Dead birds, terrorists, Franciscans: it's 15th-century Florence all
over again
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1753655,00.html
The age of Savonarola and Machiavelli highlights the dangers of a
regime that asserts the supremacy of values or faith over politics
Simon Jenkins
Friday April 14, 2006
The Guardian
Good Friday, bad news. Savonarola is back in fashion. Church is
confused with state, faith with politics and children with original
sin. Worse, we are being sent signs. On the first day of November in
1494 a huge falcon swooped low over the Piazza Signoria in Florence. It
hurled itself against the door of the Palazzo Vecchio and dropped dead.
The friar, Girolamo Savonarola, immediately prophesied doom. Though the
citizens raced to defend the walls, Florence was visited by a plague
and conquered by King Charles of France. Savonarola thundered from his
cathedral pulpit, which enemies had smeared with excrement, that Italy
was lost to whoremongers, sodomites and bankers. It would be scourged
for eternity in the pits of hell.
Simon Jenkins
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/06a66466c3d35de1
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