Arnold of Brescia, a pupil of Abelard. He preached against the papal authority and the temporal power, and the vices of the clergy. He was condemned for heresy by a Lateran Council in 1139, and retired from Italy. He afterwards returned to Rome and renewed his exertions against sacerdotal oppression, and was eventually seized and burnt at Rome in 1155. Baronius calls him “the patriarch of political heretics.”
Arnold (Matthew), LL.D. poet and critic, son of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, b. at Laleham 24 Dec. 1822. Educated at Winchester, Rugby, and Oxford, where he won the Newdigate prize. In 1848 he published the Strayed Reveller, and other Poems, signed A. In 1851 he married and became an inspector of schools. In 1853 appeared Empedocles on Etna, a poem in which, under the guise of ancient teaching he gives much secular philosophy. In 1857 he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford. In 1871 he published an essay entitled St. Paul and Protestantism; in 1873 Literature and Dogma, which, from its rejection of supernaturalism, occasioned much stir and was followed by God and the Bible. In 1877 Mr. Arnold published Last Essays on Church and State. Mr. Arnold has a lucid style and is abreast of the thought of his age, but he curiously unites rejection of supernaturalism, including a personal God, with a fond regard for the Church of England. He may be said in his own words to wander “between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born.” Died 15 April, 1888.
Arnould (Arthur), French writer, b. Dieuze 7 April, 1833. As journalist he wrote on l’Opinion Nationale, the Rappel, Reforme and other papers. In 1864 he published a work on Beranger, and in ’69 a History of the Inquisition. In Jan. 1870 he founded La Marseillaise with H. Rochefort, and afterwards the Journal du Peuple with Jules Valles. He was elected to the National Assembly and was member of the Commune, of which he has written a history in three volumes. He has also written many novels and dramas.
Arnould (Victor), Belgian Freethinker, b. Maestricht, 7 Nov. 1838, advocate at the Court of Appeal, Brussels. Author of a History of the Church 1874, and a little work on the Philosophy of Liberalism 1877.
Arouet (François Marie). See [Voltaire].
Arpe (Peter Friedrich). Philosopher, b. Kiel, Holstein, 10 May, 1682. Wrote an apology for Vanini dated Cosmopolis (i.e., Rotterdam, 1712). A reply to La Monnoye’s treatise on the book De Tribus Impostoribus is attributed to him. Died, Hamburg, 4 Nov. 1740.
Arthur (John) is inserted in Maréchal’s Dictionnaire des Athées as a mechanic from near Birmingham, who took a prize at Paris and republished the Invocation to Nature in the last pages of the System of Nature. Julian Hibbert inserted his name in his Chronological Tables of Anti-Superstitionists, with the date of death 1792.
Asseline (Louis). French writer, b. at Versailles in 1829, became an advocate in 1851. In 1866 he established La Libre Pensée, a weekly journal of scientific materialism, and when that was suppressed La Pensée Nouvelle. He was one of the founders of the Encyclopédie Générale. He wrote Diderot and the Nineteenth Century, and contributed to many journals. After the revolution of 4 Sept. 1870 he was elected mayor of the fourteenth arrondissement of Paris, and was afterwards one of the Municipal Council of that city. Died 6 April, 1878.
Assezat (Jules). French writer, b. at Paris 21 Jan. 1832 was a son of a compositor on the Journal des Debats, on which Jules obtained a position and worked his way to the editorial chair. He was secretary of the Paris Society of Anthropology, contributed to La Pensée Nouvelle, edited the Man Machine of Lamettrie, and edited the complete works of Diderot in twenty volumes. Died 24 June, 1876.
Assollant (Jean, Baptiste Alfred). French novelist, b. 20 March, 1827. Larousse says he has all the scepticism of Voltaire.