230 POLITICAL HERESY.— THE CHURCH. even in his complying frame of mind the resultant confession re- quired to be manipulated before it could be made public. For this infamous piece of work a fitting instrument was at hand. Ser Ceccone was an old partisan of the Medici whose life had been saved by Savonarola's secretly giving him refuge in San Marco, and who now repaid the benefit by sacrificing his bene- factor. As a notary he was familiar with such work, and un- der his skilful hands the incoherent answers of Savonarola were moulded into a narrative which is the most abject of self -accusa- tions and most compromising to all his friends.* He is made to represent himself as being from the first a con- scious impostor, whose sole object was to gain power by deceiving the people. If his project of convoking a council had resulted in his being chosen pope he would not have refused the position, but if not he would at all events have become the foremost man in the world. For his own purposes he had arrayed the citizens against each other and caused a rupture between the city and the Holy See, striving to erect a government on the Venetian model, with Francesco Yalori as perpetual doge. The animus of the trial is clearly revealed in the scant attention paid to his spiritual aberrations, which were the sole offences for which he could be convicted, and the immense detail devoted to his political activity, and to his relations with all obnoxious citizens whom it was de- sired to involve in his ruin. Had there been any pretence of ob- serving ordinary judicial forms, the completeness with which he was represented as abasing himself would have overreached its purpose. In forcing him to confess that he was no prophet, and that he had always secretly believed the papal excommunication to be valid, he was relieved from the charge of persistent heresy, and he could legally be only sentenced to penance ; but, as there
- Landucci, p. 172. — Processo Autentico, p. 550. — Perrens, pp. 267-8. — Bur-
lamacchi, pp. 566-7. — Villari, II. 188, 193; App. cxviii.-xxi. It is part of the Savonarola legend that Savonarola threatened Ser Ceccone with death within a year if he did not remove certain interpolations from the confession, and that the prediction was verified, Ceccone dying within the time, unhouselled, and refusing in despair the consolations of religion (Burlamacchi, p. 575. — Violi op. Villari, II. App. cxxvii.). Ceccone performed the same office for the confession of Fra Domenico (Villari, II. App. Doc. xxvir.).
