The Bonfire of the Vanities is the pyre in Florence’s main square in 1494 by which Savonarola’s followers sought to condemn art, grace and magic in all their forms.
| Type | Event |
| Date | 1494 |
| Place | Main square, Florence |
| Chronicle | Invisible Cities |
| Spanish entry | Hoguera de las Vanidades |
Events
On entering Florence one sees a crowd throwing works of art, fine furniture and delicate clothes to the ground and calling for fire, while the monk preaches forcefully from a pedestal; the Children of Savonarola led people to give up their goods. It is a program, not an excess, and the city split over it: when Cardinal Mateo passed on his way to the meeting that would discuss the monk’s separation, there were jibes with those who despised the bonfire.
It burned just as the ancient texts of Hermes Trismegistus — said to be as old as Moses, or older — had been newly translated, and as the sorcery of those books was practiced by the city’s most virtuous men, among them one who at first opposed the bonfire (Pico della Mirandola, the sorcerer on the other side of the pyre). Even a pilgrimage of virtue could be described as “halfway Savonarola”.