Obeying God and not Men: Waldensians and Orthopraxis

The Origins of the Waldensians

The twelfth century brought a whirlwind of change to European social and religious life. In the rapidly growing towns and cities, a middle class of artisans and merchants was emerging in cultures where a clear delineation between aristocracy and peasant had previously prevailed. Sweeping reforms against simony and concubinage had begun to standardize Catholicism and consolidate power to the pope, whose international reach was expanding through an evermore geographically diverse college of cardinals, and a surge in Papal letters sent across Europe. Yet even as the pope’s power grew, his challenges mounted. The heresy of Catharism, with its own well-organized polity and distinct rituals, had arrived in Europe and was growing rapidly in present-day France. Across Europe, the population was expanding, towns were rising, and a middle class was emerging whose semi-literate ranks clamored to participate in much of the piety previously reserved for monastics and clergy.[1]

In the 1170s, when a minstrel attracted a crowd one Sunday in Lyon, present-day France, telling the story of Saint Alexis, a wealthy townsman named Peter Waldo,[2] was intrigued and invited the minstrel to his home to share the story.[3] Saint Alexis, a late fourth- and early fifth-century son of a wealthy Roman family, abandoned his earthly wealth the night of his wedding and lived as an ascetic.[4] The story clearly touched Waldo, who the medieval record says “on the following morning . . . hastened to the school of theology to seek counsel for his soul’s welfare.”[5] What provoked Waldo’s especial salvitic concern is unclear. The anonymous medieval author argues that Waldo’s wealth was ill gained, “amassed . . . through the wicked practice of lending at interest,”[6] but neutral accounts of Waldo do not exist, and the author likely had apologetic motives to speak ill of Waldo.

According to a medieval source, Stephen of Bourbon, who wrote about fifty years after the foundation of Waldensianism, Waldo employed two priests, Stephen of Anse and Bernard Ydros, a young Dominican, as translator and scribe, respectively, to translate into the vernacular “not only . . . many books of the Bible but also for many passages from the Fathers, grouped by topics, which are called Sentences.”[7] Clearly at this time, Waldo profoundly valued the biblical texts, but his patronage of translations of the Church Fathers shows that he also held the traditions of the Church in high regard. It is doubtless that Waldo felt “pricked in the heart”[8] because he appropriated the biblical injunction, “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast,”[9] as a commandment for his own soul. He gave his real estate to his wife, sold his “movable goods” to make “restitution to those from whom he had profited unjustly” and to provide for his daughters. Finally, “the greatest part he disbursed for the needs of the poor.”[10]

The act of commissioning a written translation of these texts itself tells us a few key facts about Waldo. First of all, he was wealthy enough to do so. Secondly, he was literate in the vernacular, Arpitan (or Franco-Provençal), but not in Latin. Thirdly, he took scripture study seriously and personally. And fourthly—and of this his neighbors soon had little doubt—his convictions were stronger than his attachment to money. The fact that his conversion was predicated on commissioning these translations, reveals a conversion was not sudden. Translations take time. Furthermore, according to Stephen of Bourbon, it was only once Waldo “had pored over these texts and learned them by heart” that “he resolved to devote himself to evangelical perfection, just as the apostle had pursued it.” [11] Stephen of Bourbon was eager to heap insults upon Waldo, accusing him of “disobedience,” “presumption,” “usurpation,” and “contumacy,”[12] but Stephen’s account clearly shows that at the very least, Waldo was not impulsive. Indeed, Waldo had a life changing epiphany, but it was born out of deliberative intellectualism.

His dramatic and outwardly sudden change of heart was unusual, but in and of itself uncontroversial. After all, who could fault poverty or generosity? The generosity, particularly, attracted crowds. “Three days a week from Pentecost to St. Peter in Chains,” the earliest extant account wrote. he “gave bountifully of bread, vegetables, and meat to all who came to him..”[13] Finally one day, “as he was in the streets distributing an appreciable sum among of money,” an assured way to hold an audience captive, he began to preach.

His first sermon, as we have it, is brief:

“‘No man can serve two masters, God and mammon.’[14] My friends and fellow townsmen! Indeed, I am not, as you think, insane,[15] but I have taken vengeance on my enemies who held me in bondage to them, so that I was always more anxious about money than about God and served the creature more than the Creator.[16] I know that a great many find fault with me for having done this publicly. But I did it for myself and also for you: for myself, so that they who may henceforth see me in possession of money may think I am mad; in part also for you, so that you may learn to fix your hope in God and to trust not in riches.”[17]

This brief sampling of Waldo’s oral ministry is revealing. His sermon demonstrates rhetorical calculation and a fair degree of scriptural literacy. He begins with a scriptural passage, attracts attention with an anecdote, and concludes with a specific religious exhortation. He may not have been a theologian, but he had become a preacher, and it is not difficult to see hints of his charisma and skill even in this passage. “A rich man . . . but not well educated,”[18] Waldo’s preaching hit a popular nerve among his fellows and Waldo “began to gather associates in his way of life.”[19]

In the early days of the movement, the content of Waldo’s preaching was, like Waldo’s conversion, uncontroversial. Even a critic of Waldensianism, the thirteenth century Dominican Stephen of Bourbon wrote, “Preaching in the streets and the broad ways the Gospels and those things that he had learned by heart, he drew to himself many men and women that they might do the same, and he strengthened them in the Gospel.”[20] This popularity quickly backfired. Stephen continued his critique of the Waldensians, writing, “Men and women alike, stupid and uneducated, they wandered through the villages, entered homes, preached in the squares, and even in the churches, and induced others to do likewise.”[21] Eventually, “they had spread error and scandal everywhere as a result of their rashness and ignorance.”[22] Here Stephen of Bourbon does not share what “errors” were spread, but the idea that both men and women would preach and that the uneducated would dare rebuke the sins of the aristocracy would have been scandalous. The Waldensian message was not an error as much as the messengers were a scandal.

