which Mr. Meshullam has reproduced in that scene, in its singing-birds, and sparkling streams, its apricots, and peaches, and figs, and vines, corresponds with the descriptions of Solomon in his Canticles. The labours of this singularly talented Christian Jew in his farm at Urtas have placed beyond doubt two things, that the old abundance is yet sleeping in the soil of Palestine, and that it needs no miracle, but skilled industry with its enchanter's wand, and with God's blessing, to bring back the beauty and the teeming

archy. While the respect and confidence with which he has inspired the surrounding Bedouin tribes, causing them not only to leave his property unmolested, but to treat him as a friend and often to choose him as an umpire, has shown that even they are capable of being conciliated and tamed by good treatment, by persevering firmness, justice, and kindness. Ishmael and Isaac once wept and embraced each other over their father's grave; shall not their descendants one day embrace over Israel's resurrection?

EW questions in Church history have given occasion to so much bitter and prolonged dispute as that involved in the maintenance or suppression of the temporal power of the Bishops of Rome. The large amount of attention which has been devoted to its discussion in modern days, and the wonderfully peaceful solution it has received from the men of our own time, might at first sight almost warrant the supposition that it was a grievance peculiar to the nineteenth century-a difficulty with which the intelligent men of former generations did not trouble themselves. But a very moderate acquaintance with the records of ecclesiastical history will suffice to dissipate any such impression. The noblest and purest minds of the Middle Ages were continually reminded of its importance by the countless evils which manifestly sprang from the unholy alliance of the spiritual and temporal powers; and while the more thoughtful and cautious among them contented themselves with lamenting the impossibility of putting a period to the anomaly, there were not wanting others of a more practical and daring temperament, who would gladly have seized any feasible opportunity for the accomplishment of their purpose. Of the former class the most illustrious was Dante, who in pathetic strains deplored the disastrous results of Constantine's policy in taking the Church under his protection :

"Ahi, Constantin, di quanto mal fu matre, Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote, Che da te prese il primo ricco patre!"

Ah, Constantine, to how much ill gave birth,
Not thy conversion, but that plenteous dower,
Which the first wealthy Father gained from thee!

To the latter class belonged that bold and gifted monk, who in a dark and superstitious age not only realized the full significance of the problem, but actually succeeded in achieving its solution. An enterprise at once so daring and unique possesses features of general in

terest, which seem to deserve a better fate than the comparative oblivion into which they have fallen.

The birth of Arnold is placed with considerable probability about the beginning of the twelfth century. Of his family connections and early life almost nothing is known. While still a youth, he embraced the ecclesiastical profession, and was ordained clerk and reader in one of the churches of Brescia. Either before or shortly after receiving these orders, his great abilities and intense devotion to study began to attract attention; and his superiors, desirous of giving him the best education which the age could furnish, resolved to send him to France to complete his studies under Abelard. It is difficult to determine the exact period in the life of the great philosopher during which the young Lombard ecclesiastic sat et his feet. Whether he mingled in the vast crowd of scholars who thronged round Abelard's chair during the height of his fame at Paris, or shared with his fellow-students the hardships of his master's rural retreat at the Oratory of the Paraclete near Nogent-sur-Seine, does not distinctly appear, though all the probabilities of the case favour the latter supposition. The received chronology of Arnold's life, and the severe form of his character and habits, render it far from improbable that his term of study under Abelard occurred during that singular phase of the philosopher's romantic life, when master and pupils, some of them scions of the noblest families in Europe, retired to the rude wilderness at Nogent-sur-Seine, built their own huts, lived on such herbs as they could gather in the fields, lay at night on pallets of straw, and denying themselves every luxury, led a life of study, solitude, and privation. But whatever be the truth on this point, we certainly know that Arnold's student-life, if not altogether ascetic in its severity, was one of much simplicity. It is equally certain that his circumstances were such as to give him ample opportunities of winning the confidence and esteem of his distinguished teacher.

The connection formed between them was so close, that when Abelard in after-days was compelled to defend himself in a great Council of the Church against the accusations of St. Bernard, he singled out Arnold from the crowd of his former pupils as the most competent advocate he could find to plead his cause. After having completed his studies in France he returned to his native town, and, inspired with a lofty religious fervour somewhat rare in that degenerate age, he took the monastic vows, and entered one of the cloisters of Brescia. There he seems to have remained for some few years, engaged in his studies and religious duties, occasionally exercising his talents as a preacher, and though steadily advancing in repute as a man of piety and learning, exercising no positive influence on public affairs. But a man of his strong practical turn of mind and decided political convictions could hardly fail to be a deeply interested spectator of the civil and religious commotions which at that period engrossed the thoughts of his fellow-citizens. Brescia had been the scene of a political convulsion, which, occurring in his boyhood, would appear to have made an indelible impression on his mind.

