LXIX. CHAP. and trampled under foot; and he seized, without pity or respect, the vicar of Christ by the throat. Gelasius was dragged by his hair along the ground, buffeted with blows, wounded with spurs, and bound with an iron chain in the house of his brutal tyrant. An insurrection of the people delivered their bishop: the rival families opposed the violence of the Frangipani; and Cencio, who sued for pardon, repented of the failure, rather than of the guilt, of his enterprise. Not many days had elapsed, when the pope was again assaulted at the altar. While his friends and enemies were engaged in a bloody contest he escaped in his sacerdotal garments. In this unworthy flight, which excited the compassion of the Roman matrons, his attendants were scattered or unhorsed; and in the fields behind the church of St. Peter, his successor was found alone and half-dead with fear and fatigue. Shaking the dust from his feet, the apostle withdrew from a city in which his dignity was insulted and his person was endangered; and the vanity of sacerdotal ambition is revealed in the involuntary confession, that one emperor was more tolerable than twenty's. These examples might suffice; but I cannot forget the sufferings of two pontiffs of the same Lucius II. age, the second and third of the name of Lucius. The A. D. former, as he ascended in battle-array to assault the 1145. Capitol, was struck on the temple by a stone, and exLucius III. pired in a few days. The latter was severely wounded -1185. in the persons of his servants. In a civil commotion, se 1144, A. D. 1181 veral of his priests had been made prisoners; and the inhuman Romans, reserving one as a guide for his brethren, put out their eyes, crowned them with ludicrous mitres, mounted them on asses with their faces to the tail, and extorted an oath, that, in this wretched condition, they should offer themselves as a lesson to the head of the church. Hope or fear, lassitude or remorse, the characters of the men, and the circumstances of the times, might sometimes obtain an interval of peace and obedience; and the pope was restored with joyful acclamations to the Lateran or Vatican, from whence he had been driven with threats and violence. But the root of mischief was deep and perennial; and a momentary calm was preceded and followed by such tempests as 15 Ego coram Deo et ecclesiâ dico, si unquam possibile esset, mallem unum imperatorem quam tot dominos (Vit. Gēlas, II. p. 398). •-1124. II. of the Ro mans by had almost sunk the bark of St. Peter. Rome continu- CHAP. ally presented the aspect of war and discord; the LXIX. churches and palaces were fortified and assaulted by the factions and families; and, after giving peace to Europe, Calistus the second alone had resolution and pow. Calistus II. er to prohibit the use of private arms in the metropolis. A. D. 1119 Among the nations who revered the apostolic throne, Innocent the tumults of Rome provoked a general indignation A.D.1130 and, in a letter to his disciple Eugenius the third, St.-1143. Bernard, with the sharpness of his wit and zeal, has stigmatised the vices of the rebellious people. "Who Character "is ignorant," says the monk of Clairvaux, "of the "vanity and arrogance of the Romans? a nation nurs- St. Bar"ed in sedition, cruel, untractable, and scorning to nard. "obey, unless they are too feeble to resist. When they "promise to serve, they aspire to reign; if they swear "allegiance, they watch the opportunity of revolt; yet "they vent their discontent in loud clamours if your "doors, or your counsels, are shut against them. Dex"terous in mischief, they have never learnt the science "of doing good. Odious to earth and heaven, impious "to God, seditious among themselves, jealous of their "neighbours, inhuman to strangers, they love no one, "by no one are they beloved; and while they wish to "inspire fear, they live in base and continual appre"hension. They will not submit; they know not how "to govern; faithless to their superiors, intolerable to "their equals, ungrateful to their benefactors, and alike "imprudent in their demands and their refusals. Lofty "in promise, poor in execution: adulation and calum"ny, perfidy and treason, are the familiar arts of their policy." Surely this dark portrait is not coloured by the pencil of Christian charity"; yet the features, however harsh and ugly, express a lively resemblance of the Romans of the twelfth century18. 