Arnaud de Brescia

Arnaud de Brescia is a Hérésiarque born towards 1100 and torture victim in 1155, influenced by the school of logic of Pierre Abélard. It wished to increase the influence of the Laïc S, to confine the Pape with his religious role, and consequently to remove its temporal power to him.

Life of Arnaud de Brescia

It is originating in the town of Brescia, in Italy. It makes studies of clerk, and is named reader, one of the 4 minor orders under the major order of the priest. It leaves for France to follow the teaching of Abélard. It endorses the doctrines of the logician, recommends the abandonment by the Church of its temporal power and its goods, for concentrating again on the message of the Évangile. Of return to Brescia, it agitates the local Church by its theories. He is condemned with Abélard for heresy to the Concile of Direction in 1140, on the initiative of Bernard de Clairvaux, which recommends to Louis VII to expel the young theologist.

He flees then with Zurich, where he expresses his sensitivities once again. With the advertisement of died of Innocent II, it starts again to threaten the Church seriously, and benefits from the hospitality of the pontifical Légat Guido into 1143/1144 to return to Rome, where it joint with an urban revolt which drives out of Rome the pope and his cardinals. It intensifies it, and the too short pontificate of Célestin II does not manage to calm the disorders. It proposes the former Romans and their model of organization, orders the rebuilding of the Capitole, the restoration of the Senate and the equestrian order. Lucius II calls with the emperor Conrad III, in vain, and dies of them by carrying out the attack on Capitole. Eugene III returns to Rome episodically, but does not worry Arnaud de Brescia. It is Adrien IV which finally forces it to flee with the assistance of the emperor Frederic Barberousse. This last the book with the prefect of Rome, in 1155, and it is hung the same year; its body is burned and its ashes thrown in the the Tiber.

Portrait of hérésiarque

The life of Arnaud de Brescia is well-known by many accounts, with for example a description by Othon de Freising in its Gesta Friderici Imperatoris . This passage is exemplary vision of the character in the Moyen-âge, seen like a pure heretic. Its heresy must be considered in the context of the time, agitated by the Gregorian Réforme, which gives birth to in reaction many movements “traditionalists” wanting to find the purity of the Church. The ambiguity of the temporal power of the pope, who takes importance more and more, goes until dividing the emperor, traditional agent of temporal, and the papacy which wants to become the only leading institution of the company. In this context, the separation of the capacities which preaches Arnaud de Brescia always should not have been regarded as heretic by some, of which the emperor. Arnaud de Brescia offers his support besides to him, devotes himself to a vigorous criticism of the Church, Curie, of the pope.

Actually, it is the bringing together of the pope and the emperor, both confronted with interior problems, which condemns the monk, who seems an apostolic reformer then. The emperor, who needs the Pope to ensure religious stability in his empire, will offer to the Pope Arnaud de Brescia, and will sign the stop of the Roman revolt which had developed by its interested passivism. One then cuts a costume of hérésiarque overmeasure to him, conceived in a traditional way, with many commonplaces very present at Othon de Freising. One allots to him doctrines heretics about the Sacrement S, that it defended forever of alive sound.

Its figure, become legendary, is then venerated by the Italian heretics and revolutionists. Its personality knows some evolutions thereafter. As from the 17th century, one regards it according to his confession either as an heretic, or like a combatant of freedom. The writers of the 19th century will make humanistic enlightened, in a romantic way, inspired by its attempt at “ancient restoration”.

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