The WALDENSES

Section One

From Antiquity to the Reformation

Chapter 1    Description of the Country   
Chapter 2    Antiquity of the Waldenses   
Chapter 3    Condition Before the Reformation    
Chapter 4    Persecution by Yolande and Cataneo   
Chapter 5    History of the Val-Luise   
Chapter 6    History of Barcelonnette    
Chapter 7    The Waldenses in Provence   
Chapter 8    The Waldenses in Calabria   
Chapter 9    The History of Various Martyrs   
Chapter 10  The Waldenses in the Valley of the Po   

In the northern part of Italy is the beautiful plain of the Po. Beyond this region, and separating it from ancient Gaul and Germany, is the great natural barrier of the Alps. The mountains extend in the general form of a crescent, from the western side of the Gulf of Genoa, to the eastern side of the Gulf of Venice. They are known, in different parts of their course, by different names, as the Maritime Alps, the Cottian Alps, the Rhetian Alps, the Noric Alps. The Cottian Alps, in the times of the Romans, formed one of the most common routes in passing from northern Italy into Gaul. This route was also sometimes taken in going from Italy into Spain. The country at the foot of the Cottian Alps, on the Italian side, is called Piedmont, while on the side of Gaul it has received the names of Dauphiny and Savoy. High up in the mountain valleys of Piedmont, on the Italian side of the Cottian Alps, has lived from time immemorial the remarkable people whose history we are about to sketch.

The Waldenses are at once mountaineers and dalesmen. The valleys in which they live are remote from the plain, closely hemmed in by mountains, and in many places accessible only by narrow and precipitous ravines. Much of their time is spent upon the declivities of mountains topped with perpetual snow. Hardy and adventurous, exposed from childhood to a life of toil and danger, they have all that simplicity of character, and that sturdy independence, which seem in all climes to be the natural inheritance of tire mountaineer. It is, however, from their character as dalesmen, or men of the valleys, that they have received their name. This name, derived primarily from the Latin vallis, a valley, is variously spelled. The French form of the word, which is val, gives rise to a plural vaux, and thence to the adjective Vaudois. The Italian form of the word gives the adjective Vallenses, strengthened into Valdenses, and thence corrupted in English into Waldenses. The first of these names, Vaudois, is that which they call themselves, and by which they are almost universally known on the continent of Europe. The last, Waldenses, is that by which they are generally called in England and the United States.

Politically, the Waldenses are hereditary subjects of the house of Savoy. The princes of this house, originally dukes, have gradually risen in dignity to the rank of kings. Their kingdom now includes Savoy, Piedmont, the territories of Nice and Genoa, and the island of Sardinia. From this last of its possessions is derived its name, the Kingdom of Sardinia. The Waldensian territory lies wholly within the duchy of Piedmont, and its southern border is about thirty miles from Turin, which is the capital both of Piedmont, and of the whole kingdom.

The Waldenses were formerly much more numerous than now, and their territory covered a much larger area. Persecution, through a long succession of centuries, has gradually reduced them to their present number of about twenty-three thousand, and at the same time hemmed them in within their present narrow limits, extending not more than eighteen miles in length by fourteen in width, and containing an area of less than three hundred square miles.

This territory, as before stated, is within the province of Piedmont, lying in a southwesterly direction from Turin, and about thirty miles distant. It is somewhat triangular in shape, the base of the triangle being the high dividing ridge of the Alps, which separates Piedmont from Dauphiny in France. From this high ridge, the mountains on the Italian side gradually slope down towards the valley of the Po, and several streams rising near the top of the ridge run an easterly course, converge as they descend, and finally unite and empty into the Po. It is the union of these streams that forms the apex of the triangle. These streams are the Po itself at the South, the Pelice in the center, and the Clusone at the North. They lie between bold mountain spurs that shoot off from the high dividing ridge which has been named. Between each two of these mountain spurs is a valley, forming the natural bed of a river. Each valley and river become in turn the receptacle of numerous small lateral streams and valleys, and so the whole territory is a continued series of lofty mountains and deep valleys.

The river Pelice drains the valley of Lucerne, and has several important tributaries. At the entrance into the valley is the parish of St. Jean, with a village of the same name. Beyond St. Jean, and near the junction of the Pelice and the Angrogna, stands La Torre, the Waldensian capital. It has been the scene of many calamities, and is, of course, very celebrated in Waldensian history. The next village of importance in passing up this valley is Villar, and beyond that still, high up among the mountains, is Bobbi. The valley of Lucerne, in its lower portions, at St. Jean and La Torre, is of considerable width, and contains a good deal of alluvial, or bottom lands, on the banks of the Pelice. Farther up, however, this alluvial slip becomes gradually less, and cultivation is carried on chiefly by terraces on the mountain sides. At Bobbi, the scene changes from the beautiful into the sublime, and even into the awful. The level alluvial land just about Bobbi expands into the shape of a basin, but higher up it contracts into a narrow strip of a quarter of a mile in width, and finally disappears altogether. Thence up to the mountain ridge which forms the French boundary, there is nothing but deep, and even apparently unfathomable ravines, in which lie the channels of the head stream of the Pelice and its highest confluents, overhung by stupendous masses of rocks. There is not in all the Alps any scenery which is more grand and imposing. Nor are these ravines without inhabitants. Little hamlets are to be found at various points, in all directions, wherever it is possible to find a spot on the sides of the mountains, in the shape of a basin or terrace, or little hollow, that is susceptible of cultivation.

The valley of Rora encloses the little stream called Lucernette, which falls into the Pelice below the town of Lucerne. The village of Rora, though inconsiderable in size, has been rendered famous in history by the gallant exploits of its people. The scenery of this district, like its history, is full of romantic interest. Few portions of the valley contain so much that is bold, picturesque and beautiful in external nature, or so much that is truly marvelous in its heroic reminiscences. It is equally remarkable for the strong attachment of its inhabitants to their native soil. Bleak and barren as the soil is, particularly in the more elevated and rocky portions, yet few of its people have sought a home elsewhere.

On the north side of the Pelice is another and large tributary called the Angrogna, which drains a valley of the same name. This stream takes its rise in a wild mountain region, among high Alps, in the very center of the Waldensian territory. From its secluded position, rendering it almost inaccessible to a hostile force, the Angrogna has been in all ages the "Holy Valley" of the Waldenses. Though geographically and physically secondary in its character, and only a branch or tributary of the Lucerne, yet in its moral and historical bearings, the valley of Angrogna ranks as first in importance. To this retired region have the people often withdrawn, as to an asylum that could not be invaded, when most sorely pressed by their foes. Within this region was the spot, the "Shiloh" of the valleys, where in former ages the Waldensian Synod often met, and where, above all, was their "school of the prophets." In the Pra del Tor, very high up towards the headwaters of the Angrogna, secure from interruption, their young men, from the earliest ages of which we have any account of them, were accustomed to assemble from the different valleys, to pursue under the direction of competent pastors such studies as would fit them to preach the gospel. It was perhaps a rude institution, as compared with the well-appointed theological seminaries of this day. But it sent forth many noble bands of missionaries, to preach the pure gospel of Christ, long before the period of the Reformation, and when the rest of the Christian world was enveloped in thick darkness. Whilst, in the monasteries and the theological schools of the rest of Christendom, the Bible was a forbidden or an unknown book, the simple-minded young dalesmen of the Pra del Tor prepared themselves for the work of the ministry mainly by committing thoroughly to memory the entire gospels and the epistles.

Leaving the region of the Pelice, and going northward, we come to the river Clusone. This river rises in the extreme northwestern part of the Waldensian territory, and runs in a southeasterly course till it unites, first with the Pelice, and a little further on with the Po. The union of these three streams forms the apex of the triangle of which the Cottian Alps are the base. The region drained by the Clusone has three different names. In the highest part of its course, is the valley of Pragela, lower down is the valley of Perouse, and farther still the valley of the Clusone. The first and the last of these valleys have ceased to belong to the Waldenses. That part of the valley of Perouse, which lies east of the Clusone, and which is by far the most extensive and fertile, has also been taken from them. The only part, therefore, of the region drained by the Clusone, that now remains to the Waldenses, is a narrow strip on the western bank, in the middle part of its course, including the three parishes of Parustin, St. Germain, and Pramol.

On the eastern side of the Clusone are three important Roman Catholic towns, whose names occur but too often in Waldensian history. These are Pignerol, Perouse, and Fenestrelle. The first named of these has been for many ages the stronghold of those who have persecuted most bitterly the people of the valleys. Hundreds of unfortunate victims have here pined away in prison, or have been burnt at the stake, and within its walls have been concocted most of those schemes of mischief which have involved the adjoining valleys in slaughter.

Napoleon, the imperial road maker, constructed a noble highway through this valley across the Alps. This road begins at Pignerol, passes Perouse and Fenestrelle, and thence from the upper end of the valley of Pragela, it crosses Mont Genévre into France, descending through the valley of the Durance by Briançon and Embrun. It is the precise route supposed to have been taken by Julius Caesar on his way to Gaul, and by Hannibal on his invasion of Italy, as it was also by Irenaeus and the other early Christian missionaries, who first carried the gospel into Gaul.

Opposite Perouse, the Clusone receives an important tributary, the Germanesca, which drains the valley of St. Martin. Near the mouth of the Germanesca, and in the small triangular space between it and the Clusone, is the pariah of Pomaret, containing a village of the same name. At the distance of a mile or two above Pomaret, the Germanesca passes through a narrow defile, which is there barely wide enough to allow the river to rush through. Stupendous rocks are piled up on each side of the stream, and form a scene of surpassing grandeur. This is the natural gateway of the valley of St. Martin. This wonderful defile seems to have been cleft by the hand of God to form an outlet for the waters of the river. As a space, barely wide enough for a road, has been hewn out of the solid rock, nothing could be easier than to block it up, and effectually prevent the entrance of a hostile force—a measure which the Waldenses have often actually adopted.

The scenery in the valley of St. Martin frequently changes from the most wild and rugged aspect to the most attractive beauty. Throughout its entire length there is very little bottom land. Wherever there is a spot that is susceptible of cultivation, whether it consists of several acres, or is a mere nook, there the hand of man is at work to turn it to account.

The first parish above Pomaret is that of Ville Séche, so called from its chief village, which occupies an acclivity on the left bank of the Germanesca. It was in this parish that Leger was born, the well-known historian of the Waldenses.

Higher up the valley the scenery becomes still more wild and savage. The bottom grows more and more narrow, and the sides consist of alternate projections of masses of naked rocks and deep intervening wooded ravines. In the ravines which have a northern exposure, and which are far up towards the summits of the mountains, masses of snow are seen in midsummer. Everything indicates a region belonging to the High Alps. In this Alpine region, however, is found a parish, Maneille, including a village of the same name and several hamlets, and containing several hundred inhabitants.

