THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
a eed
work under the supervision of a master from six to nine years before he could hear confession. In Italy, the chief source of recruits in the fifteenth century being the peasantry, the candidates must first learn to read and commit to memory the Gospels of Matthew and John, as well as several of the New-Testament epistles. This consumed two months of each winter for three or four years, after which the candidate studied and practised manual labor for a year or two in one of the sister houses. He was then ordained, but must still act for years as the assistant of an older ‘‘ barb.” The sisters seem to have been used in missions in Germany as late as the fifteenth century; while in Italy they then lived as virgins in the houses and hospices which sheltered the ‘‘ barbs” and their pupils. There were also “ friends ’”’ who, in Germany, raised contributions for the masters, and in Italy also occasionally aided the ‘“‘ barbs ”’ in hearing confession, and in preaching. The masters were well supported by the collections and the small confessional gifts. The Waldenses never ceased to be itinerant preachers; so that in Germany, toward the end of the fourteenth century, they changed their scenes of activity every year or two, and in Italy, as late‘as 1530, every two or three years. They held an assembly regularly each year. Meetings in Germany and the Cottian Alps occurred almost invariably at night, in a private house or barn, and admission was by a countersign. In Germany, Apulia, Calabria, and other Piedmontese colonies, the Waldenses attended Roman Catholic worship regularly; and only where they were in the majority, as in the Cottian Alps, did they and their “‘ friends,” before 1487, dare for years not to confess and commune in the Roman Catholic churches, which they there avoided altogether.
To understand the inner history of the Waldenses in Germany and Italy it must constantly be borne in mind that they were outlawed from 1231, and had to be prepared at every turn for a fresh persecution. After the great persecution in 1231 they
seem to have been disturbed only lo-
5. Perse- cally, about 1260, in Bavaria and Aus-
cutions. tria, and perhaps also in Bohemia,
Moravia, and the neighboring Hungarian districts. At the beginning of the fourteenth century the persecution started anew in the same districts, spreading, by 1313, to Silesia, and, about 1330, to Poland, Hungary, Brandenburg, Thuringia, and Franconia; but the next general suppression, including also Switzerland, was inspired by Gregory XI. (1870-78). Here such energy was displayed by the inquisitors Petrus Zwicker and Martin of Amberg that these regions long remained unaffected by the Waldenses. It was not until the third decade of the fifteenth century that the surviving associations again dared to make their presence known, being encouraged in such places as the Swiss Freiburg by the long respite, and inspired elsewhere by the Hussite propaganda. In Bohemia, Moravia, and the neighboring Austrian districts they seem to have been incorporated with the Hussites, so impressing their peculiar tenets as to produce a distinct body, the Bohemian Brethren (q.v.). These seem to have sought to attract to themselves all the Waldensians in Austria, Moravia, and Bohemia, though
with imperfect success, for some of the Waldenses even then would not surrender their formal union with the Church. This conservative party seems gradually to have died out. In Swabia and Franconia the Saxon ‘noble, Johann Drandorf (burned 1425), and Peter of, Turnau (burned 1426), sought to attach the regular Waldenses to the Hussites; more successful was the Hussite Bishop Friedrich Reiser (burned at Strasburg, 1458), especially at Nuremberg, Wurzburg, Schweinfurt, Heilsbronn, Strasburg, Basel, and other parts of southern and central Germany. Yet though many of the Waldenses thus recognized the Hussites as brethren, they did not themselves become Hussites, their adherence consisting merely in deeming Wyclif, Huss, and Jerome of Prague to be Christian teachers, allowing Reiser and the Bohemian Nikolaus Pilgram to ordain priests, from whom they received the communion in both forms. However, they surrendered absolutely none of their own tenets, and Reiser’s propaganda accomplished no more than the endeavor of Peter Chelcicky to convert the Hussites to Waldensian doctrines. Nevertheless, the union between the two sects became so close that when, in 1479, a fresh attempt was made to suppress the Waldenses in Uckermark and Neumark, they decided to emigrate to Bohemia and Moravia; some settled in Fulnek and Weisskirchen in Moravia, and others in Landskron in Bohemia. From this time nothing more is heard of German Waldenses, and it can only be conjectured that the sect still lingered on in Egerland and Voigtland. None the less, the influence of the Waldenses lived on, both in the