hey thrived, to the feet of
the king, and received back their brother in exchange. Arnold was
forthwith remanded in chains to Rome, there to await the arrival of
Frederic, who intended to have the culprit tried before his own
tribunal.

But Peter, the prefect of Rome, and commandant of the Castle of St.
Angelo, a devoted servant of the pope, into whose custody Arnold was
delivered, fearful lest his prisoner should escape by means of a
popular riot,--as he had once done before in the same
circumstances,--resolved to execute him on his own account; and, without
waiting forfurther instructions either from Frederic or Adrian, but
secretly abetted by several cardinals on the spot, had the unhappy man
led out early on the morning of the 18th of June, 1155, before the popular
or people's gate; where he was fastened to a cross projecting from the
midst of a pile of faggots, which, being fired, soon enveloped their
victim in the flames. His cries and the tumult of the execution roused
the citizens, dwelling hard by, from their beds, who presently ran up
lamenting and furious to the rescue; but, in vain; as they were thrust
back on all sides by the soldiers who kept the ground. Nevertheless,
such was the infatuated reverence which the people manifested for
their late tribune, that it was found expedient after his execution to
throw his ashes into the Tiber, to prevent them being enshrined as
holy relics. Arnold of Brescia was about fifty years old, when he thus
met his fate.

However shocking such cruel executions as he suffered may be to the
more enlightened benevolence, or more sensual refinement of the
present day; yet, from the point of view of the middle ages,--that the
visible punishment of a crime should be commensurate with, and, as it
were, symbolise its moral enormity,--there can be no doubt but that in
the present case the criminal received only what he deserved. Few men
ever did worse mischief to society in their day, than Arnold of
Brescia. Private ambition was his ruling passion, and his hopes of
gratifying it were set on the realization of dreams and fancies,
engendered of an unbridled imagination, which an admixture of
mysticism further distempered. A false scandal which he took at the
discrepancy between the lives and doctrines of the clergy, in his time
widely corrupted, heightened by his Pharisaical pride,--which a bodily
temperament, naturally disinclined to sensual excess, inflated all the
more--as, by mea