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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
On the Eve of Palm Sunday, April 8, 1498, Florence witnessed a wholly disgraceful exhibition of primitive savagery and brutal instincts. The ordeal by fire, which Savonarola and his opponents had been scheduled to undergo, had failed to take place on the previous day; consequently the populace was in a particularly ugly frame of mind on being deprived of this ghastly spectacle. That Sunday night, the Florentines, and those citizens of the neighborhood who had nocked to the Tuscan capital in the hope of sharing in the promised looting, broke all bonds of restraint and the city endured a veritable ‘Walpurgisnacht’ of horror. Murder, brutal assault, arson, robbery and most other forms of violence were the order of the night; the events are recounted not only by contemporary chroniclers but by modern historians as well.
1. Joseph Schnitzer, Savonarola, ein Kulturbild aus der Zeit der Renaissance, München, 1924,1, 526-531, gives a full account and lists the early sources.
2. Ada Thurston and Curt F. Bühler, Check List of Fifteenth Century Printing in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 1939, p. 66, no. 751.
3. Schnitzer, 1, 531.
4. The arms are described as: ‘Azure on a chief or, a raven sable membered gueules.'
5. Armoiries des families contenues dans V Armorial général, Paris, 1903-1926, 11, planche CXXXII. The raven is here distinguished by bearing a branch in its beak; this is not present in the border of PML 21682.
6. Répertoire des sources historiques du moyen age ... Bio-bibliographie, Paris, 1905-1907, 1,511.
7. Compare Chevalier, I, 1163, under ‘Delfino'.
8. A manuscript note of ownership reads: ‘Camaldoli No. 13058’ and also the number 'CLXXV'. Presumably Delphino gave the book to the parent monastery of his Order.
