Am I the only person who didn’t know this? The origin of the phrase “bonfire of the vanities?” WOW I just learned something so interesting. I’m watching a PBS series (Empires: The Medici, Godfathers of the Renaissance); it’s a period I’ve always been fascinated by. I got kind of fixated on Michelangelo as a young girl and read everything I could get my hands on about him. Collected giant art books of his paintings. Etc. It’s truly an amazing period – Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Dante for heaven’s sake, Galileo (for a different kind of heaven’s sake). What an amazing time and place to live.

Savonarola - executed in 1498. Good riddance.

But when Lorenzo (“The Magnificent”) Medici died, this crazy monk Savonarola took over. He’d foreseen damnation and downfall from the indulgent and decadent lifestyle the Medicis brought to Florence, so at Lorenzo’s death Savonarola took over. He had the gay people burned to death. Prostitutes were savagely beaten. And one night, in 1497, he created an enormous bonfire and everyone had to bring their jewels, their make-up, their paintings (Botticelli threw his on the flames), everything Savonarola deemed decadent. It was such a big thing, it was called the bonfire of the vanities.

I had no idea – I thought it was just the cool title of a Tom Wolfe book (and title of a really terrible movie).

If you have Netflix, you can watch the series on streaming – it’s a great program, highly recommended. (And good if you want to get some knitting done at the same time!)