an irreverent world; shield her oppressed; relieve her poor members,
and strike respect into powerful sinners, who would not only scorn but
trample on her too, if she had nothing but words to oppose to blows.
In consequence of Arnold's sermons--preached not only at Brescia, but
also in other towns of Lombardy,--and which, besides their virulent
censure of the existing abuses in Church and State, broached opinions
contrary to orthodox faith, especially in regard to infant baptism,
and the sacrament of the Eucharist,--an insurrection broke out against
the Prince Bishop Manfred, in the year 1138, and lasted through the
next.
Manfred made a vigorous stand to begin with; then seemed on the point
of giving way, when an unexpected event turned the scales in his
favour. This was the calling by Pope Innocent II., in the year 1139,
of all the bishops and abbots of the Church to an oecumenical council
at Rome, to condemn the memory of his late rival, the anti-pope
Anacletus II. Among the rest, the Bishop Manfred and the abbots of
Brescia appeared; and did not fail to seize the opportunity of
denouncing the actions and opinions of Arnold to the pope and the
curia. The proper course was forthwith taken; the proceedings of so
pernicious a disturber of the public peace were condemned; himself
warned to hold his tongue in future, and banished out of Italy under
an oath not to return thither, without an express papal permission.
Arnold now betook himself again into France; and smarting with wounded
pride and ambition, vindictively espoused the party of his old master
Abailard, just then embroiled in his famous dispute with St. Bernard.
For the abbot of Clairvaux had found out that it would never do to
allow that honest, but mistaken man to go on spreading his views any
longer unopposed, if the orthodox faith was to be preserved intact in
Christendom; and so, after more than once privately warning him of his
errors to no purpose, accepted a challenge which Abailard at last
vauntingly sent him to a public disputation. This disputation came off
at the Synod of Sens, A. D. 1140, and resulted in the total defeat of
the philosopher by the monk. But Abailard appealed from the synod to
the pope; whereupon the synod suspended its farther measures, and
advised the Holy See through St. Bernard of what had transpired. In
doing so, the latter took care to expose the fatal consequences to
revealed religion involved in Abailard's opinions, and, in one of his
letters on this subject, stated the case thus: "That inasmuch as
Abailard is prepared to explain everything by means of reason, he
combats as well Faith as Reason: for, what is so contrary to Reason,
as to wish to go beyond the limits of Reason by means of Reason? and,
what more contrary to Faith, than to be unwilling to believe that
which one is unable to reach by means of Reason?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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