One of the earliest voices against the worldliness of the Catholic Church was Arnold, an abbot at Brescia, a town in northern Italy. In a series of sermons at Brescia, Arnold insisted that clerical vice was a result of the church’s attempt to control the world. He urged the church to surrender its property and secular dominion to the state and return to the poverty and simplicity of the early church. The true church and its ministers, he said, should shun wealth, for wealth and power nullify salvation.