The archbishop of Lyon, John, was forced to respond. The Waldensians “were forbidden to concern themselves with expounding the scriptures or with preaching.”[23] Here arrived the defining moment in Waldensian history. Waldo, “assuming the role of Peter, replied with his words to the chief priests: ‘We ought to obey God, rather than men.’”[24] In an instant, the nascent group transformed from enthusiasts to heretics. Waldo could have quietly acquiesced. He could have pled for a role within the framework of the church and transformed his movement into an order of monastics. Instead he took the words of the Bible and placed them above the dictates of the episcopate. His words branded and marginalized, but immortalized his movement for centuries to come.

Where did the Waldensians Go? – A Review of the Scholarly Debate

It is widely agreed that the movement grew, not rapidly but nonetheless consistently, and persisted from the 1170s to the 1530s. What happened next when the Waldensians, with a four-century legacy of uneducated zeal, collided with the Protestant reformers, upstarts with serious theological training. Sharing the commonality of disdaining, and being held in disdain by, the Roman Catholic Church, did not mean the groups shared a similar view of theology or practice. Yet, in the ensuing years, through correspondence and persuasion, the Waldensians aligned themselves ever more with the Reformation, particularly Geneva-style Calvinism, and distanced themselves from even those elements of Catholicism, such as ministerial celibacy, which they had retained.

Two strains of historical analysis dominate the secondary literature. The first narrative portrays the Waldensians as a small sect that lasted four hundred years but never amounted to much and faded from notice and history as the tide of Protestantism drowned Europe. While the term Waldensian persisted in the movement’s traditional strongholds and in its diaspora, the Reformation caused the Waldensians to sacrifice enough of their own doctrine and tradition that they ceased to have a recognizable connection to their forebears.

The second narrative claims a grand eight-hundred year history. Peter Waldo was a prescient visionary, a true Christian during a dark Popish apostasy whose message carried the light of Christ until the Reformation and still shines through the communities who claim Peter Waldo as their forebear. In the past, Waldensians and sympathetic Protestants had even projected the foundation of Waldensianism further back into history,[25] attempting to gain institutional and ideological credibility by advancing an improvable, doubtful institutional and ideological continuity into the past.

Both narratives assume substantial bias. In centuries past, the fault lines between these two frameworks were denominational. The scholarship, until the latter half of the twentieth century, has been apologetic more than historical. Catholic interests were helped by dismissing the Waldensians as a mere fluke of history, as a fleeting cautionary tale. For many early Protestants, Waldensians included, the story of Peter Waldo was not considered isolated, but held up as an example to imply that there was a historical lineage of Protestant doctrines all the way back to the Apostles. Over time, historiography did not support this view and Protestant theology replaced such claims with the notion of the invisible church.

The former view—that the Waldensians began in the twelfth century and ended in the sixteenth—remains dominant. Malcolm Lambert’s 1977 Medieval Heresy is representative. “The Waldensians,” he concludes, “slipped out of orthodoxy into the world of the sects.”[26] He then moves on to more interesting fodder, such as the Cathars. Gordon Leff’s Heresies of the High Middle Ages also neglects to acknowledgee the continuation of Waldensians into our day. Amedeo Molnar, whose works are staunchly defensive of cultural and theological depth of Waldensianism,[27] still treats them as a purely medieval movement. Among contemporary scholars, Euan Cameron and Gabriel Audisio, arguably today’s leading scholars of the Waldensians, are wiling to make this argument with more respect and nuance, admitting at least that the term “Waldensian” lives on, but only allowing “Waldensian” as quasi-ethnic appellation attached to Reformed churches. Cameron acknowledges that the name survived in Italy, but then says, “Waldensianism simply merged and dissolved into the reformed tradition. Its time was past.”[28] Audisio sums up his nuanced position in the title of an essay, “La Fin des vaudois (XVIe siècle)?”,[29] or in English, “The End of the Waldensians (16th Century)?” He declares the sixteenth century as the end of the movement, but deliberately leaves acknowledges his assertion is debatable.

The latter view, that Waldensianism is alive and well, and has been for eight centuries, is decidedly underrepresented in the literature, but is advocated by an inestimably important constituency, Waldensians themselves. For centuries, Waldensians have been in an odd position—they have not had to fight to preserve the memory of their past as tenaciously as they have had to advocate for their continued survival into the present. In 1710, the Waldensian Pastor Henri Arnaud penned La glorieuse rentrée de vaudois, a 407-page insistence of his people’s continued existence. In modern times, the best scholarly advocates for Waldensianism continuity are Giorgio Tourn, himself a Waldensian minister, and Prescot Stephens, whose 1998 The Waldensian Story is a watershed in the scholarship because it is a contemporary, cogent, and outsider argument for Waldensian continuity.

By telling the whole eight-hundred year story, not just its first four hundred years, Stephens compellingly portrays the Waldensians as a people united across centuries:

“Some historians have seen their conversion into a Protestant in the sixteenth century as the end of distinctive type of Christianity that was suppressed by the embrace of Calvinism. Although the Waldenses accepted the need for amendment, they were not transformed then into something they had never been. There was continuity between the medieval and the post-medieval periods. We have seen that, to a large degree, their theology, based on the New Testament, pre-dated the Reformation.”[30]

What, precisely, constitutes religious continuity? Those who would deny contemporary Waldensian claims to their own history do so at the peril of their own traditions’ legitimacies. Surely continuity, either institutional or philosophical, must not mean stagnant or unchanging; for by that standard Christianity itself can claim no lineage back to Jesus Christ Himself. Emidio Campi correctly notes, “The historical forms which Christian community has inherited are not definite and static. They require revision, movement, renewal.”[31] Campi’s assertion is not theological theory; it is historical observation.

The question of whether the Waldensian movement has persevered through the centuries—of whether it was a heresy of the past or rich Christian tradition worthy of respect in study in both its historical and contemporary manifestations—rests on how we define Waldensians. Obsessed with the Waldensian identity as “The Poor of Lyon,” those who sold their goods for itinerant ministry, too few scholars have given modern Waldensians the respect to define themselves. Moderator emeritus of the Waldensian Church, Giorgio Bouchard, offers another view: “Brothers and sisters come to us because they are searching for a religious experience which combines faithfulness to the Bible with the personal responsibility of the believer. But isn’t it just for this that many Waldenses have lived and died in the eight centuries?”[32] Waldensian identity is premised on a two-fold commitment to “faithfulness to the Bible” and “personal responsibility of the believer.” In theological terms, Bouchard defines Waldensians as committed to biblical orthopraxis (right practice; in contrast to orthodoxy, right belief); thus, debate about how well their doctrine and practice achieve these ideals in any given time, or showing that Waldensian interpretation of either of these principles was inconsistent over time, is irrelevant to proving that the ideal itself remained historically constant. Biblicism and orthopraxis in the Waldensian community predated and was preserved through the Reformation and thus biblical orthopraxis as an emphasis, rather than any particular outward manifestation of the vita apostolica or apostolic life, is the heart of Waldensian continuity.

