Which Dominican friar led Florence’s Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497?

Girolamo Savonarola led Florence’s Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497.

Savonarola was a Dominican friar who became the most powerful religious and political voice in Florence after the Medici were expelled in 1494. He preached against luxury, corruption, gambling, immodest clothing, and what he considered immoral art and books.

On Shrove Tuesday, 7 February 1497, his supporters collected objects associated with vanity and burned them in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria. The items reportedly included cosmetics, fine clothing, gaming equipment, musical instruments, and some artworks. A larger bonfire followed in 1498.

Savonarola’s influence soon collapsed. Pope Alexander VI excommunicated him in 1497, and Florence’s government arrested him in 1498. He was executed in the Piazza della Signoria that same year. The bonfires are often remembered as an extreme episode in the religious and political tensions of Renaissance Florence, not as a general rejection of Renaissance culture.