Arnold of Brescia

Arnold of Brescia was an Italian religious reformer, who preached a doctrine of absolute poverty and offered opposition to the temporal power of the popes.

He was born about 1100 at Brescia. He was prior of the monastery in Brescia and his first important move as a critic of the church was his participation in the revolt against Bishop Manfred in 1137. Arnold was denounced as a schismatic for proposing to reform the clergy and ending the church’s temporal power in 1139, by Pope Innocent II. He was banished from Italy and therefore went to France, where he became a student of the theologian and philosopher Peter Abelard, who stood in conflict with Bernard of Clairvaux. In 1140, Abelard and Arnold were condemned for doctrinal error. Abelard submitted, but Arnold continued to teach in Paris and therefore was exiled under the influence of Bernard.

In 1145 Arnold arrived in Rome with the intention to reconcile himself with Pope Eugenius III. The people in Rome, however, had set up a republican government and Arnold became their leader, preaching against the Pope, for an end to clerical corruption and a total reform of the church. He was excommunicated on July 15, 1148. The republic collapsed under Pope Adrian IV, who became allied with the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and Arnold was seized as a political rebel. In 1155 Arnold was executed, his body was burned, and his ashes were thrown into the Tibet River. He, however, was more a religious reformer than a political revolutionary.

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