That the best show in town could be a preacher in his pulpit may be a claim that challenges and sorely stretches our historical imaginations, if not our credulity, for it is not what comes to mind when we daydream of Florence in its Renaissance or of the enduring legacy of the culture of Renaissance Italy. If we stand back, however, and let the people of the Renaissance period speak in their own terms, they tell how the preacher was fundamental to their normal daily experience of life. Even a sophisticated bibliophile, historian, and social critic like Poggio Bracciolini, papal secretary and eventual chancellor of Florence, could not persuade himself to stay away when the preachers of repentance came to town (fig. 1):

Several times I went to listen to them myself, for amusement; and I heard them saying things that could cause even the most austere and formal man to burst out laughing. Now they shake themselves hurriedly, as though they are about to jump down from the pulpit; now they shout at the tops of their voices and [now] speak softly; now and again they forcefully bang their hands on the wood; at times they even laugh. In short, they assume many diverse modes of reproach in order to be seen as a new Proteus. Indeed, they resemble apes more than preachers. 1