Research Paper on Girolamo Savonarola and His Attitude Towards Pagan Religions

Introduction

Girolamo Savonarola was a very pious Dominican friar, preacher of the word and a reformer who strongly participated in the church life. His focus on religion led him to cause reformation on Christianity and morals in religion towards the end of the fifteenth century. He lived in the city of Florence as a prophet who attracted huge crowds during his sermon. Savonarola prophetic messages were commonly about the civic glory, called for the destruction of the arts and cultures that indicated worshiping of the world and called for the Christians to renew their ways of life. Savonarola moved towards imparting the true religion in the people when he declared Florence as a "Christian and religious Republic" marking critical decision to stop pagan religions. Savonarola's attitude towards pagan religions involves detailed description and comparison of heathen philosophy, idolatry, astrology, heresy, Judaism, and Islamic to Christianity regarding Biblical doctrines.

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Research Purpose

As a great contributor to the development of the Church in Italy, Savonarola studied the religion in depth. His teachings went along way to influence the perception of people towards various religious groups. The purpose of this research paper is to examine in the depth the teachings of Savonarola on religion in specific reference to paganism.

Research question

To what extent did the teachings of Savonarola influenced his attitude towards viewing pagan religions as false and that were against the Scripture of the Christ?

Hypothesis

The hypothesis of the research is that, apart from Christianity, Savonarola viewed all other pagan religions including Judaism and Islamic as false religion that went against the true teachings of the Church.

Literature Review

Since the current research focus on book IV of The Triumph of the Cross by Savonarola in specific reference to his teachings and subsequent attitudes towards the pagan religions, the literature review will shallowly examine the religion in general. Savonarola came out in his book to strongly talk about religion in more detail through which he highlights essential ingredients with which religion should be practiced. Pagans are known to be the people who do not have religious beliefs or the religions they practice do not reflect the true teachings of the Church. Many researchers have come out to declare pagans as people who worship many gods different from the true God in heaven. Savonarola tends to borrow ideas of these researchers in his view of the religion and specifically the pagan religions. Savonarola, in the first place, acknowledges the discord that exists among men on what religion should entail. However, Savonarola takes a bold and robust decision on religion according to this book IV. He demonstrates that arguments favoring Christianity are much stronger than any other arguments that tend to support different beliefs besides Christianity. And this is the point at which Savonarola starts to draw his support towards what he describes as indubitably true religion. Thus, Savonarola stands against pagan religions and identifies Christianity as the only true religion and goes ahead to highlight various areas that support his position.

Results

Savonarola supports Christianity as a superior religion and dismisses all other religions as pagan intensely focusing on describing them as superstitions. The study identifies the six main pagan religions that Savonarola extensively discusses in his book, The Triumph of the Cross. The six religions include; idolatry, astrology, heathen philosophy, heresy, Mahometanism, and Judaism. In each of these false religions that Savonarola refers to, he tends to bring out discussions on the failures and negativities involved, which defines paganism. He uses this to dismiss these pagan religions as he continues to support Christianity. Throughout his book, Savonarola brings out pagan religions as senseless, whose beliefs are different from what Christianity entails. As Christianity recognizes one God, pagan religions tend to recognize many gods, and their practices do not offer solutions to the befalling of the people.

Discussion

Pagan Religions

Heaven philosophy regards salvation as exceedingly weak and insufficient since it is only guided by the use of the human reason light. Savonarola believes that heaven philosophy is a wrong religion since those that take the roles of lead men do not have an understanding of the real end of human life. The lead men lack the rules that guide the operation of their followers concerning their aspiration to the end of human life. The reason leading to lack of this knowledge is because the end of human life is beyond what human can reason. Savonarola finds this as a nuisance religion to an extent it could not define the means through which human could use to attain his end. Thus, heaven philosophers teaching on religion was out of nothing and fool ignorance, showed imperfection, erroneous, and uncertainty.

Savonarola position on pagan religions brings out the various perceptions about the end of human life and the need for religion to define human life. Heaven philosophers view the end of human life as a completion of the Divine things, and this tends to create confusion among the followers on what entails human life. Unlike what Christians believe about the end of human life, pagan religion, such as heaven philosophers, cannot strongly talk about their end with any certainty. Thus, the attitude that Savonarola holds up heaven philosophers is the confusion that they create among the followers and their uneasiness to pronounce the future with the fear that whatever they put across would be unproven which would lead to its unacceptability by the people. The question of the immortality of the soul has existed over a long time that the religion has tried to give out an answer. However, as Savonarola puts it in his book, Triumph of the Cross, philosophers have given various opinions on the immortality of the soul. They always engage in opinions that can never achieve a collective agreement. Thus, Savonarola has a feeling that various forms of pagan religions present perspectives that create confusion, hence do not portray any true religion the way Christianity does. He accuses philosophers of lack of agreement, especially on the question of the immortality of the soul.

