ARNOLD, known as "Arnold of Brescia" (d. 1155), one of the most ardent adversaries of the temporal power of the popes. He was born probably at Brescia, in Italy, towards the end of the 11th century. He studied theology in Paris, but there is no proof that he was a pupil of Abelard. Returning to Italy he be came a canon regular. His life was rigidly austere, St. Bernard calling him Homo neque ntanducans neque bibens. He fought against the corruption of the clergy, and especially against the temporal ambitions of the high dignitaries of the church. During the schism of Anacletus (1131-37) the town of Brescia was torn by the struggles between the partisans of Pope Innocent II. and the adherents of the anti-pope, and Arnold incited the people to rise against their bishop, and, exiled by Innocent II., went to France. St. Bernard accused him of sharing the doctrines of Abelard (see Ep. 189, 195), and procured his condemnation by the council of Sens (I 140) at the same time as that of the great scholastic. It seems certain that Arnold professed moral theology in Paris and several times reprimanded St. Bernard, whom he accused of pride and jealousy. St. Bernard persuaded King Louis VII. to take severe measures against Arnold, who took refuge at Zurich. There he found support with the lay nobility; but, de nounced anew by St. Bernard, he turned his steps towards Rome (1145) . Two years previously, in 1143, the Roman corn mune had rejected the temporal power of the pope. The urban nobles had set up a republic, which, under forms ostensibly modelled on antiquity, concealed but clumsily a purely oli garchical government. Pope Eugenius III. and the cardinals had been driven into exile at Viterbo. Arnold denounced the Roman clergy, and, in particular the Curia, which he stigmatized as a "house of merchandise and den of thieves." According to Otto of Freising (Lib. de gestis Friderici, bk. ii. chap. xx.) the whole of his teaching, outside the preaching of penitence, was summed up in these maxims :-"Clerks who have estates, bishops who hold fiefs, monks who possess property, cannot be saved." Arnold's was the only vigorous personality which stood out from the mass of rebels, and he was the principal victim of the repres sion that ensued. On July 15, 1148, Eugenius III. anathematized Arnold and his adherents; but when soon afterwards the pope entered Rome Arnold remained in the town unmolested, under the protection of the senate. But Frederick I. (Barbarossa) con cluded with the pope a treaty of alliance (Oct. 16, 115 2) ; and when the second successor of Eugenius III., the energetic and austere Adrian IV. (the Englishman, Nicholas Breakspear), placed Rome under an interdict the senate, already rudely shaken, submitted and Arnold was forced to fly into Campania (1155). He was seized by order of the emperor Frederick, then in Italy, and delivered to the prefect of Rome, by whom he was con demned to death. In June 1155 Arnold was hanged, his body burnt, and the ashes thrown into the Tiber. It is probable that Arnold's adherents became merged in the communities of the Lombard Waldenses, who shared their ideas on the corruption of the clergy. Legend, poetry, drama, and politics have from time to time been much occupied with the personality of Arnold of Brescia. He was before everything an ascetic, who denied to the church the right of holding property, and who occupied himself only as an accessory with the political and social consequences of his religious principles.
The bibliography of Arnold of Brescia is very vast and of varying value. The following works will be found useful: W. von Giesebrecht, Arnold von Brescia (Munich, 1873) ; G. Gaggia, Arnaldo da Brescia (Brescia, 1882) ; and notices by Vacandard in the Revue des questions historiques (1884) , pp. 52-114; by R. Breyer in the Histor. Taschen buch (Leipzig, 5889), vol. viii. pp. 123-178, and by A. Hausrath in Neue Heidelberg. Jahrb. (1891) , Band i. pp.