345 



ARNALDO DE BRESCIA. 



ARNAUD, HENRI. 



3 is 



of criticism. Besides his lectures on the practice of physic he delivered 

 a course on the Materia Medico. These pretensions of Dr. Armstrong 

 to new and more enlightened views in medical science were much 

 discussed among his professional brethren, and not the less keenly as 

 his practice rapidly increased, and very opposite opinions were enter- 

 tained of his merits. As a practical physician Dr. Armstrong was 

 deservedly valued. Exclusively devoted to his profession, kind and 

 attentive to his patients, acute in observing and prompt in acting, he 

 well earned his extraordinary professional success. In private life he 

 was retiring, and seems to have been most amiable. In the summer 

 of 1824 his health bad been seriously affected, but the signs of con- 

 firmed disease did not appear till December 1828. He rallied under 

 the influence of country air, and returned to his extensive practice ; 

 but he gradually declined, and died of consumption on the 12th of 

 December 1829, at the age of 45 years. 



Besides the work on ' Puerpural Fever ' and ' Typhus,' mentioned 

 above, Dr. Armstrong published three separate medical works, and 

 contributed several papers to the ' Edinburgh Medical and Surgical 

 Journal,' the ' Medical Intelligencer,' and the ' Transactions of the 

 Associated Apothecaries of England and Wales.' He also published 

 Annual Reports of the Fever Hospital, alternately with Dr. Cleverley. 



His lectures appeared in the 'Lancet,' 1825; and agaiu, after his 

 death, in a separate form, edited by one of his pupils ' Lectures on 

 the Morbid Anatomy, Nature and Treatment of Acute and Chronic 

 Diseases, by the late John Armstrong, M.D., edited by Joseph Rix,' 

 8vo. London, 1834. (Memoir of the Life and Medical Opinions of 

 J. Amutrony, M.D., &c., by Francis Boott, M.D., 2 vols. 8vo., London, 

 1834.) 



(Abridged from the Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the 

 Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.) 



ARNALDO DE BRESCIA was born in the town of Brescia about 

 the beginning of the 12th century. He studied in France under the 

 famous Abelard. Having returned to Italy, he became a monk. The 

 corruption of the clergy was very great at that time, and Arnaldo, 

 endowed with an impassioned mind and a great flow of oratory, began 

 to hold forth in public against the ambition, the temporal power, and 

 the luxurious life of abbots, prelates, and cardinals, not sparing the 

 pope himself. Arnaldo maintained that ecclesiastics as well as lay- 

 men ought to be subordinate to the civil power ; that the disposal of 

 kingdoms and principalities did not belong to the church of Christ ; 

 and that the clergy ought to be satisfied with their tithes and the 

 voluntary oblations of the faithful, and not to bold, as they then did, 

 sovereign lordships and feudal estates. To these doctrines he added 

 others of a mystical character about the Trinity and the nature of the 

 soul, which were eagerly laid hold of and perhaps distorted by his 

 enemies. By preaching against the temporalities of the church, 

 Arnaldo had excited the ' passions of the people ; Brescia revolted 

 against its bishop, the fermentation spread to other towns, and com- 

 plaints against the author of all this poured in at Rome. Arnaldo 

 was Kmi -lir, | from Italy, and forbidden to return without the Pope's 

 permission. (See Mosheim's ' Ecclesiastical History,' translated by 

 Dr. Murdock, and the translator's note on the subject of ' Arnaldo.') 

 He proceeded to France, where he met with an unrelenting adversary 

 in St. Bernard, the zealous and vehement abbot of Clairvaux, who 

 denounced Arualdo, wrote against him, and forced him to seek refuge 

 at Zurich, where he remained five years. He there resumed his 

 preaching against the abuses of the clergy, and found many favourable 

 listeners. But St. Bernard traced him there also, and caused the 

 bishop of Constance to banish him from his diocese. Arnaldo upon 

 this returned to Italy, and hearing that the people of Rome had 

 revolted against the pope, he repaired there, and put himself at the 

 head of the insurrection. Lucius II. had died of the wounds received 

 in a popular affray, and Eugenius III., a disciple of St. Bernard, suc- 

 ceeded him in the papal cbair, but was driven away from the city 

 by the people and the senate. Arnaldo exhorted the Romans to 

 re-establish the Roman republic with its consuls, to reinstate the 

 equestrian order, and to emulate the deeds of their glorious ancestors. 

 The multitude, thus excited, hurried on to excesses which Arnaldo 

 probably had never contemplated. They attacked and demolished 

 the houses of the cardinals and nobles of the papal party, killed or ill- 

 treated the inmates, and shared the plunder among themselves in the 

 name of Brutus and Cato, Fabius and Paulus Emilius. Arnaldo how 

 ever still remained poor ; he really despised wealth, his morals were 

 irreproachable, and it seems that he judged of others by himself a 

 common delusion among honest popular leaders. 



Rome continued for ten years in a state of agitation little differing 

 from anarchy. Eugenius III. died in 1153, and his successor Auas- 

 tasiuH IV. having followed him to the grave shortly after, Adrian IV. 

 was elected pope in 1154. He was a man of a more determined spirit 

 than his predecessors. A cardinal having been attacked and seriously 

 wounded in the streets of Rome, Adrian resorted to the bold measure 

 of excommunicating the first city in Christendom a thing without a 

 precedent. The Romans, who had set at nought the temporal power 

 of the pope, quailed before his spiritual authority. In order to be 

 reconciled to the pontiff, they exiled Arnaldo, who took refuge among 

 ouie friendly nobles in Campania. When the emperor Frederic I. 

 came to Rome to be crowned, the pope applied to him to have Arnaldo 

 arrested. Frederic accordingly gave his orders to the Margrave or 



Viscount of Campania, and Arnaldo, being delivered into the hands of 

 ;he Prefect of Rome, was strangled, his body burnt, and the ashes 

 thrown into the Tiber, in the year 1155. [ADRIAN IV.] 