The city, which prior to the commencement of the twelfth century was, like most other towns in Lombardy, a fief of the German Empire, had, at the instigation of its bishop, thrown off the imperial yoke, and constituted itself an independent republic. As a reward for his services in heading this insurrection, Bishop Arimann claimed, in addition to his existing spiritual privileges, the supreme jurisdiction in temporal affairs. The populace, perceiving that they had only exchanged a distant for a nearer and haughtier master, resisted the arrogant pretensions of Arimann, and maintained their new-found liberties so stoutly, that after torrents of blood had been shed in the streets the episcopal party was routed, and the prelate himself banished from Brescian territory. Brescia had for many years been singularly unfortunate in her bishops, and Arimann's successor proved no exception to the general rule. At length, however, in the year 1132, there was chosen to fill the vacant see a priest named Manfred, who, with the faults of his predecessors before his eyes, seemed at first desirous of pursuing a line of conduct somewhat more in harmony with his spiritual functions. But something of a more positive kind was expected at his hands than the mere renunciation of | the episcopal claims on the feudal superiority of the town. On the occasion of his appointment to the diocese of Brescia, he had come under a solemn engagement to Pope Innocent II. to introduce a reform of his clergy without delay; and this pledge it was incumbent on him to redeem. Under a series of bishops devoted to the acquisition of secular authority, the most deplorable scandals and abuses had crept into the Church and flourished without rebuke. Those were the days when benefices and holy orders were bought and sold without the slightest regard to the age, character, or abilities of the candidate; when the higher ecclesiastics lived in

all the outward pomp of princes; and when luxury and dissipation, idleness and ignorance, characterized the great majority of the ordinary clergy.

This degeneracy, common everywhere at that time, had reached its climax in Brescia. There the dissolute habits of the priesthood had not only passed the usual limits, but had given rise to other evils, which, if not speedily checked, must have inevitably ruined the bishopric. The married clergy, or, as their monkish opponents described them, those who lived in a state of concubinage, had been tempted by the unsettled state of public affairs to make provision for their families by appropriating the church funds set apart for the relief of the poor, and by alienating the church lands. Gradually bringing themselves to regard the ecclesiastical foundations as their personal property, they did not scruple, by sale, gift, or enfeoffment, to make away with the rich endowments.

In this state of affairs the people loudly called upon the bishop to fulfil his promise, and put an end to the scandal. To this demand he willingly acceded; but having imprudently called in the civil power to aid him in carrying out his measures of reform, the attempt was greeted by the nobles and clergy with such a violent storm of opposition, that it resulted in his being forcibly ejected from the town. This brusque treatment of his well-meant plans of improvement produced a complete revolution in the bishop's mind. Afraid of losing his see by his adherence to the reforming party, he immediately veered round, espoused the cause of the clerical faction, and having completely ignored his former policy, succeeded in getting himself peaceably reinstalled in his diocese.

It was at this crisis that Arnold emerged from his retirement and began to take an active part in public affairs. His appearance in the cathedral pulpit produced a profound sensation in the minds of the citizens, and gave an extraordinary impulse to the cause of ecclesiastical reform. Few men could have been better fitted to confer strength and dignity upon a popular cause. Well read in ancient and modern history, skilled in the canon law, and intelligently acquainted with Scripture, he was able to point the artillery of his eloquence with destructive effect against the corruption then rampant in the Church. The glaring inconsistency of the lives of the clergy with apostolic precept, ancient usage, and ecclesiastical law, and the urgent need of a return to a purer and less worldly life, were themes which, pointed and enforced at once by the devout austerity of the orator's private life, and by the existing political situation, could hardly fail to win the favour of the men of Brescia.

The stinging effect of his censures was enhanced by a rich voice of surpassing sweetness, the gentle fascination of which must have contrasted strangely with the vehemence of his denunciation and the revolutionary ardour of his sentiments. He immediately rose in influence and popularity, his opinions being eagerly embraced and widely circulated. They spread with almost

