Freaks of Fanaticism, and Other Strange Events

by S. Baring-Gould

According to the same authority, Ariald bore a grudge against the Archbishop for having had occasion to rebuke him on account of some irregularity of which he had been guilty. But Landulf the elder is not to be trusted implicitly; he is as bigoted on one side as is Andrew of Strumi on the other.

In the meantime the priests and their wives were exposed to every sort of violence, and "a great horror fell on the Ambrosian clergy." The poor women were torn from their husbands, and driven from the city; the priests who refused to be separated from their companions were interdicted from the altar.[18]

Landulf was sent to Rome to report progress, and obtain confirmation of the proceedings of the party from the Pope. He reached Piacenza, but was unable to proceed farther; he was knocked down, and finding the way barred by the enemies of his party, returned to Milan. Ariald then started, and eluding his adversaries, arrived safely at Rome. He presented himself before Pope Stephen X., who was under the influence of Hildebrand, and, therefore, disposed to receive him with favour. Stephen bade him return to Milan, prosecute the holy war, and, if need be, shed his blood in the sacred cause.

The appeal to Rome was necessary, as the Archbishop and a large party of the citizens, together with all the clergy, had denounced Ariald and Landulf as Patarines. The fact was notorious that the secret and suspected Manichees in Milan were now holding up their heads and defying those who had hitherto controlled them. The Manichees suddenly found that from proscribed heretics they had been exalted into champions of orthodoxy. It was a satisfactory change for those who had been persecuted to become persecutors, and turn their former tyrants into victims. But now, to the confusion and dismay of the clergy, they found themselves betrayed by the Pope, and at the mercy of those who had old wrongs to resent. Fortified with the blessing of the Pope on his work, his orthodoxy triumphantly established by the supreme authority, Ariald rushed back to Milan, accompanied by papal legates to protect him, and proclaim his mission as divine. He was unmeasured in his denunciations. Dissension fast ripened into civil war. Ariald, at the head of a roaring mob, swept the clergy together into a church, and producing a paper which bound all of them by oath to put away their wives, endeavoured to enforce their subscription.

A priest, maddened to resentment, struck the demagogue in the mouth. This was the signal for a general tumult. The adherents of Ariald rushed through the streets, the alarm bells pealed, the populace gathered from all quarters, and a general hunting down of the married clergy ensued.

"How can the blind lead the blind?" preached Landulf Cotta. "Let these Simoniacs, these Nicolaitans be despised. You who wish to have salvation from the Lord, drive them from their functions; esteem their sacrifices as dogs' dung (canina stercora)! Confiscate their goods, and every one of you take what he likes![19] We can imagine the results of such license given to the lowest rabble. The nobles, over-awed, dared not interfere.

Nor were the clergy of the city alone exposed to this popular persecution. The preachers roved round the country, creating riots everywhere. This led to retaliation, but retaliation of a feeble, harmless sort. A chapel built by Ariald on his paternal estate was pulled down; and the married clergy resentfully talked of barking his chestnut trees and breaking down his vines, but thought better of it, and refrained.

A more serious attempt at revenge was the act of a private individual. Landulf Cotta was praying in a church, when a priest aimed at him with a sword, but without seriously hurting him. A cripple at the church door caught the flying would-be assassin; a crowd assembled, and Landulf with difficulty extricated the priest alive from their hands.

Ariald and Cotta now began to denounce those who had bought their cures of souls, or had paid fees on their institution to them. They stimulated the people to put down simony, as they had put down concubinage. "Cursed is he that withholdeth his hand from blood!" was the fiery peroration of a sermon on this subject by Ariald.

"Landulf Cotta," says Arnulf, "being master of the lay folk, made them swear to combat both simony and concubinage. Presently he forced this oath on the clergy. From this time forward he was constantly followed by a crowd of men and women, who watched around him night and day. He despised the churches, and rejected priests as well as their functions, under pretext that they were defiled with simony. They were called Patari, that is to say, beggars, because the greater part of them belonged to the lowest orders."[20]