History has recast the 15th century Florentine monk Girolamo Savonarola as a rabble-rousing zealot lording over the “bonfire of the vanities”; yet this so-called --mainly because he directed his censure at the church--was a crusader for austerity and thus a check on a papacy that had run a course of profligacy.
ascetic
nonpartisan
heretic
martyr
libertine
