CHAPTER - PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF THE TESTIMONY OF REINERIUS RESPECTING THE ANTIQUITY OF THE VALLENSES, WITH REMARKS ON THEIR DIALECT AND THEIR OWN CONCURRING TRADITIONS.

BUT it is time, that I should leave the much persecuted and calumniated Albigenses, to introduce a pure and never-reformed Church still older than that of the Paulicians.

The Church, to which I allude, is that of the Vallenses of Piedmont: and, in order to my purpose of connecting the Churches of the Reformation with the Church of the Primitive Ages, the two points of its Remote Antiquity and of its Evangelical-Purity must be successively considered.

Agreeably, then, to the present arrangement, the point of its Remote Antiquity will first come under discussion.

This topic requires the production of a continued line of witnesses through the whole period of what are usually called the Middle Ages. But, before I enter directly upon such a production, the decisive general testimony of Reinerius Sacco a well-informed Inquisitor who flourished during the earlier part of the thirteenth century, associated with the dialect and traditions of the Vallenses themselves, may, under the aspect of preliminary matter, be usefully and properly brought forward.

I. The following is the testimony of Reinerius. Concerning the sects of ancient heretics, observe, that there have been more than seventy: all of which, except the sects of the Manicheans and the Arians and the Runcarians and the Leonists which have infected Germany, have, through the favor of God, been destroyed. Among all these sects, which either still exist or which have formerly existed, there is not one more pernicious to the Church than that of the Leonists: and this, for three reasons. The first reason is; because It has been of longer continuance: for some say, that it bas lasted from the time of Sylvester; others, from the time of the Apostles.

The second reason is; because, It is more general: for there is scarcely any land, in which this sect exists not. The third reason is; because, While all other sects, through the immanity of their blasphemies against God, strike horror into the hearers, this of the Leonists has a great semblance of piety; inasmuch as they live justly before men, and believe, together with all the Articles contained in the Creed, every point well respecting the Deity: only they blaspheme the Roman Church and Clergy; to which the multitude of the Laity are ready enough to give credence. 1. I have adduced this passage for the purpose of exhibiting Reinerius, as attesting the remote antiquity of the Vallenses of Piedmont. Yet, by name, he mentions not, in it, the Vallenses: he speaks only of a body of contemporary religionists, whom he denominates Leonists. These, in regard to the origin of the sect, he carries back to a very distant period: and, at the same time, he broadly distinguishes them from the Albigenses or Cathari, whom he here simply alludes to under the names of Manicheans and Runcarians, but whom he afterward fully describes under the systematic charge of being deeply tainted with the Manichean Heresy.

Hence, to make his attestation at all available to my purpose, I have to show: that the Leonists, whom he thus characterizes, were the Vallenses or Valdenses or Vaudois of Piedmont.

My proof, then, runs in manner following.

Reinerius, a writer of the thirteenth century, tells us: that, In the judgment of some inquirers, the Leonists had existed from the time of Pope Sylvester.

Pilichdorf, another writer of the thirteenth century, tells us’ that The persons, who claimed to have thus existed from the time of Pope Sylvester, were the Valdenses. And Claude Scyssel, who was Archbishop of Turin at the latter end of the fifteenth and at the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, who lived in the immediate neighborhood of the Valdenses of Piedmont, and who in fact comprehended them within the geographical limits of his province, tells us. that The Valdenses of Piedmont derived themselves 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. Thus we have the Valdenses of Piedmont standing in direct connection, not only with the tradition respecting Sylvester, but likewise with an individual from whose name the title of Leonists has plainly and almost avowedly been deduced.

Such a combination of circumstances evidently brings out the result: that The Valdenses and the Leonists were the same.

Whence, of course, it follows: that, In ascribing a most remote antiquity to the Leonists, Reinerius, in fact, ascribes it to the Valdenses. 2. Since, then, the Valdenses were occasionally denominated Leonists from an individual named Leo, who must have lived in a far distant age because some traditions made him even a contemporary of Sylvester and Constantine: an inquiry, as to Who this Leo was, will at least afford a subject for a somewhat curious investigation.

On that subject, I purpose now to enter: and it will probably be found to bear not a little closely upon a matter of testimony which will be the topic of a future discussion.

That any Leo was the founder of the Vallensic Church, as Claude not quite accurately (I suspect) reports the tradition, cannot be allowed: for the tradition, thus reported, agrees not with the standing belief of the Vaudois, that their Communion descends in a direct unbroken line from the Apostles. But, that, at some remote period, they had among them an eminent teacher, who was distinguished by the appellation of Leo, and from whom they themselves were sometimes denominated Leonists, is a matter so highly probable, that I can see no reason why we should hastily reject such a supposition. At all events, we seem by chronology itself prohibited from deriving, as some have done, the name of Leonists from the town of Lyons on the Rhone: that is to say, if, for such derivation, we take the specific ground that Peter of Lyons, in the twelfth century, communicated, from the town, the name of Leonists to his own peculiar disciples. For, according to the plain and natural import of the language used by Reinerius, the very ancient Vallenses were already called Leonists long before the time of Peter of Lyons: inasmuch as he intimates, that Peter’s disciples, the Poor Men of Lyons, were also, as well as the ancient sect of which they were a branch and respecting which he had treated in the immediately preceding section of his Work, denominated Leonists. Yet, though I think it clear that the Valdenses could not have been called Leonists from the Lyons of the opulent merchant Peter, that is to say, from the Lyons which is seated upon the Rhone: I am not without a strong suspicion, that, ultimately, and through an entirely different channel, the title may have been borrowed from another Lyons; from Lyons, to wit, in Aquitaine, upon the borders of the Pyrenees; from the Lugdunum Convenarum, I mean, which now bears the name of St. Bertrand, and which is situated in what (from Convenae) is styled the Pays de Cominges. My conjecture is: that the traditional Leo of the Valdenses, however his history may have been circumstantially distorted and chronologically misplaced, is no other than the famous Vigilantius; of whom, in immediate connection with the primitive Christians of the Valleys at the beginning of the fifth century, we shall presently hear again.

This holy man, as we fortunately learn from the very scurrility of Jerome, was actually born in the precise town of Lyons or Convenae in Aquitaine. Whence, from the place of his nativity, he would obviously be called, among his hosts of the valleys, Vigilantius Leo or Vigilantius the Leonist.

His proper local appellation he communicated, if I mistake not, to his congenial friends, the Vallenses of Piedmont; and his memory, as we see, was affectionately cherished by them, down even to the time of Claude Scyssel.

