acquired greater fame than he, simply because a more protracted term of office enabled them to carry out to completer results than he could do, designs in no wise loftier than Adrian's; and, in so doing, to unveil before the world more fully than was permitted to him, characters not, therefore, nobler or more richly endowed than his.

The first difficulty with which the English pope had to grapple, on his accession to power, was the refractory spirit of the citizens of Rome, among whom Arnold of Brescia had, some time before, stirred up the republican mania.

Arnold was a native of the city, indicated by his surname, and was born there most likely about the year 1105. His was one of those proud and ambitious natures, in which imagination and enthusiasm are mixed up in far greater proportions, than judgment and sobriety. From his childhood he developed shining parts and an ardor for study, calculated to elicit their full force. To pursue his studies with as little interruption as possible, he adopted, while yet a boy, the clerical habit, and not long afterwards obtained minor orders. [1]

In those days, events were passing, at home and abroad, well adapted to excite all that extravagance, which was to be expected from a character like his. In Italy, it was the era of the spread of those republican principles, which were at last fought out so heroically and through such perils by the cities of Lombardy, against local barons and transalpine emperors; in Europe, at large, it was the era of the bloom of intellectual chivalry, whose seat was Paris, whose foremost champion, Abailard. But it was also the era of a wide-spread demoralization of the clergy, among whom simony and concubinage were the order of the day; and, consequently, every other disorder which naturally follows in the wake of those two capital vices. In the midst of such a complicated state of things, requiring so much steadiness of eye to view it properly, so as not to be misled,—on the one hand by a false admiration, and on the other by a false disgust,—the youth Arnold devoured the pages of Livy; and imbibed from him, as well as from other Roman classics, those principles of heathen republicanism, which he subsequently sought to restore to practice, in the metropolis of Christendom, with such fatal results to society and himself.

On the completion of his studies at home, he repaired, thirsting for deeper draughts of knowledge, to Paris; and became one of the most devoted scholars of Abailard; whose rationalist invasions of the domain of theological doctrine,—by which the supreme authority of the Church in matters of faith was threatened,—accorded with Arnold's tone of mind. In fact, he soon arrived, by the line of argument which the lessons of his master and his own feelings led him to adopt, at the firm persuasion that he alone had hit upon the true plan for reforming, not only the political, but the religious abuses of the age; and, moreover, that none but he could carry that plan out. Under this hallucination, which the fumes of pagan principles of statesmanship and rationalist principles of Christianity, fermenting together, had hatched in his brain, he returned, after a few years' stay at Paris, to Brescia; not failing to visit, at his passage of the Alps, the Waldenses, and other sects, with whose tenets he secretly sympathized.

On his arrival at Brescia, he opened his career by a series of pulpit philippics against the temporal government of the Prince Bishop, and the immoral lives of the clergy. With fiery eloquence, that told all the more by reason of the sanctity of the preacher's exterior—a precaution which he took so well that even St. Bernard admitted its success—Arnold opposed the doctrines and practice of Holy Writ to the vices and luxuries which he denounced; affirming that the corruption of the Church was caused by her having overstepped the boundaries of her domain. That she had done so, was proved, he said, by the wealth and political power which she had acquired, contrary to the spirit and example of apostolic times; to whose simplicity she must return if she was to be reformed as she ought to be, and as, for the good of society, it was indispensable she should be. Of course, this line of argument received all that applause which it never fails to do whenever urged. For the reformation of the Church, by reducing her to the poverty of the apostolic ages, involves,—besides such purely spiritual advantages as are set forth at large in the plan,—others of a material kind, which, if not usually paraded with the first, are not the less kept steadily in view. For instance, that those who carry out the reforms in question will be sure to get well paid for their pains; seeing that the transaction necessarily passes so much money and goods through their fingers, as well to private, as public profit. And, then, there is the secret satisfaction naturally felt above all by the rich and lax, at seeing the clergy, by means of this very reformation, deprived of much formidable influence—such as wealth always bestows on its possessors—and which is surely as necessary to the Church as to any other public corporation, to the end that she may carry out efficiently the affairs of her vast mission; keep up her dignity amid an irreverent world; shield her oppressed; relieve her poor members, and strike respect into powerful sinners, who would not only scorn but trample on her too, if she had nothing but words to oppose to blows.

In consequence of Arnold's sermons—preached not only at Brescia, but also in other towns of Lombardy,—and which, besides their virulent censure of the existing abuses in Church and State, broached opinions contrary to orthodox faith, especially in regard to infant baptism, and the sacrament of the Eucharist,—an insurrection broke out against the Prince Bishop Manfred, in the year 1138, and lasted through the next.

Manfred made a vigorous stand to begin with; then seemed on the point of giving way, when an unexpected event turned the scales in his favour. This was the calling by Pope Innocent II., in the year 1139, of all the bishops and abbots of the Church to an œcumenical council at Rome, to condemn the memory of his late rival, the anti-pope Anacletus II. Among the rest, the Bishop Manfred and the abbots of Brescia appeared; and did not fail to seize the opportunity of denouncing the actions and opinions of Arnold to the pope and the curia. The proper course was forthwith taken; the proceedings of so pernicious a disturber of the public peace were condemned; himself warned to hold his tongue in future, and banished out of Italy under an oath not to return thither, without an express papal permission.

Arnold now betook himself again into France; and smarting with wounded pride and ambition, vindictively espoused the party of his old master Abailard, just then embroiled in his famous dispute with St. Bernard. For the abbot of Clairvaux had found out that it would never do to allow that honest, but mistaken man to go on spreading his views any longer unopposed, if the orthodox faith was to be preserved intact in Christendom; and so, after more than once privately warning him of his errors to no purpose, accepted a challenge which Abailard at last vauntingly sent him to a public disputation. This disputation came off at the Synod of Sens, A. D. 1140, and resulted in the total defeat of the philosopher by the monk. But Abailard appealed from the synod to the pope; whereupon the synod suspended its farther measures, and advised the Holy See through St. Bernard of what had transpired. In doing so, the latter took care to expose the fatal consequences to revealed religion involved in Abailard's opinions, and, in one of his letters on this subject, stated the case thus: "That inasmuch as Abailard is prepared to explain everything by means of reason, he combats as well Faith as Reason: for, what is so contrary to Reason, as to wish to go