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"We had thought him to be a prophet," writes Luca Landucci simply, "and he confessed he was not a prophet, that he had not from God the things he preached.... And I was by when this was read, and I was astonished, bewildered, amazed.... Ah, I expected Florence to be, as it were, a New Jerusalem, ... and I heard the very contrary."
On 26th November he heard Mass for the last time in S. Maria del Fiore, and on the 28th he departed si partì el Re di Firenze dopo desinare, e andò albergo alla Certosa e tutta sua gente gli andò dietro e innanzi, che poche ce ne rimase, says Landucci thankfully.
The Pope excommunicated him: the factions in Florence the Arrabbiati, the Compagnacci, the Palleschi rejoiced; yet the people he had led so long seemed inclined to support him. Then came the plague, and then the discovery of a plot to bring back Piero. Well, Savonarola began to preach again; but he was beaten. Many would not go to hear him, of whom Landucci was one, because of the excommunication.
Narrative pp. 29, 30, ed. 1841; p 131. ed. 1883. Δράσαντι παθεῖν, Τριγέρων μῦθος τάδε φωνεῖ. Aesch. Choeph. 310. Italian proverb, in Landucci, Diario Fiorentino, 1513, p. 343.
There never was so great a procession," says Landucci. Indeed, there was not a man nor a woman who did not join the company. "It was a holy time, but it was short," says Landucci again, whose own children were among "these holy and blessed companies." Short indeed! The Italian League had been formed against France; only Florence and Ferrara remained outside.
On 24th November the treaty was signed, an indemnity being paid by the city, but the rioting did not cease. Landucci gives a very vivid account of it. Even the King himself was not slow to pillage: he was discontented with the indemnity offered, and threatened to loot the city.
Then, on the 1st of April, he said that the Virgin Mary had revealed to him that the city would be more glorious, rich, and powerful than ever before, and, as Landucci says, "La maggiore parte del popolo gli credeva." He also said that the Greater Council was the creation of God, and that whoever should attempt to change it would be eternally damned. Nor was this all.
As to how his idea of such an instrument originated, we had best let him tell us in his own words. The passage is given in a letter which he writes to his brother-in-law, Landucci.
He was a puritan and a politician, and it was on these two counts that he fought the Papacy. Landucci, op. cit. p. 176.