prayer. Whether or not he was mercifully hanged before being reduced to ashes is perhaps doubtful, but those ashes were cast into the Tiber to prevent the people of Rome from preserving them as relics and honoring him as a martyr. It was not long before Frederic had ample cause to repent the loss of an ally who might have saved him from the bitter humiliation of his surrender to Alexander III.[1]
Though the immediate influence of Arnald of Brescia was evanescent, his career has its importance as a manifestation of the temper with which the more spiritually minded received the encroachments and corruption of the Church. Yet, though he failed in his attempt to revolutionize society, and perished through miscalculating the tremendous forces arrayed against him, his sacrifice was not wholly in vain. His teachings left a deep impress in the minds of the population, and his followers in secret cherished his memory and his principles for centuries. It was not without a full knowledge of the position that the Roman curia scattered his ashes in the Tiber, dreading the effect of the veneration which the people felt for their martyr. Secret associations of Arnaldistas were formed who called themselves "Poor Men," and adopted the tenet that the sacraments could only be administered by virtuous men. In 1184 we find them condemned by Lucius III. at the so-called Council of Verona; about 1190 they are alluded to by Bonaccorsi, and even until the sixteenth century their name occurs in the lists of heresies proscribed in successive bulls and edicts. Yet the complete oblivion into which they fell is seen in the learned glossator Johannes Andreas, who died in 1348, remarking that perhaps the name of the sect may be derived from some one who founded it. When Peter Waldo of Lyons endeavored, in more pacific wise, to carry out the same views, and his followers grew into the "Poor
- ↑ S. Bernardi Epistt. 189, 195, 196, 243, 244.— Gualt. Mapes de Nugis Curialium Dist. i. cap. xxiv.— Otton. Frisingens. de Gestis Fiid. I. Lib. i. cap. 27 ; Lib. ii. cap. 20.— Harduin. Concil. VI. ii. 1224.— Martene Ampliss. Collect. II. 554-558.— Guntheri Ligurin. Lib. iii. 262-348.— Gerhohi Reichersperg. de Investigat. Anti-christi I.— Baronii Annal. ann. 1148, No. 38.— Jaffé Regesta, No. 6445. — Vit. Adriani PP. III. (Muratori III 441, 442).— Sächsische Weltchronik, No. 301.— Cantù, Eretici d'ltalia, I. 61-63.— Tocco, L'Eresia nel Medio Evo, pp. 242, 243.—Comba, La Riforma in Italia, I. 193, 194.— Bonghi, Arnaldo da Brescia, Città di Castello, 1885.
