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by St. Bernard.

Eugenius the Third, St. Bernard, with the sharpness of his wit and Character of zeal, has stigmatised the vices of the rebellious people." "Who is ignorant," says the monk of Clairvaux, "of the "vanity and arrogance of the Romans? a nation nursed in "sedition, cruel, untractable, and scorning to obey, unless they are too "feeble to resist. When they promise to serve, they aspire to reign; "if they swear allegiance, they watch the opportunity of revolt; yet "they vent their discontent in loud clamours if your doors or your "counsels are shut against them. Dexterous in mischief, they have "never learnt the science of doing good. Odious to earth and "heaven, impious to God, seditious among themselves, jealous of their "neighbours, inhuman to strangers, they love no one, by no one are "they beloved; and while they wish to inspire fear, they live in base "and continual apprehension. They will not submit: they know not "how to govern; faithless to their superiors, intolerable to their "equals, ungrateful to their benefactors, and alike impudent in their "demands and their refusals. Lofty in promise, poor in execution: "adulation and calumny, perfidy and treason, are the familiar arts of "their policy." Surely this dark portrait is not coloured by the pencil of Christian charity; yet the features, however harsh and ugly, express a lively resemblance of the Romans of the twelfth century.18

Political

Arnold of

Brescia,
A.D. 1140.

17

The Jews had rejected the Christ when he appeared among them in a plebeian character; and the Romans might plead their heresy of ignorance of his vicar when he assumed the pomp and pride of a temporal sovereign. In the busy age of the crusades some sparks of curiosity and reason were rekindled in the Western world: the heresy of Bulgaria, the Paulician sect, was successfully transplanted into the soil of Italy and France; the Gnostic visions were mingled with the simplicity of the Gospel; and the enemies of the clergy reconciled their passions with their conscience, the desire of freedom with the profession of piety.19 The trumpet of

16 Quid tam notum seculis quam protervia et cervicositas Romanorum? Gens in sueta paci, tumultui assueta, gens immitis et intractabilis usque adhuc, subdi nescia, nisi cum non valet resistere (de Considerat. 1. iv. c. 2, p. 441). The saint takes breath, and then begins again: Hi, invisi terræ et cœlo, utrique injecere manus, &c. (p. 443).

17 As a Roman citizen, Petrarch takes leave to observe that Bernard, though a saint, was a man; that he might be provoked by resentment, and possibly repent of his hasty passion, &c. (Mémoires sur la Vie de Pétrarque, tom. i. p. 330.)

18 Baronius, in his index to the xiith volume of his Annals, has found a fair and easy excuse. He makes two heads, of Romani Catholici and Schismatici: to the former he applies all the good, to the latter all the evil, that is told of the city.

19 The heresies of the xiith century may be found in Mosheim (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 419-427), who entertains a favourable opinion of Arnold of Brescia. In the viith volume I have described the sect of the Paulicians, and followed their migration from Armenia to Thrace and Bulgaria, Italy and France,

Roman liberty was first sounded by Arnold of Brescia,20 whose promotion in the church was confined to the lowest rank, and who wore the monastic habit rather as a garb of poverty than as a uniform of obedience. His adversaries could not deny the wit and eloquence which they severely felt: they confess with reluctance the specious purity of his morals; and his errors were recommended to the public by a mixture of important and beneficial truths. In his theological studies he had been the disciple of the famous and unfortunate Abelard,21 who was likewise involved in the suspicion of heresy: but the lover of Eloisa was of a soft and flexible nature; and his ecclesiastic judges were edified and disarmed by the humility of his repentance. From this master Arnold most probably imbibed some metaphysical definitions of the Trinity, repugnant to the taste of the times: his ideas of baptism and the eucharist are loosely censured; but a political heresy was the source of his fame and misfortunes. He presumed to quote the declaration of Christ, that his kingdom is not of this world: he boldly maintained that the sword and the sceptre were intrusted to the civil magistrate; that temporal honours and possessions were lawfully vested in secular persons; that the abbots, the bishops, and the pope himself, must renounce either their state or their salvation; and that, after the loss of their revenues, the voluntary tithes and oblations of the faithful would suffice, not indeed for luxury and avarice, but for a frugal life in the exercise of spiritual labours. During a short time the preacher was revered as a patriot; and the discontent, or revolt, of Brescia against her bishop, was the first fruits of his dangerous lessons. But the favour of the people is less per manent than the resentment of the priest; and after the heresy of Arnold had been condemned by Innocent the Second,22 in the general council of the Lateran, the magistrates themselves were urged by

The original pictures of Arnold of Brescia are drawn by Otho bishop of Frisingen (Chron. 1. vii. c. 31, de Gestis Frederici I. 1. i. c. 27, 1. ii. c. 21), and in the iiid book of the Ligurinus, a poem of Gunther, who flourished A.D. 1200, in the monastery of Paris near Basil (Fabric. Biblioth. Latin. med. et infimæ Etatis, tom. iii. p. 174, 175). The long passage that relates to Arnold is produced by Guilliman (de Rebus Helveticis, 1. iii. c. 5, p. 108).*

The wicked wit of Bayle was amused in composing, with much levity and learning, the articles of ABELARD, FOULQUES, HELOISE, in his Dictionnaire Critique. The dispute of Abelard and St. Bernard, of scholastic and positive divinity, is well understood by Mosheim (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 412-415).