electric swiftness through the streets of Brescia, and over most of the towns and villages in Lombardy. All, save the parties more immediately interested in the maintenance of abuses, acknowledged the truth of Arnold's strictures, and rejoiced that a spokesman had been found sufficiently bold and eloquent to express what every man felt and thought. The clergy, of course, were furious. The undertone of bitterness which pervades the contemporary Catholic accounts of his teaching, shows how terribly the churchmen of his time must have winced under his scathing rebukes and sarcastic criticisms. But even Gunther, one of the two writers to whom we are indebted for most of what we know of Arnold, acknowledges that many of his censures were by no means undeserved. About a century before, Cardinal Damiani had satirized the bishops of his time in terms almost identical with those made use of by the eloquent Brescian : "What would the bishops of old have done had they to endure the torments which now attend the episcopate ? To ride forth constantly attended by troops of soldiers, with swords and lances : to be girt about by armed men like a heathen general! Not amid the gentle music of hymns, but the din and clash of arms! Every day royal banquets, every day parade! The table loaded with delicacies-not for the poor, but for voluptuous guests: while the poor, to whom the property of right belongs, are shut out, and pine away with famine." Things had not gone on improving since these words were uttered: and there were doubtless many even among the clergy themselves who acknowledged the necessity of a reform. Arnold's plain statements of facts were indisputable: it was the remedies he proposed for eradicating the evil which seem to have given such dire offence.

Having shown by an appeal to the canon law that the clergy had no personal or hereditary claims on the funds of the Church, which by the nature of the case were inalienable, he proposed that the management of all ecclesiastical property should be taken out of the hands of the clergy and intrusted to laymen specially appointed by the sovereign. An advocate of the separate and mutually exclusive jurisdictions of Church and State, he maintained that while the Pope was entitled to wield the highest authority in things spiritual, to the State alone belonged the supreme control in all things secular; and that, consequently, the clergy were guilty of unwarrantable presumption in aspiring to discharge the functions of earthly princes. He recommended as the only true remedy for the innumerable evils which flowed from this unhallowed blending of politics with religion, that the clergy should abstain from all interference in the affairs of civil government, and devote their attention exclusively to the discharge of their spiritual functions. As regarded their maintenance, he considered that the income derived from tithes and the voluntary offerings of the Christian people would prove amply sufficient for men who were bound, by their very profession, to set an example in their own persons of simplicity of life.

This project of reform aimed a blow in several directions at once. It not only threatened the secular pretensions of the Bishop of Brescia, but struck at the root of the temporal power of the Pope, who would thereby have been reduced at one stroke to the simple rank of Bishop of Rome. The suzerainty of the German emperor over the cities of Lombardy was also endangered; for though Arnold conceded to that potentate a certain vague feudal superiority, yet as according to his theory the real sovereign of the state was the body of citizens represented from year to year by the consuls or chief magistrates of the republic, this concession amounted to little more than a name. Arnold's words were attended with such effect, that at the election of consuls for the year 1139 the clerical party was completely defeated. But though republican ideas thus gained an undoubted ascendancy, they were far from being quietly received or cordially acquiesced in by those whose interests they so materially affected. Bishop, nobles, and clergy, animated by a sense of their common danger, banded together against the rising spirit of the people.

Frightful scenes of civil discord then ensued. The war of tongues, proving utterly powerless to decide the grave questions at issue, passed into a war of swords, in which townsmen and kinsmen arrayed themselves against each other in mortal strife. The popular party would in all probability have soon succeeded in imposing its will upon its antagonists, had no other weapons than those of force been employed. But when the armoury of the clergy was exhausted in one field, they had recourse to another arsenal from which weapons of a much more potent kind could be procured. It happened that in the spring of this very year, 1139, a great council of the Church was being held at Rome; and the clergy, driven to despair by the daily increasing strength of their enemies, conceived the design of laying the whole case before the assembled bishops of Christendom, and by obtaining Arnold's condemnation as a heretic, deprive the reforming party of its principal support. The reformer was accordingly charged by his bishop with having promulgated schismatic doctrine, in so far as he had denied the supreme control of the Church over all things temporal, and attributed to the State the right of administering ecclesiastical property. Here, it is somewhat important to observe, that serious as the accusation was, it contained no whisper of heretical pravity. Schism it certainly was; but it reached no further. Eagerly as his enemies desired to fix upon him the stigma of heresy, they failed in their attempt to persuade the Pope to pronounce him heterodox. All that they were able to obtain from the supreme Pontiff in condemnation of Arnold, and in furtherance of their own views, was a decree imposing silence upon him, and this at a moment when Rome was crowded with bishops, expressly collected from all parts of Europe for the extirpation of a prominent heresy. It is true that he

was condemned during the sitting of that council of the Lateran which anathematized the Cathari and the Petrobrusians, and it is notorious that his enemies made full use of this circumstance to involve him in their condemnation; but that he had any sympathy with their doctrines is nowhere supported by the faintest shadow of proof. Had he really shared their sentiments, something more stringent than a mere decree of silence would have been considered necessary to meet the demands of the case. Like them, he would have been treated as having fallen under the ban of the Church; and the greater excommunication once launched against him, a separate papal rescript, dealing with his individual case, would have been superfluous. This view of his position is confirmed by the account given of his offence by St. Bernard, who distinctly assures us that it was merely schisma pessimum of which the Brescian monk was guilty. It is evident, therefore, that his faults were regarded by the court of Rome as political rather than religious; and all attempts, whether of Catholics to blacken him with vague charges of heresy, or of Protestants to claim him as a "morning star of the Reformation," are alike unwarranted by the facts of the case.

