Savonarola Versified

As I’ve noted before, Beza includes tributes to some non-/proto-Protestants in his Icones. One of those is Girolamo Savonarola, a Florentine Dominican friar hanged and burned in the Piazza della Signoria in 1498.

After a brief section in prose, Beza appends a verse-eulogy by Marcantonio Flaminio (interestingly; since generally Beza uses his own poems): singularis tuae pietatis…quam merito postea Marcus Antonius Flaminius, excellentissimus poeta, versibus istis optimis celebravit.

The short poem consists of two elegiac couplets, and includes a nice example of personification.

Dum fera flamma tuos, Hieronyme, pascitur artus,

Relligio sanctas dilaniata comas,

Flevit, et o, dixit, crudeles parcite flammae,

Parcite, sunt isto viscera nostra rogo.¹

While the savage flame fed on your limbs, Girolamo,

Religion tore her holy hair

and wept; she said, “Spare [him], o cruel flames,

spare [him]: it is my heart on that pyre.”²

1. The “embracing” word-order is effective here: the pyre “surrounds” and engulfs the viscera.
2. The translation is my own.