And though the Milanese clergy still clung for a while to their wives, and benefices continued to be bought and sold, these doubtful practices fell more and more into disrepute. Simoniac ecclesiastics gradually disappeared. The accusation of this sin was, however, long used by Rome as a means of gaining further advantages over the See of Milan, or driving out a prelate approved perhaps by the Emperor and obnoxious to the papal interests. It was equally useful to the people in making new encroachments on the privileges of the aristocratic clergy.

The gradual concentration of authority in Rome was greatly assisted by the influence of the monastic orders, who belonged as bodies to no particular diocese, but looked to the Pope as their supreme head, and were little disposed to be submissive to the prelates in whose jurisdiction a monastery might chance to be. In 1130, Bernard of Clairvaux and his white-robed monks—who seemed to the people, we are told, wonderful as angels from heaven—appeared in Milan, and gave an immense impulse to the monastic movement there. The rise of the mendicant orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic a century later brought a vast increase of strength to the Papacy. In Milan, as everywhere, the friars gained immense influence among the masses of the people. The See of Milan was by this time completely subjugated. It was greatly diminished in wealth and importance. The Pope exercised supreme jurisdiction in the archdiocese, and his legates constantly interfered in the government, assuming the highest place and authority with the acquiescence of the Archbishop. Deeply indeed had the See of St. Ambrose sunk since the days of the great Ariberto!

But the same movement which had defined the position of Rome, had by the process of strengthening and raising the walls of the fold, thrust an enormous number of Christians into the doctrinal wilderness outside, and the Church was now menaced by the great spread and increase of heresy. Heresy was, in fact, the fatal legacy of Hildebrand’s policy. While the Papacy, absorbed in its struggles with the Empire, could spare no energy to check them, the great sect of the Catharists, unhindered by worldly ambitions, had been quietly growing in numbers and strength, till in the twelfth century it was become a fully organised Church, divided into dioceses and governed by its own bishops. These sectarians were now generally called Patarini; the name of Hildebrand’s old allies had become synonymous with the enemies of the Church. The deep gulf between the Catharists and the orthodox Church was crossed by a chain of religious associations which had sprung up all over Lombardy, in protest against the luxury and scandalous manners of both clergy and laity, and were founded, like the original Patarini, upon moral rather than doctrinal principles. Many of them hovered indeed in thought upon the vague borderland between orthodoxy and heresy, and were touched by that Northern difference of religious sentiment which, after many temporary ebullitions, produced at last the Protestant revolution. In the thirteenth century fifteen different sects are enumerated in the city—the Catharists, the Believers of Milan, the Arnaldists, followers of Arnald of Brescia, the Poor Men of Lombardy, and others that were mostly local varieties of the same sects. Poverty and humility were, as their name denotes, the distinctive attributes of the Poor Men, while their doctrine was suspect enough to forbid their adoption into the Church. The large embrace of Rome succeeded, however, in enfolding another association of kindred type, the Umiliati, or Humble Ones, which was destined to become enormously powerful in Milan.

This order is said to have been founded early in the eleventh century by some Milanese nobles who had been captives in Germany, and who, converted to serious thoughts by the weariness of confinement, vowed that on their return they would live a holy and Christian life. It was a society of men and women, living in their own homes with their families, but distinguished from their neighbours by humility, industry and devoutness. A century later, under the influence of St. Bernard, they formed themselves into a regular order, with a rule obliging them to strict moral virtue and to the observance of all religious duties. They devoted themselves especially to the manufacture of woollen stuffs, one of Milan’s chief industries. Very soon out of the first order a second was formed, which adopted a monastic life of greater austerity, the men and women, including many married couples, living side by side in separate cloisters, and in course of time a third order arose, composed of men only, who took sacerdotal orders, and were called Canons. Thus the association, from a kind of religious guild, tended to develop into a regular order. But its rule had never been fixed or confirmed by any papal sanction, and it remained for two hundred years practically independent of Rome. Nor were its doctrines during this time free from unorthodox thought; we find the Umiliati included in the condemnation of heretical sects uttered by successive Popes from time to time in the intervals of their political cares. They shared the virtue of simplicity, at least, with the various bodies of Poveri who hovered half in and half out of the pale of Holy Church.

