100 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1123-1198.
both Abselard and Arnold to silence and seclusion in a con vent, 1140. Abyelard, weary of strife and life, submitted and retired to the convent of Cluiiy, where two years later he died in peace.1 But Arnold began in Paris a course of public lectures against the worldliness and immorality of the clergy. He exposed especially the avarice of the bishops. He also charged St. Bernard with unholy ambition and envy against scholars. Bernard called him a man whose speech was honey, whose doctrine was poison. At his request the king expelled Arnold from France.
Arnold fled to Zurich and was kindly received and pro tected by the papal legate, Cardinal Guido, his former fellowstudent in Paris.2 But Bernard pursued him even there and denounced him to the bishop of Constance.
After a few years of unknown exile, Arnold appeared in Rome as the leader of a political movement. Innocent II. had allowed him to return to Italy, Eugene III. had par doned him on condition of his doing penance in the holy places of Rome. But after the flight of this pope to France, Arnold preached again the doctrine of apostolic poverty, called the popes and cardinals Pharisees and scribes, and their church a house of merchandise and den of robbers. He was protected by the Roman senate, and idolized by the peo ple. The Romans had renounced the papal authority, expelled the pope, substituted a purely secular government after the ancient model, and invited Conrad III. to assume the role of Constantine I. or Justinian. They lost themselves in dreams
1 Tosti, in his Storia di Abelardo, Naples, 1851, says of Abselard that he had the courage of thought, but not the courage of action (il coraggio del pensiero non quello deW azione}.
2 This Guido was formerly identified with Guido of Castello who became Pope Coelestin II., Sept. 26, 1143, and ruled five months. But Giesebrecht and Gregorovius (IV. 455) distinguish the two. Francke exaggerates Arnold's influence upon Swiss liberty while at Zurich. Milman makes him a fore runner of Zwingli, who opposed the hierarchy ; but Zwingli knew little or nothing of Arnold, and had no idea of pauperizing the Church, or of a separa tion of Church and State.
§ 26. ARNOLD OF BKESCIA. 101
of government. The tradition of the old Roman rule con trolled the Middle Ages in various forms : it lived as a universal monarchy in the German Empire; as a universal theocracy in the papacy > as a short-lived republic in the Roman people. The modern Italians who oppose the tem poral power of the pope are more sensible : they simply claim the natural right of the Italian people to govern them selves, and they confine the dominion of Rome to Italy.
Arnold stepped out of the ecclesiastical into the political sphere, and surrounded the new republic with the halo of religion. He preached in his monastic gown, on the ruins of the Capitol, to the patres conscripti, and advised them to rebuild the Capitol, and to restore the old order of senators and knights. His emaciated face gave him a ghost-like appearance and deepened the effect of his eloquence.
But the republican experiment failed. The people were at last forced into submission by the interdict of Pope Adrian IV. Arnold was banished from Rome, 1154, and soon afterwards hanged by order of Emperor Frederick I., who hated democracy and republicanism. His body was burnt and his ashes were thrown into the Tiber, 1155, lest his admirers should worship his bones.1
Arnold's was a voice of protest against the secular aims of the papacy and the worldliness of the clergy which still has its hearers. " So obstinate is the ban of the Middle Ages un der which Rome is still held, "says Gregorovius," that the soul of a heretic of the twelfth century has not yet found rest, but must still haunt Rome." The Catholic Bishop Hefele refused to class him among " real heretics." 2 In 1883 Brescia raised a monument to its distinguished son.
The Arnoldists continued for some time to defend the doc-
1 According to a Brescian poem, Arnold refused to recant and made only the single request for time for prayer before dying. Gregorovius, IV. 545.
2 Unter die eigentlichen Heretiker. Hefele denies the errors ascribed to Arnold by Otto of Freising. Kirchengesch. 407.