98 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1123-1198.
rist and infant baptism; but his views on these sacraments are not known.1
With this ecclesiastical scheme he combined a political one. He identified himself with the movement of the Romans to emancipate themselves from the papal authority, and to restore the ancient republic. By giving all earthly power to the laity, he secured the favor of the laity, but lost the influence of the clergy. It was the political complication which caused his ruin.
Arnold was a native of Brescia in Lombardy, and an or dained reader in the Church. He was a pupil of Abselard, and called armor-bearer to this Goliath.2 He sympathized with his spirit of independence and hostility to Church authority, and in ay have been influenced also (as Neander assumes) by the ethical principles of that magnetic teacher. He certainly, at a later period, sided with him against St. Bernard, who became his bitter enemy. But with the excep tion of the common opposition to the hierarchy, they differed very widely. Abielard was a philosopher, Arnold, a politician; Akelard, a speculative thinker, Arnold, a practical preacher; Abrelard, a rationalist, Arnold, an enthusiast. The former undermined the traditional orthodoxy, the latter attacked the morals of the clergy and the temporal power of the Church. Arnold was far below Abselard in intellectual endowment, but far more dangerous in the practical drift of his teaching, which tended to pauperize the Church and to revolutionize society. Baronius calls him " the father of political heresies."
In his ascetic zeal for the moral reform of the clergy,
1 Von Freising : " Prceter hcec [his views on Church property] de sacramento altaris, et baptismo parvulorum non sane dicitur sensisse." Some Baptists claim him for his supposed rejection of infant baptism. The at tempts to bring him into contact with the Waldenses (who are of later date) have no foundation.
2 Freising : " Arnaldusiste ft Italia, civitatc Brixia oriundus, ejusdemque ecclesice clericus ac tantum lector ordinatus, Petrum Abailardum olim prceceptorem habucrat." St. Bernard seems to place the acquaintance at a later period : » Execratus a Petro apostolo, adhceserat Petro Abailardo."
§ 26. ARNOLD OF BRESCIA. 99
Arnold was in sympathy with the Hildebrandian party, but in his views of the temporal power of the pope, he went to the opposite extreme. Hildebrand aimed at the theocratic supremacy of the Church over the State ; Arnold sought the welfare of the Church in her complete separation from the State and of the clerical office from secular entanglements. Pascal II., we may say, had prepared the way for this theory when he was willing to sacrifice the investiture to the em peror. The Hildebrandian reform had nearly passed away, and the old corruptions reappeared. The temporal power of the Church promoted the worldliness of the clergy. The author of the Historia Pontificalis says that Arnold's doctrine agreed with the Gospel, but stood in crying contrast with the actual condition of things. St. Bernard, his opponent, was as much opposed as he to the splendor and luxury of bishops, the secular cares of the popes, and expressed a wish that he might see the day when " the Church, as in olden times, should cast her net for souls, and not for money."1 All the monastic orders protested against the worldliness of the Church, and realized the principle of apostolic poverty within the wall of convents. But Arnold extended it to the secu lar clergy as well, and even went so far as to make poverty a condition of salvation for priests and monks.2
Arnold's sermons gained great popular applause in Lombardy, and caused bitter disputes between the people and the bishop of Brescia. He was charged before the Lateran Synod of 1139 with inciting the laity against the clergy, was deposed as a schismatic (not as a heretic), commanded to be silent, and was expelled from Italy.
He went again to France and was entangled in the contro versy of Abselard with Bernard. Pope Innocent condemned
1 Epist., 238 ad Eugen. III.
2 Ottov. Freising, I.e. : " Dicebat, nee Clericos proprietatem, necEpiscopos regalia, nee monachos possessiones habentes aliqua rations salvari posse. Cuncta hcec Principis esse, ab ejusque beneficentia in usum tantum laicorum cedere opportere. "