Savonarola accuses the astrology, another pagan religion, for misleading on the causes of human affairs. The writer indicates that astrologers believe that the heavens and the stars the sky are the gods that control the affairs of human beings. Through this perception about the astrologers, it can be believed that Savonarola has a feeling that the astrologers worship the stars as their gods. Like what the forefathers did about worshipping of the sun and the stars, astrologers seem to follow suit. Savonarola dismisses this belief claiming the human being does thing based on the understanding and the will one develops towards doing something. By the astrology religion viewing human affairs as controlled by heaven and stars, Savonarola finds this teaching as having no value and dangerous. The fact that pagan religions subject human affairs as being controlled by other powers, these religions tend to disregard the power of God since the father of lies leads them. The minds of the pagans are corrupted in the way that it is difficult for them to do anything if they have not consulted heavens and the stars.

In what can be seen as Savonarola's position to pour cold water on the false religions, he states that he does intend to argue against the folly beliefs provided by any pagan religion. Instead, he moves to say that all proofs have indicated that any religion that worships heavenly bodies such as the stars should be taken as meaningless and superstitious. Various groups have come out to refute and demolish the astrologers' pretensions to powers of divination. They argue that those following astrologers should be considered unreasonable.

Savonarola also views pagan religions as being idolatry where they worship images of stones and woods which look like beasts and men. In his view, this contradicts Christianity as a true religion that demands only worshiping of God. Savonarola views such religion as foolish to an extent it honors things that are senseless and needs no confutation. He further rubbishes the argument by some men who want to excuse their folly claiming that they worship the gods found in images rather than the images themselves. He finds idolaters as people who wrongly worshiped idols, burning incense to seek the favor from idols as their true gods. According to what Savonarola view this, the way of worshiping images was a pure way to honor the idols themselves which were a representation of the evil spirits. The author finds these spirits worshiped by idolaters as evil since they never showed true religion to men even as they gave answers to those who questioned them frequently. Additionally, these spirits are evil as they never gave the true meaning of life to the men but instead, acted in controversy, where they deceived men, subverted all order, and usurped honoring God. They were the cause of the sin and the ignorance that the earth continues to experience preventing people from further knowledge of the true God.

It is the argument by Savonarola that good spirits cannot do any evil, expose people to suffering, or encourage hatred unlike what the pagans' spirit used to do. Pagan religions are the leading cause of the bad things happening around, as Savonarola mentions the war, sacrilege, incest, murder, and many crimes. The evil spirits in these religions have denied humanity an opportunity of getting what they desired, meaning, their work was to watch over the interests of humankind as guardians. This contradicts what God does to the Christians by needing nothing for his people and allows them to benefit from worshiping him. Thus, Savonarola blames the pagan religions for worshipping evil spirits that turn out to cause troubles on Earth. Their worshiping of the idols in the form of images is wrong as it deceives people and makes them stay away from worshiping the true God and religion.

Judaism

Savonarola's view of Judaism as a false religion is based on the beliefs the Jewish still hold about the light of natural reason that existed before the coming of Christ. Christ came on Earth to give supernatural light to humankind that had been blinded by sin. Instead, the Jewish and other groups of pagans used the knowledge about this light in the wrong way. According to Savonarola, the Judaism religion glorifies in the Old Testament; though they still strain to interpret and commit many errors. Judaism is a false religion in the sense that it still hopes that there is the Messiah who is yet to come. The Jewish never want to believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah had already come. The fact that the Jews keep on denying that Christianity is not the religion of God, which they still hold anyway, they are living in error, and Savonarola regards them as pagans.

The reason why the Savonarola finds Judaism a false religion is that the Jewish people are the same people that crucified Christ, the Messiah of Nazareth. They experienced how God spoke to them and Jesus ascending into heaven but do not agree the Messiah has already come. They were all aware that God was to send them a Saviour and a prophet who was great and all men were to listen to Him since God was speaking through Christ. The Jewish all knew about the race of Christ, the place of birth, and the time when He would come. Everything about the Christ, Messiah was in Mosaic Law, in the prophets, and Psalms. They were fully aware of what Jesus had to teach about,...