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Though he held no official post except that of Prior of St. Mark's, Savonarola, in effect, became the city's ruler. In a series of sermons, he laid down the form for the new Florentine government—a council modeled on the Venetian system. He also revolutionized the behavior of easy-living Florentines. Sodomy and public gambling and drinking were prohibited, and harsh punishments were set for infractions. In the manner of other theocrats, he thundered that "any who fight against this government fight against Christ," and proposed a 50-ducat fine for speaking against the state. In 1497 he set a troop of boys to scouting out iniquity, lit a great bonfire of false hair, obscene books, lutes, playing cards and dice tables. His followers roamed Italy, so the story goes, removing the penis from any nude statue they could get at.
There was a limit to the Florentines' patience; they balked at outlawing low-cut dresses and curled hair, and a group of libertines spitefully planted nails in the edge of the pulpit upon which the friar habitually pounded. In Rome there was more serious opposition: the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, a sybarite who bought his post with cash and occupied it with cynicism (he might have said, in the words of Leo X: "Let us enjoy the Papacy, now that God has given it to us"). At first, in his easygoing way, Alexander ignored the denunciations from Savonarola's pulpit, then tried to bribe the preacher with a cardinal's hat. But Savonarola contemptuously refused, and the ranting continued; detailing the scandals and debaucheries of the Vatican like a visionary gossipmonger, Savonarola pointed to Alexander's openly acknowledged children (Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, among others). Cried the friar: "You, harlot Church, you used to be ashamed of pride and lasciviousness. Now you are ashamed no longer. See how once the priests called their children 'nephews'; now they are called sons, not nephews: sons everywhere."
The Gentle Wind. Savonarola kept predicting his own martyrdom, and the prophecy finally came true. A series of papal briefs failed to silence him, but a threat of interdict against Florence alarmed the city's governors. The Florentine mob, which had listened with awe to the friar's prophecies, besieged him in the Convent of San Marco. The next day he was arrested. After 40 days of torture and interrogation—some of it conducted by a papal emissary—Savonarola and two of his monks were executed. "Savonarola, now is the time to do miracles!" jeered the mob that crowded around the stake. But no miracles attended his death, except perhaps for the fact that the Church and the society he castigated for more than a decade had let him be for so long.