In the latter part of the twelfth century the order—in obedience perhaps to that widely diffused evangelical spirit which generated the great Franciscan movement a little later—had been developing and spreading very extensively. Its votaries went about preaching repentance in the squares and open places of the different cities, and persuaded numbers of noble persons, as well as plebeians, to abandon the sins of the world and the flesh, and to live according to the pious and simple vows of the order, either in monasteries or in their own homes. Their efforts were opposed by the bishops and regular clergy, who were disposed to look upon all zeal as heretical. But Pope Innocent III., recognising their virtue and their influence on the people, resolved to secure the somewhat loose orthodoxy of the brethren, and to direct their fervour and piety to the service of the Church. He extended his favour to them, and bestowed upon them the doubtful blessing of a formal rule, which, with the privileges, included the restrictions and severe discipline of a regular monastic order. This little pleased the Umiliati, and they made a touching appeal to Innocent’s successor, Honorius III., to relieve them from their new obligations, bringing forward an ancient formula, given them, they declared, by St. Bernard, to the observance of which they had already bound themselves. But the Pope absolved them against their will from their old vows of obedience and insisted on the observance of Innocent’s rule.

Thus the death-blow was dealt to the original spirit of the institution. After a short period of increased fervour and activity, in which they became the terror of their old spiritual kinsfolk, the heretics, the order followed the course of most other monastic bodies. Humility and poverty were exchanged for papal favours and honours, and for rich possessions, and before long corruption and laxity crept in among the brethren. The sacerdotal order became the first and most important, while those who followed the original rule of simplicity, humility and purity, living in their own homes, were called the Third Order. The brethren acquired in time great wealth from the woollen industry, which they continued to pursue, and later on they were largely employed in the public offices of the city, and especially in its financial concerns. Thus they gradually became very powerful, and under the tyrannies of the Visconti and Sforza, provided Milan with many great statesmen. In the sixteenth century the vast possessions of the order, in the form of commendas and prebends, etc., were practically owned by a few great families, and the actual number of the brethren had fallen to less than a hundred. Cardinal Carlo Borromeo procured the suppression of the ancient brotherhood in 1570, on the ground of the vices and luxury of its members. He risked his life by this step, since the degenerate brethren were not ashamed to employ assassins to attempt the murder of their spoliator. The possessions of the order were distributed among other convents, and their principal House, the Brera, which had belonged to them since the twelfth century, was handed over to the Jesuits.

The desire to define and purify doctrine, and to strengthen the Church, produced under a series of determined Popes a fierce outburst of persecution in the thirteenth century. In Milan, where heterodox opinions were held by many of the most powerful as well as the lesser citizens, it was the signal for repeated bouts of civil war and constant struggles between the Pope and the rulers of the city. The introduction of the Dominicans into Milan in 1220 gave an enormous advantage to the cause of orthodoxy. As soon as the people saw the Christ-like virtues of poverty and humility and evangelising ardour, hitherto associated in their minds only with the condemned Patarini, displayed by these approved Catholic orders, they followed the Friars with enthusiasm, careless indeed of doctrine, but believing and trusting those who lived as they did themselves and mingled with them freely, understanding their sorrows and needs. It is doubtful whether St. Dominic himself was ever in Milan, but his famous disciple, Peter of Verona, was sent there in 1232 by the Pope, with full authority to search out and punish heretics. Peter carried out his mission with merciless zeal. His name, made terrible by its unsparing use as authority for the infliction of torments and fiery death, came to be feared throughout Lombardy. So bitter a hatred did he rouse by his stern interpretation of the awful word, not peace but a sword, that he himself fell a victim to the weapon of his predilection. On a morning in 1252, as he was returning on foot with a single companion from Como to Milan, two assassins sprang out upon him from an ambush and smote him to death with a sword. The sword, transfixing his skull, is familiar to us all in mediæval and Renaissance art as the ornament and emblem of the Saintly Inquisitor.

The murder of Peter Martyr was not inspired by heretical revenge alone. Motives of worldly policy had a share in the deed. The division of orthodoxy and heresy virtually followed that between the two great parties in the State, the aristocracy and the people, and the conflict between them repeated to some extent the great Patarine struggle two centuries earlier, though now, in the reversal of issues the Patarini were associated with the aristocrats against Rome. The murder of Peter was committed at the instigation of some of the nobles. The Archbishop himself, Fra Leone da Perego, a Franciscan, a man of notable character and ambition, who hated Peter, both as the agent of papal arrogance and usurpation in Milan, and as the exalter of the rival order of the Dominicans, was possibly not unaware of the plot. But the political aspect of the doctrinal warfare belongs to an epoch which we have not yet reached in our story of the city. It is enough to say here that the murder of Peter of Verona was of the greatest service to the cause of orthodoxy and the Church. It excited universal execration of the heretics, and the Dominican, elevated to the ranks of the Martyrs, was far more powerful with his cloven brow than even when alive. From this time forward heresy rapidly lost ground, and with the gradual quieting of party passion, under the domination of a single family in the city, it lost all political force, and died away in insignificance and oblivion, till the great reawakening of religious controversy in the sixteenth century.

CHAPTER III
The Free City

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