Thus ultimately, I apprehend, the name of Leonist was derived from Lyons: not, indeed, from the more celebrated Lyons on the Rhone; but from the Lyons of Aquitaine, or the Lugdunum Convenarum of the Pyrenees. 3. The importance of the testimony of Reinerius, to the apostolically remote antiquity of the Piedmontese Vallenses, is so great, that we shall not wonder at the circumstance of its being made the subject of a quibble on the part of the Jesuit Gretser.

He remarks’ that Reinerius, not on the authority of his own careful inquiries or pursuant to his own well-founded conviction, but purely on the hearsay statements of other persons, ascribes to the Leonists an antiquity, which reaches to the time of Sylvester or even to the time of the Apostles themselves. So far as it extends, this observation, no doubt is true. But Gretser took good care to stop short where he did, cautiously eschewing all notice of what Reinerius says in b is own person; and thence plainly omitting the whole of what he says, as the result of his own inquiries and as the amount of his own conviction.

The direct and positive testimony, then, of Reinerius, speaking in his own person and not merely reciting the opinions of others, runs to the following effect.

He assures us: that The Leonists were, as a sect, older, than either the Manicheans or the Arians or the Runcarians or any one of the more than seventy sects of heretics that had once existed. And he assigns this, their undoubted high antiquity, as the first and foremost of the three special reasons why they were so injurious to the Church of Rome.

Now the Manicheans, even if we say nothing of the allied sects of the Gnostics and the Docetae and the Valentinians and the Marcionites, were certainly as early as the third century.

Therefore the Leonists, inasmuch as Reinerius pronounces them to be still older than the Manicheans, must, according to the result of his inquiries and the sum of his conviction, inevitably be viewed, as running up to an antiquity not less than that of the third and second centuries: a circumstance, which at once places them in the times of the Primitive Church. II. Agreeably to this conclusion, the very necessity of their ancient dialect, corroborated as the evidence is by their own unvarying tradition, throws back their original retirement into the Valleys of Piedmont, exactly to the period marked out by the personal inquiries of Reinerius. 1. I should not have ventured to hazard such a remark on my own authority’ but I certainly may lay some considerable stress upon the decision of a scientific inquirer into the Monuments of the Roman Tongue, who had no object to serve beyond the general objects of perfectly independent literature.

The dialect of the Vaudois, as we are assured by Raynouard, is an intermediate idiom, between the decomposition of the tongue spoken by the Romans, and the establishment of a new grammatical system. It must, therefore, be philologically viewed, as a primitively derivative language-that is to say, it must be viewed, as a language, derived, without any intervention of an older derivative language, from the decomposed stock of its parent Latin.

On this principle, when speaking of the Noble Lesson which bears in its text the date of the year 1100 and which thence is more ancient than the greater part of the writings of the Troubadours, he 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 longspoken dialect bad already lost some portion of their primitive terminations. Circumstances of this nature plainly refer the formation of the Vaude from the Latin to a period of most remote antiquity: and thus, by a necessary consequence, refer also the settlement of the Vaudois themselves to the same remote period; forbidding the supposition, that they might have retired to their Alpine Valleys, after what Raynouard calls the establishment of a new grammatical system, and after the origination of a language derived only at second hand from the Latin.

Hence, the primevally Latin Vaudois 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, 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 labor of assiduous cultivation; and mountains, which no labor 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 and third and fourth centuries, occurred under the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Maximin and Decius and Valerian and Diocletian.

Therefore, both from the philological necessity of their language, and from the tenacity with which they have always maintained their primeval religion, we can scarcely doubt, that the Christians, who fled from persecution during those centuries, were the true ancestors of the Vaudois. 2. This opinion, accordingly, has ever prevailed among themselves, down, as we may say, even to the present time. (1.) To such a purpose, for instance, speaks the celebrated Henry Arnold: who, in the emergency of the period, half clerk and half soldier, superintended the glorious re-entrance of the Vaudois into their native country during the year 1689.

That their religion is as primitive as their name is venerable, is attested even by their adversaries. Reinerius the Inquisitor, in a report made by him to the Pope on the subject of their faith, expresses himself in these words: that They have existed from time immemorial. It would not be difficult to prove, that this poor band of the faithful were in the Valleys of Piedmont more than four centuries before the appearance of those extraordinary personages, Luther and Calvin and the subsequent lights of the Reformation.

Neither has their Church been ever reformed: whence arises its title of EVANGELIC. The Vaudois 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. (2.) To the same purpose, likewise, speaks their historian Boyer.

O marvelous! God, through his wise providence, has preserved the purity of the Gospel in the Valleys of Piedmont, from the time of the Apostles down to our own time. (3.) To the same purpose, again, they themselves speak collectively in the Confession, which they presented to Francis I of France in the year 1544.

This Confession is that, which we have received from our ancestors, even from hand to hand, according as their predecessors, in all times and in every age, have taught and delivered. (4.) Still, moreover, to the same purpose, they speak in the year 1559, when they delivered their supplication to Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy.

Let your highness consider, that this religion, in which we live, is not merely our religion of the present day or a religion discovered for the first time only a few years ago, as our enemies falsely pretend: but it is the religion of our fathers and of our grandfathers, yea of our forefathers and of our predecessors still more remote. It is the religion of the Saints and of the Martyrs, of the Confessors and of the Apostles. (5.) So again, when addressing themselves to the Reformers of the sixteenth century, they still harmoniously put forth the same traditional assertion of an apostolical antiquity: while, in point of knowledge and attainments, poor and secluded as they had long been, they modestly confess their own inferiority to the well-instructed teachers whose notice and assistance they solicit.

Our ancestors 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 offer from you; that, through our own fault, and the slowness of our genius, we do not understand the sacred writers with such strict correctness as yourselves. (6.) Finally, it is remarked by Leger: that, when, to the Princes of the House of Savoy, they perpetually asserted the uniformity of their faith, from father to son, through time immemorial, even from the very age of the Apostles; those sovereigns always maintained a profound silence respecting such an allegation: a circumstance, which, as he reasonably enough observes, sufficiently indicates their internal consciousness of its accuracy. 13 CHAPTER - THE ANTIQUITY OF THE VALLENSES SHEWN FROM THE TESTIMONY OF JEROME THUS, during the persecutions of the second and third and fourth centuries, placed in the valleys of the Cottian Alps as in a citadel fashioned by the hand of nature herself, we find the Vallenses, in the selfsame region, still holding the self-same primitive doctrine and practice at the beginning of the fifth century: while, by so doing, they characteristically bore witness against those growing superstitions, from which, by their secluded situation, they had been providentially exempted.

