THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
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missionaries, in a number of towns in northern and northwestern Italy. They were in Strasburg (1211), Bavaria and Austria (1218), and in the diocese of Treves and the region surrounding Mainz (1231). The determined effort to suppress heresy, then made throughout middle and southern Germany, was directed primarily against them. Meanwhile, the French Waldenses had extended their territory, so that it became necessary to take measures against them in Toul (1192), Metz (1199-1200), and Liége (1203). They were also present in Flanders at the beginning of the thirteenth century, but the south remained their chief field of operations. In Languedoe they engaged the attention of the bishops as early as the ninth decade of the twelfth century, and they soon caused commotion in Aragon and Catalonia. Here and in Languedoc they were, in all likelihood, most widely spread, numerous, and influential about the close of the twelfth and the beginning
of the thirteenth century. They were drawn chiefly !
from the laity of the bourgeois and peasant classes, though a few priests and men of culture, and even monks, were to be found among them.
The papal ban (1184) had empowered the authorities of both Church and State to proceed against the Waldenses. In 1194 Alfonso II. of Spain issued an
edict that all who should harbor, give 3. Repres- food and drink, or even listen to the sion. Waldenses should be punished by confiscation of property and prosecuted for lése majesté, while any injury might be inflicted on the Insabbatati save death and mutilation. In 1197 Pedro II. renewed this edict, with the added clause that Waldenses should be burned wherever taken, this forming the first public document in which death by burning was prescribed by the State for heresy. How far the mandate was enforced is uncertain, but in Germany about eighty members of the sect were burned at Strasburg in 1211. In their chief missionary centers, France and Italy, they were treated with more leniency. At Milan Archbishop Philip seems to have contented himself with razing their school, and in Pinerolo a vain effort was made to induce the inhabitants to refuse to receive them. In France only some of the bishops at first proceeded against them, and these with such moderate measures as summoning before the courts or burning their translations. Not until the Albigensian war broke out in southern France were bloody persecutions inflicted. Seven were burned at Maurillac in 1214. Throughout this first generation of the sect zealous efforts were made to reclaim them gently, or at least to refute their peculiar tenets; and Bernard of Fontcaud, Alanus ab Insulis, and Eberhard of Bethune then composed their works against the adherents of Waldo. In Languedoc there were attempts to reconcile them with the Church by means of religious colloquies at an unknown place previous to 1191, and at the castle of Pamiers in 1206. At the latter the Waldensian Duran of Huesca agreed to submit, provided he might retain his habit and his mode of life, and the Church was soon able to form from reconciled Waldenses a new brand of poor preachers, the Pauperes Catholici (q.v.), who, it was vainly hoped, would render valuable service in combating the Waldensian heresy.
Atavery early date dissensions arose. Waldo vainly demanded the dissolution of the associations of laborers. He permitted the dissolution of marriage in case one wished to join his ranks, while the Lombards were of the opinion that the consent of the wife was necessary. The Lombards, because of his in-
sistence, desired to become independent 4. Lombard.of him, and have a leader of their own. Secession. The result was a crisis, which reached its climax about 1210, and a final rupture took place between the two bodies, the Lombards choosing their own leader in the simple and unlettered Giovanni di Ronco. These internal dissensions probably explain why, at this period, the sect made so slight a resistance to Roman Catholic efforts for their conversion, and why it now lost so many of its members, particularly of the more cultured class. This loss, and the considerable success of the Pauperes Catholici made the more moderate spirits in both factions anxious for reunion, and the death of both leaders opened the way. In May, 1218, therefore, six delegates from both sides met at Bergamo. Generous concessions were made to the Lombards, but two points the Waldenses would not yield: Lombard recognition of Waldo and his otherwise unknown colleague Vivet as “‘ blessed ”’; and the surrender of the distinctively Lombard sacramental doctrine, for which only toleration, not acceptance, had been asked. The Lombards refused to comply on these two points, and negotiations were accordingly broken off, never to be resumed. Both were guilty of narrowness, yet the final cause of the division is to be found in the fact that the Lombards were already an organized community with fixed regulations and self-consciousness when they joined the Waldenses.
II. Ideal, Method, and Government of the Poor Men: That the purpose of Waldo was a return to apostolic poverty, with a general revival of apostolic life based especially on Matt. x., is firmly established. The dearth of direct information concerning his regulations finds, however, a certain
degree of compensation in two indirect
1. Character sources: the statements regarding the and Rule. French and Lombard ‘‘ poor men” in later times; and the authentic data
afforded by Innocent III. concerning the Pauperes Catholici, to whom the pope left, so far as possible, their old usages and organization. Inasmuch as all regular intercourse was broken off permanently, it may be considered a rule that all institutions and practises found in later times common to both Waldenses and Lombards date from before the schism. The “society” of the “ poor in spirit” was primarily nothing but an ascetic association of men and women who renounced the world, formally vowed to practise apostolic poverty and the apostolic calling, and wore as an outward symbol the apostolic habit. They alone, later called in the Lombard-German group also “ masters,” “ apostles,’ and even “lords,’”’ were members of the “‘ society ’”’; the recent converts and “ friends’? who remained in the world had no share in their privileges and duties. By the excommunication of the society its character changed long before the schism; and Waldo, who had already claimed recognition as a bishop, and
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