To frame this in terms of Peter Waldo’s own ministry and the Bible, the question of whether the Waldensians of today can claim connection to Peter Waldo, depends on which moment of his ministry best defines Waldensianism. Indeed, the story of Peter Waldo’s ministry begins when he hears the words of Matthew 19:21, “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast.” Yet, even though Waldo’s reaction to that verse was strong, his desire to forsake the worldly and seek to live the life of the apostles was not entirely unique. The popular emphasis of Christianity in Waldo’s time was on the quest to live the apostolic life. [33] The call to poverty and, even to a limited extent, lay preaching, were simply devout reactions to orthodox Catholicism.[34] It is erroneous, therefore, to mistake an emphasis on the vita apostolica—and even more misguided to mistake any given manifestation of that commitment—as the defining trait of Waldensianism. Peter Waldo’s words to Archbishop John, “We ought to obey God, rather than men,”[35] a reference to Acts 5:39, was what made Waldensianism extraordinary, heretical, and, ultimately, enduring.

The Pre-Reformation Waldensians

In addition to a charismatic leader, a new religious movement requires converts. The same crosscurrents of social and religious change which touched Peter Waldo himself swept over his religion, and indeed much of Europe, created an environment in which Peter Waldo’s lifestyle and preaching could have a receptive audience. Understanding the Waldensians in their context requires some discussion of the social and religious atmosphere in which they were established and a discussion of what the medieval sources reveal about their doctrines and practices, which often foresee Protestant trends long before Martin Luther.

On the social front, two factors are especially noteworthy. Firstly, in the twelfth-century, Europe was in early stages of a population boom which quadrupled the population of Western Europe in three centuries.[36] The population became increasingly urban while agricultural lands sprawled across remaining undeveloped European interior. Secondly, the increased urbanization coincident with extensive economic growth,[37] and a middle class emerged. The new urban merchants and skilled artisans, to whose class Peter Waldo belonged in Lyon, were often literate, but only in their vernacular, not in Latin. This placed them not only economically in the middle of society, but educationally in the middle, too. Condemned by the learned as idiotae, they had an ever-decreasing need of others to serve as their intellectual intermediaries.

The institutional church and the religious atmosphere were also in the middle of profound changes. The eleventh century had been a time of radical reform in the Catholic Church. Pope Gregory VII instituted radical reforms, attacking simony, the practice of powerful laity purchasing influential church offices for their surrogates, and insisting strongly on priestly celibacy. The first of the major religious shifts integral to understanding the Waldensians place in history, was the dramatic increase in Papal power. The eleventh-century reforms were political struggles, but the pope had emerged stronger, the church more centralized, and the balance of power was shifting—where secular authorities formerly influenced the Church, the Church was ever more controlling the secular. By the time of Peter Waldo, one hundred years after the reforms of Gregory VII, popes were still consolidating power to themselves and showing increasing specific and direct control over even minor and distant church affairs. One objective measure of this trend, suggests medieval historian Joseph H. Lynch, is simply counting how many letters the pope sends. “The pace quickened,” Lynch writes, “in the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.”[38] The first pope contemporary to Waldo, Hadrian IV, sent an annual average of 179 letters.[39] By the mid-twelfth century reign of Pope Innocent IV, 730 letters was the annual average.

Beside institutional changes, Christian scriptural understanding was in the midst of a profound shift in emphasis. Ever careful to not exaggerate the shift—the New Testament had always been authoritative in the Western church and the Old Testament has always remained so—Lynch says, “The relative weight shifted from the Lord God of Hosts who triumphed over the enemies of Israel to the loving God who sent his son to live in poverty, to die in great suffering on behalf of humankind and to rise in glory. This was not a new story in western Christianity, but it was felt more deeply by more people.” [40] Certainly Waldo was one such person. In political terms, this coincided with a shift from the divine right of kings, an Old Testament notion, with papal authority, which was “built in part on the New Testament promises of Jesus to Peter.” [41] So on one hand, the New Testament had a centralizing influence. On the other hand, though, the emerging populist piety had a decentralizing affect. So much of Old Testament law required communitarian conformity, but the New Testament, especially the Gospels, premised community first on individual response to Jesus’ call.

The final religious trend of note is what the medieval Christians gleaned from the New Testament. The renewed New Testament interest was initially quite Gospel-centered. (Paul would wait on the sidelines until the Reformation.) Lynch offers this analysis:

“Christianity is complex, but in any period the intelligent man or woman in the street can sum up, almost in slogans or bumper stickers, what seems most important to them. It should be no surprise that the emphasis would vary considerably across space and time. In twentieth-century America, that man or woman might say ‘God is love’ or that the message of Christianity is ‘Peace.’ In sixteenth-century Germany, a Lutheran might have said ‘We are saved by faith alone’ and a Catholic might have said ‘Faith without works is dead.’ In twelfth-century Europe, many pious and spiritually sensitive laymen and clerics said they were called to live the vita apostolica, ‘the apostolic life’. This pattern of life in imitation of Jesus and the apostles was a powerful model that attracted adherents.’”[42]

So the emphasis on the apostolic life is not truly a defining characteristic of Waldensianism. It was instead a characteristic emphasis of Western Christianity in general. As various classes of society heard the words of Jesus, and saw the disparity between Christ’s mandates and their own lifestyles, they wanted to do something. The apostolic life was an ethical pursuit, rather than a doctrinal one. It was not driven by an urge to know or believe correctly, but to act correctly.