The account of this matter, which I place at the head of the chain of testimony that runs through the whole period of the Middle Ages, is both deeply interesting and specially important, inasmuch as it furnishes the precise link which has long been wanted, in order, on the strength of evidence, synchronical with the particulars detailed, to connect the Vaudois with the Primitive Church: and it will not, I hope, argue an unreasonable degree of assumption, if I say, that, so far as my own knowledge and reading are concerned, I have been privileged to be the first discoverer of the evidence in question. I. Vigilantius, a native (as we have seen) of Lugdunum Convenarum or of the Pyrenean Lyons in Aquitaine, and a Presbyter of the Church of Barcelona in Spain, had charged Jerome with too great a leaning to the objectionable opinions of Origen. This circumstance called forth the rage of the irascible Father: and, in the year 397, he addressed to him a very violent epistle on the subject. Subsequently to the propounding of that epistle. Vigilantius returned into his native country of Aquitaine. and there he published a most uncompromising and decisive Treatise against the miserable growing superstitions of the age; a Treatise, which is ascribed to the year 406.

In this Treatise, he attacked the notion, that Celibacy is the duty of the Clergy: censured, as idolatrous, the excessive veneration of the Martyrs and the idle unscriptural figment that they are potent intercessors at the throne of grace: ridiculed the blind reverence, which was paid to their senseless and useless relics: exposed the gross folly of burning tapers, like the Pagans, before their shrines in broad day-light: detected the spurious miracles, which were said to be wrought by their inanimate remains: vilified the boasted sanctity of vainly gratuitous monachism: and pointed out the useless absurdity of pilgrimages, either to Jerusalem or to any other reputed sanctuary. Such was the drift of his Treatise’ and, ill the course of it, he naturally adverted to Jerome’s former indecent attack upon him.

Matters being in this state, Jerome wrote a very intemperate and abusive epistle, addressed to Riparius: and, shortly afterward, receiving the Treatise itself, he composed an Answer to it; in which, it is hard to say, whether illogical absurdity or brutal scurrility is the most predominant. From those documents, we fully learn the drift and object of the now lost Treatise of Vigilantius the Leonist: and the author, as will readily be concluded, has had the honor of being, by the Papal Church, duly enrolled in the list of heretics.

II. To the ecclesiastical student, the sentiments of Vigilantius are familiar: and their complete identity with those of the Vallenses, in all ages, cannot have escaped his notice. But, when this remarkable individual quitted Barcelona, from what part of the world did he publish the very seasonable Treatise, which called forth such vulgar and offensive vituperation from the superstitious and exasperated Jerome?

His antagonist tells us’ that He wrote from a region, ‘situated between the waves of the Adriatic and the Alps of King Cottius; from a region, that is to say, which formed a part of what was once styled Cisalpine Gaul. Now this district, on the eastern side of the Cottian Alps, is the precise country of the Vallenses. Hither their ancestors retired, during the persecutions of the second and third and fourth centuries’ here, providentially secluded from the world, they retained the precise doctrines and practices of the Primitive Church endeared to them by suffering and exile; while the wealthy inhabitants of cities and fertile plains, corrupted by a now opulent and gorgeous and powerful Clergy, were daily sinking deeper and deeper into that apostasy which has been so graphically foretold by the great Apostle: and, here, as we learn through the medium of an accidental statement of Jerome, Vigilantius took up his abode, at the beginning of the fifth century, among a people, who, Laics and Bishops alike, agreed with him in his religious sentiments, and joyfully received him as a brother. In his Epistle to Riparius, Jerome thinks it expedient to marvel: that the holy Bishop, within whose Alpine Diocese Vigilantius was then residing as a Presbyter, did not crush so useless a vessel with a well-aimed blow from the iron rod of Apostolicity. 7 But, alas, in his subsequent Tractate against the audacious heretic, the unwelcome truth comes out: and the reason of such forbearance stands forth, upon the historical canvass, most prominent and most abundantly manifest. The two superstitious bigots, indeed, Riparius and Desiderius, who seem to have dwelt upon the frontiers of the spiritual Goshen of the Valleys, complained heavily to Jerome, that their neighboring Parishes or Dioceses were polluted, forsooth, by such an unsavory vicinage: and it was charitably added, that, with Satan’s own banner in his hand, Vigilantius, albeit, in the punning phraseology of the facetious Saint, a very Dormitantius, was making, from his aerial station, successful inroads upon the slumbering Churches of the Gauls. 8 But with respect to the Bishops, evidently the Bishops of the alpine district where the zealously active Leonist sojourned; they, however nefandous it might appear to Jerome and his correspondents, however it might elicit a piteous groan from the heaving bosom of the sorely distressed Father, however it might provoke a lamentable Proh nefas duly to be re-echoed by Desiderius and Riparius: they, the Bishops of the country between the Adriatic Sea and the Cottian Alps, perfectly agreed with the misnamed heretic; and, on one special point of difference between the controvertists, actually preferred the ordination of husbands to the ordination of bachelors; nay, if we rigidly interpret the inflated language of Jerome, absolutely made antecedent matrimony a sine quo non to the ordination even of a Deacon. But this is not all Rome herself, towering in her sacerdotal potency, was not to escape unscathed. In the Tractate of Jerome, we have a case, perhaps the earliest case upon record, of a Leonistic Presbyter, himself the long remembered and long venerated Leo of Vallensic tradition, supported by the Bishops of a whole people, and, in that support, standing directly opposed to the Roman Pontiff, and to all those other Bishops who were blindly following him in his now-rapidly developing predicted apostasy.

Jerome, nurtured in the adulterate Christianity of opulent cities and fanatic monks and lordly prelates, is amazed, yea horrified, at the alpine audacity of Vigilantius. That stubborn son of the Pyrenean Lyons, who seems to have troubled his head very little about any doctrinal authority save that of Scripture, was unable thence to discover the vital importance of consecrating the Eucharist over the bones of Peter and of Paul, that rich and boasted treasure of Rome Ecclesiastical: whence, a fortiori, he could not be expected to entertain any very particular reverence for the less holy fragments of less important dead men and women. What, cries Jerome, scandalized to the last pitch of endurance, does the Roman Bishop, ‘then, do ill, who offers sacrifices to the Lord over the bones of dead men; the bones, I trow, of Peter and of Paul: bones, in our estimation, venerable; bones, in thy estimation, a mere worthless portion of dust? Does the Bishop of Rome do ill, who deems their tombs the altars of Christ? Are the Bishops, not merely of a single city, but of the whole world, all mistaken: because, despising the huckster Vigilantius, they reverently enter into the stately cathedrals of the dead. Truly, a rapid declaimer ought to be blessed with a good memory. Only two pages before, and in the course of the very same Tractate, Jerome had been groaning over Bishops, not indeed (as he remarks) to be called Bishops, who were the sworn allies and associates of the desperately wicked Vigilantius: and now he discovers, that all the Bishops of all the world, with the Pope of Rome at their head, are fiat against the heretic.

