Infelix ego

Penitential Psalm 51 (50 in the Septuagint numbering), the Miserere, provided the inspiration for his long and impassioned cry for mercy, a document which was to become highly influential in the years before the Reformation, especially in music history.

After their crimes were read to them, they were hanged in chains, and then burned, with the ashes being hurled into the Arno so that no relics would be recoverable by the crowds of the fanatical reformer's former supporters.

God alone therefore is my refuge ...[3]Infelix ego and its incomplete companion work Tristitia obsedit me spread quickly throughout Europe after Savonarola's execution.

Savonarola's psalm meditations were among the few works of his not to be placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Church's list of banned books, by Pope Paul IV in 1559, during the height of the Counter-Reformation.

While the Dominican order was successful in preventing all of Savonarola's works being placed on the Index, the Church was able to shut down all printing of them in Italy after 1559, including Infelix ego.

Another composer who used a similar allusive technique was Lupus Hellinck, who wrote at least three compositions inspired by Savonarola, including two Miserere settings, both of which allude to the Josquin version, and one of which was itself used by French Protestant composer Claude Le Jeune for his own direct setting of Savonarola's other prison meditation, Tristitia obsedit me.