverendo padre frate Gieronimo Savonarola de l’ordine di San Domenico dell’osservantia di Toscana sopra l’Esodo. Et questi salmi. In exitu Israel. Qui habitata. In dominio confido. Qui confidunt in domino. Quam dilecta tabernacula. Co [n]una esortatione fatta al popolo fiorentino. Con tre predixhe sopra la historia di Gedeone, nuovamente aggiunta a questo volume. sopra Esodo.

In the frontispiece of the cinquecentina, on the pulpit from which Savonarola is preaching, the printer’s mark of the brothers Ottaviano Scoto the Younger and Bernardino can be seen: the double cross and tripartite heart with the two brothers’ initials (B and O) along with the letter S.

As may be deduced from the colophon of the specimen conserved at the Uffizi, the volume was printed in Venice in 1540 by the two typographer brothers, with the collaboration of Giouanantonio de Volpini, known as “il Rizo stampadore,” a printer active in Venice between 1539 and 1541.

Savonarola’s preachings are preceded by a preface by the Florentine notary Lorenzo Violi, addressing Ercole II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, and by two dedications: one by Giovanni Bresaola, the work’s scientific publisher, to Queen Isabella of Aragon, and the other by Bartolomeo Gualterotti, one of the friar’s fervent followers, to the scholar Domenico Bruni.

The specimen includes an emended page among the tables with the indices of sermons as well as the first sermon on Psalm 3: the supplication David addresses to God against his oppressors. The 22 sermons, written in the vernacular, show prized initial letters and feature numerous handwritten marginal notes and manicula (hands drawn with the index finger pointing towards a part of the text to be emphasized), bearing witness to this book being the object of study among the Dominican monks.

On 12 May of 1497, after his excommunication, Savonarola, reduced to silence, had devoted himself to doctrinal writings; however, on 11 February 1498, after all attempts at reconciliation with the pope had faded, the friar ascended the pulpit for his final Lenten sermon, in blatant disobedience of His Holiness’s preaching ban.

In 1498, first from the Florence Cathedral and then from the Convent of San Marco, Savonarola expounded upon Exodus, the Old Testament book that tells the story of the Hebrews’ liberation from Egyptian slavery. Just as the Israelites had fled the Pharaoh’s persecutions, Savonarola elevated himself to the role of a new Moses, and it would be he that would lead the Florentines – the modern-day Chosen People – across the Red Sea to Salvation. If the Pharaoh (i.e. Pope Alexander VI) had, through excommunication, ordered him to stay quiet, then Girolamo, in order to free his people from the yoke of slavery, had to speak: the friar likened the burden of excommunication to the weight of the oppression inflicted by the Pharaoh upon the Children of Israel, attacking not only the excommunication itself, but all those who complied with it – thus transforming the antagonism between himself and the pontiff into a struggle between good and evil.

Indeed, the cycle of sermons shows a clear and continuous overlapping between the figures of Moses and Savonarola, between the events in the history of the Chosen People and those of the Florentine Republic. Florence’s calling, then, becomes akin to Jerusalem’s: with its popular government and its reforms, the city is in fact tasked with rebuilding the Temple. The reflection upon Exodus is the one in which the friar’s preaching takes on a prophetic value: the prophet is not just the one who enters into contact with the transcendent and discloses its revelation; he is also the one who takes on the function of pastor and of spiritual guide. According to Savonarola, the Florentine people was “stiff-necked” (dura cervice) just like the Hebrews, who in many passages of Exodus are greedy and lack gratitude towards God. In fact, the Israelites had failed to appreciate the gift of the manna that had been their salvation in the desert, and had ungratefully asked Moses for the foods they ate when they still slaves under the Pharaoh. Moses’s difficult task was placed in parallel with that faced by Savonarola, who devoted himself to the project of reform in a continuous, exhausting clash with the vices and sins of the city of Florence. In spite of the continuous difficulty, Girolamo proved perseverant as well as convinced he was invested with a holy mission.

In the spring of 1498, the friar was preaching to what was now a handful of people who, in defiance of the threat of excommunication, had the courage to listen to him. The devout Florentine notary, Lorenzo Violi, meticulously took down every word Girolamo spoke, and the sermons were quickly collected, printed, and circulated – to the Pope’s indignation. His Holiness sent a brief to Florence demanding that the son of iniquity be sent to Rome to be tried for heresy; however, the Gonfaloniere of Justice in Florence, the Piagnone Giuliano Salviati, allowed Savonarola to continue preaching, even in the cathedral.

As may be deduced from the stamp of the Santa Maria Novella library on the frontispiece and by the endpaper’s recto that bears an ancient, handwritten ownership note reading “S. Ma Nov.lla,” the cinquecentina originated from the Dominican convent. The specimen is bound together with the volume volume Reuerendi p. fra. Hieronymi Sauonarole in primam d. Ioannis espistolam & in alia sacre scripture verba, igniti eloquii sermones nusquam ante hac impressi. Quorum titulos, pagella sequens indicat.