Complete Works

Apuleius
Hie.
Alms
State of the soul
Double death

...the most benevolent grandfather of the magnanimous king and the illustrious virtues of the sick man demanded. To him, indeed, he was both very well known by reputation and joined by a certain familiarity; for he had been honorifically received by him in Gaul while he was visiting Paris. For truly, He who presented him, while he lived, as an object of admiration to the whole world and to many centuries, likewise decreed that his passing be celebrated as no less famous and unheard-of. Wherefore I think those things should be related at present which I drank in with my own ears while I was in Florence—whither I had betaken myself, though not in time, upon learning of his illness—in the sacred temple which is called Saint Reparata’s, hearing Girolamo Savonarola of Ferrara, of the Order of Preachers, a man most learned in theology and most illustrious in fame and renown for holiness, as he was delivering sacred sermons to the Florentine people.

But first, it is my intention to warn those ignorant of sacred letters in the words of Apuleius: lest with dull ears and an obstinate heart they think those things to be lies which seem new to the hearing, or strange to the sight, or words truly, certainly arduous and above the reach of thought; which, if they explore a little more deeply, they will find not only confirmed by evidence, but even most easy to have happened. He, then, declaiming from the pulpit, suggested to all who were present what I am about to say. “A secret must be revealed to you, O Florence, which is indeed as true as that proverb frequent among you, ‘the Gospel of John.’ I would certainly have kept silent, but I am compelled to speak, and He who is able to command me has ordered that I make these things public. Furthermore, I think there was none of you who did not know Giovanni Pico della Mirandola; he had been heaped with great benefits and great graces from God, and endowed with many-sided learning. To no mortal perhaps has so celebrated a genius fallen. The Church has suffered a great loss in him. I would judge that if a longer space of life had been granted to him, he would have excelled all who have died these eight hundred years past, on account of the monuments of writings he would have left behind. He was accustomed to frequent my company and reveal secrets from which I knew that he was being summoned by God through internal locutions to the religious life; wherefore, desiring to obey these inspirations, he had proposed more than once to comply. But, ungrateful for divine benefits, he either declined the labors when called while absent (for he was of a delicate temperament), or, thinking that religion stood in need of his works, he deferred it for a time—this, however, I say not as a certainty, but as conjectured and presumed by me. On account of this, I threatened him for two years with a scourge, if he should execute negligently the work that God had proposed for him to accomplish. I confess I asked God repeatedly that, having been struck a little, he might finally take up the way which had been shown to him from on high. I did not seek this by which he was struck; I had not thought this was decreed by God for that purpose: namely, that he should leave this life and lose a part of the illustrious crown prepared in heaven, and not fully attain that fame and celebrity of name which he would have had to the highest degree if he had lived. But the most kind Judge bore Himself most mercifully toward him. Yet on account of the large alms bestowed upon the poor with a most lavish hand, and the prayers which were most insistently poured out to God, it has been brought about that his soul does not yet exult in the heavens of the supernal Father’s bosom, nor, consigned to the lower regions, is it tortured by perpetual torments; but, committed for a time to the fire of purgatory, it pays temporary penalties. Which thing I have said most willingly in this place so that those who knew him, and especially those who were heaped with his benefits, may help him with their suffrages.”

These and many other things the man of God asserted with a clear voice; but adding that it was not hidden from him that, on account of lies of this kind, if any were mixed in, the preachers of the word of God were made worthy of eternal punishment; and also adding that for some days these things had been known to him in their entirety. But on account of the words which the sick man had affirmed the Virgin said to him, he had stood wavering and had long feared lest he had been deluded by the works of demons, since by his death the promise of the rods was frustrated. Nevertheless, it became known to him that the deceased had been deceived by the equivocation of death, since she spoke of the second and...