Waldensians

“ From the time of the unsuccessful endeavours at Bergamo to effect a union between the two principal groups, there was, so far as we are aware, no further intercourse between the two. On the other hand, the German Waldensians during the 13th and 14th centuries maintained a pretty regular communication with their Italian brethren.―In general, too, the Lombards continued, along with their German offspring, to hold firmly by the fundamental tenets of the primitive Waldensian faith. ”

“ The Church of the Reformation was in the loins of the Waldensian Church ages before the birth of Luther; her first cradle was placed amid those terrors and sublimities, those ice-clad peaks and great bulwarks of rock. In their dispersions over so many lands—​over France, the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, England, Calabria, Naples—​the Waldenses sowed the seeds of that great spiritual revival which, beginning in the days of Wicliffe, and advancing in the times of Luther and Calvin, awaits its full consummation in the ages to come. ”

“ CHAPTER III. FIRST PERSECUTIONS OF THE WALDENSES. Their Unique Position in Christendom—​Their Twofold Testimony—​They Witness against Rome and for Protestantism—​Hated by Rome—​The Cottian Alps—​Albigenses and Waldenses—​The Waldensian Territory Proper—​Papal Testimony to the Flourishing State of their Church in the Fourteenth Century—​Early Bulls against them—​Tragedy of Christmas, 1400—​Constancy of the Waldenses—​Crusade of Pope Innocent VIII.—​His Bull of 1487—-The Army Assembles—​Two Frightful Tempests approach the Valleys.
The Waldenses stand apart and alone in the Christian world. ”

“ It seemed as if the last hour of the Waldensian race had struck.
Seeing this mighty host before their Valleys, the Waldenses sent two of their patriarchs to request an interview with Cataneo, and turn, if possible, his heart to peace. John Campo and John Desiderio were dispatched on this embassy. “Do not condemn us without hearing us,” said they, “for we are Christians and faithful subjects; and our Barbes are prepared to prove, in public or in private, that our doctrines are conformable to the Word of God.... Our hope in God is greater than our desire to please men ”

“ We know not if ever before an entire nation were in prison at once. Yet now it was so. All of the Waldensian race that remained from the sword of their executioners were immured in the dungeons of Piedmont! The pastor and his flock, the father and his family, the patriarch and the stripling had passed in, in one great procession, and exchanged their grand rock-walled Valleys, their tree-embowered homes, and their sunlit peaks, for the filth, the choking air, and the Tartarean walls of an Italian gaol. ”

“ The Waldenses bear a twofold testimony. Like the snow-clad peaks amid which their dwelling is placed, which look down upon the plains of Italy on the one side, and the provinces of France on the other, this people stand equally related to primitive ages and modern times, and give by no means equivocal testimony respecting both Rome and the Reformation. If they are old, then Rome is new; if they are pure, then Rome is corrupt ”

“ After passing a certain time in the school of the barbes, it was not uncommon for the Waldensian youth to proceed to the seminaries in the great cities of Lombardy, or to the Sorbonne at Paris. There they saw other customs, were initiated into other studies, and had a wider horizon around them than in the seclusion of their native valleys. Many of them became expert dialecticians, and often made converts of the rich merchants with whom they traded, and the landlords in whose houses they lodged. The priests seldom cared to meet in argument the Waldensian missionary. ”

“ The grandfather of the Vaudois historian, Gilles, in one of these pastoral visits to Venice, was assured by the Waldenses whom he there conversed with, that there were not fewer than 6,000 of their nation in that city. Fear had not yet awakened the suspicions and kindled the hatred of the Romanists, for the Reformation was not yet come. Nor did the Waldenses care to thrust their opinions upon the notice of their neighbours. Still the priests could not help observing that the manners of these northern settlers were, in many things, peculiar and strange. ”

“ Now when the children of light, who confessed the doctrine of the Waldenses, in the midst of the darkness of popery,199 began to lift up their hands more and more, in the Flemish countries, and to combat with the power of the word of God the errors of the Roman church, and to reject principally papal authority, the mass, transubstantiation, pilgrimages, the invocation of saints, purgatory, infant baptism, the swearing of oaths, revenge towards enemies, etc., as we stated concerning the belief of the Waldenses, in the account for the eleventh century ”

“ Nevertheless, of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many men have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor. Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me. ”

“ Men were found who confessed to believing in the Waldenses and to performing acts of adoration to the Cathari—in the common enmity to Rome any faith which was not orthodox was regarded as good. The reputation of the Waldenses as skilful leeches was a powerful aid in their missionary labors. They were constantly consulted in cases of disease or injury, and almost without exception they refused payment for their ministrations, save food. One woman confessed to giving forty sols to a Catharan for medical services, while to Waldenses she gave only wine and bread. ”

“ While three armies were marching to attack them, the Waldenses, in their grand valley, with its rampart of ice-crowned peaks, were engaged in their morning devotions. Suddenly the cries of fugitives, and the shouts of assailants, issuing from the narrow chasm on the south, broke upon their ear, together with the smoke of burning hamlets. Of the three points of attack, this was the easiest to be defended. Six brave Waldensian [Pg 95] youths strode down the valley, to stop the way against La Trinita’s soldiers. They were six against an army. ”

“ It consists of seventeen articles, [39] the chief of which are the Moral inability of man; election to eternal life; the will of God, as made known in the Bible, the only rule of duty; and the doctrine of two Sacraments only, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
The lamp which had been on the point of expiring began, after this synod, to burn with its former brightness. The ancient spirit of the Waldenses revived. They no longer practised those dissimulations and cowardly concealments to which they had had recourse to avoid persecution. They no longer feared to confess their faith. ”

