ERLEMBALDO COTTA, SANTO

ERLEMBALDO COTTA, Saint. — A noble Milanese knight of the 11th century, a religious and warrior spirit, devoted all his efforts to the service of the popes in the reform of the clergy, purged of simony and concubinage. Upon the death of his brother Landolfo, head of the fatherland, the deacon Araldo (v.), who together with Landolfo had preached reform in Milan, invited Erlembaldo to take his place. Erlembaldo went to Rome in 1032 to seek counsel from Pope Alexander II, who commanded him to defend the reform with arms and appointed him standard-bearer of the Holy Church. Erlembaldo so strengthened the Patarene party that soon no one in Milan dared openly oppose II.
Yet in 1066, when he returned from Rome bearing the bulls of excommunication against the simoniacal archbishop Guido, the latter succeeded in turning the people against him by insinuating that Erlembaldo aimed to subject the Milanese Church to the Church of Rome. But the Patarene party recovered and the struggle against Guido and the reformed clergy continued, while Erlembaldo worked for Guido’s deposition and the election of a bishop pleasing to the Holy See. The aged Guido now resigned the see, and the imperial envoy Enrico appointed in his stead Goffredo di Castiglione (1068), whom the Pope condemned as simoniacal. Erlembaldo and his followers besieged Goffredo in his castle of Castiglione, but a severe fire in Milan forced the enterprise to be suspended. Meanwhile Guido, having returned to Milan, died (1071), and Erlembaldo, with the consent of the papal legate, had Attone proclaimed bishop (1072). But the opposing faction forced Attone to resign, and neither he nor Goffredo ever took possession of the Milanese Church. Pope Gregory VII, elected in 1073, exhorted Erlembaldo to persevere in his reforming work, though counselling him to receive repentant sinners with kindness. The Milanese nobles, again rallying behind Enrico—whose interference in episcopal elections the Pope had condemned at the Roman Council of 1073—conspired against Erlembaldo, and when he refused to allow the use of chrism consecrated by the schismatic bishop, they prepared to attack him. On 28 June 1075 Erlembaldo was slain, and his body, left unburied for several days, was secretly interred by some of his followers near the monastery of S. Celso, where he was venerated as a martyr and confessor. Urban II, passing through Milan in May 1095 together with Archbishop Arnold II, translated his relics to the church of S. Dionigi. This act, which then amounted to a canonization, was recorded by an inscription on his tomb and handed down by two independent sources: an anonymous annotator of the 14th century on Landolfo Seniore and the 16th-century Fiamma.