Peter Waldo’s quest was perhaps flamboyant, but his desires were not out of step with his time. As he sold his own goods and began to preach, barefoot and penniless,[43] and others followed suit, their drastic obedience demonstrated a belief in radical orthopraxis, the emphasis on living right. However, orthopraxis was not seen in soteriological terms, that it is to say, it was not done for the purpose of salvation per se, but simply because it was what God commanded. While barefoot itinerant preaching is no longer central to Waldensianism, orthopraxis, as a commitment to follow what the Bible teaches, has been a consistent feature of Waldensianism from Peter Waldo until today, even as the interpretations of what the Bible requires of Christian living have changed.

Peter Waldo’s request for portions of the Bible in his own Arptian (or Franco-Provençal) language reflects the broader desire among the literate but unlearned for their own access to the scriptures. As the literate class expanded, vernacular Bibles were perhaps inevitable, but an inevitability which Waldo foresaw, not out of a sense of prophecy but out of sense of his own spiritual needs. Such democratization of biblical interpretation was indeed terrifying to those who believed the institutional church reserved for herself all exegesis. However, for the Waldensians who were committed to obey God, rather than men, personal biblical study was obligatory. Thus the Waldensians indeed “possessed a strongly biblical culture,”[44] as Amedeo Molnar argues. Despite claims that Waldo was not educated, he valued a knowledge of the Bible, not simply for a priestly elite or for himself, but for all who would follow Christ. Molnar praises Waldo’s foresight, writing, “The Waldenses had in fact realized what Wycliffe and the Hussite were later to require: every Christian who would know the will of God through the Holy Scriptures must become himself a biblical theologian.”[45]

Unveiling a detailed, fair view of medieval Waldensianism in practice and doctrine, is problematic. We lack a clear sense of Waldensian beliefs in their own words. The quantity of medieval source material is generous considering the size of the movement (in fact, the quantity seems sufficiently disproportional to the numbers of Waldensians and their geographic extent to imply that the Waldensians were viewed as a disproportionately severe ecclesiastical threat).

The problem is that the extant sources are heavily biased. The Waldensians themselves were not prolific writers. Molnar argues that Waldensian theology “was lived in communities” but “rarely written down.”[46] That is true, but unhelpful. Biblical orthopraxis, in action, could perhaps mean that more effort is exerted in interpreting and acting upon Biblical passages in community than in composing written theological reflection. Of course, the education level of Waldensians historically was less than their priestly or monastic contemporaries. What we have, therefore, is primarily anti-Waldensian polemic from a Catholic perspective. The important exception is “A Profession of Faith,” penned by Waldo himself for a diocesan council to which he had been called by Archbishop Guichard.[47] but even this document deliberately tried to present the Waldensians in contrast to the Cathars on key points and in harmony with Rome on others. There is no reason to doubt the honesty of the “Profession,” but it reflects not what Waldo thought was most important, but what Waldo thought Guichard would want to hear. A perfect source perhaps would be intra-Waldensian correspondence, which would give the modern scholar a view into the Waldensians’ self-perception, but only such source we have is a collection of letters from 1360s, nearly two hundred years late. No perfect source exists, but noting its absence is worthwhile to keep our sources in perspective. We know how Waldensians were viewed among the Catholic ecclesiastical elite and how the presented themselves in that setting, but how the Waldensians viewed themselves and any details about the content of the message they presented as they preached remains shrouded in mystery.

An anonymous chronicler gives us our first glimpse at Waldensianism as a nascent movement. Waldo, the chronicler wrote, “began to gather associates in his way of life. They followed his example in giving their all to the poor and became devotees of voluntary poverty. Little by little, both publicly and privately, they began to declaim against their own sins and those of others.”[48] This first account is not detailed, but if affirms a life of poverty and preaching as foundational Waldensian practices. Perhaps because it is an early source, it spares judgment. But for the Waldensians, judgment was soon to come. In 1179 a Lateran Council was summoned which “condemned heresy and all protectors and defenders of heretics.”[49] The anonymous chronicler at the counsel, however, does not yet roundly condemn the Waldensians, for it seems that, at the time, neither did the pope, Alexander III. “The pope,” wrote the chronicler, “embraced Waldes, approving his vow of voluntary poverty but forbidding preaching by either himself or his followers unless welcomed by the local priests.”[50] In this act, the pope reaffirmed a respect for poverty as an acceptable lay manifestation of the apostolic life, but retains preaching as the province of the ordained. “This injunction they observed for a short time; then, from the day they became disobedient, they were the cause of scandal to many and disaster to themselves.”[51] This is our earliest impression that Waldensian discipleship had taken a turn for the scandalous. The scandal however was not in the content of the preaching, but in the act of preaching. As André Vauchez writes, “The conflict was a disciplinary rather than a doctrinal one, at least in the beginning.”[52]

Walter Map, an Englishman who encountered the Waldensians at the aforementioned Lateran Council, marks a shift in the literature to intense, and perhaps dishonest, attacks on the Waldensians. He described them as “simple and illiterate men,”[53] which may be at best a condescending oversimplification. After all, other sources insist upon the literacy of at least Waldo himself. In this time of social transition, Peter Waldo was prosperous but not prestigious, a member of the emerging middle class between “oppressed peasantry and noble aristocracy.”[54] and the disdain with which the ecclesiastical elite viewed Waldo, and perhaps by extension the emerging middle class to which he belonged, is evident in Map’s descriptions. In a moment of particularly eloquent arrogance, Map managed to simultaneously proclaim the spiritual richness of the Bible and turn a blind eye to the Gospel pattern of Jesus teaching and even commissioning simple fishermen:

“In every letter of the sacred page, so many precepts fly on wings of virtue, such riches of wisdom are accumulated, that anyone to whom God has granted the means may draw from its fullness. Shall pearls, then, be cast before swine? Shall the Word of God be given to the ignorant, whom we know to be incapable of receiving it, much less of giving in turn what they have received?”[55]

Map, however, was the first chronicler to criticize an actual point of Waldensian teaching, but if the account is true—and the tone is so self-aggrandizing on Map’s part that there is perhaps reason to be suspicious of the account’s veracity—the problem lay more in ignorance than apostasy:

