ments, especially baptism, for they declared that if a life of iustitia, 'righteousness', were observed, then baptism was superfluous, as it also was, in a somewhat different sense, for those who did not amend their lives after they had received it. They lived a life of simple manual labour. Another group, centred on the castle of Monforte in Piedmont and which had as adherents members of the local nobility as well as more simple people, demonstrated a similar disillusionment with the official structures of the Church and tenets of the faith. Absolution for sin, they maintained, should not be the prerogative only of the priesthood. They denied the authority of 'the Roman pontiff' in favour of that of their leader, Gerard. In the cities, this new 'puritanism' was to have more disruptive effects. The Patarenes, or 'rag-pickers' of Milan, under their leader Erlembald, a member of a family of lesser knights, posed a serious threat to the peace of the city in the years 1056-75. Not only did they attack the clergy of the Church of St Ambrose as corrupt and immoral, but they set up their own churches in which celibate clergy provided for the spiritual needs of the group. The Patarenes were initially supported by such major figures in the Reform Movement as Gregory VII and Peter Damian and indeed their concerns, though perhaps overenthusiastically proclaimed, were very much those of the Reform papacy. But their increasingly violent behaviour turned public opinion against the Patarenes. Erlembald was murdered by his enemies and many Patarenes fled from the city. The papacy, intent on gaining influence amongst the Milanese clergy, abandoned them in favour of the new reformist clerics who had begun to emerge. Whilst the Patarenes in Milan and other cities such as Brescia, Cremona, and Piacenza to which their movement spread, never, in the strict sense, went beyond the declarations of the reforming councils of the Church, the zeal of their activity led them to be considered as heretics for it questioned the sole authority of the Church to discipline its clergy and claimed a right of action for the laity against errant ecclesiastics which could not be conceded. The aggression of the Patarenes, however, set the tone for heretical developments in the twelfth century. Instead of small groups content to live
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