But, though Jerome may forget the important fact which he has recorded, others will remember it. Those, who adhere to the catholic doctrines of the Primitive Church as they stand broadly opposed to unscriptural popish additaments, will recollect, that Vigilantius was not an insulated and unsupported witness to the sincerity of the Gospel. A whole people, with their Bishops and Clergy at their head, were his associates: and the recorded abode of this whole people was a mountainous district between the Adriatic Sea and the Cottian Alps.

CHAPTER - THE ANTIQVITY OF THE VALLENSES SHEWN FROM THE TESTIMONY RECORDED BY PILICHDORF WITH fearful rapidity, the deluge of Teutonic Invasion was now rising to overwhelm the whole Western Roman Empire: and a period of well nigh two centuries elapsed, ere its tumultuous streams of many cognate peoples began to subside into a state of comparative tranquillity.

But the Alpine Retreat of the Primitive Christians, more highly privileged than the submerged Ararat of old, reared its head above the flood, and preserved its sacred deposit amidst the mighty world of waters which rolled harmlessly at its feet.

Whenever the Gothic Nations precipitated themselves upon Italy, their line of march was invariably across either the Rhaetian Alps or the Julian Alps: nor have I been able to find, that the Cottian Alps ever came within the sphere of their operations. Under Providence, the peculiar locality of this mountain range procured its exemption: and thus, in the midst of the storm, the Vallenses were securely housed within its difficult and sequestered recesses.

At length, all the ten fated kingdoms were erected by the ten principal Gothic Tribes’ and, as the historian speaks, the victorious nations of Germany established a new system of manners and government in the western countries of Europe. 1 Then, the revolution being completed, we forthwith hear of the divinely preserved Church in the wilderness.

The tenth and last Gothic Kingdom, that of the Lombards, was founded, upon the soil of Italy, in the year 567 and 568. and, about three centuries after Constantine or at the commencement of the seventh age, the Vallenses again demand our attention.

At this time, another celebrated and long remembered pastor, a worthy successor of the older Leonistic pastor Vigilantius, appeared among them.

His name was Peter’ and, in the recorded appellation of the country where he sprang up, we first, so far as I know, meet with the geographically descriptive title of Valdenses or Vallenses or Men of the Valleys. For the preservation of this piece of Valdensic history, handed down among the Alpine mountaineers themselves, and from them communicated to the Valdenses of France, we are indebted to Peter Pilichdorf: who, in the thirteenth century, exhibited himself, as their bitter, though curiously inquisitive, enemy. They say, reports that writer: that, in the time of Constantine, a companion of Pope Sylvester, disliking the excessive enrichment of the Church by the donations of the Emperor, and on that account separating himself from Sylvester, maintained the way of poverty: asserting, that the true Church was continued in the line of his own adherents, and that Sylvester with his adherents had fallen away from the true Church. Furthermore, they say: that, at the end of three hundred years from the time of Constantine, a certain person, named Peter, sprang up from a region called Valdis; who similarly taught the way of poverty. From these two, originated the sect of the Valdenses. From the identity of name, it may be thought, that this Peter of Valdis, thus ascribed to the beginning of the seventh century, is a mere fabulous duplicate of the later and more celebrated Peter Valdo of Lyons; who, in consequence of some extraordinary chronological blunder, has, in this tradition, been thrown back more than five hundred years.

Such, when first I read the passage which mentions Peter of Valdis as living three centuries after Constantine, was the idea which naturally presented itself to my own mind. But I doubt, whether such an idea be correct. If there be any error in the statement, that error must inevitably be laid to the account, either of Pilichdorf individually, or of the Valdenses his informants collectively.

I. Now, with respect to Pilichdorf individually, he well knew (as, indeed, he distinctly tells us), that Peter Valdo of Lyons began his ministry in the days of Pope Innocent II. or about the year 1160 and, of this individual, he gives, from his own knowledge, a very full account, which exactly corresponds with the parallel account given by Reinerius. 4 Hence, I think it impossible, that Pilichdorf, thus fully informed, could ever have himself mis taken so widely, as to place Peter Valdo of Lyons in the seventh century under the appellation of Peter of Valdis.

No confusion, therefore, can reasonably be ascribed to Pilichdorf himself individually.

II. And, as for the Valdenses collectively, it is plainly no less impossible, that, in the thirteenth century or in the age when Pilichdorf received his information from them, they should ever have fallen into so gross a chronological mistake.

Persons, who were actually living in the thirteenth century, and who thence must have familiarly known the character and history of the pious merchant of Lyons, could never have ignorantly ascribed Peter Valdo, who notoriously flourished during the latter half of the twelfth century, to so remote a period as the very beginning of the seventh century: or, if they had made such an extraordinary mistake, it is plain, that, to the malignant Pilichdorf, it would have afforded a topic of immeasurable exultation and triumph.

But no such misapprehension, and consequently no such triumph, appears. In his Work against the Valdenses, Pilichdorf gives us his account of Peter the rich merchant of Lyons: and, in the extant fragment of his other Work written against the Poor Men of Lyons, he notices, without any imputation of a confused blunder, the standing tradition of the Valdenses, that another Peter of much higher antiquity had previously risen up in the region named Valdis; a region, which, by its very name evidently identifies itself with the country of the Valdenses in Piedmont.

Therefore, no confusion can reasonably be ascribed to the Valdenses collectively: and, therefore, we may safely conclude, that the Valdensic Peter of this tradition was not the Valdensic Peter of Lyons, but, as the tradition purports, an individual who flourished in the seventh century.

CHAPTER - THE ANTIQUITY OF THE VALLENSES SHEWN FROM THE HISTORY OF CLAUDE OF TURIN DESCENDING with the stream of time, while corruption went on rapidly increasing through the provinces and in the rich towns of the now dislocated though partly restored Western Empire, we shall again, early in the ninth century, meet with the Piedmontese Vallenses in direct connection with their eminent Pastor, Claude, Bishop or Metropolitan of Turin.

I. Bossuet seems not quite to have made up his mind, as to whether Claude was an Arian or a Nestorian. One of the two, he confidently pronounces him to have been: and, so far as I can understand the ingenious Prelate, he rather in-dines to the charge of Arianism. His authority is Jonas, Bishop of Orleans: who, prudently waiting for the death of Claude, when he could offer no contradiction, brought the charge against him in the Preface to his work concerning the worship of images, addressed to Charles the Bald. The very vagueness of the allegation, which hovers between the asserted Nestorianism of his early friend Felix of Urgel and a pretended Arianism of which even his bitter enemy Dungal could discover no traces during his life, may well, even on the first blush, induce a full presumption that Claude was a favorer of neither heresy. Accordingly, in the Works of that remarkable man which have hitherto been brought to light, nothing whatever appears to inculpate him: while we find abundance, both to show his real sentiments, and also to explain why the Romish Priesthood have in his case diligently resorted to their old and familiar craft of abusive calumny.

