THE GRINCH WHO STOLE CARNIVAL AND THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES

Girolamo Savonarola, the monk and preacher active in Renaissance Florence, celebrated the Carnival of 1497 by the famous "Bonfire of the Vanities" (Carnival masks and costumes, indecent books and pictures, etc.) in Piazza della Signoria. A Venetian merchant is known to have bid 22,000 gold forms for the doomed vanities, but the scandalized authorities not only rejected his offer but added his portrait to the pile (more)