Arnold of Brescia

Arnold of Brescia (c. 1090 – June 1155), also known as Arnaldus (Italian: Arnaldo da Brescia), was an Italian canon regular from Lombardy. He called on the Church to renounce property ownership and participated in the failed Commune of Rome.

Exiled at least three times and eventually arrested, Arnold was hanged by the papacy, then was burned posthumously and (his ashes) thrown into the River Tiber. Though he failed as a religious reformer and a political leader, his teachings on apostolic poverty gained currency after his death among "Arnoldists" and more widely among Waldensians and the Spiritual Franciscans, though no written word of his has survived the official condemnation. Protestants rank him among the precursors of the Reformation.

Born in Brescia, Arnold became an Augustinian canon and then prior of a monastery in Brescia. He criticized the Catholic Church's temporal powers that involved it in a land struggle in Brescia against the Count-Bishop of Brescia. He called on the Church to renounce its claim and return ownership to the city government so as not to be tainted by possession—renunciation of worldliness being one of his primary teachings. He was condemned at the Second Lateran Council in 1139 and forced from Italy.

According to the chronicler Otto of Freising, Arnold had studied in Paris under the tutelage of the reformer and philosopher Pierre Abélard. He took to Abélard's philosophy of reform ways. The issue came before the Synod of Sens in 1141 and both Arnold and Abélard's positions were overruled by Bernard of Clairvaux. Arnold stood alone against the church's decision after Abélard's capitulation; he returned to Paris, where he continued to teach and preach against Bernard. As a consequence he was then commanded to silence and exiled by Pope Innocent II. He took refuge first in Zurich then probably in Bavaria. His writings were also condemned to be burned as a further measure, though the condemnation is the only evidence that he had actually written anything. Arnold continued to preach his radical ideas concerning apostolic poverty.

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