ABSTRACT
On 28 December 1494, Fra Girolamo Savonarola concluded his sermon in the Cathedral church of Florence with the complaint that he was totally exhausted, worn out with preaching and praying for Florence; he told his listeners that he was having a short holiday and that the canons of the Cathedral had agreed for someone else to preach in his place for the coming days, and so God's work would continue (XXIII, 424-5).1 This was the last of a series of twenty-three sermons preached over the course of the previous eight weeks, a period of remarkable and quite unforeseen change for Savonarola and for Florence.2
