orm, 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.)

Arnold's discourses were directly calculated by their tendency to find
ready entrance into the minds of the laity, bef