“Knowing that the lips of an ass which eats thistles find lettuce unworthy of them, I put very easy questions of which no one could be ignorant. ‘Do you believe in God the Father?’ They replied, ‘We do.’ ‘And in the Son?’ They answered, ‘We do.’ I went, ‘And in the mother of Christ?’ They again, ‘We do.’ They were answered with derisive laughter from everyone present and withdrew into confusion; deservedly, for like Phaëton, who did not even know the names of his horses, they who were taught by none sougth to become teachers.”[56]

In 1180 or 1181, our only opportunity to see Waldo speak for himself emerged. His “Profession of Faith” was explicitly designed to affirm his orthodoxy and deny Waldensian agreement with the heresies of the Cathars. Walter Wakefield and Austin Evans analysis of the “Profession” is indubitable: the “Profession” was “in fact, orthodox in every way.”[57] The profession was modeled after earlier statements of faith with additions that served as a “point-by-point repudiation of the contemporary teaching of the Cathars as we know it from other sources.” Where Waldo diverged from both the traditional formula and denials of Catharism was in his conclusion:

“Since, according to James the apostle, ‘faith without works is dead,’ [James 2:20] we have renounced the world; whatever we had we have given to the poor, as the Lord advised, and we have resolved to be poor in such fashion that we shall take no thought for the morrow, nor shall we accept gold or silver, or anything of that sort from anyone beyond food and clothing sufficient for the day. Our resolve is to follow the precepts of the Gospel as commands. We wholeheartedly confess and believe that persons remaining in the world, owning their own goods, giving alms and doing other good works out of their own, and observing the commandments of the Lord, may be saved. ”[58]

Any mention of lay preaching is conspicuously absent. Surely Waldo knew his audience. However, he did not back down from his insistence on orthopraxis, or as he phrases it, “following the precepts of the Gospel as commands.”[59] He distinctly does not equate the apostolic life with salvation.

A final medieval source of Waldensians foundational doctrines worthy of attention is Archbishop of Narbonne, Bernard Gaucelin’s 1190 “Treatise Against the Waldenses.” The document is illuminating because it is the most comprehensive listing of what the Waldenses believed, albeit from an confrontational apologetic perspective. The prologue suggests the name of the movement “surely derived from ‘dense vale’ (valle densa) inasmuch as they were enveloped in the deep, dense darkness of error.”[60] In twelve chapters, Gaucelin attacks Waldensian assertions that “no obedience is owed the pontiff,” priests are not intermediaries of salvation, that lay men may preach, that women may preach, that prayers for the dead profit nothing, and that church buildings are unworthy of veneration.[61] While Waldensianism did not begin with theological disagreement, the chasm between Rome and Waldo did enlarge. If Gaucelin is trustworthy, and the attestation of many of these doctrines and practices in later Waldensian history show that he is, starkly non-Catholic doctrines emerged within a decade of the Lateran Council.

Beginning with Allan of Lille’s “Scholar’s Attack on Heretics”, medieval Catholic apologists often conflated Waldensians in with Cathars, generalizing them simply as another, and generally lesser, brand of heresy. This is unfortunate but understandable. The Cathars were simply the more menacing enemy, larger in power and more distant in doctrine. All was not well for the Waldensians because of this confusion. While the brunt of violent Inquisition would be directed elsewhere, no heretic was safe.

The centuries between the days of Peter Waldo and the Reformation were a time of radicalization of doctrine, dispersion of people, survival, and moderating the role of the apostolic life for the Waldensians. Waldo’s insistence that he must follow God and not men proved inherently prone to fracture. By the mid-thirteenth century, Waldensian doctrine had grown more passionately anti-establishment and anti-clerical. Quickly, this stance, at first an understandable reaction to the institutional Church’s condemnation of their movement, led to doctrinal changes. Reinerius Saccho, in 1254, enumerated as some of their doctrines radical anti-clericalism that had gone beyond Donatism straight into anti-sacramentalism and an advocacy of the priesthood of all believers.[62]

Furthermore, inquisitions began in the thirteenth century, and while pockets of Waldensians occasionally enjoyed peace, a Waldensian diaspora—geographic and theological—expanded. To complicate the image of what was really happening, our sources are restricted to inquisitional proceedings which Gabriel Audisio warns were “essentially coercive.”[63] The Inquisitions led Waldensians south into Italy, north to Germany, and east to the modern-day Czech Republic. By the sixteenth century, fear of persecution had altered Waldensian practice considerably. Audisio writes, “Fear had forced them to dissimulate their preaching mission; the believers, meanwhile, had managed to conceal their convictions to such an extent that a real contradiction had developed between the principles they announced, deriving from their literal reading of the Gospel, and the way in which they applied them in their daily lives.”[64] A two-tier system had evolved of itinerant preachers, barbes, who often lived double lives with world careers and believers who themselves often outwardly practiced Catholicism. Peter Waldo’s ideal was not forgotten, but there surely was a cognitive and spiritual dissonance in many Waldensians lives by the time of the Reformation.

Inquisition was not the Roman Catholic Church’s only reaction to Waldensianism. Wakefield and Austin, the compilers of the primary source anthology Heresies of the High Middle Ages, acknowledge that “Waldes appears in every respect as a forerunner of Francis of Assisi; willingness to obey authority was the fundamental difference between them.”[65] Today we see Waldo and Francis as contemporaries. They lived across the Alps from one another, and their lifetimes do overlap, although Waldo was about forty years older. If we say that “willingness to obey authority was the fundamental difference,” we underestimate what a profound difference forty years can make. First of all, the emerging merchant class, from which both Waldo and Francis came was growing more and more respected. Secondly, it is likely that the Church’s acceptance of Francis may actually have been a lesson learned from Waldo. It was advantageous for the Church to make apostolic poverty an option within its framework, because a popular spiritual impulse continued to draw men and women to poverty.

Emidio Campi argues that the later formation of the Dominican order, whose identity was as an Ordo Praedictorum (an order of preachers), and the Franciscans, with their emphasis on divine poverty, is “an ecclesiastical response to the challenge represented by the Waldenses to the Church.”[66] Yet this solution fell short of the Waldensian ideal which insisted that preaching and poverty be combined with an individual’s discipleship. The Christian was personally obligated to follow both Christ’s injunctions to “go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor”[67] and “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.”[68] Campi argues that Catholicism collectively embraced both commandments. Before the Waldensians poverty was the domain of monastics and preaching the realm of the secular clergy; after the Waldensians, these roles came closer together as the “specialization[s] of two different, monastical orders.”[69] Merely moving the roles closer together in the church by placing both these Christian obligations under the tent of “monasticism” would not have sufficed for Waldo.

