Arnold of Brescia was born in the town from which he took his name. At Paris he became an ardent disciple and personal friend of Abelard. Returning to his native city, he became provost of a foundation of Canons Regular, and a conspicuous influence both in the spiritual and political life of the town. [Sidenote: Early life of Arnold of Brescia.] He had the love of novelty, the restless vanity, the acute sceptical intellect of his brilliant teacher. He preached that priests were to live on the tithes and free offerings of the faithful, that bishops were to renounce their ‘regalia,’ and monks their lands, and the laity only were to rule the state. Under his leadership, Brescia, like the other Lombard cities, cast off the bishop’s rule, but Innocent II. took up the bishop’s cause, and, as we have seen, the Lateran Council of 1139 deprived Arnold of his benefice and banished him from Italy. He again crossed the Alps, stood by the side of Abelard at the Council of Sens, and returned to Paris, and taught at Abelard’s old school on Mont Ste. Geneviève. But his doctrine of apostolic poverty was too extreme to please the ambitious clerks who thronged the Paris schools, and he was pursued by the inveterate malice of Bernard, who persuaded Louis VII. to drive the heretic from France. Arnold retired to Zürich, whence he soon wandered, preaching, through the valleys of upper Swabia, protected against Bernard’s anger by the papal legate Cardinal Guido, his old Paris comrade. The abbot of Clairvaux was furious with the cardinal. ‘Arnold of Brescia,’ he wrote, ‘whose speech is honey, whose doctrine poison, the man whom Brescia has vomited forth, whom Rome abhors, whom France drives to exile, whom Germany curses, whom Italy refuses to receive, obtains thy support. To be his friend is to be the foe of the Pope and God.’ In 1145 Arnold returned to Italy with Guido, and was reconciled to the Church. With his arrival in Rome to work out his penance, the last and greatest period of his career begins.