§ 84. THE WALDENSES. 501
and then the richest gem of all, the Word of God. This writer praised their honesty, industry, and sobriety. Their speech, he said, was free from oaths and falsehoods.
We have thus three types of Waldenses: the Poor Men of Lyons, the Poor Men of Lombardy, and the Austrian Waldensians.1 As for their dissent from the established Church, it underwent in some particulars, in their later periods, a devel opment, and on the other hand there was developed a tendency to again approach closer to the Church.2
In their earliest period the Waldenses were not heretics, although the charge was made against them that they claimed to be "the only imitators of Christ." Closely as they and the Cathari were associated geographically and by the acts of councils, papal decrees, and in literary refutations of heresy, the Waldenses differ radically from the Cathari. They never adopted Manichsean elements. Nor did they re pudiate the sacramental system of the established Church and invent strange rites of their own. They were also far removed from mysticism and have no connection with the German mystics as some of the other sectaries had. They were likewise not Protestants, for we seek in vain among them for a statement of the doctrine of justification by faith. It is possible, they held to the universal priesthood of believers. According to de Bourbon and others, they declared all good men to be priests. They placed the stress upon following the practice of the Apostles and obeying the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, and they did not know the definition
1 The earliest writers, as the abbot Bernard and Alanus, make no distinc tions. Rainerius, 1260, does, as do also the Itescriptum which has an eye to the Waldenses of Passau and Salve Burce in his Supra Stella, 1235, who refers more particularly to the Poor Men of Lombardy. David of Augsburg, 1256, an inquisitor of high repute, has in mind the Waldensians, as a body. Bernard Guy, 1320, treats of the Lyonnese Waldensians. The docu ments given by Dollinger extend to the sixteenth century, many of them bearing upon the Waldenses of Austria.
2 At the time of the Reformation, according to Morel, dancing and all sports were forbidden, except the practice of the bow and other arms. Comba, p. 263, recognizes this opposite tendency, the Waldenses approaching closer to the established Church in their practice of the sacraments.
502 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
which Luther put on the word "justification." They ap proached more closely to an opinion now current among Protestants when they said, righteousness is found only in good men and good women.1
The first distinguishing principle of the Waldenses bore on daily conduct and was summed up in the words of the Apostles, "we ought to obey God rather than men." This the Catholics interpreted to mean a refusal to submit to the authority of the pope and prelates. All the early attacks against them contain this charge.2 Alanus sought to refute the principle by adducing Christ's submission to the author ity of Pilate, John 19 : 11, and by arguing that the powers that be are ordained of God. This was, perhaps, the first positive affirmation of a Scriptural ground for religious inde pendence made by the dissenting sects of the Middle Ages. It contains in it, as in a germ, the principle of full liberty of conscience as it was avowed by Luther at Worms.
The second distinguishing principle was the authority and popular use of the Scriptures. Here again the Waldenses anticipated the Protestant Reformation without realizing, as is probable, the full meaning of their demand. The reading of the Bible, it is true, had not yet been forbidden, but Waldo made it a living book and the vernacular translation was diligently taught. The Anonymous writer of Passau said he had seen laymen who knew almost the entire Gospels of Matthew and Luke by heart, so that it was hardly possible to quote a word without their being able to continue the text from memory.
The third principle was the importance of preaching and the right of laymen to exercise that function. Peter Waldo and his associates were lay evangelists. All the early docu ments refer to their practice of preaching as one of the worst heresies of the Waldenses and an evident proof of their arro gance and insubordination. Alanus calls them false preachers, pseudo-pr cedicator es. Innocent III., writing, in 1199, of
*De Bourbon, p. 297.
2 The abbot Bernard, Migne, 204. 796, sqq., 817 sqq.; Alanus, Migue, 210. 880 sqq. ; de Bourbon, p. 292 ; Dollinger, II. 6, 51.