The Waldensians predated often similar positions manifested by Saint Dominic, Saint Francis, Luther, Calvin, Wycliffe, and Wesley. Arguing that they in any way influenced those later movements is difficult, perhaps futile. Establishing commonalities does not prove influence. Nonetheless, the Waldensian propensity of prescience suggests a group who sensitively perceived the pulse of European spirituality.

The Waldensians and the Reformation

By the sixteenth century, Waldensians had been repressed and wearied for four centuries. Gabriel Audisio argues that the Waldensians were suffering from a profound “identity crisis.”[70] The barbes, the wandering ministers, themselves were acutely aware how unlike Peter Waldo’s idyllic call to poverty and preaching their lifestyles had become. For the barbes, “it had proved impossible to respect what they believed in theory to be the will of God.”[71] Meanwhile, Reform from Germany was sweeping across Europe. Audisio argues that there are three pillars of Reformed theology—justification by faith alone, the priesthood of all believers, and Biblical supremacy.[72] Obviously, the Poor of Lyon were a ready audience for the latter two claims. Arguably, they beat the Reformation to those conclusions by at least three centuries.

The commonalities were sufficient to generate curiosity, and the fresh energy of the nascent Reformation surely appealed to the weary Waldensians. The enthusiasm was tempered and cautious, however. “The barbes were bewildered” [73] as they studied Luther, whose scholastic style of biblical exegesis was jarring, but intriguing, to the historically literalist Waldensians. Justification by faith was more problematic. The Waldensians began as a movement of action. Emphasis on orthopraxis had led the barbes to conclude that “it was possible to aid one’s own salvation.” [74]

At a 1530 synod in Merindol, Provence, two barbes reported to their brethren on what they had learned on an investigational journey across the Alps “to obtain first-hand knowledge of the reforming movement.”[75] Giorgio and Martin Gonin had studied under William Farel and “returned with a large quantity of Reformation literature.”[76] Exposure to reformed theology only provoked more questions. Yet, it was clear that the Waldensians barbes, while not in universal agreement with the Reformed writers, were on the whole eager to engage in dialogue. The meeting of Waldensian and Reformation thinkers in the 1520s and ‘30s is a watershed in the story of Western Christianity. Audisio frames the setting especially well:

“What are we talking about when we say the Vaudois of the sixteenth century? Essentially, the meeting of two currents, two movements, two cultural worlds. On one hand, a dissident and clandestine religious group whose organization and age had earned it its stripes, who had overcome three centuries of persecution: the Poor of Lyon. On the other hand, another dissident current, barely newborn, unique in its inspiration but multiple in its forms, which had risen, formed, and took over half of northern Europe: the Reformation. “[77]

The 1530 Synod assigned the Waldensians’ most learned barbes, George Morel and Pierre Masson, to seek out advice from the Reformers. The Waldensians loyalty to biblicism especially shines in the utter humility in which Morel and Masson, the elite and powerful of their four-century tradition, approach the Reformers. Morel emphasizes his sect’s fierce spiritual commitment, but does not boast of Waldensian exegesis. Waldensian faith, Morel argued, “was basically the same as that of the reformers.”[78] However, Morel told the reformers, “The only difference [with you] is that by our own fault and intellectual indolence, we did not grasp the sense of Scripture as correctly as you. That is why we come to you to guide, instruct, edify, and teach us.”[79] In the history of religious dialogue this approach is nothing short of extraordinary. Morel and Masson met with John Oecolampadius of Basel and Martine Bucer for advice. The Waldensian inquiry focused on practical questions of Christian living and church organization. Morel laid bare all of the Waldensian concerns. Stephens notes that the barbes worried about the “superficial in their spiritual lives: the timing and length of prayers, rank and precedence in the ministry; and with social minutiae—matters of dress and sport, sexual relationships within marriage.”[80] This fact, of course, shows that Waldensian spiritual worldview was still fueled by questions of orthopraxis rather than orthodoxy. Nonetheless the Waldensians and the Reformers shared a profound respect for Biblical authority and Oecolampadius and Bucer were willing teachers for such enthusiastic students. Bucer, however, “criticized them for wanting everything reduced down to rules.”[81]

In 1532, the Reformers, including the eloquent and persuasive Calvin protégé William Farel among them, came to the Waldensians. In September, a gathering took place in the Angrogna Valley of modern-day Italy. Traditionally the site of the meeting is held to be Chanforan. The results of the meeting were radical. Traditions which Waldensianism had unquestioningly retained from Catholicism were jettisoned, such as the celibate ministry and set times for prayer. Even unique Waldensian practices were rejected, such as the refusal to take oaths. The most dramatic change in religious practice was the cessation of itinerant ministry. [82] On salvation, the synod accepted Calvinist predestination, going so far as to say, “the doctrine of free will denies completely the predestination and grace of God.”[83]

It is tempting to agree with Audisio’s analysis that “The Poor of Lyon were giving up what had been their particular spiritual essence, their common practices and the understanding of religious intelligence.”[84] The error in this analysis is the assumed “essence” of Waldensianism. It is perhaps shocking that drastic shifts in lifestyle and even view of salvation would not constitute a sacrifice of a religion’s essence, or as so often is more dramatically proposed, the very end of the Waldensians.

The Waldensians historical insistence on orthopraxis is easily mistaken for advancing a doctrine of justification by works. The orthopraxis-centric emphasis on the Vita Apostolica was never explicitly soteriological. Waldo himself emphasized that in his “Profession of Faith.” Waldensianism’s essence was not itinerant preachers or salvation by works. It was biblical orthopraxis, a firm commitment to live the teachings of the Bible as best as they understood it. George Morel recognized that the Reformers understood the Bible better than he did. In his humble enthusiasm to learn more, and make changes in his life and his church, even drastic ones, to conform to his new Biblical understanding, he and the Synod and Chanforan arguably acted in the most authentically Waldensian way possible. In essence, they said, like Peter Waldo had centuries earlier, “We ought to obey God, rather than men,”[85] even if the men were their own spiritual forebears.