A commentary on the epistle to the Galatians is the only one of his various writings, which has been published in full. But the Monks of St.

Germain had in manuscript his Commentaries upon all the Epistles, which were found in the Abbey of Fleury near Orleans; as also those on Leviticus, which formerly belonged to the Library of St. Remi at Rheims.

There exist likewise, both in England and elsewhere, several manuscript copies of his Commentary on St. Matthew. Papirius Masson, moreover, has published extracts from his Epistle to the Abbot Theutmir, which are prefixed to the violent attack of Dungal upon that Epistle, and which occur likewise in the Work of Jonas of Orleans written for the defense of images: and Mabillon has printed the dedication of his Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, addressed to the Emperor Louis the Pious.

Now, under such circumstances, could any real proof of heresy have been adduced from his writings, we should long since have heard of it: for, if Bossuet, from Claude’s own compositions to which he had easy access, could have established the truth of his random accusation, he was not a man to have contented himself with a meagre reference to the posthumous gossip of Jonas of Orleans.

II. I have mentioned a Work by Claude, his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, as having been published in full. That Work is now before me’ and a brief account of its character and contents will fitly introduce those subsequent remarks, which I shall have occasion to offer.

The Work itself is a composition of beautiful christian simplicity. From the superstitions of even the incomplete Popery of the ninth century, it is altogether free. And, throughout, with clearness and fidelity, it propounds the genuine doctrine of the Gospel.

So far as regards the claim of Rome, to the universal supremacy of Peter, and thence to the universal supremacy of his pretended successors the Latin Pontiffs, Claude maintains the equal authority of Peter and of Paul in their respective departments’ Peter being at the head of the mission to the Jews; and Paul, similarly and independently, being at the head of the mission to the Gentiles. The doctrine of man’s justification in all ages, through faith alone in the merits of Christ, and not by the works of the law whether ceremonial or moral, be strenuously asserts with the utmost fullness and unreserve and precision. He virtually, without hesitation, sets aside the imaginary infallibility of the Church: for on the grand article of justification, he pronounces; that, as the Galatians had swerved from the true faith, so the same lamentable departure might also be then observed in the existing Churches at large. With an evident reference to the state of religion in his own time, he declares; that, what constitutes heresy, is a departure from that interpretation of Scripture which the sense of the Holy Spirit demands: and he remarks, at the same time; that real heretics of this description may be found within, as well as without, the pale of the visible Church. Finally, in respect to the posthumous charge of Arianism brought against him, he uses language, which touches the very point that divided that heresy from the true catholic doctrine: the point, to wit, that Christ, by nature, not merely by adoption, is the Son of the Father; or, in other words, the specially discriminating point, that the Father and the Son are consubstantial. III. When the never-changing genius of Popery is considered, it will be obvious, that the bold advocacy of primitive truth in such a declining age could not, in an ecclesiastic of Claude’s high rank and influential character, pass without producing a considerable degree of annoyance to the pontifical faction: nor was he himself to be exempted from the calumnious imputation of being a presumptuous innovator, when, in reality, the proper innovators were the persons who assailed him simply because he was a steady adherent to the soundness of Apostolical antiquity.

You declare yourself to have been troubled, says he to the Abbot Theutmir, because a rumor respecting me has passed out of Italy through all the Gauls even to the very borders of Spain; as if I had been preaching up some new sect, contrary to the rule of the Catholic Faith: a matter, which is utterly and absolutely false. It is no marvel, however, that Satan’s members should say these things of me, since he proclaimed our very Head himself to be a seducer and a demoniac. I, who hold the unity, and who preach the truth, am teaching no new sect. On the contrary, sects and schisms and superstitions and heretics, I have always, so far as in me lies, crushed and opposed: and, through God’s help, will never cease to crush and oppose. But, certes, this trouble has come upon me, only because, when, sorely against my will, I undertook, at the command of Louis the Pious, the Burden of a Bishopric, and when, contrary to the order of truth, I found all the churches at Turin stuffed full of vile and accursed images, I alone began to destroy what all were sottishly worshipping. Therefore it was, that all opened their mouths to revile me: and, forsooth, had not the Lord helped me, they would have swallowed me up quick. IV. This universalizing language, however, must be viewed, as respecting one division only of the pious Bishop’s people. The citizens of Turin and the inhabitants of the low country were vehemently against him; indignant like Micah of old, that he should have taken away their gods which they had made: but he had a flock among the Alpine mountains and in the Alpine Valleys, who had not forgotten the days of Vigilantius, and who both symbolized and sympathized with their admirable Prelate; themselves, in truth, being partakers both of his reproach and of his affliction.

These things says he, in an extract from his Commentary on Leviticus published by Mabillon: These things are the highest and strongest mysteries of our faith: they are the characters most deeply impressed upon our hearts. In standing up for the confirmation and defense of such truths, I am become a reproach to my neighbors insomuch that those, who see us, do not only scoff at us, but likewise, one to another, even point at us. God, however, the father of mercies and the author of all consolation, has comforted us in all our afflictions: that, in like manner, we might be able to comfort those, who are weighed down with sorrow and affliction. We rely upon the protection of him, who has armed and fortified us with the armor of righteousness and our faith; that tried shield for our eternal salvation. Here we perceive a direct reference to the twofold state of the diocese over which he painfully presided.

Some of his neighbors, it seems, were so irritated at the doctrines which he preached, that they not only scoffed, but even literally pointed the finger of scorn at him.

Yet he had to comfort others, who, in like manner with himself, were pressed down with sorrow and affliction.

The distinction is marked with singular precision: and its import, I think, can scarcely be misunderstood.

In the scoffers, we may note the Riparii and the Desiderii of the day’ those genuine successors of Jerome’s correspondents, who deemed their lowland parishes or suffragan dioceses polluted by a too great vicinity to the mountains and valleys of the Cottian Alps.

In the partakers of holy Claude’s affliction; the objects, like himself, of ribald scorn and the pointed finger of self-satisfied apostatic disdain; men, who needed the evangelical consolations which the troubles of their invaluable Bishop had so well qualified him experimentally to communicate: in these strongly-characterized members of his extensive Metropolitanship, we may note the Leonistic Vigilantii of the times; those genuine successors of the primitive Bishops and People, who were honored by Jerome’s furious vituperation; kindred souls with the apostolic Claude; theologians, whose faith and practice stand out strongly reflected by the recorded sentiments of their superintending friend and pastor and adviser and comforter.