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Præsule, qui numeros vetitum contingere nostros
Nomen ab innocuâ ducit laudabile vitâ.

We may applaud the dexterity and correctness of Ligurinus, who turns the unpoeticas name of Innocent II. into a compliment.

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• Compare Franke, Arnold von Brescia und seine Zeit. Zürich, 1825.-M.

prejudice and fear to execute the sentence of the church. Italy could no longer afford a refuge; and the disciple of Abelard escaped beyond the Alps, till he found a safe and hospitable shelter in Zürich, now the first of the Swiss cantons. From a Roman station,23 a royal villa, a chapter of noble virgins, Zürich had gradually increased to a free and flourishing city; where the appeals of the Milanese were sometimes tried by the Imperial commissaries.24 In an age less ripe for reformation the precursor of Zuinglius was heard with applause: a brave and simple people imbibed, and long retained, the colour of his opinions; and his art, or merit, seduced the bishop of Constance, and even the pope's legate, who forgot, for his sake, the interest of their master and their order. Their tardy zeal was quickened by the fierce exhortations of St. Bernard; 25 and the enemy of the church was driven by persecution to the desperate measure of erecting his standard in Rome itself, in the face of the successor of St. Peter.

the Romans to restore

A.D.

Yet the courage of Arnold was not devoid of discretion: he was He exhorts protected, and had perhaps been invited, by the nobles and people; and in the service of freedom his eloquence thunthe republic, dered over the seven hills. Blending in the same discourse 1144-1154. the texts of Livy and St. Paul, uniting the motives of Gospel and of classic enthusiasm, he admonished the Romans how strangely their patience and the vices of the clergy had degenerated from the primitive times of the church and the city. He exhorted them to assert the inalienable rights of men and Christians; to restore the laws and magistrates of the republic; to respect the name of the emperor; but to confine their shepherd to the spiritual government of his flock.26 Nor could his spiritual government escape the censure

23 A Roman inscription of Statio Turicensis has been found at Zürich (D'Anville, Notice de l'Ancienne Gaul, p. 642-644); but it is without sufficient warrant that the city and canton have usurped, and even monopolised, the names of Tigurum and Pagus Tigurinus.

24 Guilliman (de Rebus Helveticis, 1. iii. c. 5, p. 106) recapitulates the donation (A.D. 833) of the emperor Lewis the Pious to his daughter the Abbess Hildegardis. Curtim nostram Turegum in ducatû Alamanniæ in pago Durgaugensi, with villages, woods, meadows, waters, slaves, churches, &c.-a noble gift. Charles the Bald gave the jus monetæ, the city was walled under Otho I., and the line of the bishop of Frisingen,

Nobile Turegum multarum copiâ rerum,

is repeated with pleasure by the antiquaries of Zürich.

25 Bernard, Epistol. cxcv. cxcvi. tom. i. p. 187-190. Amidst his invectives he drops a precious acknowledgment, qui, utinam quam sanæ esset doctrinæ quam districtæ est vitæ. He owns that _Arnold would be a valuable acquisition for the church.

26 He advised the Romans,

Consiliis armisque sua moderamina summa
Arbitrio tractare suo: nil juris in hâc re
Pontifici summo, modicum concedere regi
Suadebat populo. Sic læsâ stultus utrâque

Majestate, reum gemine se fecerat aulæ.

