He was one of the few people to speak out early on against Medici corruption and the Medici's subversion of democratic institutions like the Great Council. When the ruling Medicis fell from power, Savonarola actually led the movement to empower the parliament, called the Great Council, which led the city under the oversight of the emerging Florentine middle-class for almost twenty years until the restoration of the monarchy. "Savonarola's followers often referred to the new hall of the Great Council as 'the Hall of Christ' (sala di Cristo), and they occasionally spoke of 'holy liberty' even when serving in office" (Martines 141). Martines stresses that, for all of his flaws, the friar was more interested in enforcing what he saw as the truth, rather than gaining power for his own use. In this age, republicanism and religious fundamentalism were not at odds, as they are often seen in the contemporary political scene. Rather it was the more secular Medicis that had taken the teeth out of the people's voice in government. "Hurrah for Christ our King" along with "Jesus King of Florence" became the watchwords of the day, when Savonarola was at his most popular (Martines 141).

Florence, in a word, was haunted by rising taxes, famine, war, unemployment, disease, and severe political strains...Savonarola's solution was to call for repentance, for more prayer, faith, charity, generosity from the rich, and commitment to the Great Council," and more controversially, for the French king Charles VIII to become another Cyrus and establish a moral empire, of which Florence would be a critical part (Martines 148).

Savonarola thus praised what the cleansing force of the invading French Charles VIII, which he thought would expunge the influence of the corrupt papacy.

Savonarola eventually fell afoul of Pope Alexander VI, which combined...

Still, when he still commanded the respect of most Florentines, Savonarola was considered a powerful preacher and inspired great devotion amongst a diversity of followers, as well hatred in the heart of his many detractors. Others were frightened to speak out as he did, Martines implies, with good reason -- there were plots to blow up the cathedrals where he spoke, left dead animals in his pulpit and even drove nails where he spoke (Martines 1-2). He had, if nothing else, the courage of his convictions.
Martines does not excuse Savonarola's fanaticism, rather he connects it to the fanaticism of our time, and how despair about larger institutional issues often causes people to focus on reforming something they can control, namely morality. He also points out how Savonarola linked morality to democracy. His work is not so much a biography of the friar as it is a biography of the city of Florence, and the conflicts between the Italian city-states, the European powers, and the powerful political families and factions within the Roman Catholic Church. Other than his first anecdote about Savonarola's opponents desiring to use explosives while he preached in the church (which they mercifully desisted from, given that innocents might be hurt in what would be the first terrorist attack in history, perhaps) Savonarola does not make his appearance in the text until relatively late in the narrative. Instead, the back-story of Flounce is provided, which is necessary to understand what Savonarola meant historically, and why his ideology filled such a visceral need in the hearts of his followers. It also brings needed complexity to how fundamentalism functioned as a vehicle of republicanism, even while the friar burned art and made sodomy a crime punishable by death.