§ 84. THE WALDENSES. 499
France they overflowed into Piedmont, partly to find a refuge in its high valleys, seamed by the mountain streams of the Perouse, the Luserne, and the Angrogne. There, in the Cottian Alps, they dwelt for some time without molestation. They had colonies as far south as Calabria, and the emigra tion continued in that direction till the fifteenth century.1 But the time of persecution came. In 1209, Otto IV. issued an edict of banishment and in 1220 Thomas, count of Savoy, threatened with fines all showing them hospitality. But their hardy industry made them valuable subjects and for a hundred years there was no persecution in the valleys unto death. The first victim at the stake perished, 1312.
Innocent VIII., notorious for his official recognition of witchcraft, was the first papal persecutor to resort to rigorous measures. In 1487, he announced a crusade, and called upon Charles VIII. of France and the duke of Savoy to execute the decree. Everything the Waldenses had endured before, as Leger says, was as " roses and flowers" compared with what they were now called upon to suffer. Innocent furnished an army of eighteen -thousand. The Piedmontese Waldenses were forced to crouch up higher into the valleys, and were subject to almost incredible hardship. The most bitter sufferings of this Israel of the Alps were reserved for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, after they had accepted the Reformation.2 It was of the atrocious mas sacres perpetrated at that time that Milton exclaimed,
"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, Whose bones lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold."
The history of the Waldensian movement in different parts of Germany and Austria has scarcely less interest than the Franco-Italian movement. It had a more extensive in fluence by preparing the way for other separatist and evan-
1 Coinba, p. 103 sq. ; Lea, II. 259 sqq.
2 In 1530 the mediaeval period of their history closes. At that date two of their number, Morel and Peter Masson, were sent to consult with Bucer, CEcolampadius, and other Reformers. Morel was beheaded on his return journey. His letter to CEcolampadius and the Reformer's reply are given by Bieckhoff, pp. 364-373. The Waldenses adopted the Reformation, 1532.
500 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
gelical movements. It is supposed that a translation of parts of the Scriptures belonging to the Waldenses was in circulation in Metz at the end of the twelfth century. Copies were committed to the flames. It is also supposed that Waldenses were among the heretics ferreted out in Strassburg in 1212, eighty of whom were burnt, twelve priests and twenty-three women being of the number. The Walden ses spread as far north as Konigsberg and Stettin and were found in Swabia, Poland, Bavaria, and especially in Bohemia and the Austrian diocese of Passau.1
They were subjected to persecution as early as in 1260. Fifty years later there were at least forty -two Waldensian communities in Austria and a number of Waldensian schools. Neumeister, a bishop of the Austrian heretics, who suffered death with many others in 1315, testified that in the diocese of Passau alone the sect had over eighty thousand adherents.2 In 1318 Dominican and Franciscan inquisitors were despatched to Bohemia and Poland to help the authori ties in putting the heresy down. Bohemia had become the most important centre of Waldensianism. With these Aus trian heretics the Poor Men of Lombardy kept up a corre spondence 3 and they received from them contributions.
In spite of persecutions, the German Waldenses continued to maintain themselves to the fifteenth century.
The Austrian dissenters were active in the distribution of the Scriptures. And Whittier has based his poem of the Vaudois Teacher upon the account of the so-called Anony mous writer of Passau of the fourteenth century. He speaks of the Waldenses as going about as pedlers to the houses of the noble families and offering first gems and other goods
1 See Comba, 74 sqq. A number of the documents given by Dollinger are interrogatories for use against the Waldenses of Germany and Austria, or accounts of their trials. One of them, in German, belongs as late as the sixteenth century, Dollinger, II. 701 sq. Haupt, Keller, Preger. and Goll have extended our knowledge of the Austrian Waldenses.
2 Haupt, Waldenserthum, p. 21.
8 Comba, in the French trans, of his work, and Miiller, Die Waldenser, p. 103, print a consolatory letter from them to their suffering Bohemian friends.