The Triumph of the Cross
9781465653710
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Savonarola was a speaker rather than a writer. His was the eloquent ministry of the living word, rather than the calm apostolate of the lifeless pen. He was more at home when standing in the pulpit of the Duomo in Florence, facing the panting, throbbing crowd, numbering thousands, who, with itching ears and thirsting souls, drank in his every word, as though the words were dewdrops from heaven, than when sitting at the little table—which is still preserved in his lowly cell at San Marco—holding in his emaciated hand a nerveless, passionless pen. His great master-intellect and his large sympathetic heart seemed to long to pour out their rich pent-up treasures, freely and without stint, through the channel of his eloquent tongue; whereas the hand that would perpetuate his thoughts, by stamping them upon paper, at times seemed palsied. Out of the abundance of his heart his mouth preferred to speak. Still he wrote sometimes;—it was generally, however, under moral compulsion, being impelled to do so by circumstances which he could not control. He was accused of error by those, or to those at a distance; his advice was sought by others who were far away—defence or counsel had to be committed to paper. For a time he might not sway the masses, as he would, by the irresistible magic of his burning words; then we have the apostolate of the pen. He retired to the seclusion of his monastic cell, and wrote, as his zeal prompted, his message to his fellow-men. Many of his treatises—short ones for the most part—exist. We have his five books—we might call them chapters, they are so brief—on “The Simplicity of the Christian Life”; a treatise on “Humility”; an exposition of the “Our Father,” and another of the “Hail Mary”; commentaries on some of the Psalms; an explanation of the Mass, and of the ceremonies of the Holy Sacrifice; certain rules for good Christian living (composed when he was in prison), and a number of other letters and booklets. But perhaps the most notable, as well as the most useful, of his writings are the four little “Books,” as he calls them, which these words are to introduce to the English-reading public, and which he himself styles, in the Prologue or Introduction to the First Book, a defence of “the glorious Triumph of the Cross” over “the profane and foolish babble of worldly-wise Philosophers”. Of St. Philip Neri, the Apostle of Rome, who was ever staunch in his loyalty to the memory of the one who, for a time at least, was the Apostle of his own native Florence, it is said, that this was one of his favourite books. The Saint’s biographer, Cardinal Capecelatro, writes: “It is well known that Philip often read the writings of Savonarola, especiallyThe Triumph of the Cross, and that he used them for the instruction of his spiritual children. There are still preserved in the Vallicella, among the books which belonged to St. Philip, and which were given by him to the Congregation, five of Savonarola’s works.” The history and object of The Triumph of The Cross, which may be considered the most important of the works, if we may so call them, of the great Florentine Reformer, is given by Echard, the Continuator of Quetif, in his Scriptores Ordinis Prædicatorum.