The papal decree having been published at Brescia, the fickle populace, wrought upon by their superstitious fears, were persuaded by the clergy to break with Arnold, and renounce connection with his schemes of independent civil government and ecclesiastical reform. The consuls of the republic being driven from the city, he also was compelled to flee. In this sudden revulsion of popular feeling he seems to have first attempted to find shelter in other parts of Lombardy; but, being hunted from place to place with remorseless assiduity by the machinations of the priests, he was at length driven across the Alps into Switzerland. He found a congenial home in the canton of Zurich, where he rested in peace till the following year. His repose was disturbed by a summons from his old master Abelard to attend the Council of Sens in France. The philosopher had been accused of heresy by William, Abbot of St. Thierry, and the charge having been taken up and reiterated by St. Bernard, he boldly challenged his antagonists to the proof. In order to secure the best advocacy for his cause, he called to his side the most distinguished of his former scholars to aid him in his defence. Of these the most conspicuous was Arnold, who in this capacity is described by St. Bernard as "the armour-bearer of the new Goliath." The Abbot of Clairvaux apparently looked forward with some trepidation to the prospect of being pitted against such a formidable pair of antagonists, the master as renowned for his subtlety, as the scholar for his eloquence. But to the relief and astonishment of his principal accusers, Abelard, perhaps deeming it a hopeless task to convince men who had come with their minds made up to condemn him, waived all attempt at defence, and appealed to the Holy See direct. Notwithstanding his appeal, his doctrines were condemned

by the council, doubtless with the view of preventing them spreading further. St. Bernard immediately wrote to the Pope, urging him to bestow his approval on the verdict of the council, to impose silence on Abelard, and to throw both him and Arnold into prison. The obsequious Pontiff complied with all these requests, and, in the middle of July 1140, a papal decree was received by the heads of the Church in France, commanding them to imprison the accused in separate cloisters, and burn Abelard's books. It would seem, however, that the zeal of the saint in his fanatical pursuit of heresy was but feebly seconded by the great ecclesiastics of France. Whilst Abelard found a retreat with the Abbot of Clugny, Arnold was permitted quietly to retire to Switzerland, where he received a hospitable welcome from those who took more charitable views of his character. At this period of his exile he owed much to the powerful friendship of Cardinal Guido da Castello, then Papal Legate of Germany, who, having himself studied under Abelard, had probably in former days made the acquaintance of the brilliant Brescian on the banks of the Seine, and now showed him kindness in the hour of his misfortune.

Even in this distant retirement, however, he was not safe from the relentless animosity of St. Bernard, who pursued him over the Alps with letters of the harshest tenor. One of these violent epistles, in which he points out the importance of securing the person of the fugitive, or expelling him from the diocese, was addressed to the Bishop of Constance. "If the good man of the house," he writes, "had known at what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have allowed his house to be broken through."......" He (Arnold, to wit) is one of those who have the form of godliness but completely deny its power. He is a man who neither eats nor drinks, but along with the devil hungers and thirsts for the blood of souls; and of whom the Lord himself says, They will come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.' And now we have heard that he works iniquity with you, and eats up your people as one eats bread." Then follows a fierce tirade, in which the most dreadful maledictions of the imprecatory psalms are heaped upon the devoted head of the Italian monk-"Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, and their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known." Yet in the midst of this strange farrago of abuse it is curious to observe how the high estimate formed of Arnold's character by the severest and most consistent of his contemporaries occasionally crops out in spite of himself, as when he says, "Would that he were as sound in doctrine as he is strict in life;" and again, "Whose conversation is honey, his doctrine poison; with the head of a dove, he has the tail of a scorpion." An epistle of similar purport was sent by the indefatigable abbot to Cardinal Guido, warning him against maintaining too familiar an intimacy with Arnold, who he believed. would be only

too ready to abuse the cardinal's friendship for the propagation of his peculiar views. Arnold having, after a time, made a full recantation of the opinions maintained by Abelard, and endorsed by himself at Sens, these annoyances altogether ceased; and in this secure asylum he remained unmolested for the next five years of his life. To this period must probably be referred those labours of his in Zurich, which were attended with such success that the town and adjoining district became thoroughly impregnated with his opinions, and retained for more than a generation profound impressions of his teaching.

