A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume ILea, Henry Charles
History
A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume I
Lea, Henry Charles
Inquisition -- History
only allowed to return to his city on condition of allowing Arnald to
remain there. After the death of Conrad III., in 1152, Eugenius III.
hastened to win the support of the new King of the Romans, Frederic
Barbarossa, by intimating that Arnald and his partisans were conspiring
to elect another emperor and make the empire Roman in fact as well as in
name. The papal favor seemed necessary to Frederic to secure his coveted
coronation and recognition. Blindly overlooking the irreconcilable
antagonism between the temporal and spiritual swords, he cast his
fortunes with the pope, swore to subdue for him the rebellious city and
regain for him the territory of which he had been deprived; while
Eugenius, on his side, promised to crown him when he should invade
Italy, and to use freely the artillery of excommunication for the
abasement of his enemies. The domination of the Roman populace has not
been wholly moderate and peaceful. In more than one emeute the palaces
of noble and cardinal had been sacked and destroyed and their persons
maltreated, and at length, in 1154, in some popular uprising, the
cardinal of Santa Pudenziana was slain. Adrian IV., the masterful
Englishman who had recently ascended the papal throne, took advantage of
the opportunity and set the novel example of laying an interdict on the
capital of Christianity until Arnald should be expelled from the city;
the fickle populace, dismayed at the deprivation of the sacrament,
indispensable to all Christians at the approaching Easter solemnities,
were withdrawn from his support, and he retired to the castle of a
friendly baron of the Campagna. The next year Frederic reached Rome,
after entering into engagements with Adrian which included the sacrifice
of Arnald, and he lost no time in performing his share of the bargain.
Arnald's protectors were summoned to surrender him, and were obliged to
obey. For the cruel ending the Church sought to shirk the
responsibility, but there would seem to be no reasonable doubt that he
was regularly condemned by a spiritual tribunal as a heretic, for he was
in holy orders, and could be tried only by the Church, after which he
was handed over to the secular arm for punishment. He was offered pardon
if he would recant his erroneous doctrines, but he persistently refused,
and passed his last moments in silent 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.[55]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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