Echoes of Peter Waldo

The Waldensians are unique among medieval heretics. They were not repressed into historical oblivion like the Cathars, whose geographic and demographic influence at its peak far exceeded that of the Waldensians in any age. They never grew into a world-changing movement like Luther and Calvin’s Reformation. Their movement, now over eight hundred years old, lives on quietly in small pockets in the Italian valleys of Piedmont, in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina, and in the plains of Paraguay and Uruguay. The Waldensians are an anomaly, never disappearing, but perhaps never truly flourishing. They predated the Reformation by centuries, but did not instigate it and even when they appear to have foreseen some of its doctrines, they did not seem to influence it. They absorbed Reformed doctrine, but Calvinism never entirely absorbed them.

As the Reformation, and its ensuing religious violence, swept over Europe, Waldensians who had already been dispersed by the inquisitions of the thirteenth through fourteenth centuries all too often faded from history. But the Synod of Chanforan solidified, rather destroyed, the Piedmontese Waldensians. The reclassification as Protestants rather than heretics did not erase the legacy of Peter Waldo or the identity forged through oppression and violence both before and after Chanforan. The Italian Waldensian community has even endured oppression in the last century at the hands of Mussolini and perhaps only achieved true religious freedom after Vatican II.[86] The Italian Waldensians spurred communities in place as diverse as Argentina, Uruguay, and North Carolina.

Yet the echoes of Peter Waldo’s ministry extend far beyond the communities and churches which carry his name. Euan Cameron writes, “The identity of Waldensianism, then, may be sought more in the shared purpose, attitudes and beliefs of the movement, rather than in any formal continuity or quasi-apostolic succession.”[87] Waldo’s movement was founded on a remarkably simple premise—that Jesus’ call to his apostles to sell their possessions and go forth to preach applied to lay hearers of the Gospels—they did not make grand theological claims. It grew out of one man’s conviction that he would obey God, not man, that he would serve God, not mammon. His movement, then, can be found wherever Waldo’s teachings and examples were influential—whether through inspiring or provoking a reaction—and where Waldensianism was prescient of the work of future reforms.

Waldensian churches in Italy and South America have a legacy of fighting valiantly for minority rights. As rare Protestants in their countries, they have been on the vanguard of the fight for religious freedom, specifically, and social justice generally in their countries. In World War II, the Waldensians were key partisan freedom fighters in Northern Italy.[88] Within Catholicism, the Dominicans and certainly the Franciscans may owe their ministries to the reaction Waldo provoked and the spiritual path he cleared.

In Protestantism, the ways in which Waldensianism was prescient, if not influential on the Reformation help explain why the Reformation succeeded. It spoke to spiritual needs that had been mounting quietly throughout Europe, many of the same needs that Waldensians noticed first. Peter Waldo’s deep commitment to the apostolic life represented a laity weary of clergy-laity divide. The priesthood of all believers, now a common doctrine in Protestantism, was expressed in the Waldensian lay wanderers. Waldensianism was an early advocate of individual Bible study, and Waldo’s personal patronization of the translation of scripture into the vernacular. The simply act of reading the Bible in English is an echo of Waldo’s legacy. Waldensians in their formative years were shockingly egalitarian, permitting even women to preach, centuries before Protestantism would ordain female clergy.

The initial loyalty to the apostolic life was an especially forceful denial that piety is reserved for only a segment of Christendom. The tension between acting out of moral imperative and acting out of salvitic expectation gnawed at Protestant theologians long after the Waldensians faced such questions. The Waldensian stance can perhaps be understood as proto-Wesleyan. Even if salvation does not come through the apostolic life, perhaps the spiritual strength of grace makes the apostolic life possible. Centuries after the Synod of Chanforan, the Waldensian and Methodists of Italy merged into the united Chiesa Evangelica Valdese in 1975,[89] perhaps finally theologically resolving the Waldensian commitment to good works to the Reformation understanding of grace.

From the moment Peter Waldo sold his possessions to minister to the people of Lyon until our time when every Sunday ministers from North Carolina to Italy stand behind pulpits claiming Peter Waldo as their forebear, the story of the Waldensians enriches our understanding of Christian history. Their persistence, no matter how few their numbers, proves that at the heart of the movement is a commitment to biblical orthopraxis, a scripturally-inspired drive to do God’s will, too powerful to be oppressed or assimilated into oblivion.

[1] While these changes are well-attested in numerous sources, the most succinct and lucid discussion of the overall socio-religious milieu in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries is found in Joseph H. Lynch. The Medieval Church: A brief history. New York: Longman, 1992. pp. 150–228.

[2] The name of Peter Waldo and the movement he started, the Waldensians, are transliterations whose English versions vary greatly in both the medieval sources in English translation and the modern scholarship. In this paper, I have chosen to use Peter Waldo and Waldensians for consistency, but in quotations the reader may see the synonymous Waldes or Valdes or Valdesius for the founders name, and Waldenses, Vaudois, Valdese as alternatives. The historicity of the first name Peter is questionable. It is not in earliest sources and may have been added to his name by his disciples to reflect his role as founder.

[3] The earliest account of this story is found in English translation in “Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. pp. 200–202.

[4] “St. Alexis.” The Catholic Encylcopedia. Available online at <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01307b.htm>.

[5] “Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 201.

[6] “Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 200.

[7] Stephen of Bourbon. “On the Early Waldenses.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 209.

[8] Acts 2:37 KJV.

[9] Matthew 19:21 KJV. Quoted in “Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 201.

[10] “Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 200.

[11] Stephen of Bourbon. “On the Early Waldenses.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 209.

[12] Stephen of Bourbon. “On the Early Waldenses.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 210.

[13] “Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 200.

[14] Waldo is quoting here an abridged version of Matthew 6:24 or Luke 16:13. The full verse in both Gospels is “No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

[15] His rhetorical denial of insanity here is stylistically reminiscent of Peter’s denial of drunkeness in Acts 2.

[16] An allusion to Romans 1:25.

[17] “Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis.” Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 200.

[18] Stephen of Bourbon. “On the Early Waldenses.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 209.

