Pico and Savonarola
I find myself deeply conflicted when I watch the news of the financial collapse. There is a part of me which likes to see the wicked get their deserts. If I were to give this subpersonality a name, Savonarola would be as good as any. The United States is suffering today from its own love affair with an enjoy now, pay later, economy, a love affair which has turned sour as all worldly loves tend to do.
In Medici Florence at the end of the 15th century something similar occured. People who had been living beyond their means suddenly found themselves forced to make a virtue of poverty due to social upheaval. Enter Savanarola, your typical “mad monk” of the Black Legend. It would seem that this charming fellow, if the reports are to be believed, wanted to make a bonfire of the accomplishments of the Italian Renaissance. As soon as a revolution placed him in power he became the original “liberation theologian” liberating the Florentines from their priceless artworks and incunablia.
Burn baby burn! There is something purifying about a fire, an indeed any human calamity. When we see the sinners punished it gives a sort of vicarious thrill does it not? It must or, for example, CNN would not be featuring a TOP TEN WANTED LIST of America’s miscreant financial elite. The flames are cracking and the hour of revenge is at hand. My inner Savonarola is waxing rightous.
But there is another part of me which watches in horror at the destruction of my nation’s wealth. Fundamentally, I am not a Savonarola, but a Pico de la Mirandola. Like the latter man, a scholar and an epicure, I take a chivalrous attitude towards the works of human art. There is no production of the human mind so vulgar or pagan that I would not wish to salvage it for the critical inspection of posterity.
And in today’s bonfire there is much which cries out for salvation. As the mendacious mogels of mortgages go up in flames many an innocent bystander is being scorched as well. The psychology of markets, the interlocking of interest rates and the clearing of prices ensure that many people who saved and made sound, even ethical decisions are being hurt by the unscrupulous trend-setters. Hard working employees of mismanaged companies are the fired without notice as executives cushion their fall from grace.
But the flames are not easily appeased. Too much fuel has already been fed to them, and they are spreading through the forum. In the end Pico decides to his lot in with Savonarola. “Yes, let it all burn! These vanities have dragged us down into hell. Let them perish…if only we can escape with our naked souls and our freedom intact!”
And so it all went in…the paintings and the sculptures and the books. It will be sad indeed if the analogy holds true and America is stripped as bare as Florence was in the aftermath of Savonarola. But the tragedy didn’t end there, for eventually Savonarola himself went the way of the vanities, and Pico too disapeared.
We’ll just have to wait and see if history persists in repeating itself. Meanwhile, in my inner world, Savonarola and Pico are locked in furious struggle. And I suspect I am not unique in that respect.
