It chanced that the monk who had the ear of the people, Fra Tomasso Nieto, was himself a Spaniard.The Host was borne along in a novel fashion, amid barefooted crowds of old and young.It was placed on a decorated bier, which rested on the shoulders of four priests in linen garments--an imitation of the Ark of the Covenant which the children of Israel once carried round the walls of Jericho.Thus did the afflicted people of Milan remind their ancient God of His old covenant with man;and when the procession again entered the cathedral, and it seemed as if the vast building must fall in with the agonized cry of 'Misericordia!', many who stood there may have believed that the Almighty would indeed subvert the laws of nature and of history, and send a miraculous deliverance.
There was one government in Italy, that of Duke Ercole I of Ferrara, which assumed the direction of public feeling, and compelled the popular revivals to move in regular channels.At the time when Savonarola was powerful in Florence, and the movement which he began spread far and wide among the population of Central Italy, the people of Ferrara voluntarily entered on a general fast (at the beginning of 1496).A Lazarist announced from the pulpit the approach of a season of war and famine such as the world had never seen; but the Madonna had assured some pious people that these evils might be avoided by fasting.
Upon this, the court itself had no choice but to fast, but it took the conduct of the public devotions into its own hands.On Easter Day, the 3rd of April, a proclamation on morals and religion was published, forbidding blasphemy, prohibiting games, sodomy, concubinage, the letting of houses to prostitutes or panders, and the opening of all shops on feast days, excepting those of the bakers and greengrocers.
The Jews and Moors, who had taken refuge from the Spaniards at Ferrara, were now again compelled to wear the yellow O upon the breast.
Contraveners were threatened, not only with the punishments already provided by law, but also 'with such severer penalties as the Duke might think good to inflict.' After this, the Duke and the court went several days in succession to hear sermons in church, and on the 10th of April all the Jews in Ferrara were compelled to do the same.On the 3rd of May, the director of police, Zampante, sent the crier to announce that whoever had given money to the police-officers in order not to be denounced as a blasphemer, might, if he came forward, have it back with a further indemnification.These wicked officers, he said, had extorted as much as two or three ducats from innocent persons by threatening to lodge an information against them.They had then mutually informed against one another, and so had all found their way into prison.But as the money had been paid precisely in order not to have to do with Zampante, it is probable that his proclamation induced few people to come forward.In the year 1500, after the fall of Lodovico il Moro, when a similar outbreak of popular feeling took place, Ercole ordered a series of nine processions, in which there were 4,000 children dressed in white, bearing the standard of Jesus.He himself rode on horseback, as he could not walk without difficulty.An edict was afterwards published of the same kind as that of 1496.It is well known how many churches and monasteries were built by this ruler.
He even sent for a live saint, the Suor Colomba, shortly before he married his son Alfonso to Lucrezia Borgia (1502).A special messenger fetched the saint with fifteen other nuns from Viterbo, and the Duke himself conducted her on her arrival at Ferrara into a convent prepared for her reception.We shall probably do him no injustice if we attribute all these measures very largely to political calculation.To the conception of government formed by the House of Este, this employment of religion for the ends of statecraft belongs by a kind of logical necessity.
Religion and the Spirit of the Renaissance But in order to reach a definite conclusion with regard to the religious sense of the men of this period, we must adopt a different method.From their intellectual attitude in general, we can infer their relation both to the divine idea and to the existing religion of their age.
These modern men, the representatives of the culture of Italy, were born with the same religious instincts as other mediaeval Europeans.
But their powerful individuality made them in religion, as in other matters, altogether subjective, and the intense charm which the discovery of the inner and outer universe exercised upon them rendered them markedly worldly.In the rest of Europe religion remained, till a much later period.something given from without, and in practical life egotism and sensuality alternated with devotion and repentance.The latter had no spiritual competitors) as in Italy, or only to a far smaller extent.
Further, the close and frequent relations of Italy with Byzantium and the Mohammedan peoples had produced a dispassionate tolerance which weakened the ethnographical conception of a privileged Christendom.And when classical antiquity with its men and institutions became an ideal of life) as well as the greatest of historical memories, ancient speculation and skepticism obtained in many cases a complete mastery over the minds of Italians.Since, again, the Italians were the first modern people of Europe who gave themselves boldly to speculations on freedom and necessity, and since they did so under violent and lawless political circumstances, in which evil seemed often to win a splendid and lasting victory, their belief in God began to waver, and their view of the government of the world became fatalistic.And when their passionate natures refused to rest in the sense of uncertainty, they made a shift to help themselves out with ancient, Oriental, or medieval superstition.They took to astrology and magic.
