Frederick sends his soldiers to secure Arnaldo, but as to Ostasio and
his children he relents somewhat, being touched by the anguish of
Adelasia. Adrian rebukes his weakness, saying that he learned in the
cloister to subdue these compassionate impulses. In the next scene,
which is on the Capitoline Hill, the Roman Senate resolves to defend
the city against the Germans to the last, and then we have Arnaldo a
prisoner in a cell of the Castle of St. Angelo. The Prefect of Rome
vainly entreats him to recant his heresy, and then leaves him with the
announcement that he is to die before the following day. As to the
soliloquy which follows, Niccolini says: "I have feigned in Arnaldo in
the solemn hour of death these doubts, and I believe them exceedingly
probable in a disciple of Abelard. This struggle between reason
and faith is found more or less in the intellect of every one, and
constitutes a sublime torment in the life of those who, like the
Brescian monk, have devoted themselves from an early age to the study
of philosophy and religion. None of the ideas which I attribute to
Arnaldo were unknown to him, and, according to Mueller, he believed
that God was all, and that the whole creation was but one of his
thoughts. His other conceptions in regard to divinity are found in one
of his contemporaries.
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