ror, we perceive a singular
mixing together of the Arnoldian spirit with the dreams of Roman vanity;
a radical tendency to the separation of secular from spiritual things
which if it had been capable enough in itself, and if it could have
found more points of attachment in the age, would have brought
destruction on the old theocratical system of the Church. They said that
the Pope could claim no political sovereignty in Rome; he could not even
be consecrated without the consent of the Emperor--a rule which had in
fact been observed till the time of Gregory VII. Men complained of the
worldliness of the clergy, of their bad lives, of the contradiction
between their conduct and the teachings of Scripture.

The popes were accused as the instigators of the wars. "The popes," it
was said, "should no longer unite the cup of the eucharist with the
sword; it was their vocation to preach, and to confirm what they
preached by good works. How could those who eagerly grasped at all the
wealth of this world, and corrupted the true riches of the Church, the
doctrine of salvation obtained by Christ, by their false doctrines and
their luxurious living, receive that word of our Lord, 'Blessed are the
poor in spirit,' when they were poor themselves neither in fact nor in
disposition?" Even the donative of Constantine to the Roman bishop
Silvester was declared to be a pitiable fiction. This lie had been so
clearly exposed that it was obvious to the very day-laborers and to
women, and that these could put to silence the most learned men if they
ventured to defend the genuineness of this donative; so that the Pope,
with his cardinals, no longer dared to appear in public. But Arnold was
perhaps the only individual in whose case such a tendency was deeply
rooted in religious conviction; with many it was but a transitory
intoxication, in which their political interests had become merged for
the moment.

The pope Lucius II was killed as early as 1145, in the attack on the
Capitol. A scholar of the great abbot Bernard, the abbot Peter Bernard
of Pisa, now mounted the papal chair under the name of Eugene III. As
Eugene honored and loved the abbot Bernard as his spiritual father and
old preceptor, so the latter took advantage of his relation to the Pope
to speak the truth to him with a plainness which no other man would
easily have ventured to use. In congratulating him upon his elevation to
the papal dignity, he took occasion to exhort him to do