“ Walden said. "There aren't any others now. We'd know it if there were." He turned away from Eric, to the plastic wall that looked out across the garden and the children playing and the long, level, flower-carpeted plain.
"Sometimes, when there's more than one of them, they go out there away from us, out to the hills where it's wild. But they're found, of course. Found, and brought back." He sighed. "The last of them died when I was a boy."
Others like him. Within Walden's lifetime, others, cut off from their own race, lonely and rootless in the midst of the new. ”

“ I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven Than I live to Walden even. I am its stony shore, And the breeze that passes o'er; In the hollow of my hand Are its water and its sand, And its deepest resort Lies high in my thought.
The cars never pause to look at it; yet I fancy that the engineers and firemen and brakemen, and those passengers who have a season ticket and see it often, are better men for the sight. The engineer does not forget at night, or his nature does not, that he has beheld this vision of serenity and purity once at least during the day. ”

“ And it is right that, though the Waldenses are foreigners, and a people of but small account on Europe’s muster-roll, their bi-centenary should waken echoes in England; such echoes as God wills that noble deeds should stir throughout all time. ”

“ In the mean time, the change in political relationships had all at once altered the condition of the Waldenses.
Victor Amadeus, of Savoy, entered into a confederacy with England and Germany against France, and sent messages of peace, and perfect amnesty, to the little warrior band of Waldenses, on condition that they should aid him in a war with France.
“You have,” thus said the regent, “only one God and one Prince. Serve both faithfully. Hitherto we have been enemies; but henceforth we shall be friends. Others have been the occasion of your misfortunes. ”

“ Since the Waldenses were very ancient, and were spread over very many parts of the world, it came that they, from time to time were compelled, by the demand of those with and among whom they lived, to give an account of their faith ”

“ By far the most important body of these anti-sacerdotal heretics were the Waldenses. Their founder was Peter Waldo, whose name takes many forms—Waldez, Waldus, Waldensis. He was a wealthy merchant of Lyons who, moved with religious feelings and himself ignorant, caused two priests to translate into the vernacular Romance the New Testament and a collection of extracts from the chief writers of the early Church known as Sentences. From a perusal of these he became convinced that the way to spiritual perfection lay through poverty. ”

“ In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh ”

“ He says "that the Waldenses were no new sect, but had been in those valleys for more than five or six centuries," and in proof of this remarks further, that "no edict of any prince who gave permission for the introduction of this religion into these parts can be found. Princes only give permission to their subjects to continue in the religion of their ancestors." Cassini, an Italian priest, declares that [Pg 12] the tradition handed down was, that "the Waldenses were as ancient as the Christian Church." ”

“ The external history of the Waldenses," says Mr. Milner, "is little else than a series of persecution." In the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III instituted a crusade against them, and they were pursued with unrelenting fury, and thousands were put to a cruel death. ”

“ The Waldenses lived for a long time untroubled, amidst the defense of their mountains, their remote situation, and their pure, simple manners. They cultivated their fields, practiced a pure Christianity, and received the Holy Communion of bread and wine, conformably with the usage of the most ancient church. An author favorable to them says: “There is scarcely a woman to be found amongst them who cannot, as well as any man, read the whole text of the Scripture in their everyday tongue. They teach the pure doctrine, and exhort to a holy life.” ”

“ I know your love has gone out to Robert Walden. I have no right to ask you to thrust a sword into your own loving heart. I do not doubt he will protect you with all the strength of a noble manhood. This house shall be yours, together with Pompey and Phillis, who will be as dutiful to you as they have been to your mother and me. You speak of our coming back, but when we once leave this house we never shall [Pg 368] behold it again; nor shall we ever look again upon your face unless you come where we may be. Where that will be, God only knows; we shall be fugitives and wanderers without a home. ”

“ It had given them the power of repelling the invader. Climbing the slopes of the Pra, and issuing from all their hiding-places in its environs, they spread themselves over the mountains, the paths of which were familiar to them, and while the host stood riveted beneath them, caught in the double toils of the defile and the mist, they tore up huge stones and rocks, and sent them thundering down into the ravine. The Papal soldiers were crushed where they stood. Nor was this all. Some of the Waldenses boldly entered the chasm, sword in hand, and attacked them in front. ”

“ The craft of the man conquered the deputies, and despite the warnings of the more sagacious, the pastor Leger in particular, the Waldenses opened the passes of their valleys and the doors of their dwellings to the soldiers of Pianeza.
Alas! alas! these poor people were undone. They had received under their roof the murderers of themselves and their families. The first two days, the 22nd and 23rd of April, were passed in comparative peace, the soldiers eating at the same table, sleeping under the same roof, and conversing freely with their destined victims. ”

“ At the head of the whole community down to his death stood the founder himself. He led the entire movement, received new members into the societas, and chose and ordained the ministri.―The two most important sources for the primitive history of the Waldensian movement, mutually supplementing one another, are, the Chronicon Laudunense of an unnamed canon of Laon in the Mon. Germ. Scrr. xxvi. 447, and the tract De Septem Donis Spir. S. of the inquisitor Stephen de Borbone, who died A.D. 1261, which is given in full in de la Marche, Anecdotes historiques, etc., Paris, 1877. ”