Arnold of Brescia ( 1090 – June 1155), also known as Arnaldus (), an Italian canon regular from Lombardy, called on the Church to renounce property-ownership and participated in the failed Commune of Rome of 1144–1193. Exiled at least three times and eventually arrested, Arnold was hanged by the papacy; his remains were burned posthumously and the ashes thrown into the River Tiber. Though he failed as a religious reformer and a political leader, his teachings on apostolic poverty gained currency after his death among "Arnoldists" and more widely among Waldensians and the Spiritual Franciscans, though no written word of his has survived the official condemnation. Protestants rank him among the precursors of the Reformation. Biography Born in Brescia, Arnold became an Augustinian canon and then prior of a monastery in Brescia. He criticized the Catholic Church's temporal powers that involved it in a land struggle in Brescia against the Count-Bishop of Brescia. He called on the Church to renounce its claim and return ownership to the city government so as not to be tainted by possession—renunciation of worldliness being one of his primary teachings. He was condemned at the Second Lateran Council in 1139 and banished from Italy. According to the chronicler Otto of Freising, Arnold had studied in Paris under the tutelage of the reformer and philosopher Pierre Abélard. He approved of Abélard's proposals for monastic reform. The issue came before the Synod of Sens in 1141 and both Arnold and Abélard's positions were overruled by Bernard of Clairvaux. Arnold stood alone against the church's decision after Abélard's capitulation; he returned to Paris, where he continued to teach and preach against Bernard. As a consequence he was then commanded to silence and exiled by Pope Innocent II. He took refuge first in Zürich and then probably in Bavaria. His writings were also ordered burned as a further measure, though that judgement is the only evidence that he had actually written anything. Arnold continued to preach his radical ideas concerning apostolic poverty. Arnold, who is known only from the vituperative condemnation of his foes, was declared to be a demagogue; his motives were impugned. Having returned to Italy after 1143, in 1145 Arnold made his peace with Pope Eugene III, who ordered him to submit himself to the mercy of the Church in Rome. When he arrived, he found that Giordano Pierleoni's followers had asserted the ancient rights of