The work of Niccolini in which he has poured out all the lifelong
hatred and distrust he had felt for the temporal power of the popes is
the Arnaldo da Brescia. This we shall best understand through a sketch
of the life of Arnaldo, who is really one of the most heroic figures
of the past, deserving to rank far above Savonarola, and with the
leaders of the Reformation, though he preceded these nearly four
hundred years. He was born in Brescia of Lombardy, about the year
1105, and was partly educated in France, in the school of the famous
Abelard. He early embraced the ecclesiastical life, and, when he
returned to his own country, entered a convent, but not to waste his
time in idleness and the corruptions of his order. In fact, he began
at once to preach against these, and against the usurpation of
temporal power by all the great and little dignitaries of the Church.
He thus identified himself with the democratic side in politics, which
was then locally arrayed against the bishop aspiring to rule Brescia.
Arnaldo denounced the political power of the Pope, as well as that
of the prelates; and the bishop, making this known to the pontiff at
Rome, had sufficient influence to procure a sentence against Arnaldo
as a schismatic, and an order enjoining silence upon him. He was also
banished from Italy; whereupon, retiring to France, he got himself
into further trouble by aiding Abelard in the defense of his
teachings, which had been attainted of heresy. Both Abelard and
Arnaldo were at this time bitterly persecuted by St. Bernard, and
Arnaldo took refuge in Switzerland, whence, after several years,
he passed to Rome, and there began to assume an active part in the
popular movements against the papal rule. He was an ardent republican,
and was a useful and efficient partisan, teaching openly that, whilst
the Pope was to be respected in all spiritual things, he was not to
be recognized at all as a temporal prince. When the English monk,
Nicholas Breakspear, became Pope Adrian IV., he excommunicated and
banished Arnaldo; but Arnaldo, protected by the senate and certain
powerful nobles, remained at Rome in spite of the Pope's decree, and
disputed the lawfulness of the excommunication. Finally, the whole
city was laid under interdict until Arnaldo should be driven out. Holy
Week was drawing near; the people were eager to have their churches
thrown open and to witness the usual shows and splendors, and they
consented to the exile of their leader. The followers of a cardinal
arrested him, but he was rescued by his friends, certain counts of the
Campagna, who held him for a saint, and who now lodged him safely in
one of their castles. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, coming to Rome
to assume the imperial crown, was met by embassies from both parties
in the city. He warmly favored that of the Pope, and not only received
that of the people very coldly, but arrested one of the counts who had
rescued Arnaldo, and forced him to name the castle in which the monk
lay concealed. Arnaldo was then given into the hands of the cardinals,
and these delivered him to the prefect of Rome, who caused him to
be hanged, his body to be burned upon a spit, and his ashes to be
scattered in the Tiber, that the people might not venerate his relics
as those of a saint. “This happened,” says the priest Giovanni
Battista Guadagnini, of Brescia, whose Life, published in 1790, I have
made use of--“this happened in the year 1155 before the 18th of June,
previous to the coronation of Frederick, Arnaldo being, according to
my thinking, fifty years of age. His eloquence,” continues Guadagnini,
“was celebrated by his enemies themselves; the exemplarity of his life
was superior to their malignity, constraining them all to silence,
although they were in such great number, and it received a splendid
eulogy from St. Bernard, the luminary of that century, who, being
strongly impressed against him, condemned him first as a schismatic,
and then for the affair of the Council of Sens (the defense of
Abelard), persecuted him as a heretic, and then had finally nothing to
say against him. His courage and his zeal for the discipline of the
Church have been sufficiently attested by the toils, the persecutions,
and the death which he underwent for that cause.”