SAVONAROLA. 219 all preaching after Ascension Day (May 4) was forbidden for the reason that, with the approach of summer, crowds would facilitate the dissemination of the plague. That passions were rising beyond control was shown when, the next day, Savonarola preached his farewell sermon in the Duomo. The doors had been broken open in advance, and the pulpit was smeared with filth. The Com- pagnacci had almost openly made preparations to kill him ; they gathered there in force, and interrupted the discourse with a tu- mult, during which the Frate's friends gathered around him with drawn swords and conveyed him away in safety.* The affair made an immense sensation throughout Italy, and the sympathies of the Signoria were shown by the absence of any attempt to punish the rioters. Encouraged by this evidence of the weakness of the Piagnoni, on May 13 Alexander sent to the Fran- ciscans a bull ordering them to publish Savonarola as excommuni- cate and suspect of heresy, and that no one should hold converse with him. This, owing to the fears of the papal commissioner charged with it, was not published till June 18. Before the exist- ence of the bull was known, on May 22, Savonarola had written to Alexander an explanatory letter, in which he offered to submit himself to the judgment of the Church ; but two days after the ex- communication was published he replied to it with a defence in which he endeavored to prove that the sentence was invalid, and on June 25 he had the audacity to address to Alexander a letter of condolence on the murder of his son, the Duke of Gandia. Fort- unately for him another revulsion in municipal politics restored his friends to power on July 1, the elections till the end of the year continued favorable, and he did not cease to receive and administer the sacraments, though, under the previous orders of the Signoria, there was no preaching. It must be borne in mind that at this period there was a spirit of insubordination abroad which regarded the papal censures with slender respect. We have seen above (Yol. II. p. 137) that in 1502 the whole clergy of France, acting under a decision of the University of Paris, openly defied an ex- communication launched at them by Alexander VI. It was the same now in Florence. How little the Piagnoni recked of the ex- communication is seen by a petition presented September 17 to
- Landucci, p. 148,— Villari, II. 18-25.
