Hello, and welcome to Epoch's. Last time I said once I'd finished speaking to you all about the life of Leonardo and Michael Angelo, I'll do a whistle stop tour of the entire Medici family about 300 years worth of history, and I will do but before I do there's one other very very interesting life

that I wanted to talk to you all about and that is the life of

Giralamo Savonarola, a firebrand monk of Florence.

And I wanted to talk to you all about that just because it's a really important interregnum in the story of the

Madici, an interruption, one of the few interruptions actually, in the rule of the

Madici family in Florence. This one is particularly interesting, I think, the highs and

lows. So if you'll allow me, I'll tell you about the rise and fall of

Savonarola. So first of all let me take you to a moment in time the 7th of

February 1497 late afternoon early, in the main square of Florence, the Piazza della Signoria.

And there was constructed a giant bonfire, 60 feet higher by all accounts,

over 200 feet long 60 feet higher.

The giant, giant fire. And the people of Florence, bear in mind, that's where the Renaissance itself had

flourished, the home, the seat of great works of art, of opulence, and the rebirth of classicism, the

rebirth of really what artistic taste really means. The people there were

throwing on this bonfire, great works of art, great busts,

drawings by Michelangelo and Leonardo, paintings by Botachelli, all sorts of things, all their fineries, were being thrown on this

fire and burnt to Sinders, and overlooking it all was the fiery monk

so von Arola, you can only imagine he was smiling,

perhaps maniacally laughing, we don't know if he was doing that,

rubbing his hands in glee, and because it was exactly what he wanted to

see. Now only a few years later the people of France decided to change their minds again. They

went back to how they were before.

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