16 Quid tam notum seculis quam protervia et cervicositas Romanorum Gens insueta paci, tumultui assueta, gens immitis et intractabilis usque ad. huc, subdi nescia, nisi cum non valet resistere (de Considerat. I. iv. c. 2. p. 441.) The saint takes breath, and then begins again: Hi, invisi terræ et cu lo, utrique injecere manus, &c. (p. 443.) 17 As a Roman citizen, Petrarch takes leave to observe, that Bernard, though a saint, was a man; that he might be provoked by resentment, and possibly repent of his hasty passion, &c. (Memoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. i. p. 330.) 18 Baronius, in his index to the twelfth volume of his Annals, has found a fair and easy excuse. He makes two heads, of Romani Catholici, and Schismatici: to the former he applies all the good, to the latter all the evil, that is told of the city. VOL. VIII. A a CHAP. The Jews had rejected the Christ when he appeared among them in a plebeian character; and the Romans Political might plead their ignorance of his vicar when he assumheresy of ed the pomp and pride of a temporal sovereign. In the Arnold of busy age of the crusades, some sparks of curiosity and A.D.1140. reason were re-kindled in the Western world: the Brescia, heresy of Bulgaria, the Paulician sect, was successfully transplanted into the soil of Italy and France; the Gnostic visions were mingled with the simplicity of the gospel; and the enemies of the clergy reconciled their passions with their conscience, the desire of freedom with the profession of piety". The trumpet of Roman liberty was first sounded by Arnold of Brescia20, whose promotion in the church was confined to the lowest rank, and who wore the monastic habit rather as a garb of poverty than as an uniform of obedience. His adversaries could not deny the wit and eloquence which they severely felt: they confess with reluctance the specious purity of bis morals; and his errors were recommended to the public by a mixture of important and beneficial truths. In his theological studies, he had been the disciple of the famous and unfortunate Abelard, who was likewise involved in the suspicion of heresy: but the lover of Eloisa was of a soft and flexible nature; and his ecclesiastic judges were edified and disarmed by the humility of his repentance. From this master, Arnold most probably imbibed some metaphysical definitions of the Trinity, repugnant to the taste of the times: his ideas of baptism and the eucharist are loosely censured; but a political heresy was the source of his fame and misfortunes. He presumed to quote the declaration of Christ, that his kingdom is not of this world: he boldly maintained, that the sword 19 The heresies of the xiith century may be found in Mosheim (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 419-427), who entertains a favourable opinion of Arnold of Brescia. In the viith volume, I have described the sect of the Paulicians, and followed their migration from Armenia to Thrace and Bulgaria, Italy and France. 20 The original pictures of Arnold of Brescia, are drawn by Otho bishop of Frisingen (Chron. 1. vii. c. 31. de Gestis Frederici I. I. i. c. 27. l. ii. c. 21), and in the iiid book of the Ligurinus, a poem of Gunther, who flourished A. D. 1200, in the monastery of Paris near Basil (Fabric. Bibliot. Latin. med. et infimæ Ætatis, tom. iii. p. 174, 175.) The long passage that relates to Arnold is produced by Guilliman (de Rebus Helveticis, I. iii. c. 5. p. 108.) 21 The wicked wit of Bayle was amused in composing, with much levi. ty and learning, the articles of ABELARD, FOULQUES, HELOISE, in his Dictionnaire Critique. The dispute of Abelard and St. Bernard, of scholastic and positive divinity, is well understood by Mosheim (Institut, Hist. Eccles. p. 412--415.) LXIX. and the sceptre were intrusted to the civil magistrate; CHAP. that temporal honours and possessions were lawfully vested in secular persons; that the abbots, the bishops, and the pope himself, must renounce either their state or their salvation; and that after the loss of their revenues, the voluntary tithes and oblations of the faithful would suffice, not indeed for luxury and avarice, but for a frugal life in the exercise of spiritual labours. During a short time, the preacher was revered as a patriot; and the discontent, or revolt, of Brescia against her bishop, was the first