tenets and customs of the Bohemian Brethren, and in the theories. of the Anabaptists, for whom they were the forerunners throughout Upper Germany and Austria. In Lombardy the persecutions, which began in 1231, did not achieve their ends until the close of the fourteenth century. In the valleys on the eastern slopes of the Cottian Alps the Inquisition began its work at latest by the end of the thirteenth century, and on the western side by 1289; but real severity first began in 13832. The instigation of Gregory XI. took effect also here. In the French valleys the soul of the movement against the Waldenses was the Minorite Francesco Borelli, who had 169 burned at one time on July 1, 1380; but the Dominicans in the Piedmontese valleys were less zealous, besides being checked by the secular officials. Equally fruitless was the effort of the Spanish Dominican Vincente Ferrer (q.v.) in 1403 to win back the inhabitants of the Vals Louise, Argentiére, and Freissiniéres. In 1412, therefore, the Inquisition resumed its activity in the western valleys, though with little success; but in 1434 it was replaced in Bardonnéche, Oulx, Exilles, and elsewhere by the secular arm, so effectively that the Waldenses emigrated in large numbers. In France, on the contrary, they were protected for a time by Louis XI., who sought to check all exercise of ecclesiastical discipline; but against the chicanery of the incensed archbishop of Embrun and the offended provincial boards of Dauphiny his attempted protection was vain and the accession of Charles VIII. brought with it a fresh persecution transcending in extent and horror all that had hitherto befallen the Waldenses of the Cottian Alps, A crusade was now preached
against them at the direction of Innocent VIII., and under the auspices of the archdeacon Alberto de Cattaneo of Cremona, papal legate for the territories of Charles I. of Savoy, the assault was opened simultaneously in the dioceses of Vienne, Sitten, and elsewhere, and in Piedmont, Dauphiny, and the margravate of Saluzzo. In the Val Angrogna successful resistance was offered and Charles was induced, in 1488 or 1489, to suspend the war in Saluzzo and Piedmont; but in Dauphiny greater success was obtained, where from 1488 the crusading army coerced the Waldenses of the Vals Pragelas, Cluson, Freissiniéres, Louise, and Argentiére. Those who remained loyal either sought refuge in the high valleys of Oulx and Bardonnéche, or returned secretly to their old homes ‘after the storm had subsided, so that in 1495 fresh processes were resumed against them in Val Pragelas, and in 1506 in the Vals Argentiére and Freissiniéres. In Saluzzo the widow of the margrave expelled the Waldenses from the upper valley of the Po in 1509, but they returned three years later and even gained absolution from Leo X. In Dauphiny only the Val Louise was really cleared of the Waldenses. In Piedmont they had proved victorious, and they were not even disturbed in their colonies in Provence, Calabria, Apulia, and middle Italy. In Lombardy they had completely disappeared, and they were practically destroyed in Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, and Poland. The number of Waldensians put to death can not be approximately estimated, but was very high. More numerous than the steadfast were those who recanted under pressure, only to return to their faith. Then they had to be prepared for the worst, for most sentences of death seemed to have fallen on these. They were also guilty of violence, as in Austria the murder of priests and monks, and in the Cottian Alps of an official of the Inquisition (1374), and more frequently took bloody revenge upon renegade masters and friends who had turned spies and informers for the Inquisition.
V. The Romance Waldenses after the Reformation: After Apr., 1523, Guillaume Farel (q.v.) labored for the Protestant cause for a time at Gap in Dauphiny, and though he was soon expelled, the agitation begun by him quickly reached the Waldenses of the Cottian Alps. Within a few years, by the labors of the ‘‘ barb ’’ Martin Gonin, a Protestant faction arose, especially among the Waldenses of Provence; and in the summer of 1530 two
“barbs,” George Morel of Val Freis- 1. Entrance siniéres and Pierre Masson of Bur-
into the gundy, were sent across the Alps to Reformed confer with Farel. Morel, who pos- Body. sessed a fair education, also conferred
with Berthold Haller in Bern, with Cicolampadius in Basel, and with Butzer and Capito in Strasburg; and on his return was so energetic in behalf of the Protestant cause that Farel and other Protestants of French Switzerland were formally invited to visit his coreligionists at their assembly at Angrogna in 1532. Farel accepted, together with Anton Saunier and Robert Olivétan. Farel dominated the assembly, as is shown by their renunciation of their distinctive doctrines. The doctrine of election and the Zwinglian doctrine of the