Pursuing still a northwest course, and ascending yet higher the deep and gloomy valley, through which a mountain torrent comes pitching down, we arrive at the parish of Macel. The valley, long before one reaches this point, becomes exceedingly picturesque. In several places, rocks surmounted with larches and pines, rise perpendicularly, in awful grandeur, from almost the very edge of the water, so that it would seem impossible to make a road between them and the river. In the upper part of this parish, just beneath the Col-du-Pis, is the hamlet of Balsille, on the left bank of the torrent, and opposite to the famous, cone-shaped mass of rocks, called Balsi. This spot is known as the Thermopylae of the valleys. Here a few hundred dalesmen defended themselves a long time successfully against twenty thousand French and Savoyard troops, and finally retreated to the mountain in the rear, with scarcely the loss of a man.

The two parishes last described are not on the Germanesca, but on a small branch that comes in from the Northwest. The Germanesca itself, in the upper part of its course, comes from the Southeast. Ascending this stream, one is struck with the increased wildness and barrenness of the country. The side of the mountain which bounds the river on the right bank has a considerable growth of timber in his ravines. But that on the left bank is composed, for the most part, of naked rocks. There is scarcely any bottom land throughout its entire course. What there is, is covered, in many places, with masses of rocks which have detached themselves from the mountain sides. In some cases, the river is almost blocked up with them.

At first sight, a stranger would suppose that no human being would ever think of taking up his abode in a region, abounding indeed in sublime and imposing scenery, but withal so utterly wild and dreary. Yet even here are two populous parishes. The first is Rodoret; second and highest is Prali. This last is decidedly the wildest and most barren of all the parishes of the Waldenses. The pines that grow on the sides of the mountains are few, scattered, and dwarfish. On the South the valley is completely shut in by the lofty range of Mount Julien, whose elevated peaks and sides are covered with snow even in July. Not unfrequently the whole parish is covered with snow during eight and nine months of the year. Avalanches are frequent, and often very destructive. Among the heights south of Prali are twelve little lakes or ponds, formed by the melting of the snows on Mount Julien. They are nearly on the route from Prali over to Bobi, in the valley of Lucerne.

The Waldenses are in all essential particulars Presbyterian in order, and Calvinistic in doctrine. But they are not, technically speaking, Protestants, nor are they to be counted among the Reformed churches. Though Italians, and living upon the very confines of the papacy, they have never had any connection with the church of Rome, and have had therefore none of its corruptions from which to reform. Their poverty and their inaccessible situation were their protection from encroachment, during the earlier centuries, whilst the papal power was gradually acquiring its colossal dimensions. When the reformed churches of Germany, France, and England threw off the yoke of the papacy, and began to restore Christianity within their borders to its original simplicity and purity, the Waldensian Christians received the tidings with gladness, and had numerous conferences with the Reformers, to their mutual benefit; but they claimed, at that time, as for centuries previous they had claimed, before their temporal sovereigns, that the faith, the worship, and the ecclesiastical organization prevalent among them then, had been handed down among them by uninterrupted tradition from the very earliest ages of Christianity.

Of the conversion of the Waldenses to Christianity, history gives us no authentic account. Romish historians as far back as the year A.D. 1250, represented them as the oldest sect of heretics, though unable to tell when or how their heresy began. Their own account of the matter uniformly has been that their religion has descended with them from father to son by uninterrupted succession from the time of the apostles. There certainly is no improbability in the conjecture that the gospel was preached to them by some of those early missionaries who carried Christianity into Gaul. The common passage from Rome to Gaul at that time lay directly through the Cottian Alps, and Gaul we know received the gospel early in the second century at the latest, probably before the close of the first century. If the apostle Paul ever made that "journey into Spain," (Romans 15:28,) which he speaks of in his epistle to the Romans, and in which he proposed to go by way of Rome, his natural route world have been in the same direction, and it is not impossible that his voice was actually heard among those retired valleys. The most common opinion among Protestant writers is that the conversion of the Waldenses was begun by some of the very early Christian missionaries, perhaps by some of the apostles themselves, on their way to Gaul, and that it was completed and the churches more fully organized by a large influx of Christians from Rome, after the first general persecution under Nero. The Christians of Rome, scattered by this terrible event, would naturally flee from the plain country to the mountains, carrying with them the gospel and its institutions.

Such is the opinion of Henry Arnaud, one of the most intelligent of the Waldensian pastors. "Neither has their church ever been reformed," says Arnaud, "whence arises its title of evangelic. The Waldenses are in fact descended from those refugees from Italy, who, after St. Paul had there preached the gospel, abandoned their beautiful country, and fled, like the woman mentioned in the Apocalypse, to these wild mountains, where they have, to this day, handed down the gospel from father to son, in the same purity and simplicity as it was preached by St. Paul." This is not following fables, for there is nothing in the relation either improbable or absurd. When the Christians at Rome were bound to stakes, covered with pitch, and burnt in the evenings to illuminate the city, is it wonderful, if the glare of such fires should induce those yet at liberty, to betake themselves for shelter, to the almost inaccessible valleys of the Alps, and to the clefts of the rocks, trusting to that God in whose hands are the deep places of the earth, and considering that the strength of hills is his?

The words of Arnaud were written near the close of the seventeenth century; but we have others of a much earlier date. The Waldenses complain that it has been the cruel policy of their persecutors to destroy all the historical memorials of their antiquity. About the year 1559, the Roman Catholics, with a view to exterminate the protestants of the valleys, cruelly butchered them, and in order to obliterate every memorial of them, diligently searched for their records, which they committed to the flames. Though on this account the testimonies of their antiquity are not so ample as could be wished, yet we possess a variety of their own declarations on this point previous to the period just mentioned, which have been preserved in the wonderful providence of God. In the Noble Lesson, dated 1100,* are contained the following assertions:

"Now, after the Apostles, were certain teachers,

"Who taught the way of Jesus Christ our Saviour.

"And these are found even at the present day.

"If any man love those who are good, he must needs love God and Jesus Christ.

"Such an one will neither curse, swear, nor lie.

"Now, such an one is called a Waldensian, and worthy to be punished.

"For, I dare say, and it is very true,

"That all the Popes, which have been from Silvester to this present,

"And all the Cardinals, Bishops, Abbots, and the like,

"Have no power to absolve or pardon."

In 1530, the Waldenses thus addressed Œcolampadius and other reformers: "That you may at once understand the matter, we are a sort of teachers of a certain necessitous and small people, who already, for more than four hundred years—nay as those of our country frequently relate—from the time of the apostles, have sojourned among the most cruel thorns, yet, as all the pious have easily judged, not without the great favour of Christ; and having been stung and tormented by the same thorns, have been delivered by promised favour." Robert Olevitan, whom Leger* the historian describes as "one of the most excellent pastors of the valleys," in a preface to his French version of the Bible, dated from the Alps, February 12, 1335, dedicates it to God, and not to the rich and pompous, but to the poor church: "No," adds he, "it is to thee alone I present this precious treasure, in the name of a certain poor people, thy friends and brethren in Jesus Christ, who, ever since they were blessed and enriched with it by the apostles and ambassadors of Christ, have still possessed and enjoyed the same." In presenting their Confession of Faith to Francis I of France, 1544, the Waldenses protested that their belief in "entirely such as they have received from hand to hand from their ancestors, according as their predecessors, in all times and in all ages, had taught them it."

* John Leger, one of the Waldensian pastors, in the seventeenth century, carefully collected a number of ancient documents of the Waldensian doctrine. In the persecution, 1655, the plunderers of the Waldensians deprived him of every leaf of the MS [manuscript] in order to bury in oblivion all knowledge of their former existence, or long continued principles. With incredible diligence he commenced a new search in the valleys of the French side of the Alps, where the destruction had not been so severe, and found authentic copies of the same treatises. A number of these he has published in his valuable history of the Waldenses. The Originals he delivered to Sir Samuel Morland, who presented them in 1658 to the library of the University of Cambridge. Twenty-one volumes were there deposited, but the first seven are now missing. ... Copies of some of these are preserved at Geneva. The remaining fourteen volumes...are still to be seen at Cambridge.

These declarations were given by the Waldenses, while in full possession of their documents; but after the most of these were destroyed in 1559, they still refer to the fact of their antiquity. Accordingly, in 1580, they of the valleys complained to their prince that a mission of Jesuits and troops possessed themselves of their temples at the hour of public worship, preventing the ministers on the Sabbath from performing their duty, and that the Jesuits had along with them a judge, or lord, and sometimes the lords of the valleys, who were furnished with his Highness’ letter. They then add, "It is a thing true and notorious, most serene Duke, that his said subjects and their ancestors have been taught for a great many hundreds of years, in the true Christian religion, by their ministers, whom they call honourably Barbas, and that they have sometimes taught them in secret and nightly assemblies, in imitation of the primitive church, to avoid the persecution of the ecclesiastics: but afterwards, observing that they took from that quarter a pretext to calumniate them, the matter was reckoned of such consequence, that they have wished to preach publicly, the holy doctrine in which they have been instructed from all antiquity, and from hand to hand by their fathers."

In one of the manuscripts, dated 1587, and deposited in the library of the University of Cambridge, the question is put: "At what time have the religion and state (stata) been preached in the valleys?" The answer is, "About five hundred years, as can be collected from many histories; but according to the belief of the inhabitants of the valleys, it has been from time immemorial, and from father to son, since the time of the apostles."

During the dreadful persecutions of 1655, the churches of Piedmont, in a Confession of Faith, publicly declare their agreement, "in sound doctrine, with all the reformed churches of France, Great Britain, the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, and other places, being ready to subscribe to that eternal truth of God with our own blood, even as our ancestors, since the days of the apostles."

Let it be observed, then, that the Waldenses maintain, and have done so from the date of their earliest existing histories, that their ancestors inhabited the country which they now occupy, and held the faith which they hold, since the days of the apostles. They are of opinion, that the gospel was preached to their forefathers in those valleys by Christian missionaries from Rome, or other cities in Italy where it had gained extensive ground, or that it was introduced by those who fled from the plain country, perhaps some of them from Rome itself, or the neighborhood thereof, during the persecutions under the Roman emperors. It is probable that the truth was introduced by both these means. In a petition presented by the Waldenses to Philibert Emanuel, duke of Savoy and prince of Piedmont, in the year 1559, they use the following language: "We likewise beseech your Royal Highness to consider, that this religion which we profess is not only ours, nor hath it been invented by men of late years, as is falsely reported, but it was the religion of our fathers, grandfathers, and great grandfathers, and other yet more ancient predecessors of ours, and of the blessed martyrs, confessors, prophets, and apostles; and if any can prove the contrary, we are ready to subscribe, and yield thereunto."

Leger, their great historian, states that all the petitions and addresses of these people to their sovereigns, from the earliest times, contained a sentence to the same effect, namely, that they had been in the enjoyment of liberty of conscience, "da ogni tempo, da tempo immemoriale,"—from all time, from time immemorial. "And is it not extraordinary," asks Leger, "that it has never once happened, that any of the dukes of Savoy, or their ministers, should have offered the least contradiction to the pretensions of their Waldensian subjects? Again and again it has been asserted by them, ‘We are descendants of those, who from father to son have preserved entire the apostolical faith in the valleys which we now occupy.’ Their pretensions have been passed over in silence. They have been suffered to repeat their demands from reign to reign, and to carry them to the feet of their sovereigns: ‘Permit us to enjoy that free exercise of our religion which we have enjoyed from time out of mind, and before the dukes of Savoy became princes of Piedmont.’ I have still the copy of a remonstrance, in which I myself inserted these very words, and which the President Truchi, the ablest man in the state, has endeavoured to answer on every other point but this. He has, however, never dared to touch upon our antiquity." "And formerly, in the year 1559," continues Leger, "when Emanuel Philibert was told, that his Waldensian petitioners professed the faith which had been handed down to them from their forefathers from the time of the martyrs and apostles, would that great prince and his court have endured to be told this by these poor people, if there had been one particle of truth to be discovered to the contrary, by the ministers of his royal highness, or by his ecclesiastics, or if any of them could have maintained the opposite, and shown, that they did not descend from father to son from the times of the martyrs, and confessors, and holy apostles?"

To the above-cited testimonies of the Waldenses themselves in regard to their origin, it may not be amiss to add what they modestly say on this point, when addressing the Reformers, in the sixteenth century. "Our ancestors," say they, "have often recounted to us, that we have existed from the time of the apostles. In all matters, nevertheless, we agree with you; and, thinking as you think, from the very days of the apostles themselves, we have ever been concordant respecting the faith. In this particular only, we may be said to differ from you; that, through our fault, and the slowness of our genius, we do not understand the sacred writers with such strict correctness as yourselves."

Let us now see what their enemies have said on this point. And here there is an abundance of testimony, from which, however, we can extract only a single instance. Reinerius uses the following language respecting these people, whom he denominates Leonists: "Concerning the sects of ancient heretics, let it be observed, that they have been more than seventy in number; all of which, save those of the Manicheans, the Arians, the Runcarians, and the Leonists, which have infected Germany, have, through God’s favour, been extirpated. Among all these sects, which either still exist, or which have formerly existed, there is not one more pernicious to the Church [of Rome] than that of the Leonists; and this for three reasons. First, because it has been of longer continuance; for some say, that it has lasted from the time of Sylvester; others, from the time of the apostles. Second, because it is more general; for there is scarcely a country in which it does not exist. Third, because, that whilst all other sects, through their monstrous blasphemies against God, strike horror into the hearers, this of the Leonists has a great appearance of piety, inasmuch as they live justly before men, and believe, not only, all the articles of the creed, but every sound doctrine respecting the Deity; only they speak evil of the Roman Church and clergy, to which the multitude of the laity are quite ready to give credence."

That Reinerius speaks of the Waldenses under the name of Leonists, is quite clear from what he says in other places. In addition to this, Pilichdorf, a writer of the same century, expressly says that the persons who claim to have existed from the time of Pope Sylvester were the Waldenses. And Claude Scyssel, Archbishop of Turin, in the latter end of the fifteenth century, and in the beginning of the sixteenth, and who, from his vicinity to them, as well as from the fact that they were geographically comprehended in his diocese, must have had good opportunities of knowing their origin and history, tells us that the Waldenses of Piedmont took their origin from a person named Leo, who, in the time of the emperor Constantine, execrating the avarice of Pope Sylvester, and the immoderate endowment of the Roman Church, seceded from that communion, and drew after him all those who entertained right sentiments concerning the Christian religion.

These statements prove, not that the Waldenses originated as this writer suggests, but that they were incontestably the people meant by the Roman Catholic writers, when treating of the ancient Leonists.

On the subject of the antiquity of the Waldenses, M. Renouard, author of an elaborate work on the Provençal language and literature, and who discusses this question, not as an ecclesiastical historian, but simply as a philologist, says that "the dialect of the Waldenses is an idiom intermediate between the decomposition of the language of the Romans and the establishment of a new grammatical system; a circumstance which attests the high antiquity of this dialect in the country which this people inhabit."

In speaking of the Noble Lesson, the oldest work which the Waldenses have, and which was, as is conceded on all hands, written in the twelfth century, and consequently more ancient than the greater part of the songs and other writings of the Troubadours, this author says, "The language seems to me to be of an epoch already far separated from its original formation; inasmuch as we may remark the suppression of some final consonants; a peculiarity which announces, that the words of the long-spoken dialect had already lost some portion of their primitive terminations."

The philological fact, here stated, proves the high antiquity of the Waldenses; for they must have retired to those valleys at a remote period indeed, if they left the plains of Italy before the establishment of the new grammatical system, of which M. Renouard speaks. "Hence," remarks Mr. Faber, "the primevally Latin Waldenses must have retired from the lowlands of Italy to the valleys of Piedmont, in the very days of primitive Christianity, and before the breaking up of the Roman empire by the persevering incursions of the Teutonic nations. But it is scarcely probable, that men would leave their homes in the fair, and warm, and fertile country of Italy, for the wildness of desolate mountains, and for the squalidity of neglected valleys—valleys which would require all the severe labour of assiduous cultivation, and mountains which no labour could make productive—unless some very paramount and overbearing cause had constrained them to undertake such an emigration. Now a cause, precisely of this description, we have in the persecutions, which, during the second, third, and fourth centuries, occurred under the emperors Marcus Aurelius, Maximin, Decius, Valerian, and Diocletian.

CHAPTER 3

Condition Before the Reformation

The character of the early Waldensian church is set forth with singular truth and beauty in their ancient insignia, a copy of which is here given. That church was indeed a "light shining in darkness," and blessed be God its candlestick has not yet been removed from its place. The Waldenses of Piedmont are, in our view, primitive Christians, who have been preserved in these valleys from the alterations successively introduced by the church of Rome into the evangelical worship. It is not they who separated from Romanism, but Romanism which separated from them, in modifying the primitive worship. Hence the impossibility of assigning a precise date to their origin. The church of Rome, which in its commencement, also formed part of the primitive church, did not modify itself all at once; but, as it became powerful, it assumed, together with the scepter of rule, the display, the pride, and the spirit of domination which ordinarily accompany power; whilst, amid the Waldensian valleys, this primitive church, existing in comparative obscurity, remained in its isolation, free, and without tendency to abandon the pure simplicity of its infancy. The independence of the diocese of Milan, and that asserted by the episcopal see of Turin, in its resistance, in the ninth century, to the worship of images, contributed to maintain them in this position.

The Waldensian valleys could not always preserve that obscure independence which constituted their security. Romanism, gradually invested with a new worship unknown to the apostles, daily rendered more and more conspicuous the contrast between its pompous innovations and the antique simplicity of the Waldenses.

To reduce them within the despotic unity of Rome, there were sent against them the agents of a ministry equally unknown in the apostolic period; these were the inquisitors (1308). In consequence of the resistance which they encountered in these remote mountains, the valley of Lucerne was ultimately (1453) put under interdict. But this measure only established more manifestly the line of demarcation which was forming between the two churches; for although the Waldenses were not separated schismatically from the Romish church, the external forms of which still included them, they had their own clergy, their own worship, and their own parishes.

Their pastors were named barbas, the Waldensian term for uncle. It was in the almost inaccessible solitude of the Pra-del-Tor, that their school was situated. There those who were preparing to be barbas learned by heart the gospels of St. Matthew and St. John, the catholic epistles, and a portion of those of St. Paul. They were instructed, further, in Latin, Romane (old French), and Italian. After this they passed several years in retirement, and they were then consecrated ministers by the administration of the sacrament and the imposition of hands.

They were supported by the voluntary contributions of the people, distributed among them annually in a general synod. A third of these contributions was given to the ministers, a third to the poor, and a third was reserved for the missionaries of the church.

These missionaries always journeyed in pairs, a young man and an old man, the latter being designated regidor, the former coadjuteur. They traversed all Italy, where they had fixed stations at different points, and in almost all the towns adherents; at Venice, for example, no fewer than 6,000, and at Genoa as many. Each pastor being, in his turn, a missionary, the younger men thus became initiated in the delicate duties of evangelization, each being under the experienced conduct of an elder, whom discipline established as his superior, and whom he obeyed in all things, alike from duty and from deference. The old man, on his part, thus prepared himself for his repose, by forming for the church successors worthy of it and of himself. His own task finished, he could die in peace, with the consolatory assurance of having transmitted the sacred deposit of the gospel to prudent and zealous hands.

Besides this, the barbas were instructed in some trade or profession by which they might provide, in whole or in part, for their own living. Some were hawkers, some artisans, the greater number surgeons or physicians; and all were versed in the cultivation of the soil and the nurture of flocks.

At the annual synod, held in the valleys, the past conduct of the pastors was closely investigated, and their mutations of residence regulated. These mutations took place every third year among the younger pastors; the old barbas were not removed. A director-general of the church was appointed at each synod, with the designation of President or Moderator; the latter title ultimately prevailed, and subsists to this day.

There was nothing more remarkable about the early Waldenses than their missionary spirit. It was by sending out missionaries, two by two on foot, to visit their brethren dispersed in various lands, that they kept alive the little piety which existed in the world at that day. These missionaries knew where to find their brethren; they went to their houses, held little meetings, administered the ordinances, ordained deacons, and sustained the faith and hopes of the tempted and persecuted ones. It is said that these missionaries could go, at one period, from Cologne to Florence, and stay every night at the houses of brethren. It is on account of the great number of missionaries which these little and poor churches in the valleys sustained, that we read of there being sometimes one hundred and forty or fifty ministers at the meetings of their synods. But few of these were needed at home; the most were engaged in the foreign work.

It is also remarkable that almost all the men whom God raised up from time to time, in France, and other countries, for more than six hundred years before the Reformation, seem to have had more or less to do with the Waldenses, such as Peter Waldo, Peter Bruys, Henry of Lausanne, and Lollard.

Not only did preachers go out from the valleys to proclaim the glorious gospel, but humble pious peddlers, or itinerating merchants, of whom there were many in the middle ages, scattered the truth by carrying some leaves of the Word of Life, or some manuscript tracts, beneath their merchandise, which they engaged those whom they found to be favorably disposed, to receive and read.

The following beautiful verses, descriptive of this traffic of the Waldensian peddlers, were published in a valuable religious Journal, a few years ago.*

* The London Christian Observer. [The contents of this book were compiled (1907) chiefly from The Israel of the Alps by Alexis Muston, translated by John H. Montgomery, and published in 1852 (London: Ingram, Cooke).]

The Vaudois Missionary

I.

“O, lady fair, these silks of mine
are beautiful and rare
The richest web of the Indian loom
Which beauty’s self might wear.
And these pearls are pure and mild, behold,
And with radiant light they vie;
I have brought them with me a weary way:
Will mu gentle lady buy?

II.

And the lady smiled on the worn old man,
Through the dark and clustering curls
Which vailed her brow as she bent to view
His silk and glittering pearls:
And she placed their price in the old man’s hand,
And lightly turned away
But she paused at the wanderer’s earnest call:
My gentle lady, stay!

III.

“O, lady fair, I have yet a gem
Which a purer lustre flings
Than the diamond flash of the jewelled crown
On the lofty brow of kings;
A wonderful pearl of exceeding price,
Whose virtue shall not decay;
Whose light shall be as a spell to thee,
And a blessing on the way!

IV.

The lady glanced at the mirroring steel,
Where her youthful form was seen,
Where her eyes shone clear and her dark locks waved
Their clasping pearls between;
“Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding worth,
Thou traveller gray and old;
And name the price of thy precious gem,
And my pages shall count thy gold.”

V.

The cloud went off from the pilgrim’s brow,
As a small and meagre book
Unchased with gold or diamond gem,
From his folding robe he took
“Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price—
May it prove as such to thee!
Nay, keep thy gold—I ask it not—
For the Word of God is free.”

VI.

The hoary traveller went his way,
But the gift he left behind
Hath had its pure and perfect work
On that high-born maiden’s mind;
And she hath turned from her pride of sin
To the lowliness of truth,
And given her human heart to God
In its beautiful hour of youth. 

VII.

And she hath left the old gray walls
Where an evil faith hath power,
The courtly nights of her father’s train,
And the maidens of her bower;
And she hath gone to the Vaudois vale,
By lordly feet untrod,
Where the poor and needy of earth are rich
In the perfect love of God!

The first combined measures taken by the secular authority for the destruction of the Vaudois do not appear to date before 1209. At that epoch, the emperor Otho IV, having, after the death of his rival, Philip of Suabia, been recognized by the Diet of Frankfort, repaired to Rome, for the purpose of being consecrated by pope Innocent III, who had always favored him against Philip. On his way he passed through Piedmont. The then reigning count of Savoy, Maurice, had taken part against him in his disputes with Philip, and the latter had given him, as a reward, the towns of Quiers, Testona, and Modona. Otho, now triumphant, resolved to punish the partisan of his competitor by enfeebling him in his own states; and he accordingly conferred on the archbishop of Turin, who was a prince of the empire, authority to destroy the Waldenses by force of arms. Thus, the long train of persecution which this people had to undergo was not opened by the house of Savoy, but by its enemies; and when, later, the house of Savoy itself entered on the path of cruelty and depopulation, it was not of its own motion, but ever under foreign influences, the most vindictive of which was that of the court of Rome.

Thus was the primitive church preserved in the Alps up to the epoch of the Reformation. The Waldenses are the chain by which the reformed churches are connected with the first disciples of our Savior. In vain has popery, renegade from evangelical truths, sought, a thousand times, to break that chain; it has resisted every shock; empires have crumbled away, dynasties have fallen, but this chain of scriptural testimony has not been broken, for its strength came, not from men, but from God.

Pomaret, the Valley of St. Martin

It was a foreigner, the sister of Louis XI, commenced the systematic persecution of the Waldenses. This was Yolande, who, having married Amadeus IX, one of the best and most charitable dukes of Savoy that ever honored his dynasty, became, in 1472, as his widow, the regent of his dominions. Her name, from Yolande, was converted into Violante, either from some alteration of orthography in the public documents, or in allusion to her violent and vindictive character.

On the 23^rd of January, 1476, without putting forth any other complaint against the Waldenses, or alleging any other ground for her rigor than their creed, she ordered the seigneurs of Pignerol and Cavours to bring them, at whatever cost, within the bosom of the Romish church; the Waldenses, in their turn, demanded that the Romish church itself should be brought back to the gospel. The duchess convoked her great vassals to deliberate on the means of reducing to silence these daring Protestants—if we may employ the term a century before the Reformation. But she had not the opportunity of carrying her projects into effect, being herself made prisoner by order of the duke of Burgundy, who, being at war with Louis XI, desired to prevent her giving aid to that monarch. The Waldenses, however, had pertinaciously refused to abjure their alleged heresy, and Charles, Yolande’s second son, accordingly directed an inquiry to be made into this contumacy (1485). This inquiry for the first time officially manifested the profound difference which time had established between the Waldenses, still faithful to the primitive faith, and the Romish church, more and more degenerate. The result was laid before the holy see in 1486.

In the following year, Innocent VIII fulminated against the Waldenses a bull of extermination, by which he enjoined all the temporal powers to arm for their destruction. It invited all Catholics to take up the cross against them, "absolving from all ecclesiastical pains and penalties, general and particular, those who should take up the cross; releasing them from any oaths they might have taken; legitimatising their title to any property they might have illegally acquired; and promising remission of all their sins to such as should kill any heretic. It annulled all contracts made in favor of the Waldenses, ordered their domestics to abandon them, forbade all persons to give them any aid whatever, and empowered all persons to take possession of their property."

Forthwith several thousands of volunteers—vagabond adventurers, ambitious fanatics, reckless pillagers, merciless assassins—assembled from all parts of Italy to execute the behests of the pseudo-successor of St. Peter. This horde of brigands, suitable support of a profligate pontiff, marched against the valleys, in the train of another army of 18,000 regular troops, contributed in common by the king of France and the sovereign of Piedmont.

Yet no crime was alleged against the unhappy Waldenses, even by the pope himself. His exterminating bull itself admitted that their chief means of seduction was their marked manifestation of sanctity. The destruction of this feeble folk seemed inevitable at the hands of so overwhelming a force of foes; but God undertook their defense, breathing a spirit of confusion into the ranks of their enemies, of steady courage into their own.

The papal legate who was charged with the execution of these sanguinary orders was an archdeacon of Cremona, named Albert Cataneo, or de Cataneis. He took up his abode first at Pignerol, in the convent of San Larenzo, whence he dispatched preaching monks to essay the conversion of the Waldenses, ere he assailed them with arms. These missionaries obtaining no success, he himself advanced into the valleys. The inhabitants sent to him as delegates, John Campo and John Desiderio, who thus addressed him: "Do not condemn us without hearing us, for we are Christians and faithful subjects; and our barbas are prepared to prove, in public or in private, that our doctrines are conformable with the word of God. True, we have not followed the transgressors of the evangelical law, who have so long departed from the tradition of the apostles; we have rejected their corrupt precepts, and refused to recognize any other authority than that of the Bible; but we find our happiness in a pure and simple life, wherein alone the Christian faith takes root and flourishes. We despise the love of riches and the thirst of dominion, wherewith our persecutors are devoured. Our hope in God is, however, greater than our desire to please men: beware how you draw down upon yourselves his anger by persecuting us; for remember, that if God so wills it, all the forces you have assembled against us will nothing avail."

This noble confidence was not deceived. At the will of God this army of invaders vanished from the Waldensian mountains as rain in the sands of the desert.

The inhabitants concentrated themselves on the most inaccessible points; the enemy, on the contrary, spread themselves over the plains. From strategetic incapacity, or from an ostentatious desire to make a great display of military force, Cataneo resolved to make an attack simultaneously on all the leading points, to that from the village of Biolet, in the marquisate of Saluzzo, to that of Sezanne, in Dauphiny; his shallow lines occupied the whole country. It was his idea to stifle with one blow the hydra of heresy; with one blow his own power was shattered, his lines broken, and his battalions assailed, in their precipitate flight, by those whom they had come to crush.

The only weapons employed were pikes, swords, and arrows. The Waldenses constructed shields and cuirasses of skins, covered with the thick bark of the chestnut tree, and these arrested the enemy’s arrows, which, shot from below, penetrated without piercing these defenses; while the Waldenses, vigorous and skillful, full of confidence in God, and better posted, discharged their weapons from above with triumphant advantage. There was one post, however, which, despite the energy of the defense, seemed about to be forced by the enemy—the central point of this great line of operations, on the heights of San Giovanni, near the Angrogna mountains, at a place called Roccamanante.

The crusaders having by degrees ascended the mountain, had reached this natural bulwark, behind which the Waldenses had placed their families. These, seeing them draw back, fell on their knees, and exclaimed with fervor, "O Lord God, help them! O Lord God, save us!" The enemy, who from a distance beheld their suppliant attitude, sent forth a contemptuous shout of laughter, and hastened their march. "You shall be saved with a vengeance," cried one of their chiefs, named, from his dark complexion, Il Nero di Mondovi; and as he spoke he raised his visor, in scorn of the poor folk, whom he thought he could insult with impunity, but at the very instant an arrow, shot by a young man of Angrogna, called Peter Revelli, pierced the forehead of this modern Goliath between the eyes, and laid him dead on the spot. His men, struck with panic and fear, drew back in disorder; the Waldenses, taking advantage of their terror, sallied forth, and, rushing upon them, drove them down to the plain, where they dispersed in flight.

A fresh endeavor was made next day to obtain possession of the redoubtable post. The enemy, adopting a different route, proceeded along the valley of Angrogna, on their way to the Pra-del-Tor, whence, ascending by La Vachera, they would have rendered themselves masters of the whole country. But one of those thick fogs which, at times, suddenly arise in the Alps, carne upon them, just as they were involved in the most dangerous and most difficult defiles. Ignorant of the locality, advancing in doubt, uncertain which way to turn, and unable to advance in a body over these rocks, bordered with precipices, they were checked by the first attack of the Waldenses, and speedily defeated. The first who were repulsed fell back on those who were behind them, these on the next, and in a few minutes utter disorder prevailed; retreat soon became flight, flight catastrophe, the fugitives falling over the humid rocks into the fatal abysses below. Few of the assailants escaped; and this decisive rout, due to the will of God rather than to the arms of the Waldenses, completed the deliverance of this valley, which was not again visited by Cataneo’s troops.

On the mountain of Roderi, in the valley of Pragela, the Waldenses, favored by the nature of the locality, put to flight the crusaders, by rolling down upon them avalanches of rocks; after this they descended, attacked them man to man, and prolonged the fight till the evening. The legate then drew off to Dauphiny. There a battalion of his forces, 700 strong, entering the village of Pommiere, in the Val-Louise, which they designed to plunder, were suddenly attacked by the Waldenses; and all those who escaped the fury of the first assault perished within a few days in the gorges of the mountains. The standard-bearer alone, after remaining concealed in a ravine for two days, came forth to avoid death by starvation and cold, and yielded himself up to the Waldenses, who afforded him sustenance and asylum, with that generous forgiveness of injuries which Christ has inculcated on his faithful. The prisoner’s strength restored, he was permitted to depart, and it was he who made known the total defeat of his companions.

After these futile and inglorious expeditions, the duke of Savoy withdrew his troops, dismissed the legate, under pretext that his mission was completed, and sent a bishop to the Waldenses to induce them to make overtures for a peace, which, they were assured, would be granted them. The interview of this envoy with the evangelical Christians of the Alps took place in the hamlet of Prasuyt, on the borders of the parishes of Angrogna and San Giovanni. It was there agreed that the Waldenses should send a representative from each of their churches to wait upon the prince, who was to repair, for that purpose, to Pignerol. At this meeting it was that the prince required to see some of their children, in order to ascertain whether it was really true that they were born with black throats, hairy teeth, and goat’s feet, as the Romanists asserted. "Is it possible," he exclaimed, when he saw several of these children, "is it possible that these are the children of heretics! What charming creatures! They are the finest children I ever beheld!" The prejudice thus dissipated may appear ridiculous, but it was calculated to be of potent effect in an ignorant age. Superstition, which obscures the moral and religious sense, throws also its veil over all the other parts of the human intellect; as, on the other hand, the light of the gospel, in illuminating the soul which has received it, elevates, aggrandizes, and purifies all the intellectual powers.

In the general description of the country of the Waldenses, which is given in the first chapter, we have confined ourselves to the present limits of that people. They extended, however, at one time, far beyond those limits, into similar mountain valleys on the other side of the Alps, into Savoy on the North, into Provence and Dauphiny in France on the West, into the valley of the Po, and into the plain country between their present territory and Turin. In regard to some of these Waldensian settlements, it is difficult to say whether they were the original population, or whether they were early emigrants from the Piedmontese valleys. They were, however, all homogeneous in character, and they all looked to the Piedmontese valleys as a sort of mother country, the recognized center and starting point of their race and their religion. Some of the earliest records of the history of this people of God relate to those valleys from which they have been since expelled, and where few, if any, of their name or faith are now to be found.

Among the French valleys formerly occupied by a Waldensian population, the first to be named is the Val-Louise. This is a deep, cold gorge, which descends from Mont Pelvoux to the basin of the Durance. The earliest ascertained persecution of the people of this valley was between 1238 and 1243. A century later, in 1335, we find, in the accounts-current of the bailli of Embrun, this singular article: Item, for persecuting the Waldensian, eight sols and thirty deniers, gold; as though the persecution of these Christians of the Alps had then become a regular department of the public service!

Chabert, one of the Waldensian brethren of the valley of Lucerne, more than five hundred years before, had bought, from the dauphin John II, a large house in Val-Louise, which he had presented to the brethren of that district for the purpose of their religious assemblies. This edifice the archbishop of Embrun destroyed in 1348, excommunicating beforehand any persons who should attempt to rebuild it, and burning, at the same time, twelve Waldenses who had been found in the house by the archbishop’s satellites. These unfortunate captives, being taken to Embrun, and collected in the square facing the cathedral, amid a crowd of people, and more immediately surrounded by fanatic monks, were enveloped in a yellow robe, on which were painted flames, symbolizing those of the hell to which they were declared doomed; their heads were shaved, and they were publicly anathematized; then, with bare feet, and ropes round their necks, they were fastened to the stake and strangled; fire was then applied, their bodies returned to dust, their souls ascended to their God.

A young inquisitor, Francesco Borelli, obtained from pope Gregory XI pressing letters to the king of France, the duke of Savoy, and the governor of Dauphiny, enjoining them to unite their forces for the purpose of extirpation from the Alps this inveterate heresy. The inquisitor undertook the charge of the temporal arms that were confided to him; and his persecutions left not a single village unassailed. Like the fabulous robe of the centaur, which destroyed whatever it touched, it seized whole families, whole populations, so that the prisons were soon inadequate to receive the multitude of prisoners. New dungeons were constructed for them, of mere bare walls, designed only to secure and inflict suffering on the captives.

Borelli began with summoning before him all the inhabitants of these valleys; they did not appear, and he condemned them for not appearing. Thencefoward, exposed to be surprised by his satellites, they suffered the double anguish of their own perils and the anguish of their families. One was seized on the highway, another in his field, another by his fireside; for fifteen years did this work of extermination proceed.

At length, on May 22, 1393, all the churches of Embrun were decked as for a grand solemnity, and the cathedral especially, where the mass of the local clergy, covered with their theatrical decorations, were grouped in the choir, while, near them, a double line of soldiers served at once to keep back the people in the nave, and to guard a troop of prisoners, soldiers of Christ, condemned, for their vindication of his word, to be burned alive. Presently the list of these martyrs was read out to the people. There were eighty from the valleys of Frayssinières and Argentiere, and one hundred and fifty from the Val-Louise—a large proportion of the population of that valley; and after each name was pronounced the fatal formula that condemned the living bodies of these two hundred and thirty victims to the stake. The solitude of the desert now reigned in these depopulated mountains; and as the wolves abandon the exhausted charnel-house, the inquisitors withdrew from these impoverished valleys.

For a while France had enough to do in saving herself from utter destruction at the hands of the English, owing her final safety only to the enthusiasm of a young girl, Joan of Arc. Meantime, the Waldensian churches gradually raised up their heads once more, as violets from amid the rocks, the breath of persecution propagating their evangelical faith, as the wind bears afar the fragrance of the flower. But the haughty and brutal animosity of the papacy grew also; and towards the close of the fifteenth century, Innocent VIII proclaimed against the Waldenses that war of extermination, the conduct of which, as we have seen in a former chapter, he committed to Albert Cataneo.

It was in the month of June, 1488, that this worthy legate of the pope, having fruitlessly essayed to subjugate the valleys of Piedmont, passed into France by Mont Genevre, where he caused to be strangled eighteen of these poor folk whom he had made prisoners. Thence he made an onslaught upon Briançon, a town which had been indicated to him as a nest of heresy; and from this marched upon Frayssinières, whose few and poorly armed inhabitants retired to a rock overlooking the church, where they were surrounded by the troops, and made prisoners.

Cataneo’s ferocious fanatics thence entered the deep gorge of Val-Louise. The Waldenses, feeling that they could not resist a force twenty times greater than their own, abandoned their poor habitations, placed their old people and children in their rustic carts, with their domestic utensils and such provisions as they could collect, and, driving their herds before them, and singing canticles, retired to the rugged slopes of Mont Pelvoux. This part of the Alps rises more than six thousand feet above the level of the valley. A third of the way up there is an immense cavern, called Aigue-Froide or Ailfrede, from the cold springs, nourished by the snows, which are found there. A sort of platform, accessible only over fearful precipices, extends at the mouth of the cavern, the majestic vault of which, after subsiding into a narrow passage, expands once more into an immense hall, of irregular form. Such was the asylum which the Waldenses had selected. They placed at the extremity of the grotto, the women, children, and old men; the cattle and sheep occupied the lateral cavities of the rock, and the able-bodied men posted themselves towards the mouth of the cavern, which, after having first barricaded with large rocks the path that led to the grotto, they had walled up with similar materials. Cataneo states, in his Memoirs, that they had with them provisions for more than two years. All their precautions thus taken, they deemed they had nothing to fear; but in reality they had to fear this very confidence in mere human precautions.

Cataneo had with him a daring and experienced leader, named La Palud. This captain, seeing the impossibility of forcing the entrenchments of the grotto on the side by which the Waldenses had reached it, led his own men back into the valley; then, with all the ropes he could collect, he ascended Mont Pelvoux, and, making his way to the precipice overhanging the entrance to the cavern, descended, by means of the ropes, to the platform. Nothing could have been more easy than for the Waldenses either to cut the ropes, or to slay each soldier before he reached the ground, and then hurl him into the abyss; but a panic terror seized the unhappy besieged. Some who rushed out from the cavern precipitated themselves down the rocks. Those who essayed resistance were slaughtered by La Palud, who then, not venturing to involve his men in the depths of the cavern, piled up all the wood he could collect at the entrance, and set fire to it. Those who attempted to issue forth were either destroyed by the flames, or by the sword of the enemy, while those who remained within were stifled by the smoke. When the cavern was afterwards examined, there were found in it four hundred infants suffocated in their cradles, or in the arms of their dead mothers. Altogether there perished in this cavern more than three thousand Waldenses—including the entire population of Val-Louise. Cataneo distributed the property of these unfortunates among the vagabonds who accompanied him, and never again did the Waldensian church raise its head in these blood-stained valleys.

The valley of Barcelonnette in Savoy is a hollow, closed in on all sides by almost inaccessible mountains. The period of the first advent hither of the Waldenses is unknown; but we find that when Farel carne to preach here in 1519, at Josiers, the population rejoiced to hear, by the voice of the reformer, the doctrines of their forefathers proclaimed aloud in all their evangelical purity.

In 1366, a rigorous order enjoined all the Waldenses of Barcelonnette either to embrace Romanism, or to quit the territory of Savoy within a month, under penalty of death and confiscation of their property. Most of them resolved to retire to the valley of Frayssinières, which belonged to France; but it was now deep winter; the roads were covered with snow and ice; the women, children, and old men could advance but slowly, so that wearied and cold, they were fain to lie down for the night on the snow, and numbers were frozen into the sleep of death. The survivors reached with difficulty the paternal asylum that had been opened to them. When, however, the governor of Barcelonnette proposed to distribute the property of the proscribed amongst the catholic population of the valley, these noble men refused to accept the gift, and the exiles were thereupon permitted to return and resume their possessions, the authorities perceiving that otherwise the land would remain uncultivated, and the valley in a large degree uninhabited. Still the Waldenses were not allowed openly to exercise their religion, but were fain several times in the year to traverse the glaciers to Vars, in the territory of France, to receive the communion and the benediction of a pastor.

Half a century later (in 1623) persecution recommenced. A Dominican monk, named Bouvetti, obtained from the duke of Savoy authority to proceed against the Waldenses of Barcelonnette, to whom he brought once more the alternative of abjuration or exile. The execution of this alternative was pitilessly prosecuted by the governor of the valley, Francis Dreux, so that after many fruitless endeavors to effect a modification of their fate, the Waldenses, unshaken in the faith of their fathers, had once more, and now without return, to abandon their native valley, and to seek an asylum in lands less afflicted. Some withdrew to Queyras and Gapencois, others to Orange and Lyon, others to Geneva, others still to the valleys of Piedmont, which seemed their mother country.

The inhabitants of Frayssinières in France, whose laborious habits and pure life the illustrious De Thou has depicted in the most vivid colors, were also in their turn the victims of persecution; between 1056 and 1290 no fewer than five papal bulls demanded their extirpation, and so early as 1238 the Inquisition preyed upon them.

In 1344, most of the inhabitants of Frayssinières, being persecuted, took refuge in the valleys of Piedmont; but they afterwards returned thence with their barbas, resisted the inquisitors, and were soon stronger than before.

After the extermination of the Waldenses of Val-Louise, the bloody Cataneo undertook to deal with those of Frayssinières, and summoned them to appear before a him at Embrun. Knowing that the object was to obtain their abjuration, they did not attend; hereupon they were condemned as contumacious rebels and heretics, to be burned, and their property to be confiscated to the Romish church. Such of them as were seized were accordingly sent to the stake without any further formality; and anyone who interceded for them, though it were a son for a mother, a father for his child, was immediately imprisoned, and, in many cases, condemned also to the flames as abetting heresy.

Upon the death of Charles VIII, in 1498, delegates from almost all the provinces of the kingdom repaired to Paris to take part in the coronation of Louis XII; and the inhabitants of Frayssinières took the occasion to depute one of their number to attend, and to lay their complaints before the new sovereign. Louis XII referred the matter to his council, and after consultation with the pope, papal and royal commissioners were appointed to investigate the subject on the spot. Upon arriving at Embrun, these commissioners had all the documents of the processes against the Waldenses on the part of the inquisitors laid before them, and having investigated them, censured the bishop, and annulled all the condemnations pronounced against the inhabitants of Frayssinières.

After this, the Waldensian Christians in Dauphiny experienced various turns of fortune, some of them memorable indeed, but we have not space to dwell upon them more particularly. During the seventeenth century, they were permitted freely to exercise their religion, and had regular pastors at Restolas, Abries, Château-Queyros, Arvieux, Moline, and St. Veran.

The revocation of the edict of Nantes destroyed their temples and proscribed themselves. Thousands of them went into exile. Those of Queyras withdrew into the valleys of Piedmont. Under Louis XV their faith being still interdicted, these poor people exercised their worship in the desert, like those of Le Gard and of the Cevennes. When a religious assembly was to take place, the villagers descended separately, by different paths, with spade on shoulder, as if repairing to their work, and all would meet in some solitary nook, where, taking their psalm books from their bosoms, they would unite in prayer. Whole families were wont to traverse long distances to attend these meetings. Departing in the evening, they would travel all night, and at the entrance of villages the men would take off their shoes and walk barefoot, so that the sound of their steps might not betray them; the feet of the mules or horses, on which the women and children rode, were covered with linen, for the same purpose, and thus the pious procession would reach the secret place of prayer. Sometimes the gendarmerie, then called the maréchaussée, would suddenly come upon the assembled worshippers, and in the name of the king, arrest the pastor; but the assemblies of the desert, dispersed at one point, would rally at another. Where copies of the Bible had, by incessant seizures, become too few to supply the wants of each, societies of young persons were formed, for the purpose of learning the Scriptures by heart, and thus preserving it, in their memory at least, from the menaced confiscation. Each member of these societies was entrusted to retain exactly in his memory a certain number of chapters; and when the assembly of the desert assembled, these new Levites, standing beside the minister, in face of the faithful, would supply the reading of the interdicted volume, by successively reciting, each in his turn, all the chapters of the book indicated by the pastor, for the common edification. Descendants of these glorious men, who thus aided to preserve the protestant church in France through periods of storm, still subsist at Frayssinières, at Vars, at Dormilhouse, Arvieux, Molines, and St. Veran. A recent apostolate, worthy of representing the ancient Waldensian fervor, has connected with these districts the name of Felix Neff.

Several colonies of the Waldenses established themselves in Provence towards the close of the thirteenth century. For a while adhering to a close reserve in their religious worship, and punctually paying all taxes, tithes, and seigneurial dues, they were not interfered with by the Romanists; but the German reformers having reproached them with cowardice and dissimulation in not more openly manifesting their faith, they ceased to practice their worship in private only. Forthwith the inquisitors were let loose upon them, and one of these, John di Roma, was so excessive in his cruelties and spoliations, during the ten years he acted in these valleys, that the king had him imprisoned. The persecutions, which he had commenced, were, however, none the less continued. In 1534, the bishops of Sisteron, Apt, Cavaillon, and other sees, each in his diocese, sought out the Waldensians, and filled the prisons with them. Having ascertained that these heretics were natives of Piedmont, information was transmitted of their apprehension to the archbishop of Turin; and a commissioner, appointed by him, wrote to the authorities in Provence, directing that proceedings should be suspended until full inquiry had been made by him. The bishop of Cavaillon, however, on the 29^th of March, 1535, informed him that thirteen of these prisoners had been already burned to death. Others, he said, had died in prison. Thus the intervention of the commissioner was futile against the vehement zeal of these persecuting prelates.

Clement VIII, a year before his death, promised plenary indulgence to every Waldensian in the French territories who would enter within the pale of popery; not one of them accepted the offer. Thereupon the pope complained to the king of France, who wrote to the parliament of Aix; and the parliament ordered the seigneurs of the lands occupied by the Waldensians to compel their vassals either to abjure or to quit the country. Upon their refusal, an attempt was made to conquer them by intimidation. Some of them were cited to appear before the court of Aix, to explain the causes of their disobedience; they did not attend, and, in default, the court condemned them to be burned alive. Their brethren thereupon took up arms, and delivered the prisoners. The authorities took up arms, and a civil war seemed inevitable. The case was laid before the king, Francis I; and he, thinking to pacify all parties, published in July, 1535, a general amnesty, on the condition that the heretics should abjure within the space of six months.

The six months passed away, and there was no abjuration; thereupon every seigneur and magistrate of these districts assumed the right of exacting abjuration, or of inflicting punishment on the recusant, by means of confiscation and imprisonment. Many of the seigneurs used largely this new mode of enriching themselves. Menier d’Oppede grievously abused it. The descendant of a Jewish family, poor, of evil reputation, and remorseless in soul, he took advantage of this crusade against the faithful; collecting a force of armed men, he would issue forth, seize upon some Waldensian farmer, and command him to invoke the saints. "There is but one Mediator between God and man," would the Waldensian reply, "and that is he who is himself both God and man, even Christ." The heretic would then be dragged to the caverns beneath the chateau d’Oppede, and there remain until he paid a heavy ransom, or till death released him, in which case his captor confiscated all his property to his own use.

These revolting depredations especially disgraced the year 1536. In the following year, the attorney-general of the parliament of Provence, at the instance of the fanatic clergy, and of greedy spoliators, drew up a report, setting forth that the Waldensians were daily increasing. Upon this report the king commanded the court to suppress the rebels; in June, 1539, he further enjoined it to take cognizance of heresy, and in the following October the court ordered the seizure of one hundred and fifty-four persons, denounced as heretics by two apostates.

In the excessive fermentation to which such measures naturally gave rise, a mere spark would light up a flame; and this happened in the following manner.

The Judge of Apt, taking a fancy to a mill there, denounced the miller, Pellenc, as a heretic; Pellenc was burned alive, and his mill confiscated to the profit of the denouncer. Some young people of Merindol, whose Provençal veins still boiled with Italian blood, could not restrain their indignation at such iniquity, and in their ignorance or their despair of legal forms, they executed justice for themselves; they went by night, and destroyed the mill, so unrighteously possessed, at the price of their brother’s blood, by his murderer. The judge made his complaint to the court of Aix, and named the persons whom he suspected to have taken part in this violence. The court, though it was vacation time (July 1540), held an extraordinary sitting, and decreed the arrest of eighteen persons.

The officer appointed to effect the arrest proceeded to Merindol; he found the houses all empty. "Where are the inhabitants of this village?" he asked, of a mendicant whom he met on the way. "They have fled to the woods, for they heard that the troops of the count de Teuda were going to kill them." "Go seek them," said the officer, "and tell them they shall receive no harm." A few Waldensians made their appearance, and the officer served the summons upon these, ordering them to appear before the court in two months.

On the 2^nd of September they assembled together, and addressed to the court a memorial protesting their submissiveness to its orders, and their fidelity to the king; and supplicating the court not to be influenced by their enemies, who had already misled it, since, in the summons which they were directed to obey, there were the names of some persons who were dead, of others who had never existed at all, and of infants who could not yet walk. The court, irritated at having its blunders pointed out by these simple mountaineers, replied that the living should appear before it without troubling their heads about the dead. The Waldensians consulted an advocate as to what course they should pursue. "If you desire to be burned alive," was the answer, "you will go before the court." They did not go before it, and, accordingly, upon the 18^th of November, 1540, the court of Aix pronounced against them an inconceivable judgment, condemning to the stake twenty-three persons, seventeen out of whom were named, delivering up their wives and children to anyone who could seize them, forbidding all persons to aid them in any way, and ordering Merindol, as a place notorious for heresy, to be burned to the ground, and utterly destroyed.

This decree aroused general indignation, not only in the populace, but in the generous hearts among the nobility and the advocates. The young count d’Allenc, one of the most distinguished members of the Arlesian nobility, waited upon the president Chassanée, made an appeal to his justice and humanity, and obtained a respite, during which the court, itself alarmed at the decree it had pronounced, referred the matter to the king, who directed Dubellay to proceed to Provence, and inquire into the conduct of the Waldenses.

Upon the report of this nobleman that the Waldenses were retired and quiet people, reserved in their manners, chaste and sober in their lives, and laborious in their habits, but that they did not attend the mass, the monarch, by a letter dated the 18^th of February, 1541, proclaimed a general amnesty, pardoning all the condemned on condition of their abjuring their errors of doctrine within three months. This amnesty was not published by the court of Aix till the middle of May, when there only remained two weeks of the stipulated time unexpired; but had there been but one moment, they would never have sought to save their mortal life, at the expense of their immortal soul, by abjuring the truth. On the contrary, they proclaimed more emphatically than ever their persecuted doctrines, in a confession of faith, dated 6^th of April, 1541, which they transmitted to Francis I, and which the sire de Castelnau read to him. Each point of doctrine was supported by texts of scripture. "Well, what have our people got to say in reply to that?" asked the monarch, from time to time. But his fickle and superficial mind soon forgot the impression thus made upon him.

The illustrious and learned Sadolet, whose features Raffaelle has transmitted to us in a celebrated picture, heard of this confession of faith, and requested to be furnished with a copy of it. He was at this time bishop of Carpentras, and it was with him the Waldenses of Cabrières first appeared on the stage; for, being inhabitants of his diocese, it was they who laid before him a copy of the common confession. "We consent," said they, "not only to abjure, but to submit to the severest penalties, if it can be shown to us, out of the holy scriptures, that our doctrines are erroneous."

The cardinal replied to them with kindness, admitted that they had been the victims of black calumnies and false criminations, requested them to come and confer with him, and sought to make them perceive that, without departing from the spirit of their confession, they might modify its letter. He took no pains, indeed, to prevent their perceiving that he himself desired a reform in Catholicism. Had the Waldenses encountered only such examiners as he, blood would not have flowed! He wrote to the pope to express his surprise that the Waldenses were persecuted, while the Jews were spared; but the poor folk soon lost his protection, for he was recalled to Rome, and thus, removed from his observation, the Waldenses remained alone in face of their persecutors.

The term of the amnesty indicated by the royal letter having arrived, the court of Aix ordered the Waldenses to send ten representatives, to declare whether they intended to avail themselves of it, and to conform. One representative alone appeared, named Estène. "We consent to abjure," be repeated, "if our errors can be demonstrated."

The cardinal de Tournon, excited against the Waldenses by the legate of the papal see, sent word to the king that the clergy had rejected the confession of faith, which the sectaries had laid before him, whereupon the governor of the province was ordered to clear it of heresy. The bishop of Cavaillon, deputed by the court of Aix, visited Merindol to inquire into the religious views of the Waldenses. On reaching the village, he summoned the principal inhabitants before him, and rejecting all question between them of doctrine, required them at once "to abjure their errors," intimating that all he desired was a mere formality on their part, after which they would be left at peace, and at full liberty to place what interpretation they pleased on their abjuration. But the Waldenses were not Jesuits; they frankly refused compliance, and the bishop withdrew.

On the 4^th of April, 1542, he returned, and was equally unsuccessful. Two years then passed away, in suspense on the one hand, in hesitation to act on the other, and then Francis I, on June 14, 1544, on the plaint of the Waldenses of Cabrières, issued an edict suspending all proceedings against the Waldenses, restoring them to their social privileges, and releasing such of them as were in prison. The court of Aix, before publishing this edict, sent one of its officers to Paris, to procure, if possible, its revocation. On the 1^st of January, 1545, letters of revocation were, in the privy council, placed before the king for signature, and he signed them without reading them, or being at all aware of their purport. They were, however, effective for the purpose, and that purpose was the execution of the decree of the 18^th of November, 1540, and the destruction by fire and sword, not simply of the twenty inhabitants of Merindol, contemplated by the decree, but of the entire population of seventeen villages. The instant that this sanguinary order had been thus fraudulently obtained, it was dispatched by especial courier to Oppede, the president of the court of Aix, who, as instantly upon its receipt, sent instructions to the governor of Provence, to assemble troops for its prompt execution. No notice was given to the doomed people, lest they should make their plaint before their sovereign, and thus lay bare the fraud of which he was the dupe and they were to be the victims. The soldiers were quietly collected, and they only awaited the arrival of captain Poulain, who was shortly expected from Piedmont.

He came on the 7^th of April. Between the 7^th and the 11^th all the preparations were completed for carrying into effect this retroactive sentence. The 12^th was a Sunday, but nevertheless the court assembled at the summons of Oppede.

The inhabitants of Lourmarin were ordered to prepare billets for a thousand foot and three hundred horse. The inhabitants replied by taking up arms. The order was repeated; they required a delay of twelve hours for reflection. "Subjects do not make terms with their sovereign," was the rejoinder. The chatelaine of Lourmarin, Blanche de Levis, came herself to intercede for her people, but she was not listened to. All in tears, she then addressed her vassals, and entreated them to avoid certain destruction, by laying down their arms. "Our destruction would only be the more certain and the more prompt, were we to lay them down," was the reply. "But let us depart quietly, and we will abandon our goods to those who seek them by our death."

The poor chatelaine, however, could do nothing. The dame de Cental also wrote to Oppede, entreating him to spare her vassals. But already the troops, spread over the country, had begun to pillage and destroy. Oppede began by setting fire to the houses in La Roque, Ville-Laure, and Trezemines, which had been abandoned by the Waldenses; he did the same at Lourmarin, where a hundred and fourteen houses were destroyed. On the 18^th of April, the combined troops appeared before Merindol; the inhabitants had retired, but a young man, named Maurice Blanc, who had been late in the fields, was seized by the pillagers. They tied him to an olive tree, and the soldiers, converting him into a mark for their arquebuses, fired at him from a distance. The fifth bullet terminated his sufferings. They then set fire to the village, which was entirely consumed. Some women having been surprised in the church, they were stripped naked, subjected to indescribable outrages, and then compelled to hold each other by the hand, as in a dance, were urged, at the pike’s point, up the castle-rock, whence, already severely wounded and suffering, they were precipitated, one after the other, into the abyss beneath. Elsewhere many were taken and sold. One father had to travel to Marseilles to ransom his daughter. A young mother, endeavoring to escape across the fields, with her infant in her arms, was overtaken and outraged by these ruffians, pressing all the while her nursling to her bosom. An aged woman at Lauris, between Cabrières and Avignon, whose years saved her from this particular brutality, became in their hands an object of insult to humanity and to their own religion. They cut her hair in the shape of a cross, and having covered this tonsure with some tinsel, they led her through the streets, singing psalms derisively, in imitation of a procession of priests. Coming, at length, to a large oven, which was heated to bake a quantity of bread for themselves, the soldiers pushed their victim to the opening with their pikes, crying, "Enter there, you old devil!" The poor creature, exhausted with her sufferings, was about to enter without resistance, but the soldiers who had prepared the oven would not permit this use to be made of it.

Signalizing its march by a thousand similar brutalities, under the most various and most revolting forms, the army reached Cabrières. This fortified town, being within the pope’s territory, could not have been touched without the consent of the pontiff, but the vice-legate Mormoiran had furnished Oppede with full power to act as he should think fit. The army came to the town on the 19^th of April, and though this was the Sabbath, at once commenced battering the walls. The Waldenses within, occupied in prayer, gave no indication of submission, and the firing continued all day and all night. On Monday morning it was stayed, and Oppede wrote to the besieged, that if they would open the gates of the town, they should receive no harm. The first troops which entered were those from Piedmont, trained and hardy warriors, who were to have begun the carnage; but, knowing the stipulations of the surrender, the soldiers declared that their honor was concerned in its observance. Meantime, Oppede sent for the principal men of the place, who came without distrust. They were eighteen in number; their hands were tied, and they were passed among the troops, to which they made no objection, thinking they were merely there as hostages for the tranquility of the rest of the population. But as they were traversing the ranks of the Provençal troops, commanded by Oppede, the son-in-law of this man, named de Pourrieres, cut with his saber the bald head of an old man, whose faltering steps had accidentally approached too near the officer’s feet.

"Kill them all," cried Oppede, when he saw the old man fall, and instantly the cowardly and frantic troops whom he so fitly commanded, butchered the unhappy host; yes, whose quivering limbs, as they lay in recent death, the same de Pourrieres and the sire de Faulcon savagely mutilated. The heads of the murdered men were raised on pikes, and the soldiers being thus excited, the signal for general massacre was given. A number of women, shut up in a barn, to which fire was applied, sought to save themselves from the flames by leaping from the walls; they were received on the points of pikes and swords. Others had retired to the castle. "Death! blood!" exclaimed Oppede, as he pointed out to his soldiers the path to the asylum of the victims.

But the most horrible scene took place in the church. Hither the great majority of the women had repaired for refuge; the soldiers seized them, stripped them naked, outraged them in the most brutal manner, and then threw some of them from the tower to the ground, while others, after being dragged forth to glut the ruffianism of other soldiers who came up, were finally dispatched by being eventerated. The horrors perpetrated on this, and on many similar occasions, were such as it is impossible to describe. The abbé Guerin, who was present at this massacre, states in his deposition that in the church alone "four or five hundred poor women and girls were outraged and slain."

The prisoners who were not put to death, were sold by the soldiers as galley slaves. The vice-legate, indeed, acting in the true spirit of popery, refused to grant any quarter whatever. Having ascertained that twenty-five women, most of them mothers of families, had concealed themselves in a grotto near Mys, he ordered a party of soldiers thither to exterminate them, though the place was not within the papal territory. On reaching the mouth of the grotto, a discharge of musketry was directed within; no one came forth, fuel was plied up inside, and a large fire lighted, and all these living creatures of God perished in the flames and the smoke. In this extermination, there were burned seven hundred and sixty-three houses, ninety-nine stables, and thirty-one barns. The number of persons slaughtered was upwards of three thousand.

While still at Cabrières, Oppede received a message from the lord of the town of La Costa, entreating him to spare his vassals. This was on the Monday evening. "Let them make four breaches in their walls," replied Oppede, "and we will see." On the Tuesday morning these breaches were commenced, but when the inhabitants saw Oppede’s troops advancing as to an assault, they hastily filled up the breaches they had made, and closed the gates. The troops were fain to content themselves that day with destroying the gardens of the castle, which stood outside the town; the next morning, the 22^nd of April, Oppede wrote to the syndics of La Costa, undertaking that if the gates were thrown open, the inhabitants should receive full protection and justice; the gates were opened on the faith of this promise, and the furious soldiers rushing in, at once proceeded to the work of massacre, outrage, and destruction. There was a small warren behind the castle; hither the soldiers dragged their female captives to dishonor, before they slew them. One mother, after in vain seeking to defend her daughter from the brutal ravisher, stabbed herself, and then drawing the ensanguined knife from her wound, gave it to her child, as the last resource from dishonor.

An inquiry into these atrocities was instituted in September 1551, by order of Henry II, who desired to free his father’s memory from this stain of blood; the fraud by which the revocation of the king’s pardon had been effected was laid bare, but though the advocate, Guerin, was punished with death, the great criminal, Oppede, not only escaped, but returned triumphant to Provence, where he was welcomed by the clergy, who had blasphemously offered up public prayers and Te Deums in the churches, "for the safety and speedy return of this illustrious defender of the faith."

The few Waldenses who had escaped death retired for a while to the valleys of Piedmont.

The first migration of the Waldenses of Piedmont from their own valleys, to the richer land of Calabria, took place in 1340. By a convention with the local seigneurs, ratified later by the king of Naples, Ferdinand of Aragon, they were permitted to govern their own affairs, civil and spiritual, by their own magistrates and their own pastors. Their first colony was near the town of Montalto. A half century later, rose the town of San Xisto, which afterwards became the capital of the colony; other towns and villages of theirs were named Vacaresso, L’Arguelena, San Vincenzo, Le Rosse, contributing to create prosperity in a district that was previously well-nigh desolate.

The marquis di Spinello, struck with the ameliorations effected, by these industrious and upright men in the territories which had been ceded to them, invited a number of their body into his own states, gave them lands, aided them to build a town, and authorized them to surround this town with a wall, whence it derived the name of La Guardia.

Towards the close of the fourteenth century, another migration of Waldenses took place, from Provence into Italy; these new colonists settling in Apulia, not far from their Calabrian brethren, built their several walled towns, which they named after those whence they had come—La Cellare, Faët, La Motte. Again, in 1500, other Waldenses from Frayssinières and Pragela, established themselves in Calabria, on the small river Vollurate, which runs from the Apennines into the Bay of Tarento, whence they, and new comers, spread over other portions of the kingdom of Naples, even to Sicily. Agriculture and the sciences flourished among them. Baarlam of Calabria, of whom Petrarch was a disciple, was himself a disciple of the Waldenses. The missionary pastors, whom the synod at home sent amongst these colonists, remained with them, two at a time, for the space of two years; and were then replaced by others, themselves visiting on their return to their villages all the chief towns of Italy, in each of which they had brethren, more or less numerous. The Waldensian historian, Gilles, relates that his grandfather, on one of these pastoral visitations to Venice, was assured by the faithful, when he conversed with them, that the city contained no fewer than six thousand members of that body.

Until 1558, the Waldenses of Calabria remained unmolested in their modest and tranquil retirement. In that year, having applied to the synod for the appointment amongst them of a permanent pastor, the application was granted, and there was nominated to the honorable, but perilous post, a young Piedmontese, a native of Conio, named John Louis Paschale, who, having quitted the career of arms to become a soldier of Christ, had prepared himself for the ministry by studies recently completed at Lausanne.

Paschale departed, accompanied by another pastor, Jacob Boveto, also a Piedmontese, and who suffered martyrdom at Messina, in 1560.

Upon his arrival in Calabria, Paschale began zealously to preach the gospel as publicly as it was preached at Geneva. Thereupon, there arose a report that a Lutheran had come, who was about to destroy everything with his doctrines; the ignorant murmured, and the fanatics vociferated that he must be exterminated with all his adherents. The marquis Salvator-Spinello, suzerain of the Waldenses, who was then at Foscalda, a small town near La Guardia, sent word that some of their body must appear before him and explain their new proceedings; and, accordingly, a body of them, headed by Paschale, waited upon the marquis. This was in July 1559. But the zealous young pastor had not to combat, as he had expected, honest errors, in a fair controversy, with evangelical texts and arguments. His enemies sought, not the truth, but silence; and, accordingly, after listening to Paschale for a few moments, the marquis, finding that submission was not to be expected from the Waldenses, dismissed the flock with a menace, and placed Paschale, and a fellow pastor, Marco Ascegli, who had accompanied him, in the dungeons of Foscalda. Hence, after an imprisonment of eight months, they were, on the 7^th of February, 1560, transferred to the dungeons of Cosenza, where Ascegli, after being subjected to the torture, was burned to death.