I am unwilling to call this obvious application of Claude’s language by the name of a mere conjecture. From the Bishop’s own statement to the Abbot Theutmir, we know, that Turin and its daughter cities were, as the Apostle speaks, wholly given to idolatry. And yet, from the evidence already adduced, we likewise know, that one large portion of his diocese, the valleys and mountains of the Cottian Alps, no less vehemently detested all modifications of the odious superstition in question; firmly, with their Bishop, holding to the doctrines and practices of the Gospel and the Primitive Church.

When these two matters are combined, I really see not what other satisfactory illustration the language of Claude is capable of admitting.

V. Accordingly, the illustration is fully borne out by his hostile contemporary Dungal, from whom we distinctly learn the precise fact which we wish to learn: the fact, namely, that the diocese of Claude was divided into two parts; the one part, comprehending those who adhered to the superstition of the day and who warmly opposed him; the other part, comprehending those who symbolized with him in doctrine and who are palpably the Vallenses of the Cottian Alps.

This book, I Dungal vowed to dedicate and compose, in honor of God and the Emperor, against the mad and blasphemous dirges of Claude Bishop of Turin: not that there lacked abundant reason for reclamation and complaint long before I came into this country, while I sighed to behold the Lord’s harvest overrun with malignant weeds; but, lest I should seem only to beat the air, I long remained silent.

The people in this region are separated from each other, and are divided into two parts, concerning the observations of the Church: that is to say, concerning the images and holy picture of the Lord’s passion. Hence, with murmurs and contentions, the Catholics say: that that picture is good and useful; and that, for instruction, it is almost as profitable, as Holy Scripture itself. But the heretic, on the contrary, and the part seduced by him, say that it is not so; for it is a seduction into error, and is indeed no other than idolatry.

A similar contention prevails respecting the cross. For the Catholics say · that it is good and holy; that it is a triumphal banner; and that it is a sign of eternal salvation. But the adverse part, with their master, reply that it is not so; inasmuch as it only exhibits the opprobrium of the Lord’s passion and the derisive ignominy of his death.

In like manner, concerning the commemoration of the Saints, there is a dispute, as to the approaching them for the sake of prayer, and as to the venerating of their relics. For some affirm: that it a good and religious custom to frequent the churches of the martyrs; where their sacred ashes and holy bodies, with the honor due to their merits, are deposited; and where, through their intervention, both corporal and spiritual sicknesses are, by the divine grace and operation, healed most copiously and most presently. But others resist, maintaining’ that the saints after their death, as being ignorant of what is passing upon earth, can aid no one by their intercession; and that, to their relics, not a whit more reverence is due, than to any ordinary bones of mere animals or to any portion of mere common earth. After this specification, he proceeds, in his rambling and declamatory fashion, to answer the Epistle of Claude addressed to the Abbot Theutmir: some portions of which, specially referred to by Dungal, Papirius Masson has published and prefixed to the Work of Dungal himself. VI. Here I need only to remark: that Claude and his faithful flock the Vallenses disclaimed all charge of innovation; while, with a force of argument to which Dungal’s miserable and verbose reply affords a very curious contrast, they exposed the unscriptural vanity of image-worship and cross-worship and relic-worship and idle pilgrimages to Rome and formal penances and papal supremacy inherent in the chair of the Apostle.

All these things, says Claude, are mighty ridiculous: truly, they are matters, rather to be lamented, than to be committed to the gravity of writing. But, against foolish men, we are constrained to propound foolish things. Return to the heart which you have left, ye wretched prevaricators: ye, who love vanity and are become vain; ye, who crucify afresh the Son of God and put hint to open shame; ye, who in this manner, even by whole troops, have made the souls of miserable men the companions of demons, alienating them from their Creator through the nefarious sacrilege of images, and thus casting them down into perpetual damnation. Return, ye blind, to the true light which lighteneth every one that cometh into the world the light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not; the light, which perceiving not, ye are therefore in darkness, and walk in darkness, and know not whither you go because darkness hath blinded your eyes. VII. I must not omit to remark: that, in an evidential point of view, Dungal’s perpetual reference to Vigilantius is not a little striking and important.

He charges Claude and his Vallenses with teaching and maintaining the same doctrines, as those taught and maintained by the eminent individual in question: and his whole strain of uncomely vituperation serves only to show; that, after a lapse of four centuries, the memory and influence of the admirable Leonist still, in the Valleys of the Cottian Alps, remained fixed and unimpaired. 13 Accordingly, while he forgets not to mention the birth of Vigilantius at the Lugdunum Convenarum of the Pyrenees, he describes him, certainly with much correctness, as having been the neighbor of Claude: though it may be doubted, whether, with equal correctness, he asserts Vigilantius to have been the author of Claude’s madness. 14 The madness in question, as holy Claude well knew, existed in Scripture and in the Primitive Church, long before any of the contending parties, either in the fifth century or in the ninth century, had made their appearance upon the face of this nether world. Hence we may perfectly understand the immeasurable wrath of Dungal, that Claude, to confound idolatry, should actually have dared to quote Scripture. Here, then, we have evidence, both for the continued existence and for the resolute unchangeableness of the Vallenses at the beginning of the ninth century. For, as it appears from a specific date in the Work of Dungal, Claude must have written his epistle to Theutmir shortly before the year 820: and Dungal must have answered him, either in, or shortly after, that same year. 16 The Vallenses, therefore, must have been in their native fastnesses, bearing their appointed testimony to scriptural truth and against paganizing idolatry, at the commencement of the ninth century.

VIII. Nor can it justly be said, as some have imagined, that they owed their origin to the faithful preaching of Claude of Turin. No doubt, he greatly encouraged and strengthened them: but, as we have had direct evidence to their long prior existence, so a diligent authoritative investigation, conducted by a bitter enemy, has been found to bring out the very same result.

Shortly before the year 1630, Marco Aurelio Rorenco, Prior of St. Roch at Turin, was employed to institute a strict inquiry into the opinions and connections and antiquity of the mountaineer Vallenses: and his researches led to the production of two Works; the one, published in the year 1632; and the other published in the year 1649.

