ANTIPAPAL DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT: ARNOLD OF BRESCIA
ST. BERNARD AND THE SECOND CRUSADE
A.D. 1145-1155
JOHANN A.W. NEANDER
During the first half of the twelfth century—a period marked by conflicting spiritual tendencies—in Italy began a work of political and religious reform, which has ever since been associated with the name of its chief originator and apostle, Arnold of Brescia, so called from his native city in Lombardy. He was born about the year 1100, became a disciple of Abelard—whose teachings fired him with enthusiasm—and entered the priesthood.
Although quite orthodox in doctrine, he rebelled against the secularization of the Church—which had given to the pope almost supreme power in temporal affairs—and against the worldly disposition and life then prevalent among ecclesiastics and monks. His own life was sternly simple and ascetic, and this habit had been strongly confirmed by the ethical passion which burned in the religious and philosophical instructions of Abelard. With the popular religion Arnold had earnest sympathy, but he would reduce the clergy to their primitive and apostolic poverty, depriving them of individual wealth and of all temporal power.
The inspiring idea of Arnold's movement was that of a holy and pure church, a renovation of the spiritual order after the pattern of the apostolic church. He conformed in dress as well as in his mode of life to the principles he taught. The worldly and often corrupt clergy, he maintained, were unfit to discharge the priestly functions—they were no longer priests, and the secularized Church was no longer the house of God.
Arnold dreamed of a great Christian republic and labored to establish it, insomuch that his ideal, never realized in concrete form, either in church or state, took, and in history has kept, the name of republic. His eloquence and sincerity brought him powerful popular support, and even a large part of the nobility were won to his side. But of course, among those whom his aims condemned or antagonized, there were many who spared no pains to place him in an unfavorable light and to bring his labors to naught. In the simple story of his career, as here told by the great church historian, his figure appears in an attitude of heroism, which the pathos of his end can only make the reader more deeply appreciate. Through all this agitation is heard the voice of St. Bernard urging the religious conscience and better aspiration of the time, preaching the Second Crusade, and speeding its eastward march with earnest expectation—his high hope doomed to perish with its inglorious result.