Heresy found fertile soil wherever the Church was corrupt. This was due to the fact that a corrupt Church does not do its duty in fighting heresy, while its abuses discredit it in the eyes of the average man. Savonarola, the great Dominican reformer, was disgusted by the corruption of his own day, not just within the Church but in the life of the State. His brief period as spiritual "dictator" of the Florentine Republic placed him on a collision course with the Papacy and the Medici Family, leading to his doom. Mr. Michael Davies provides a sympathetic critique of this deeply serious, though overly zealous and eventually apocalyptic-minded reformer. Taken from: Christianity in the Late Middle Ages-Early Renaissance - 1996 Von Hildebrand Institute