"A Stagnant Replica of the Real World"

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part I

Spurned by his first love and finding the world a place where "all vices are lauded and all virtues derided," the wealthy youth Savonarola seeks the "slow immersion into death" of the cloister.

Instead he finds "a small stagnant replica of the real world without," rife with politics, self-indulgence, and careerism. "The entire edifice was rotten with a ramifying network of decay. He saw the issue with the absolute insight of innocent youth, and it affected him like a personal injury."

Roeder later describes resentment of Savonarola by a young sonnambulist monk who ("mischievous as a monkey") plays pranks in his pretended unconscious ramblings and claims religious visions. He becomes jealous when Savonarola, who had dismissed the younger monk's visions, begins to report his own far more stern prophesies.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry