Persecution of Heretics: Waldenses
Abstract
The Waldenses
“Waldenses” was the name given to heretical Christians in the south of France about 1170. Cathari were called “Waldenses” by their contemporaries—modern writers say wrongly, though the contemporaries were naturally there at the time! Waldenses became so celebrated that nearly all the mediæval heretics were classed under their name, just as earlier heresies had all been called Manichæan. The Waldensians—the Waldenses or the Vaudois—endured centuries of persecution for their faith. Those who were concerned in their suppression were eager to accuse them of the worst enormities imaginable. Vaudois is supposedly from Vaudes (Valdès, de Vaulx), French for Waldo, but is also French for witches, and so might be an insulting name, and an old name for “Valley People” might be its source. Every Vaudois possessed a rudimentary education, a remarkable fact for the middle ages, and one that the Church could not abide, and Cathars were known to have night schools where reading was taught in secrecy.
The most important of the Waldensian literature is a poem in Provençal, La Nobla Leyczon, but it is not entirely original, having been edited.
Peter Waldo (1140-1218) was a rich merchant of Lyons, France, who, about 1170, supposedly asked a priest how to live like Jesus Christ, and was told what Jesus said to the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:21, cited above. Waldo provided for his wife, put his daughters in a convent, and gave the rest of his money to the poor. He memorized parts of the bible, and began preaching. As he gained followers, he sent them out in pairs preaching. They were called “the Poor in Spirit”, and are also known as Pauperes de Lugduno, the “Poor Ones of Lyons”, so they seem to have been inspired by the Essenes, the Ebionites, the Jewish sect from which Christianity emerged.
Waldo preceded S Francis (1181-1226) in adopting a life of poverty to be free to preach. The difference was that the Waldenses preached the doctrine of Christ while the Franciscans preached the person of Christ. He founded his beliefs on the bible, especially the gospels, which he thought so self-explanatory, they needed no interpretation. He thought all that was needed was to make the bible available to the people, so he commissioned two priests to translate the bible into Provençal, starting with the gospels.
In 1179, Pope Alexander III (1159-1181) who had found no evidence of heresy among the Waldensians, forbade them to preach except with the permission of a bishop, because they were not trained priests. The Archbishop of Lyons ordered Waldo to stop preaching. Waldo quoted Peters’ response when the Sanhedrin told the apostles to stop preaching:
We must obey God rather than men.Acts 5:29
Waldo kept on preaching, and the Archbishop excommunicated him. From 1180 to 1230, the Catholic Church enacted legislation against heresy. It created a permanent tribunal, staffed by Dominican friars, which became known as the Inquisition. In 1184, Pope Lucius III (1181-1185) excommunicated Waldo and all his followers, but in 1180, four years before Waldo and the Waldensians were excommunicated by the pope, the Waldenses were among the first heretics subject to the Inquisition. Thus a wholly pious movement was declared as heresy by the Church. Some were readmitted into the Catholic Church. Durandus de Osca (1210), tried to found an order of Pauperes Catholici, the forerunner of the Dominicans. Many were killed in the crusade against the Albigenses. Those remaining were formally condemned by the Lateran council of 1215.
The beliefs of the Waldensians were described by the inquisitor Sacconi about 1250. The Waldensians were Christians, but were independent of the Catholic Church. Humble people who believed in “apostolic poverty”, they went barefoot, owning nothing, but sharing all things in common. They threatened the Church because they were truer Christians than the Catholic clerics. The humility and chosen poverty of the Waldensians contrasted with the grandeur of the Church, and its officers. Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) was contemporary with Waldo, but wore fine clothes elaborately decorated with gemstones. Kings and cardinals had to kiss his foot, and famously he said that the pope is “less than God but more than man”. A century later, Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) wore a tiara covered with jewels, including 48 rubies, 45 emeralds, 72 sapphires, and 66 large pearls.
The earliest known document of the Waldensians is a record of a conference at Bergamo in 1218 between the Ultramontane and the Lombard branches, the Lombards showing a greater opposition to the Catholic priesthood than their northern brethren. The northern (Ultramontane) Branch of the Vaudois held that—like the Essenes:
- oaths are forbidden by the gospel,
- capital punishment is not allowed to the civil power,
- any layman may consecrate the sacrament of the altar,
- the Roman Church is not the Church of Christ.
The Lombard branch also held that no one in mortal sin could consecrate the sacrament, and that the Roman Church was the scarlet woman of the Apocalypse, “drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus”, whose precepts ought not to be obeyed. This is indeed true in Essenic terms, except that it was the Roman empire or emperor who was the Scarlet Woman ariginally. The pope was the Antichrist.
These features show the relation of the Waldenses and the Cathari—their objection to oaths and to capital punishment are closely related to the principles of the Cathari, but no priesthood is mentioned, so they seemed to be lay Cathars, credentes or croyants, not ready for the consolamentum or perhaps capable of it, but happy to proselytize. But perhaps it is simply that no mention was made of the professional class, because later they seemed to have professional ministers like the Cathari. Election took the place of ordination, but the Lombards recognized only two orders, while the northern body had three orders of bishops, priests and deacons, like the Cathari. A new religious society arose unlike both the medieval church and the Protestantism of the sixteenth century.
They vigorously attacked Papal corruption in their evangelical tours. All believers were entitled to be priests, including women, so long as they were sincere. They could therefore absolve sin and offer sacraments. They disparaged prayers for the dead, indulgences, confession, penance, music, chanting, the use of Latin, adoring saints and the blessed sacrament. Killing of any kind, lying and swearing oaths were deadly sins, and preaching crusades meant damnation. Waldensian ministers were called Majorales or Perfects. They renounced marriage and property and simply preached. All Waldenses, whether lay or Perfects were to proselytize. David Christie-Murray, an ordained priest who became a Quaker, wrote in his book, A History of Heresy:
Apart from their heterodox opinions, they were blameless in their lives, being humble, industrious toilers with their hands, who dressed simply, were temperate in all their appetites, sober, truthful, slow to anger, eschewing the gathering of wealth, and avoiding taverns, dances and similar worldly pleasures.
From a letter of about 1530, Waldenses were baptized, and received the holy communion sometimes, at least, from Catholic priests, but maintained a separate discipline and held services based on itinerant preachers. Their ministers were called “barba”, a Provençal word meaning “guide”, elected from among labouring men, who at the age of twenty five might ask the body of ministers to be admitted as candidates. If approved they were taught during the winter months, when work was slack, for a space of three years. Then they served two years as menial assistants at a nunnery for women in a recess of the valleys. They were admitted to office by the imposition of hands of all ministers present. They went out to preach two by two, and the junior was bound absolutely to obey the senior. Clerical celibacy was their rule. The ministers received food and clothing from the contributions of the people, but also worked with their hands. The affairs of the church were managed by a general synod held every year. The duties of the “barbas” were to visit all within their district once a year, hear their confessions, advise and admonish them. In all services the two ministers sat side by side, and one spoke after the other. On doctrine, they acknowledged the sacraments as having only a symbolical meaning, prayed to the Virgin and saints, and admitted auricular confession, but they denied purgatory and the sacrifice of the mass, and did not observe fasts or festivals. People did good works through natural virtue stimulated by God´s grace. The reply emphasized the wrongfulness of their outward submission to the ordinances of the Catholic church:
God is a jealous God, and does not permit His elect to put themselves under the yoke of Antichrist.
This correspondence was with the Swiss and German reformers and a synod was held, in 1532, at Chanforans in the valley of the Angrogne, out of which they united and rejected totally, the Roman communion, accepting the Calvinist doctrine of election.
Persecution of the Waldenses
To counter the Waldenses, Innocent III formed the “Poor Catholics” to do what Waldenses were doing under the auspices of the Church. Thus the peasants could be fooled into thinking Catholics were as poor as the Waldenses, and did similar things while the priests continued to live like the feudal princes they were, in luxury.
In 1211, more than eighty Waldenses were burned for heresy. The Church Council of 1215 was directed against them, and then the Inquisition. This was the beginning of centuries of persecution. So many were imprisoned by the end of the thirteenth century that the Church directed Catholics to collect charity to feed them. The magnitude of their persecution is shown by the fact that in one year, in Italy alone, nine thousand Waldensians were killed and another twelve thousand were put into prison, where most of them died. In 1393, at Grenoble, 150 were burnt on a single occasion.
In spite of this, somehow the itinerant Waldensian preachers were able to maintain links throughout Europe. The Waldensians went underground and withdrew to other countries, especially Italy, Switzerland, and Austria, particularly the Alpine valleys of the Vaudois, named after them. These valleys were too inaccessible for the inquisitors, and Waldenses from north and south took refuge there. It became the center of their religion.
In 1487, pope Innocent VIII issued a bull for their extermination. A crusade against them looked like succeeding until a fog descended, confusing the Catholics and allowing them to be defeated. It was a setback and Charles II, the Duke of Piedmont was persuaded to leave them be. Waldenses in Germany joined the Hussites and the Bohemian Brethren, only to suffer more persecution.
The Waldenses were living in the valleys of Piedmont in the seventeenth century. The Church exercised its authority on the Duke Charles Emmanuel II of Savoy who ordered that the Vaudois region should be reduced. The attorney of the Duke in 1655 ordered all of them to become Roman Catholics or lose their property and lives. The army used to enforce the order was made up of Frenchmen from Louis XIV’s army and Irishmen who had fled from Cromwell. The people were treated with horrible barbarity.
Before long, mobs were rampaging over the estates of the Waldenses. After the men had been killed or chased into the mountains, the women were beheaded and their children had their brains dashed out. In the towns of Villaro and Bolbio, those over 15 years old who refused mass were crucified upside down. Younger children were throttled.
Nothing now could be seen but the face of horror and despair. Blood stained the floors of houses, dead bodies strewed the streets, groans and cries were heard from all parts.
The Duke’s soldiers were even worse. They made a point of mutilating any Waldensian that they caught before they killed them. Often they were simply left to die of their wounds, or of starvation, because they were too injured to move to seek nourishment. Mary Reymondet had her flesh stripped from her bones slice by slice in a manner reminiscent of Hypatia, a thousand years before. She died in a frightful state. Giovanni Pelanchion was tied with one leg to a mule and was dragged through the town while pelted with stones. Ann Charboniere was impaled with a stake and left to die.
Others were suspended from trees or the beams of their own homes by iron hooks stuck through their abdomens. Bartholemew Frasche had holes bored through his heels, through which a rope was passed and he was dragged to a dungeon and left to die. Daniel Rambart had a joint of a finger or toe amputated each day. Some people had packets of gunpowder forced into their mouths and lit. Drowning, suffocation and burning at the stake were all common. Sara Rastignole des Vignes refused to recite Jesus Maria so had a sickle stuck into her vagina. Martha Constantine was raped and killed by having her breasts cut off.
A servant of Jacopo Michalino was tortured by being stabbed many times in the souls of his feet and in his ears. Then his penis was cut off and the bleeding wound cauterized with a candle, so that he did not bleed to death and would suffer longer. Then his torturers tore off his nails with hot pincers. Still he would not recant his religion, so they tied him to a mule and dragged him through the streets of Bolbio. Finally they killed him by tying a staff to his head with cords and twisting it off his body.
Children were killed in front of their parents by being decapitated or cut to pieces. Mary Pelanchion was hung naked from a bridge and used as target practice. Cypriana Bastia said he would rather be dead than a Catholic, so he was half-starved with some dogs and then fed to them. Jacopo de Ronc had his nails pulled out by red hot pincers, then was led through the streets being alterbnately bludgeoned and having a strip of flesh cut from him.
These murders continued in the Piedmont valleys until they were almost depopulated. Those who were not tortured to death but fled to the mountains died there of starvation or disease. Despite the outrage of Protestant Europe, the army of occupation remained and Vaudois worship was curtailed. Their chief pastor, Leger, had to flee to Leyden where he wrote his History of the Vaudois Church (1684). The Waldensians survived until the sixteenth century, when they joined the Protestant Reformation.
Let a Catholic sum up. Lord Acton, one of the few respected Catholic historians and famous for his epithet, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, wrote a letter to another of the few, Lady Blennerhasset:
The accomplices of the Old Man of the Mountains [the classic assassins of history] picked off individual victims, but the papacy contrived murder and massacre on the largest and also on the most cruel and inhuman scale. They were not only wholesale assassins, but they also made the principle of assassination a law of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation.
This murderous oppression continued as late as 1860, according to J McCabe. In the previous 40 years, 300,000 people had been murdered in Spain, Italy and Portugal supposedly as armed rebels, but mainly ordinary people simply claiming what we now regard as human rights.
