Vanities, Bonfires and Popular Religious Culture in Florence

Bill Craven

Abstract

Near the end of the fifteenth century in Florence, in successive years, objects described as 'vanities' were burnt on large public bonfires. The festivities were organised by supporters of the popular Dominican preacher Savonarola. These incidents have often been seen as reactionary destructiveness aimed at the worldliness of Renaissance culture. An examination of contemporary accounts reveals, however, an interesting and sometimes enigmatic array of items chosen for burning. They included some categories that would not have been surprising to bystanders at the time: depictions and writings considered indecent, women's cosmetics, gamblers' cards and dice, accessories used in celebrating the Devil's own festival of Carnival. Why some other objects were included, notably chess sets and musical instruments, is a question not easily answered. Attempting to account for the presence of these 'vanities' does, however, open up an exploration of some interesting aspects of Florentine popular religious culture.

Addendum

Since the book was published, Bill Craven has consulted with colleagues on the subject of medieval chess, and wishes to add the following addendum to his article on this aspect:

Thanks to my former colleagues Mr D.W.A. Baker and Dr Thomas Mautner, both, like myself at the time, Visiting Fellows in the Faculty of Arts, I realise that I should not have been surprised to find chess sets so prominent among the gambling implements on the Bonfires of Vanities. Mr Baker and Dr Mautner referred me to H.J.R. Murray's monumental work A History of Chess (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1913, reprinted 1962).

Murray noted that chess, like other games played in the Middle Ages, was usually played for a stake. It was so usual, in fact, that the absence of a stake occasioned comment (pp 474-475). Since it was a game of the upper classes, it could be inferred that stakes would be substantial, and Murray mentions town statutes that sought to impose limits on their size (p. 440).

Furthermore, in the medieval form of chess, dice were often used to quicken the slow pace of the game. A letter of Peter Damiani, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, written in late 1061 or early 1062, recounts how another bishop was persuaded and brought to penitence by his argument that a canonical prohibition against dice included chess. In the same letter Damiani referred to "the vanity of chess" (pp 408-410, Latin text pp 414-15).

Murray's survey gives prominence to another relevant aspect of the history of chess, a development he calls "the great reform of the fifteenth century". It was precisely towards the end of the fifteenth century that the modern form of chess was rapidly displacing traditional forms (Chapter XI, especially pp 776-779.) Ironically, these changes to the game remedied the slow pace that had prompted the use of dice. Murray also remarks that Italy was the main centre of chess activity in that century.

There were other strands, however, in the web of associations surrounding the game. Moralists and preachers had long since exploited interest in the game. A Lombard Dominican, Jacobus de Cessolis, had composed an enormously popular moralising treatise on the traditional game in the latter half of the thirteenth century. Numerous vernacular translations were made from the Latin original, and an Italian translation was printed in Florence in 1493, while Savonarola was preaching the coming retribution.

The chess sets handed over for the Bonfires carried, like many of the other objects, complex and interesting layers of meanings.

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