Identifier: italyfromdanteto1919cott (find matches)
Title: Italy from Dante to Tasso (1300-1600) : its political history as viewed from the standpoints of the chief cities, with descriptions of important episodes and personalities and of the art and literature of the three centuries
Year: 1919 (1910s)
Authors: Cotterill, H. B. (Henry Bernard), b. 1846
Subjects: Cities and towns
Publisher: New York : Frederick A. Stokes Co
Contributing Library: University of Connecticut Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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FLORENCE (1400-1500) Savonarolas sermons now are of another mood. Insteadof insisting solely on love and repentance and general amnestyhe begins to suggest political reform, and on his advice, afterthe abolition of the Medicean Seventy, a Greater Council, on the pattern of the Venetian Maggior Consiglio —which,however, was anything but democratic—was empowered tosanction the election of magistrates and the passing of laws.To this nominally popular assembly were nominally subordi-nated the other numeroas Councils ; to it appeal was permittedeven from the verdicts of the Signoria and the Gonfalonieredi Giustizia.i But the real nature of this reform is apparentfrom the fact that—perhaps to frustrate any plebiscite forthe return of the Medici—the calling of an Arengo (Assemblyof the People) was made on Savonarolas advice a capitaloffence, seeing that the Maggior Consiglio was the work of God,not of man, and the only purpose of a popular vote wouldbe to snatch the power from the ha

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