Savonarola's Revelations

Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498). Compendio di revelatione. Florence: Francesco Bonaccorsi, 18 August 1495. (06585)

Irreconcilable conflicts with the papacy and the Medici rulers of Florence led to Savonarola’s public execution as a heretic in 1498. In one of his principal works, the Compendio di revelatione, Savonarola claimed that his apocalyptic revelations were God’s call for the reform of the Church and the Florentine public. In one of his most remarkable prophecies the controversial Dominican described the triple-tiered Crown that the Virgin Mary would wear at the Last Judgment, bejeweled with emblems of her many virtues and heavenly attributes. Bridwell Library’s copy is one of the few that retains the original engraving of the Virgin’s Crown.