In 2009 at least nine million people were displaced from their homes and communities owing to religious intolerance.
– Harper’s Magazine , November 2009
Fanatics is a work of fiction. Except those noted below, all happenings and characters are imaginary.
The events in the life of Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498), as described in Fanatics, conform to the historical record. The manner of his death follows eyewitness accounts.
The “Severn Eleven” incident is very loosely based on the activities of the actual “Toronto 18,” who trained in a rural area near Orillia, Ontario, planned several terrorist attacks in the Toronto area, and were arrested in June 2006 and charged with various crimes under the Anti-Terrorism Act. As of this writing, a number have been convicted.
I found the following books useful in my research:
Seward, D. The Burning of the Vanities: Savonarola and the Borgia Pope. Sutton Publishing, 2006.
Martines, L. Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.