On the 14^th of April, Paschale was removed from the castle of Cosenza, and in company with twenty-two prisoners, condemned to the galleys, conveyed, under circumstances of great cruelty, to Naples, which they reached on the 23^rd of April. On the 16^th of May, he was taken in chains to Rome, and imprisoned in the Torre di Nona, in a deep, dark, damp dungeon, without the least furniture, or even straw to lie on, and where his arms were bound so tightly with small cords that they entered the flesh.

For three days several members of the holy office were engaged during four hours each day, in argument with Paschale, endeavoring to bring him to retract, but it vain; and on the 8^th of September, 1560, he was conducted to the Convent dells Minerva, to hear his condemnation pronounced. On the following morning he was taken to the square in front of the castle of St. Angelo, and there, in the presence of pope Pius IV, was strangled, his body burned, and his ashes thrown into the Tiber.

The attention of the holy office having been thus called to the Waldenses of Calabria, cardinal Alexandrini was dispatched to San Xisto, in company with two Dominican monks. These wolves in sheep’s clothing, assuming extreme mildness of demeanor, assembled the inhabitants, assured them that no harm was designed against them, and that if they would merely consent to hear no other preachers than those sent them by the Romish bishop, and dismiss the Lutheran pastors who were misleading them, they had nothing to fear. They then, in order to ascertain how many persons observed the practices of the Romish church, had the bell rung for mass, and invited the people to attend.

Not one attended; on the contrary, the entire population of the town, with the exception of a few young children and aged persons, quitted the place, and withdrew to an adjacent wood. The popish commissioners, repressing their anger, performed mass, and then proceeded to La Guardia. Here, having had the gates closed, they assembled the people. "Dear and faithful friends," said they, "your brethren of San Xisto have abjured their errors and attended mass; we invite you to follow this prudent example, or we shall be compelled, much to our regret, to condemn you to death." The alarmed population, after some hesitation, consented to hear mass, and after the performance of this ceremony the gates were opened.

When, however, some of the people of San Xisto came and revealed the truth, the population of La Guardia, indignant at the deceit which had been practiced upon them, and ashamed of their own culpable weakness, assembled in the market-place, resolved to join their brethren in the wood, and were only dissuaded from doing so by the representations of the marquis of Spinello.

The grand inquisitor now demanded that the public force should aid him in the complete execution of his mission, and two companies of soldiers were accordingly placed at his disposal. These he dispatched to the wood of San Xisto, to seize the fugitives, but, instead of taking them prisoners, the fanatic troops no sooner discovered the unhappy Waldenses than they fell upon them, killed a great number, put to flight the rest, and pursued these like wild beasts. The fugitives at length attained some high rocks, where they entrenched themselves, and, as the soldiers came up, hurled upon them great stones, with such effect that many were slain, and more wounded, so that the officers deemed it expedient to retreat, and to communicate the result to cardinal Alexandrini. The legate thereupon applied to the viceroy of Naples for greater force, wherewith to suppress this rebellion, as he called it, of the Waldenses; the viceroy himself marched to San Xisto, at the head of his troops, and there denounced fire and sword against all who should not abjure their heresy. The Waldenses, on their part, fortified themselves on the mountaintops; and their position became at length so formidable, that the viceroy, not venturing to attack them with the troops he had brought, put forth a proclamation by which he offered a free pardon to all exiles, outlaws, and other criminals, who would aid to exterminate the Waldenses.

This proclamation, so characteristic of popery, had the effect of collecting together a multitude of reprobates, marauders, and bandits, many of whom were intimately acquainted with all the by-paths of the Apennines; and by these the Waldenses in the mountains were hunted down and slaughtered, some dying by the sword, some by fire, some by famine.

Meanwhile the inquisitor and the monks were not idle. By a foul stratagem, they induced the surviving population of La Guardia, in number seventy souls, to assemble together, and, so assembled, they were seized by soldiers, concealed for the purpose, loaded with chains, and taken as prisoners to Montalto, where they were all subjected to the most cruel tortures by the inquisitor Panza, for the purpose of forcing them, not only to forswear their faith, but to forswear themselves, by admitting against their brethren and their pastors the pretended abominations which the corrupt imaginings of popery had conceived and laid to their charge. To effect a confession of these crimes from the agony of the Waldenses, was a grand object with the inquisitors; and one unhappy man, Stephano Carlini, was, to this purpose, tortured in so horrible a manner that his bowels gushed forth. Another prisoner, Verminello, having, in excess of pain on the rack, promised to attend mass, the inquisitor deemed him a likely person, under aggravated torture, to confess also to the crimes which the church of Rome so earnestly desired to bring home to the Waldenses; and the miserable man was accordingly kept for eight consecutive hours upon an instrument of suffering, aptly called hell; but he could not be brought to sanction the atrocious calumnies, an admission of which would have released him from torture. Bernardino Conto was covered with pitch, and burned alive in the marketplace of Cosenza. Another martyr, Mazzone, was stripped naked, his body shredded with iron whips, and the mangled frame then beaten to death with lighted brands. Of this victim’s two sons, one was flayed alive, and the other hurled from the summit of a tower. From the same tower was precipitated another young man, who, for his prodigious strength, was surnamed Samson. As his mangled frame lay, still breathing, on the flag-stones below, the viceroy passed. "What carrion is this?" he asked. "It is a heretic, who will not die." The viceroy kicked the wretched man’s head aside. "Let the pigs come, then, and eat him," said he; and the barbarous order was executed, the prostrate body of the martyr palpitating with life for some hours, beneath the tearing teeth of the unclean brutes, which a human brute far more unclean and foul than they had set to the work.

Sixty women of San Xisto had ropes bound round their bodies and limbs so tightly that wounds were made, and these festering, engendered corruption that was removed with hot lime. Afterwards, some of them were burned alive, others starved to death in their dungeons, while the handsomer among them were sold to satisfy the passions of the highest bidder. At Montalto, eighty-eight Waldensian prisoners were crowded in a low, damp dungeon. By order of the marquis Buccianici, the executioner came, took the nearest prisoner, led him outside, bound a strip of linen round his head, made him kneel, and cut his throat. Then, placing his knife between his teeth, and holding the ensanguined linen in his hand, the executioner returned to the dungeon, withdrew the next prisoner, and in like manner dispatched him; and so with the rest, until on that blood-stained ground there lay the headless trunks of eighty-eight martyrs, gentle as lambs, and as lambs slaughtered. Other persons were sawed asunder. Others, eighty-six in number, having been first flayed alive, had their bodies cleft in two, and the ghastly portions were stuck on pikes along the high road, for the length of thirty-six miles. The preachers and elders of the Waldenses were burned alive, their bodies being covered with resin and sulphur. For two whole years did the fire and sword of antichrist devour this unhappy district, and sixteen hundred victims gratified with their blood the sanguinary thirst of Rome. A few of the Waldenses effected their escape, and regained, with infinite toil, the valleys of their ancestors.

There is no town in Piedmont, under a Waldensian pastor, where some of the brethren have not been put to death. Jordan Terbano was burned alive at Suza; Hippolyte Rossiero at Turin; Michael Goneto, an octogenarian, at Sarcena; Villermin Ambrosio hanged on the Col di Meano; Hugo Chiamps, of Fenestrelle, had his entrails torn from his living body, at Turin; Peter Geymarali, of Bobbio, in like manner, had his entrails taken out at Lucerne, and a fierce cat thrust in their place to torture him further; Maria Romano was buried alive at Roccapatia; Magdalen Foulano underwent the same fate at San Giovanni; Susan Michelini was bound hand and foot, and left to perish of cold and hunger on the snow at Sarcena. Bartholomew Fache, gashed with sabers, had the wounds filled up with quick-lime, and perished thus in agony at Fenile; Daniel Michelini had his tongue torn out at Bobbio, for having praised God; James Baridari perished, covered with sulphureous matches, which had been forced into his flesh under the nails, between the fingers, in the nostrils, in the lips, and over all his body, and then lighted. Daniel Revelli had his mouth filled with gun powder, which, being lighted, blew his head to pieces. Maria Monnen, taken at Liousa, had the flesh cut from her cheek and chin bones, so that her jaw was left bare, and she was left to perish. Paul Garnier was slowly sliced to pieces at Rora; Thomas Margueti was mutilated in an indescribable manner at Miraboco, and Susan Jaquin cut in bits at La Torre. Sara Rostagnol was slit open from the legs to the bosom, and left so to perish on the road between Eyral and Luzerna; Anne Charbonnier was impaled, and carried thus on a pike, as a standard, from San Giovanni to La Torre. Daniel Rambaud, at Paesano, had his nails torn off, then his fingers chopped off, then his feet and his hands, and then his arms and his legs, with each successive refusal on his part to abjure the gospel. In March, 1536, Martin Gonin, pastor of Angrogna, was seized on his return from Geneva, at Grenoble, and, after a mock trial, taken from his prison at night, and drowned in the Isere. In June 1556, Barthelemi Hector, of Poitiers, was burned at Turin, for having sold copies of the Bible to the shepherds of the Alps. In 1555, a pastor of Geneva, Jean Vernoux, one of the earliest fellow laborers with Calvin; Antoine Labarie Quercy, who had quitted the magistracy in order to devote himself more actively to the cause of the gospel; and three friends of theirs, Batailles, Tauran, and Tringalet, were on their way to the Waldensian valleys, seized by the maréchaussée, in the gorges of the Col Tamis, and, after a lengthened interrogatory before the court of Chambery, were all burned in one fire.

Among the leaders who had signalized themselves by excessive ferocity in the crusade against the Vaudois, under Innocent VIII, was Captain Varagle, or Varaille. A son of this man, endowed with remarkable capacity, entered into holy orders in 1522, and took up his abode not far from the Waldensian valleys, in the little town of Busque, one of the most retired in Piedmont. Here his rapid progress in literature and theology, and his eloquence in the pulpit, attracted the attention of his superiors.

The influence of the Reformation was now making itself everywhere felt; and the Romish church comprehended the essential importance of strengthening its power, which the synod of Angrogna had just aided to weaken. Young Geoffrey Varaille, selected to operate as a counterpoise to the impulse of reformation, received the difficult mission to visit the principal towns of Italy, and raise up the credit of the Romish church by his eloquent preaching. He was to be accompanied by an Observantine monk of the convent of Monte Fiascone, named Matteo Baschi, the founder of the Capuchin order, and by ten members of the secular clergy.

These twelve being assembled together, proceeded, with a view to the accomplishment of their mission, to examine for themselves the arguments of the reformers against catholicism. It was not long ere their enlightened minds recognized the force of these arguments so fully, that, becoming themselves objects of suspicion to the popish authorities, they were all imprisoned at Rome, where they remained captives for five years. At the expiration of this period, Varaille, released from his dungeon, entered the service of the papal legate at the court of France, and abode with him at Paris for a considerable time. Here the rays of the Reformation fell upon his soul with still greater power than i