fruits of his dangerous lessons. But the favour of the people is less permanent than the resentment of the priest; and after the heresy of Arnold had been condemned by Innocent the second22, in the general council of the Lateran, the magistrates themselves were urged by prejudice and fear to execute the sentence of the church. Italy could no longer afford a refuge; and the disciple of Abelard escaped beyond the Alps, till he found a safe and hospitable shelter in Zurich, now the first of the Swiss cantons. From a Roman station, a royal villa, a chapter of noble virgins, Zurich had gradually increased to a free and flourishing city; where the appeals of the Milanese were sometimes tried by the Imperial commissaries". In an age less ripe for reformation, the præcustor of Zuinglius was heard with applause: a brave and simple people imbibed and long retained the colour of his opinions; and his art, or merit, seduced the bishop of Constance, and even the pope's legate, who forgot, for his sake, the interest of their master and their order. Their tardy zeal was Præsule, qui numeros vetitum contingere nostros We may applaud the dexterity and correctness of Ligurinus, who turns the 23 A Roman inscription of Statio Turicensis has been found at Zurich (d'Anville, Notice de l'ancienne Gaule, p. 642-644): but it is without sufficient warrant, that the city and canton have usurped, and even monopolised, the names of Tigurum and Pagus Tigurinus. 24 Guilliman (de Rebus Helveticis, 1. iii. c. 5. p. 106.) recapitulates the donation (A. D. 833) of the emperor Lewis the Pious to his daughter the abbess Hildegardis. Curtim nostram Turegum in ducatu Alamanniæ in pago Durgaugensi, with villages, woods, meadows, waters, slaves, churches, &c. a noble gift. Charles the Bold gave the jus monetæ, the city was walled under Otho I. and the line of the bishop of Frisingen, Nobile Turegum multarum copiâ rerum, is repeated with pleasure by the antiquaries of Zurich. CHAP. quickened by the fierce exhortations of St. Bernardes; LXIX. and the enemy of the church was driven by persecution to the desperate measure of erecting his standard in Rome itself, in the face of the successor of St. Peter. He exhorts the Romans Yet the courage of Arnold was not devoid of discretion; he was protected, and had perhaps been invited, to restore by the nobles and people; and in the service of freedom, the re- bis eloquence thundered over the seven hills. Blending A.D. 1144 in the same discourse the texts of Livy and St. Paul, -1154. uniting the motives of gospel, and of classic, enthusiasm, public, he admonished the Romans, how strangely their patience and the vices of the clergy had degenerated from the primitive times of the church and the city. He exhorted them to assert the inalienable rights of men and Christians; to restore the laws and magistrates of the republic; to respect the name of the emperor; but to confine their shepherd to the spiritual government of his flock 26. Nor could his spiritual government escape the censure and controul of the reformer; and the inferior clergy were taught by his lessons to resist the cardinals, who had usurped a despotie command over the twentyeight regions or parishes of Rome. The revolution was not accomplished without rapine and violence, the effusion of blood and the demolition of houses: the victorious faction was enriched with the spoils of the clergy and the adverse nobles. Arnold of Brescia enjoyed, or deplored, the effects of his mission: his reign continued above ten years, while two popes, Innocent the second and Anastasius the fourth, either trembled in the Vatican, or wandered as exiles in the adjacent cities. They were succeeded by a more vigorous and fortunate pontiff, Adrian the fourth, the only 25 Bernard, epistol. cxcv, cxcvi. tom. i. p. 187-190. Amidst his invectives he drops a precious acknowledgment, qui, utinam quam sanæ esset doctrinæ quam'districtæ est vita. He owns that Arnold would be a valuable acquisition for the church. 26 He advised the Romans, Consiliis armisque sua moderamina summa Nor is the poetry of Gunther different from the prose of Otho. 27 See Baronius (A. I 1148, No. 38, 39.) from the Vatican MSS. He loudly condemns Arnold (A. D. 1141, No. 3.) as the father of the political heretics, whose influence then hurt him in France. 28 The English reader may consult the Biographia Britannica, ADRIAN |