SEE ALSO Borgias Home | Borgia Characters | Borgias Historical Profiles
 Girolamo Savonarola | as played by Steven Berkoff |
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| “I see castles aflame. I see city streets running with blood. I see the bloated body of the Borgia pope, blackened by syphilis, lying dead in St. Peter’s. No one dares approach it. Are you the one to bring on this apocalypse? Are you the cleric in red?” | ||||||||
 | GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA PREVIOUS SEASONS |
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| Season One |
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| One of the most interesting and lively antagonists of the Borgia family, Girolamo Savonarola was as large a personality as he was in history. He is first seen preaching his Hellfire and brimstone as another Borgia antagonist, Cardinal Della Rovere, wanders in his self-exile in order to find allies to depose the Borgia pope. While his intentions are noble--albeit colored by a touch of delusion--it is clear that his power over the people of Florence grows cult-like, as more and more people are brianwashed by his charisma and earnestness as having received his visions and prophecies from God Himself. He incites the people to do his bidding: God's Children, Savonarola's "angels" (or vermin, as Machiavelli calls them), walk the streets of Florence singing and marking doors of the vain with chalk crosses if they do not give up their vanities for the fire in the square; other followers are incited to stone homosexual men labelled "sodomites"; and most of his followers have given up their money and possessions to live a more "holy" and spiritual life with the idea that only those who do so will enter Heaven and the rest who choose to remain in any mode of comfort or finery will go to Hell. The biggest people condemned to damnation are the rich (like the Medicis) and the Pope of Rome, whose decadence and hedonism Savonarola finds most contemptible. He repeatedly rebuffs papal orders sent to him by Cardinal Cesare Borgia and scorns an offer to sit in consistory in Rome as a cardinal from Cardinal Sforza. And while his intentions are guided by righteousness, Savonarola is not above murder. Once Cardinal Della Rovere joins a Dominican order, Savonarola gives him his blessing to kill Pope Alexander VI. At the height of his popularity with the people, he is taken down by his hubris and noneother than a Borgia: Cardinal Cesare Borgia. Once he has fallen, he faces a fate just as fiery as his personality. |
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| Family members: None Romance(s): None Friends: None Enemies: Rodrigo Borgia/Pope Alexander VI, Piero de Medici/the Medicis of Florence, Niccolo Machiavelli, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, sodomites | Allies:God's Children, other Florentine followers, and Cardinal Giuliano Della Rovere Marriage(s): None Victim(s): The people of Florence who suffered at his word, himself | |||
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| How does (Character name) in The Borgias compare to actual history? Compare the facts with the fiction below! | ||||
| ON THE BORGIAS... | IN HISTORY... | |||
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