Now in the first of these Works, entitled, A narrative of the introduction of Heresies into the Valleys, he states: that The Valdenses were so ancient, as to afford no absolute certainty in regard to the precise time of their origination; but, at all events, that, In the ninth and tenth centuries, they were even then not a new sect. And, in the second of them, entitled Historical Memorials of the Introduction of Heresies, he makes some very important additions to his former statement; for he there tells us: that, In the ninth century, so far from being a new sect, they were rather to be deemed a race of fomenters and encouragers of opinions which had preceded them; further remarking, that Claude of Turin was to be reckoned among these fomenters and encouragers, inasmuch as he was a person, who denied the reverence due to the holy cross, who rejected the veneration and invocation of saints, and who was a principal destroyer of images. 18 CHAPTER - THE ANTIQUITY OF THE VALLENSES SHEWN FROM THE LANGUAGE OF ATTO OF VERCELLI ABOUT a century after the time of Claude, we again find the Alpine Vallenses presented, with a sufficient measure of distinctness, to our observation.

Vercelli is a city of Piedmont, not very far distant from Turin to the eastward: and it constitutes the ecclesiastical metropolis of an immediately contiguous diocese or province. Of this district, in the year 945, Atto was Bishop or Archbishop. Hence, from the mere circumstance of locality, he must have been fully aware of what was passing, both in his own province, and in his own close vicinity.

I. Now two of his Epistles, by describing and censuring what he deemed the errors of certain neighboring religionists, who had penetrated into his diocese of Vercelli and who had there successfully labored to make proselytes, establish alike both the prolonged existence of the Vallenses and their steady adherence to the system of doctrine which had distinguished them in the time of Claude of Turin. 1. The former of these two Epistles is couched in terms following.

Atto, by the grace of God, a humble Bishop, health and joy to all the faithful who reside in our diocese.

Lately, on the eve of the Octave of the Lord, we preached, God permitting, to those who were present a certain discourse, which we judge it necessary to direct to yourselves also.

In your parts, alas, there are many persons, who despise the divine services of the Church. These apply themselves to auguries or to signs of the heavens or to vain precantations, fearing not that which the Lord says concerning the Jews. A generation, incredulous and perverse, seeketh a sign. Paul likewise, the blessed Apostle, exclaims: Beware, lest any one seduce you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ.

And elsewhere: Why turn ye again to weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? The Psalmist, moreover, says; Ye Sons of men bow long will you be heavy in heart, and love vanity, and seek after a lie?” And again: Blessed is the man, whose hope is in the name of the Lord, and who has not looked to vanities and insane falsehoods. Farewell in the Lord. 2. The latter of the two Epistles speaks the same language, and plainly refers to the same subject.

Atto, through the mercy of Christ, a humble Bishop, to all the people of our diocese of the holy mother Church of Vercelli.

Know ye, that, both through Christ himself and through the holy Apostles or Prophets and through the other holy Teachers, we have heard: that numerous false prophets will come, who, what is most grievous, will study to turn many aside from the way of truth, so as to lead them into destruction, inasmuch as they shall have given credit to their pretensions. Whence the heart is not so easily preserved in righteousness, but that ye may hasten to believe even some persons who utter only words of brute ignorance and simplicity: insomuch that (alas, most unhappy men!), being deceived by diabolical error, and forsaking your holy mother the Church or the Priests through whom ye ought to come to eternal salvation, you even distinguish those individuals by the name of Prophets.

Wherefore, when this letter shall have been seen or heard or known, if, by chance, any one of you (which God forbid!) shall hereafter perpetrate wickedness of such a description: let him learn, that be is altogether to be condemned, and that he has no license either to drink wine or to eat anything cooked save bread alone, until he shall come to his holy mother the Church of Vercelli and into our presence, in order that he may be adjudged to make satisfaction and to exhibit the true humility of penitence.

But, if any one, inflated by pride, shall attempt to act against this our behest, let him know: that he is to be driven from the threshold of the Church, an alien from the holy communion; and that he is to be abominated by all the faithful, until he shall have submitted to the correction of the Holy Church, as well himself, as all those who shall have associated with him after they have learned his character.

If, moreover, any one of the Priests (which God avert!) shall peradventure have been polluted with such an abomination · let him not dare usurpatively to administer any divine sacrament, until he shall have made satisfaction in our judgment worthy of God. II. Thus run two of the Epistles of Atto. and, in each of them, the Bishop is obviously speaking of one and the same body of individuals, whatever precise individuals may be intended.

The following are the several marked characteristics which he ascribes to them.

They lived in his own immediate neighbor-hood: they despised the divine services of the dominant Church: they uttered, what Atto deemed, words of brute ignorance and simplicity: they deceived, by diabolical error, their proselytes: they induced them to forsake their holy mother the Church: they taught them to desert the Priests, through whom they ought to come to eternal salvation: and, from the nature of their ministrations, they were distinguished, among the people, by the name of Prophets or Religious Instructors; insomuch that the Bishop supposed them to be those numerous predicted false prophets, who should come and study to turn aside many from the way of truth.

Such is Atto’s account of his troublesome neigh-bouts: and, when the several points of vicinage and numbers and interference for the purpose of proselytism are considered, it is difficult to specify what persons can have been intended by the description, save the contiguous Vallenses of the Cottian Alps. But, if their identity with the Vallenses be admitted: then we have a full attestation to the still continued existence of the Vallenses, locally and theologically unchanged, in the middle of the tenth century.

It will be said, that I have pretermited one, and that not the least extraordinary, of the characteristics which are ascribed by Atto to the individuals in question: he represents them as being sorcerers who dealt in the impious vanity of magical incantations.

To this it might be sufficient to reply: that falsehood is ever inconsistent with itself; and (agreeably to the axiom) that the very incongruity of the present charge demonstrates it to be nothing more than a malignant calumny fabricated by their inveterate and unscrupulous enemies the Romish Priesthood. Mere sorcerers, or mere pretenders to diabolical potency, would never, we may be quite sure, have troubled themselves with teaching their silly customers to despise the services of the ruling Church, or with injecting religious doubts into their minds as to the security of their immortal souls in the hands of the Romish Priesthood.

Such are not the arts or habits of reputed or stimulated wizards and witches and votaries of Satan. They clearly appertain to persons of widely different principles and character.

But I may safely advance beyond this sufficiently-obvious argument. The charge, preferred against the neighbors of Atto, was that of sorcery. Now this identical charge was actually preferred against his alpine neighbors the Vallenses. Hence, the very fact of the charge having been preferred against the neighbors of Atto, serves only to confirm and establish the position, that the Vallenses were those neighboring proselytizers who made such provoking theological inroads into the diocese of Vercelli.

Through all the middle ages, the Vallenses of Piedmont were confidently reported to be an unclean race of impious magicians.

