RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Waldenses
lonia, France, and Lorraine. [It is not likely that either party had regard to national or geographical bounds. 4. H. N.| In the two regions first named persecutions by Church and State continued, and in the thirteenth century all traces of the Waldenses vanished from Spain, and in the thirteenth century they disappeared from Lorraine and Flanders. In the Franche Comté, Provence, and Languedoc, however, they were so numerous in 1248 that Count John of Burgundy deemed himself able to cope with them only by means of the Inquisition. They were in conflict with the Church in Valentinois and Provence until the second quarter of the fourteenth century; but as late as the first quarter of the same century their great missionary district was Languedoc, where repressive measures failed to diminish their activity or to disperse their “ friends,’ who were sometimes able to form, both there and in Provence, small congregations with cemeteries of their own, as at Montauban, Montcucq, and Gourdon. After the inquisition of Peter Cella (1241-42), however, the “‘ poor men” and their “friends ”’ were gradually dispersed even in Languedoc, so that by the beginning of the fourteenth century they had become a secret organization, and declined in the course of this and the following century. The internal conditions of the sect during its period of decline are revealed fairly well by the protocols of the Inquisition, and by Bernardus Guidonis. The society preserved, so far as possible, its old customs and regulations. As consequences of their conflict with the Church and the Cathari, the Waldenses had abandoned their apostolic habit, and the Church they regarded as the “‘ Church of the wicked ”’ and a “house of lies’’ because its members were permitted to take oaths and its priests were not bound to apostolic poverty. They denied the right of excommunication and enforcing obedience, and contested the right of Roman Catholic priests to administer the sacraments. They also denied the miracles of the saints, and rejected their invocation, though not the cult of the virgin; and they observed as feasts only Sundays, the days of the virgin, and sometimes the days of the apostles and evangelists. Nevertheless, to escape suspicion, they attended church industriously, sought the favor of priests and monks, and did not hinder the “ friends” from confession to Roman Catholic priests. No longer a preaching association with a missionary activity within the Church, the French central affiliation became a sect or anti-church prevented from schism and independence only by the untoward circumstances. Hence the “ friends’ came to be designated as Waldenses, and only the descendants of parents who were “ believers ”’ were eligible for the “ poor ” class or the perfecti. The training imposed for the order of ‘‘ poor men ”’ consisted successively of five or six years of study, ordination as deacons, and about nine years more of theological study. Entrance was invariably by ordination as deacon, which was regarded as more important than the profession of vows. Women were no longer admitted to this order. The powers and duties of the officers were closely defined with a major minister at the head chosen for life. A catechism, apparently transmitted orally from generation to generation, consisting of
seven articles on God, seven on man, the Decalogue, and the seven works of mercy, was arranged.
IV. The Lombard-German Branch before the Reformation: The Lombards successfully advanced into Italy, Germany, Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary. In Italy, Milan remained their headquarters and Lombardy their chief missionary district. By 1235, however, the persecution of heresy had begun, on a large scale, though how far the ‘‘ poor men,” who had imitated and borrowed much from the Cathari, despite their opposition to them, were affected is uncertain. At all events, their organiza-
tion was not destroyed by 1266, when
1. In Italy. the assemblies could be held more frequently in Lombardy than anywhere
else. Yet by that time the greater amount of money for the support of the clergy came from Germany, thus showing that the German Waldenses were then more numerous and stronger than the Lombard. In the course of the fourteenth century the Lombards seem to have died out in their original center; but as early as the previous century the “ poor men” had found asylum in the Alpine valleys of western Piedmont and the neighboring Dauphiny. A tradition of the fifteenth century would have them come from France, crossing the Cottian Alps. However, the resemblance and close connection with the German Lombards, contradicts that tradition. Doubtless the movement entered not by migration but by missionary proselyting among the inhabitants on both declines of the Cottian Alps, who were originally sprung from an East Provengal stock. The dialect of the Waldensian literature supports this view. Precisely when this mission began is uncertain, but the sect was widespread in the valleys on both sides of Mont Génévre by the beginning of the fourteenth century. By the end of this century Waldenses occupied not only the so-called Waldensian valleys, but they were to be found in the numerous villages in the valleys of Susa and the Sangone, and in the cities of the neighboring plain, Pianezza, Castagnola, Moncalieri, Carmagnola, Chieri. In the course of the same century there were also two southern colonization districts in Calabria and Apulia. The first group of towns were said by Waldensian tradition of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to have been founded about 1315 or 1370 at the request of a Calabrian noble, by Waldenses from the Cottian Alps. The accuracy of this tradition is questionable, though the names Borgo d’Oltremontani and Guardia Piemontese, where Waldensian is still spoken, show that these towns owed their origin to the Waldenses. About 1400 some of them are said to have been driven from Provence to Apulia, where they founded the four towns of Monteleone, Faito, Cella, and La Motta Montecorvino, while a century later others were said to have founded the city of Volturara; but it is shown again that Cella and Faito had been in existence in the twelfth century, and had received Provengal colonists in 1345 or 1347, but not Waldenses. However, they were certainly both numerous and influential in Apulia in the fourteenth century, so that about 1380 their swmmus pontifex was residing there, and was still receiving moneys from Piedmont in the middle of the fifteenth century. In their travels
Waldenses