Fra Domenico of San Marco

Fra Domenico belongs to the inner circle of San Marco, one of those followers whose devotion to Fra Girolamo is so complete that it becomes a kind of second self. Where Savonarola calculates and withdraws, Domenico volunteers — stepping forward for the ordeal by fire when no one else will, exposing the gap between the prophet's caution and his disciple's zeal. He matters because his willingness to die for a contested truth throws the whole question of faith and fraud into the open, and because his fate shadows the novel's turn from reformist hope to public degradation.