Girolamo Savonarola, the great moral, political, and religious reformer of Italy, was born in Ferrara, September 21, 1452. He was of noble family, studied medicine, but renounced his intended profession and became a Dominican monk. In 1491 he became prior of St. Mark's, Florence. When he began to preach in the Church of St. Mark on the sins of the time, he applied to Italy the prophetic language of the Apocalypse. He predicted the restoration of the Church in Italy through severe divine viistations. His power in the pulpit was overwhelming, and the fame of his preaching was spread abroad, many regarding him as an inspired prophet. In his denunciations he spared neither wealth nor position, laity nor clergy, and he exhorted the people to order their lives by the simple rules of Scripture. Savonarola refused to pay the customary homage of his office to the ruler of Florence, who at this time was Lorenzo de' Medici. His own office, the preacher declared, was received, not from Lorenzo, but from God. Overlooking the slight, Lorenzo tried by all means to win Savonarola's favor, but the reformer persisted in denouncing him. When a committee asked the preacher to desist from his denunciations and prophetic warnings, he bade them tell Lorenzo to repent of his sins, adding that, if he threatened banishment, the ruler himself would soon depart, while his censor would remain in Florence. In 1492 Lorenzo died and his son Piero succeeded him. But Savonarola now became the most powerful man in the republic, and he exerted himself for reformation of his own monastery, the Church, and the state itself. Soon he prophesied the downfall of the Medici, against whom he arrayed a considerable part of the Florentine people. He predicted that one should come over the Alps and wreak vengeance upon the tyrants of Italy. In 1494 Charles VIII of France invaded Italy, warred against Naples, and advanced on Florence. Piero de' Medici, thoroughly frightened, surrendered his strongholds and agreed to pay Charles two hundred thousand ducats. Of Savonarola's career from this time, and the state of Florence up to the day of his death, the two authors here selected give faithful and vivid narratives. In _Romola_ George Eliot portrays the character and acts of this great reformer with a legitimate intensifying, for artistic purposes, of the certified facts of history. PASQUALE VILLARI