"Brought to Florence at the instance of Lorenzo de' Medici to become lector to the Dominican community at San Marco, Girolamo Savonarola would ultimately be responsible for the events that convulsed the city in the 1490s and led to the overthrow of the Medici themselves. Savonarola's apocalyptic sermons, preached from the pulpits of San Marco and the Duomo, predicted dire consequences for a sinful Florence, a scourging, if the Florentines did not mend their ways and form themselves into a commonwealth for God. Fully in the ascendant by 1495, Savonarola increasingly used his platform in Florence to urge a renewal of the entire Church, a renovatio ecclesiae that implicated the papacy as a particular impediment to reform. He was accused of heresy and eventually excommunicated by the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, on 13 May 1497. Savonarola refused to acknowledge the validity of the excommunication and defended himself against the charges. But he was soon arrested by the Florentine Signoria--the city's highest magistracy--at the pope's behest. He was then brought to trial for falsely claiming to have seen visions and uttered prophecies, for religious error, and sedition. In a few days it was all over. Girolamo Savonarola was hanged and burned, together with two of his Dominican disciples from San Marco, in Florence's Piazza della Signoria on 23 May 1498, still professing adherence to the Church. Girolamo Savonarola's self-defense, like his visionary teaching, was preached from the pulpits of Florence, but was also carried on through a series of writings. The works presented in this volume were all written by the friar during the dramatic months leading up to his death, as he ever more desperately defended his actions to those who were ranged against him"--Provided by publisher.