This prevalent notion of their sorcery was often of considerable use to them in their battles with their enemies. It was devoutly believed, that, through special favor of the devil, they were proof against musketry: and it was even asserted with an oath, that their Barbes or Clergy, after an action, gathered up the balls in their shirts by handfuls, without their having received the slightest scratch. The approved mode of shooting Satan’s pupils with silver bullets was, I suppose, either then unknown, or on trial had been found to be too expensive. In a similar spirit of voracious credulity, a popish wiseacre, in the year 1488, gravely assured Duke Philip of Burgundy: that the children of the terrific Vaudois were invariably born, with hairy throats, with four rows of awfully black teeth in their heads, and (like the cyclopean brethren of old) with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads. Such sagacious individuals were indisputably of the same school as those writers, upon whose credit we have been more than once exhorted (for it were unfair to lay the whole burden of the kindly exhortation upon the single back of Bossuet) to believe all the Manichean Diaboliads ascribed to the old Paulicians and the later Albigenses. Yet, in regard to the concernments of the Vaudois with the Evil One, so firmly persuaded was each miserable dupe of the Romish Priesthood, that the very term Vaulderie came to denote Witchcraft. 5 Their faith rested upon the credible report of a shuddering Inquisitor: and who shall doubt an Inquisitor’s veracity, when he is dealing with an obstinate Heretic? But let us hear the report, that naught may be extenuated and naught set down in malice.

When they wish to go to the said Vaulderie, they anoint themselves with an ointment which the devil has given them. They then rub it with a very small rod of wood: and, with palms in their hands, they place the rod between their legs. Thus prepared and equipped, they fly away wherever they please: and the devil carries them to the place, where they ought to hold the said assembly. In that place, they find tables ready set out, charged with wine and victuals: and a devil gives them the meeting, in the shape of a he-goat, with the tail of an ape, or in some form of a man. There, to the said devil, they offer oblation and homage: — and there they commit crimes so fetid and enormous, as well against God as against nature, that the said Inquisitor declared that he did not dare to name them. The result of the investigation will readily be anticipated’ but, as to the poor victims of popish intolerance themselves, when they were brought out to be burned, they declared, that they had never had any thing to do with Vaulderie, and that they did not even know what idea was annexed to the term. Nevertheless, the districts in France, through which these reputed sorcerers were scattered, acquired so evil an odor, that merchants scarcely dared to visit them, lest they should be branded with the hateful name of Vauldois. 7 III. Among the people of Vercelli and its diocese, the great success of the Vallensic Missionaries may be readily gathered from the very lamentations of Atto: and his angry peradventure, in regard to the possibility of some even among his Clergy adopting their theological sentiments, shows not obscurely, that many of the Priesthood were already in that unsatisfactory predicament. These were, I suppose, the most exemplary, the most religiously disposed, and the best informed, of the Order: and it is highly probable, that the notorious profligacy and the gross ignorance of their brethren may have led them to seek pure faith and consistent practice among the despised and hated Vallenses.

Accordingly, on the one hand, a chapter of Atto’s own Cupitulare strictly inhibits, under pain of an anathema, all his Suffragan Bishops and Priests and Deacons and Clerks of every description, from resorting to those whom he stigmatizes under the aspect of sorcerers and magicians: while, on the other hand, he addresses two admonitory Epistles to his Clergy on the fruitful subject of their scandalous concubinage, which led them rapaciously to rob the Church in order to decorate and enrich their spurious offspring and their acknowledged harlots. The reprehensions of the Bishop are just and praiseworthy: but what must have been the state of the Priesthood to require them? Atto admits: that, through the vices of the Clerical Order, the derision of the vulgar was excited and the name of the Lord was blasphemed; for these depraved men were actually not ashamed to play the part of judicial bullies on behalf of their strumpets and bastards. 9 Yet does he complain: that the Vallenses taught his flock to doubt, whether such pastors were the surest guides to eternal salvation!

CHAPTER - THE ANTIQUITY OF THE VALLENSES SHOWN FROM THE LANGUAGE OF PETER DAMIAN AS the Romish Clergy, if we may believe their Bishop Atto of Vercelli, rejoiced in concubinage and a spurious progeny: so the Clergy of the Valdenses claimed and exercised their undoubted Christian right to enter into the holy estate of matrimony.

In the days of Jerome, as we have seen, the Bishops of the Cottian Alps even went so far as to refuse ordination save to already married candidates: and, in the middle of the eleventh century, or about a hundred years later than the time of Atto and his exemplary Priesthood, we find the Valdensic Clergy, in despite both of roman anger and of increasing superstition, still maintaining their liberty, and still preserving the wise custom of their forefathers. 1. The account of them under this aspect is rendered doubly curious, by the amusing professional flattery offered upon the occasion to the Princess Adelaide; who appears, as Duchess of Savoy and as Marchioness of the Cottian Alps.

In the Epistle addressed to this great Lady by the blessed Peter Damian, Adelaide, under the hands of the courtly saint, is the Deborah of the day, while the less active Metropolitan of Turin performs the inferior part of the lagging Barak. The figurative Sisera, destined to be slain by the joint efforts of the united avengers, is Sacerdotal Matrimony: for this spiritual usurper domineers over certain of her Grace’s Clergy, with no less unrelenting tyranny than the literal Sisera ever afflicted the unhappy children of Israel. But relief is at hand. Let the Bishops in the borders of Deborah’s territories, where the enormities of Sisera are the most atrocious, with Barak at their head, come to the rescue: and, while the archiepiscopal warrior deals with the husbands; let the ducal prophetess show no mercy to the wives. Yet, forsooth, wives said I? Wives, I trow, they are not, as holy Peter acutely argues: but females of a most ancient, though non-descript, character. With Mary, God acknowledges virgins; with Anna, widows; with Susanna, wives; but who, I pray, are these? Since God owns them not, let them in-continently be turned out of the temple. Here I shall prudently stop: for the blessed writer’s happy illustration of Sisera’s enormity which immediately follows the dismissal of the unrecognized females from church, albeit addressed to the princely Adelaide, will be more honored in its suppression than in its adduction.

II. The amount of the present evidence is this.

About the year 1050, there was, on the borders or marches of the Piedmontese Dominions, a pertinaciously married Clergy: and, neither the dilatory Barak of Turin nor his Suffragan Bishops on the borders seeming to have much inclination for the task, Adelaide, as Marchioness of the Cottian Alps or as Lady-Warden of the Vallensic Boundary-District, is exhorted by Peter Damian to coerce and to punish them.

CHAPTER - THE ANTIQUITY OF THE VALLENSES SHEWN FROM THE LANGUAGE OF RODOLPH OF ST. TRUDON OUR next step must be over some seventy or eighty years: and then we shall once more hear of the same refractory people in the same mountainous region.

Rodolph, Abbot of St. Trudon, was engaged in writing his Chronicle, from the year 1108 to the year 1136. About the mean year 1124, he and some members of his Religious Fraternity were at Rome on the spi