Ariald and Cotta now began to denounce those who had bought their cures of souls, or had paid fees on their institution to them. They stimulated the people to put down simony, as they had put down concubinage. "Cursed is he that withholdeth his hand from blood!" was the fiery peroration of a sermon on this subject by Ariald. "Landulf Cotta," says Arnulf, "being master of the lay folk, made them swear to combat both simony and concubinage. Presently he forced this oath on the clergy. From this time forward he was constantly followed by a crowd of men and women, who watched around him night and day. He despised the churches, and rejected priests as well as their functions, under pretext that they were defiled with simony. They were called Patari, that is to say, beggars, because the greater part of them belonged to the lowest orders."[20] [20] Ap. Pertz, l.c., pp. 19, 20. "What shall we do?" asked a large party at Milan. "This Ariald tells us that if we receive the Holy Sacrament from married or simoniacal priests, we eat our own damnation. We cannot live without sacraments, and he has driven all the priests out of Milan." The parties were so divided, that those who held with Ariald would not receive sacraments from the priests, the heavenly gift on their altars they esteemed as "dogs' dung;" they would not even join with them, or those who adhered to them, in prayer. "One house was all faithful," says Andrew of Strumi; "the next all unfaithful. In the third, the mother and one son were believing, but the father and the other son were unbelieving; so that the whole city was a scene of confusion and contention." In 1058 Guido assembled a synod at Fontanetum near Novara, and summoned Ariald and Landulf Cotta to attend it. The synod awaited their arrival for three days, and as they did not come, excommunicated them as contumacious.