For the next five years another blank occurs in the records of his life. From the year 1140 nothing is heard of him, until with dramatic suddenness he reappears in 1145 on the stage of history, engaged in cooperating with the Romans in their attempt to remould their political constitution on the basis of the ancient republic. During the closing years of his sojourn in Switzerland, a train of events had occurred in Rome so closely resembling in character and tendency those which had happened in Brescia, that they could not but possess for Arnold a peculiarly strong fascination. A quarrel had broken out between Pope Innocent II. and the citizens of Rome upon the propriety of dismantling the fortifications of Tivoli, a town which they had succeeded in capturing not without considerable difficulty. The Romans, exasperated by the length of the siege, had wished to demolish its defences; while Innocent was anxious to maintain them intact as a useful instrument for keeping his unruly subjects in check. The latter, who had for a long time been infected with the republican theories then prevalent in Lombardy and other parts of Italy, at once divined the intention of the Pontiff, and resolved to counteract it. Surrounded by the ruins of former greatness, and animated by the splendid traditions of the past, they assembled in the Capitol, and declaring their independence of the Pope in all save what concerned his spiritual authority, they proclaimed the republic, re-established the senate, and abolished the dignity of Prefect. The prefect was the chief magistrate of the city, and besides being nominated by the Pope, was the representative of the Emperor, to whom he paid homage, and from whom, in token of his supreme civil jurisdiction, he received a drawn sword on his appointment. This high office was now, in the revived enthusiasm for ancient institutions, abolished; and a new dignitary, with the title of Patrician of Rome, appointed to preside over the senate and represent the republic.

Matters did not improve on the election of a new pope. Lucius II. committed the imprudence, not long after his election, of risking a personal conflict with the excited populace. Believing that the application of vigorous measures would speedily reduce his refractory people to obedience, he repaired in full pontifical costume to the Capitol, at the head of an imposing assembly of Church dignitaries and armed men, for the purpose of dispersing the senate, which was then sit

ting. But the infuriated multitude, undaunted by this display of temporal and spiritual force, greeted the Holy Father and his followers on their appearance with a shower of missiles, and routed them ere they could strike a blow. The Pope himself was so severely hurt in the skirmish, that he died a few days afterwards.

It was shortly after this occurrence that Arnold, attended by two thousand armed Swiss, who followed him either as an escort, or as a military contingent devoted to the interests of the republic, left his Transalpine retreat and entered, in 1145, on the last and longest phase of his public life. Though we have no positive knowledge of the causes which induced him to mix himself up with a movement which eventually proved his ruin, yet there is much in the known circumstances of the case which enables us to form a reasonable conjecture regarding them. Many of his former fellow-students, disciples of Abelard, were Romans by birth, and nothing is more natural than that, having imbibed republican sentiments, they should invite to their aid the illustrious friend of their early days, to propagate by the charm of his eloquence the views they held in common. Without doubt the favourable nature of the opportunity which presented itself in the actual condition of affairs at Rome, must also have exercised no slight influence upon his mind in determining him to take so grave a step. For regarding the fondness of the higher clergy for secular power as the capital source of all the corruption which disgraced the Church, it was natural for a mind like his, trained under Abelard to strike straight down to the roots of things, and bold enough to face the full consequences of his logic, to conclude that no higher service could be rendered to Christianity at large, than the healing of this deadly plague at the fountain-head.

It was a thing to be expected that the appearance of Arnold in the capital of Christendom, would give a mighty impetus to the cause of republicanism and church reform. His captivating eloquence, and past connection with similar movements in Lombardy, procured him an acknowledged position of influence and authority, of which he availed himself to the utmost for the promulgation of his politico-religious views. In the absence of Pope Eugene III., and with the whole power of the republic at his back, he enjoyed for a brief period an undisturbed opportunity of influencing the public mind. The same doctrines which he had propounded in Brescia were again insisted on with all his wonted fire and vigour. Whilst acknowledging to the full the absolute supremacy of the Pope in things spiritual, he pointed out that the care of all the churches in Christendom was a task amply sufficient to engross the thoughts and anxieties of the first pastor of the Church, without charging himself with the additional burden of civil government; and believing that there would be no lasting peace, either for Church or State, until a separation was effected between them, he held that the only practicable mode of accomplishing this object, was by the establishment of republican institutions. He