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LXIX.

CHAP. the præcursor 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 quickened by the fierce exhortations of St Bernard*; 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

to restore

lic,

A. D.

11441154.

Yet the courage of Arnold was not devoid of discretion; he was protected, and had perhaps been the repub- invited by the nobles and people; and in the service of freedom, his eloquence thundered over the seven hills. Blending in the same discourse the texts of Livy and St Paul, uniting the motives of gospel, and of classic enthusiasm, 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 unalienable 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 t. Nor could his spiritual

Bernard, epistol. cxcv. cxcvi. tom. i. p. 187-190. Aamidst his invectives, he drops a precious acknowledgement, qui, utinam quam sans esset doctrinæ quam districtæ est vitæ. He owns that Arnold would be a valuable acquisition for the church.

He advised the Romans,

Consiliis armisque sua moderamina summa
Arbitrio tractare suo: nil juris in hâc re
Pontifici summo, modicum concedere regi
Suadebat populo. Sic læfâ stultus utrâque

Majestate, reum gemina se fecerat aulæ.

Nor is the poetry of Gunther different from the prose of Otho.

LXIX.

spiritual government escape the censure and con- CHAP. troul of the reformer; and the inferior clergy were taught by his lessons to resist the cardinals, whọ had usurped a despotic 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 Englishman who has ascended the throne of St Peter; and whose merit emerged from the mean condition of a monk, and almost a beggar, in the monastery of St Albans. On the first provocation, of a cardinal killed or wounded in the streets, he cast an interdict on the guilty people; and, from Christmas to Easter, Rome was deprived of the real or imaginary comforts of religious worship. The Romans had despised their temporal prince; they submitted with grief and terror to the censures of their spiritual father; their guilt was expiated by penance, and the banishment of the seditious preacher was T 2

the

*See Baronius (A. D. 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.

The English reader may consult the Biographia Britannica, ADRIAN IV. but our own writers have added nothing to the fame or merits of their countrymen.

LXIX.

CIHA P. the price of their absolution. But the revenge of Adrian was yet unsatisfied, and the approaching coronation of Frederic Barbarossa was fatal to the bold reformer, who had offended, though not in an equal degree, the heads of the church and state. In their interview at Viterbo, the Pope represented to the Emperor the furious ungovernable spirit of the Romans; the insults, the injuries, the fears, to which his person and his clergy were continually exposed; and the pernicious tendency of the heresy of Arnold, which must subvert the principles of civil, as well as ecclesiastical subordination. Frederic was convinced by these arguments, or tempted by the desire of the Imperial crown; in the balance of ambition, the innocence or life of an individual is of small account; and their common enemy was sacrificed to a moment of political concord. After his retreat from Rome, Arnold had been protected by the Viscounts of Campania, from whom he was extorted by the power of Cæsar; the præfect of the city pronounced his sentence; the martyr of freedom was burnt alive in the presence of a careless and ungrateful people; and his ashes were cast into the Tyber, lest the heretics should collect and worship the relics of their master *. The clergy triumphed in his death; with his ashes, his sect was dispersed; his memory still lived in the minds of the Romans. From his school they had probably derived a new article of faith, that the metropolis

His execution, A. D.

1155.

Besides the historian and poet already quoted, the last adventures of Arnold are related by the biographer of Adrian IV. (Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. iii. p. i. P. 441. 442.).

LXIX.

tropolis of the Catholic church is exempt from the CHAP. penalties of excommunication and interdict. Their bishops might argue, that the supreme jurisdiction, which they exercised over kings and nations, more specially embraced the city and diocese of the prince of the apostles. But they preached to the winds, and the same principle that weakened the effect, must temper the abuse, of the thunders of the Vatican.

of the Se

nate,

A. D.

1144.

The love of ancient freedom has encouraged a Restoration belief, that as early as the tenth century, in their first struggles against the Saxon Othos, the commonwealth was vindicated and restored by the senate and people of Rome; that two consuls were annually elected among the nobles, and that ten or twelve plebeian magistrates revived the name and office of the tribunes of the commons *. But this venerable structure disappears before the light of criticism. In the darkness of the middle ages, the appellations of senators, of consuls, of the sons of consuls, may sometimes be discovered t. They T3

were

*Ducange (Gloss. Latinitatis media et infimæ tatis, DECARCHONES, tom ii. p. 726.) gives me a quotation from Blondus, (decad. ii. 1. ii.): Duo consules ex nobilitate quotannis fiebant, qui ad vetustum consulum exemplar summæ rerum præessent. And in Sigonius (de Regno Italiæ, 1. vi. opp. tom. ii. p. 400.) I read of the consuls and tribunes of the 10th century. Both Blondus, and even Sigonius, too freely copied the classic method of supplying from reason or fancy the deficiency of records.

+ In the panegyric of Berengarius, (Muratori, Script, Rer. Ital. tom. ii. p. i. p. 408.), a Roman is mentioned as consulis natus in the beginning of the 10th century. Muratori (dissert. v.) discovers, in the years 952 and 956, Gratianus in Dei nomine consul et dux, Georgius consul et dux; and in 1015, Romanus, brother of Gregory VIII. proudly, but vaguely, styles himself consul et dux et omnium Roma

norum senator.

LXIX.

CHAP. were bestowed by the Emperors, or assumed by the most powerful citizens, to denote their rank, their honours, and perhaps the claim of a pure and patrician descent; but they float on the surface, without a series or a substance, the titles of men, not the orders of government; and it is only from the year of Christ one thousand one hundred and forty-four, that the establishment of the senate is dated as a glorious æra, in the acts of the city. A new constitution was hastily framed by private ambition, or popular enthusiasm ;

could Rome, in the twelfth century, produce an antiquary to explain, or a legislator to restore, the harmony and proportions of the ancient model. The assembly of a free, of an armed people, will ever speak in loud and weighty acclamations. But the regular distribution of the thirty-five tribes, the nice balance of the wealth and numbers of the centuries, the debates of the adverse orators, and the slow operation of votes and ballots, could not easily be adapted by a blind multitude, ignorant

of

* As late as the 10th century, the Greek Emperors conferred on the Dukes of Venice, Naples, Amalphi, &c. the title of iж705, or consuls, (see Chron. Sagornini, passim); and the successors of Charlemagne would not abdicate any of their prerogative. But, in general, the names of consul and senator, which may be found among the French and Germans, signify no more than Count and Lord, (Signeur, Ducange, Glossar.). The monkish writers are often ambitious of fine classic words.

The most constitutional form, is a diploma of Otho III, (A. D. 998.), Consulibus senatus populique Romani; but the act is probably spurious. At the coronation of Henry 1. A. D. 1014, the historian Dithmar (apud Muratori, dissert. xxiii.) describes him, a senatoribus duodecim vallatum, quorum sex rasi barbâ alii prolixâ, mystice incedebant cum baculis. The senate is mentioned in the panegyric of Berengarius, (p. 406.).

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