Nor is the poetry of unther different from the prose of Othe

and control of the reformer; and the inferior clergy were taught by his lessons to resist the cardinals, who had usurped a despotic command over the twenty-eight regions or parishes of Rome.27 The revolution was not accomplished without rapine and violence, the effusion of blood and the demolition of houses: the victorious faction was enriched with the spoils of the clergy and the adverse nobles. Arnold of Brescia enjoyed, or deplored, the effects of his mission : his reign continued above ten years, while two popes, Innocent the Second and Anastasius the Fourth, either trembled in the Vatican or wandered as exiles in the adjacent cities. They were succeeded by a more vigorous and fortunate pontiff, Adrian the Fourth,28 the only Englishman who has ascended the throne of St. Peter; and whose merit emerged from the mean condition of a monk, and almost a beggar, in the monastery of St. Albans. On the first provocation, of a cardinal killed or wounded in the streets, he cast an interdict on the guilty people and from Christmas to Easter Rome was deprived of the real or imaginary comforts of religious worship. The Romans had despised their temporal prince; they submitted with grief and terror to the censures of their spiritual father: their guilt was expiated by penance, and the banishment of the seditious preacher was the price of their absolution. But the revenge of Adrian was yet unsatisfied, and the approaching coronation of Frederic Barbarossa was fatal to the bold reformer, who had offended, though not in an equal degree, the heads of the church and state. In their interview at Viterbo, the pope represented to the emperor the furious, ungovernable spirit of the Romans: the insults, the injuries, the fears, to which his person and his clergy were continually exposed; and the pernicious tendency of the heresy of Arnold, which must subvert the principles of civil, as well as ecclesiastical, subordination. Frederic was convinced by these arguments, or tempted by the desire of the Imperial crown; in the balance of ambition the innocence or life of an individual is of small account; and their common enemy was sacrificed to a moment of political concord. After his retreat from Rome, Arnold had been protected by the viscounts of Campania, from whom he was extorted by the power of Cæsar: the præfect of the city pronounced his sentence: the martyr of freedom was burnt alive in the His execupresence of a careless and ungrateful people; and his ashes tion, were cast into the Tiber, lest the heretics should collect and

A.D. 1155.

27 See Baronius (A.D. 1148, No. 38, 39) from the Vatican MSS. He loudly condemns Arnold (A.D. 1141, No. 3) as the father of the political heretics, whose influence then hurt him in France.

"The English reader may consult the Biographia Britannica, ADRIAN IV.; but cu own writers have added nothing to the fame or merits of their countryman.

29

worship the relics of their master. The clergy triumphed in his death with his ashes his sect was dispersed; his memory still lived in the minds of the Romans. From his school they had probably derived a new article of faith, that the metropolis of the Catholic church is exempt from the penalties of excommunication and interdict. Their bishops might argue that the supreme jurisdiction, which they exercised over kings and nations, more specially embraced the city and diocese of the prince of the apostles. But they preached to the winds, and the same principle that weakened the effect, must temper the abuse, of the thunders of the Vatican.

Restoration of the senate, A.D. 1144.

The love of ancient freedom has encouraged a belief that as early as the tenth century, in their first struggles against the Saxon Othos, the commonwealth was vindicated and restored by the senate and people of Rome; that two consuls were annually elected among the nobles, and that ten or twelve plebeian magistrates revived the name and office of the tribunes of the commons.30 But this venerable structure disappears before the light of criticism. In the darkness of the middle ages the appellations of senators, of consuls, of the sons of consuls, may sometimes be discovered. They were bestowed by the emperors, or assumed by the most powerful citizens, to denote their rank, their honours, and perhaps the claim of a pure and patrician descent: but they float on the surface, without a series or a substance, the titles of men, not the orders of government; 33 and it is only from the year of Christ one

31

32

29 Besides the historian and poet already quoted, the last adventures of Arnold are related by the biographer of Adrian IV. (Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. iii. P. i. p. 441, 442.)

30 Ducange (Gloss. Latinitatis mediæ et infimæ Etatis, DECARCHONES, tom. ii. p. 726) gives me a quotation from Blondus (Decad. ii. 1. ii.): Duo consules ex nobilitate quotannis fiebant, qui ad vetustum consulum exemplar summæ rerum præessent. And in Sigonius (de Regno Italiæ, 1. vi. Opp. tom. ii. p. 400) I read of the consuls and tribunes of the xth century. Both Blondus and even Sigonius too freely copied the classic method of supplying from reason or fancy the deficiency of records.

31 In the panegyric of Berengarius (Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital. tom. ii. P. i. p. 408) a Roman is mentioned as consulis natus in the beginning of the xth century. Muratori (Dissert. v.) discovers, in the years 952 and 956, Gratianus in Dei nomine consul et dux, Georgius consul et dux; and in 1015, Romanus, brother of Gregory VIII., proudly, but vaguely, styles himself consul et dux et omnium Romanorum senator.

As late as the xth century the Greek emperors conferred on the dukes of Venice, Naples, Amalphi, &c., the title of rares or consuls (see Chron. Sagornini, passim); and the successors of Charlemagne would not abdicate any of their prerogative. But in general the names of consul and senator, which may be found among the French and Germans, signify no more than count and lord (Signeur, Ducange, Glossar.). The monkish writers are often ambitious of fine classic words.

33 The most constitutional form is a diploma of Otho III. (A.D. 998), Consulibus senatus populique Romani; but the act is probably spurious. At the coronation of Henry I., A.D. 1014, the historian Dithmar (apud Muratori, Dissert. xxiii.) describes him, a senatoribus duodecim vallatum, quorum sex rasi barbâ, alii prolixâ, mystice incedebant cum baculis. The senate is mentioned in the panegyric of Berengarius (p. 406).

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