But let us see what Savonarola actually did. He was, so to speak, a professional prophet, and while he predicted not only a sack of Rome but his own death by violence, he also, by the admission of sympathetic biographers, put forth many vaticinations of an entirely fantastic character. Here again he might very well have a Jewish prototype. For us the first question is, What did he actually predict in history, and how and why did he predict it? In 1494 he seems to have predicted the French invasion which took place in that year. Villari asserts that he did so in the sermons he preached in Lent, but admits that "it is impossible to ascertain the precise nature" of the sermons in question. [49] Father Lucas goes further, and points out that there is no trace in them of the alleged prophecy [50] which Savonarola in his Compendium Revelationum (1495) claims to have made but does not date. Villari further admits that the sermons of that year are so badly reported as to have lost almost every characteristic of Savonarola's style. Their reporter, unable to keep pace with the preacher's words, only jotted down rough and fragmentary notes. These were afterwards translated into barbarous dog-Latin--by way of giving them a more literary form--and published in Venice. For this reason Quétif and some other writers entertained doubts of their authenticity. [51] Villari nevertheless is satisfied of it on internal grounds, and we may accept his estimate. The main allegation is that in 1494 Savonarola, who had for years been preaching that national sin would elicit divine chastisement, in those Lenten discourses, and also in some others, foretold the coming of a new Cyrus, who would march through Italy in triumph, without encountering any obstacles, and without breaking a single lance. We find numerous records of these predictions, and the terrors excited by them, in the historians and biographers of the period; and Fra Benedetto reports his master's words in the following verses [thus literally translated]:-- Soon shalt thou see each tyrant overthrown, And all Italy shalt thou see vanquished, To her shame, disgrace, and harm. Thou, Rome, shalt soon be captured: I see the blade of wrath come upon thee; The time is short, each day flies past: My Lord will renovate the Church, And convert every barbarian people. There will be but one fold and one shepherd. But first Italy will have to mourn, And so much of her blood will be shed That her people shall everywhere be thinned.