ARNAUD, HENRI, the pastor and military leader of the Vaudois, 

 was born at the town of La Tour, or La Torre, in Piedmont, in tlie 

 year 1641, and was educated at the Latin school there. It is said that 

 before entering the Church he was in the military service of the Prince 

 of Orange, afterwards William III. of England. Little is known of his 

 personal history until the commencement of the renowned expedition 

 of the Vaudois for the recovery of their possessions in Piedmont, of 

 which he was both the military leader and the historian. Victor 

 Amadeus II. of Savoy was induced to imitate within his dominions 

 the principles on which Louis XIV. had revoked the Edict of Nantes, 

 and thus to adopt a harsher rule of compulsory conformity to the 

 Roman Catholic faith than that which had been followed by his imme- 

 diate predecessors. According to Arnaud's account he imprisoned 

 14,000 of the Vaudois Protestants in the dungeons of Turin, of whom 

 3000 were afterwards allowed to emigrate, leaving 11,000, who are 

 said to have perished from the effects of thirst, cold, and hunger, and 

 the other evils incident to captivity. The number said to have so 

 perished is a manifest exaggeration. Of the 3000 permitted to emi- 

 grate, the greater part found an asylum in the west of Switzerland 

 and in the German states of the Upper Rhine ; the remainder accepted 

 the protection of the Elector of Brandenburg. It would appear that 

 at the commencement of Arnaud's expedition there were about 2000 

 of the Vaudois dispersed through the districts from which his follow- 

 ers were collected. Before they were united under the command of 

 Henri Arnaud, these people had made two unsuccessful efforts to 

 return to their native valleys. The first was a very rash enterprise ; 

 but the second appears to have been partially directed by Arnaud, 

 who in the end however recommended the giving up of the attempt, 

 and encouraged his followers to a better-arranged effort, by preaching 

 to them from the text, " Fear not, little flock." In the meantime he 

 made a journey to Holland, and communicated his project to the 

 Prince of Orange, who approved of it, and probably furnished the 

 money with which it was conducted. 



The revolution of 1688, and the accession of William to the throne 

 of England, seemed to Arnaud the fit time for the commencement of 

 his enterprise. He was one of those men in whom religious enthusiasm 

 is united with great sagacity, and his arrangements for concentrating 

 his dispersed followers were designed with wonderful skill, aud exe- 

 cuted with corresponding success. Their rendezvous was the great 

 forest of the Pays de Vaud, between Nyon and Rolle. There they 

 remained in concealment for some time. Before they embarked, their 

 retreat having been discovered by their neighbours, Aruaud turned 

 this circumstance to his advantage, by seizing for the use of his follow- 

 ers the boats of those who were led by curiosity to visit the spot. The 

 expedition embarked on the Lake of Geneva to the number of between 

 eight and nine hundred, on the night of the 16th of August, 1689, 

 headed by Arnaud, who, in his military capacity, adopted from his 

 native town the name of La Tour. They debarked between the towns 

 of Nernier and Ivoyre, and were formed by their leader into nineteen 

 companies, under so many captains. After meeting with many obstacles, 

 and encountering a good deal of opposition, they entered the valley of 

 San Martino on the 16th of September, the thirty-first day of their 

 march. On their way they had been harassed by a body of French 

 troops, about 3000 in number, aud towards the close of their march 

 had been exposed to attack from a French force of 12,000 men on the 

 one hand, and a Piedmontese army of 10,000 on the other. When 

 they halted, it was their leader's first business to draw up a memorial 

 to the court of Turin, representing the injustice of the removal of the 

 Vaudois from their ancient possessions, their peaceful and inoffensive 

 disposition, and their loyalty to the House of Savoy. On a table-land 

 at the top of a rock called in the narrative ' La Balsille,' they con- 

 structed a strong line of fortification against the French troops, who 

 remained in their vicinity all winter, and harassed them with repeated 

 attacks. In 1690 a general assault was commenced on the 2nd of May. 

 The French were completely repulsed, and we are told the almost 

 incredible circumstance, that though the besieging army consisted of 

 22,000 men, of whom a multitude were destroyed, not one of the 

 Vaudois garrison received even a wound. In pursuance of their system 

 of extermination and defiance, the garrison stuck the heads of their 

 prisoners on palisades within sight of the enemy. One prisoner, how- 

 ever, Mons. de Parat, the commander of the assaulting detachment, 

 was too valuable to be sacrificed. He was wounded, and as there was 

 no surgeon in the camp of the Vaudois, he was told that he must send 

 for one to his own army. He did so ; a surgeon came, and as Arnaud 

 wanted the services qf such a person, he was of course detained. At 

 the expiration of a week after their defeat, the French returned to the 

 siege of ' La Balsille,' and took the place, but found it empty. Aruaud, 

 whose spirit and sagacity seem to have been equal to every emergency, 

 had drawn off his forces in the night, conducting them down precipitous 

 banks and through wild ravines, the dangerous character of which 

 prevented such a project from being suspected. With numerous and 

 exasperated enemies at tbeir heels, Aruaud's band proceeded to 

 Angrona, and when they had arrived there, at the moment when 

 every chance of their further safety seemed to be exhausted, they 

 received the gratifying intelligence that, owing to the exacting and 