[19] “Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 201.

[20] Stephen of Bourbon. “On the Early Waldenses.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 209.

[21] Stephen of Bourbon. “On the Early Waldenses.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 209.

[22] Stephen of Bourbon. “On the Early Waldenses.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 209.

[23] Stephen of Bourbon. “On the Early Waldenses.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. pp. 209–210.

[24] Stephen of Bourbon. “On the Early Waldenses.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 209.

[25] Gabriel Audisio. The Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival, c. 1170–c. 1570. Tr. Claire Davison. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1999. p. 6.

[26] Malcolm Lambert. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation. 3rd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. p. 86.

[27] Amedeo Molnar. A Challenge to Constantinianism: The Waldensian Theology in the Middle Ages. Geneva: WSCF, 1976. p. 5.

[28] Euan Cameron. Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe. p. 303.

[29] Gabriel Audisio. “La Fin des vaudois (XVIe siècle)?” Les vaudois des origins à leur fin (XXIe – XVIe siècles). Torino: Albert Meynier, 1990. p. 77.

[30] Prescot Stephens. The Waldensian Story: A Study in Faith, Intolerance and Survival. Lewes, Sussex, England: Book Guild Ltd, 1998. pp. 342–343.

[31] Emidio Campi. Preface. Amedeo Molnar. A Challenge to Constantinianism: The Waldensian Theology in the Middle Ages. Geneva: WSCF, 1976. p. 2.

[32] Giorgio Bouchard. Foreword. Prescot Stephens. The Waldensian Story: A Study in Faith, Intolerance and Survival. Lewes, Sussex, England: Book Guild Ltd, 1998. p. xxi.

[33] Joseph H. Lynch. The Medieval Church: A brief history. New York: Longman, 1992. p. 192.

[34] Joseph H. Lynch. The Medieval Church: A brief history. New York: Longman, 1992. pp. 192-195.

[35] Attributed to Peter Waldo (quoting Acts 5:39) in Stephen of Boubon, “On the Early Waldensians.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages. New York: Columbia, 1969. p. 210.

[36] Joseph H. Lynch. The Medieval Church: A brief history. New York: Longman, 1992. pp. 192-152.

[37] Joseph H. Lynch. The Medieval Church: A brief history. New York: Longman, 1992. pp. 192-156.

[38] Joseph H. Lynch. The Medieval Church: A brief history. New York: Longman, 1992. p. 172.

[39] Joseph H. Lynch. The Medieval Church: A brief history. New York: Longman, 1992. p. 172.

[40] Joseph H. Lynch. The Medieval Church: A brief history. New York: Longman, 1992. p. 187.

[41] Joseph H. Lynch. The Medieval Church: A brief history. New York: Longman, 1992. p. 187.

[42] Joseph H. Lynch. The Medieval Church: A brief history. New York: Longman, 1992. p. 192.

[43] Walter Map. “De nugis curialium I.xxxi.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 204.

[44] Amedeo Molnar. A Challenge to Constantinianism: The Waldensian Theology in the Middle Ages. Geneva: WSCF, 1976. p. 7.

[45] Amedeo Molnar. A Challenge to Constantinianism: The Waldensian Theology in the Middle Ages. Geneva: WSCF, 1976. p. 7.

[46] Amedeo Molnar. A Challenge to Constantinianism: The Waldensian Theology in the Middle Ages. Geneva: WSCF, 1976. p. 7.

[47] Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 204.

[48] “Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis.” Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 202.

[49] “Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 203.

[50] “Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 203.

[51] “Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 203.

[52] André Vauchez. The Spirituality of the Medieval West: The Eight to the Twelfth Century. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1993. p. 119.

[53] Walter Map. “De nugis curialium I.xxxi.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 203.

[54] Emidio Campi. Preface. Amedeo Molnar. A Challenge to Constantinianism: The Waldensian Theology in the Middle Ages. Geneva: WSCF, 1976. p. 2.

[55] Walter Map. “De nugis curialium I.xxxi.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 203.

[56] Walter Map. “De nugis curialium I.xxxi.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 203.

[57] Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 205.

[58] Peter Waldo. “A Profession of Faith.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 206.

[59] Peter Waldo. “A Profession of Faith.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 206.

[60] Archbishop Bernard Gaucelin. “A Treatise Against the Waldenses.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 211.

[61] Archbishop Bernard Gaucelin. “A Treatise Against the Waldenses.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 211.

[62] Reinerius Saccho. “Of the Sects of Modern Heretics.” in History of the Albigenses and Waldenses. S. R. Maitland, trans. London: C. J. G. and F. Rivington, 1832, pp. 407-413. Online at <http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/waldo2.html>,

[63] Gabriel Audisio. Preachers by Night: The Waldensian Barbes (15th-16th Centuries) p. 26.

[64] Gabriel Audisio. Preachers by Night: The Waldensian Barbes (15th-16th Centuries) p. 207.

[65] Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University, 1969. p. 200.

[66] Emidio Campi. Preface. Amedeo Molnar. A Challenge to Constantinianism: The Waldensian Theology in the Middle Ages. Geneva: WSCF, 1976. p. 2.

[67] Matthew 19:21.

[68] Matthew 28:19.

[69] Emidio Campi. Preface. Amedeo Molnar. A Challenge to Constantinianism: The Waldensian Theology in the Middle Ages. Geneva: WSCF, 1976. p. 3.

[70] Gabriel Audisio. Preachers by Night: The Waldensian Barbes (15th-16th Centuries) p. 207.

[71] Gabriel Audisio. Preachers by Night: The Waldensian Barbes (15th-16th Centuries) p. 207.

[72] Gabriel Audisio. Preachers by Night: The Waldensian Barbes (15th-16th Centuries) p. 203.

[73] Gabriel Audisio. Preachers by Night: The Waldensian Barbes (15th-16th Centuries) p. 203.

[74] Gabriel Audisio. Preachers by Night: The Waldensian Barbes (15th-16th Centuries) p. 203.

[75] Prescot Stephens. The Waldensian Story: A Study in Faith, Intolerance and Survival. Lewes, Sussex, England: Book Guild Ltd, 1998. pp. 112-113.

[76] Prescot Stephens. The Waldensian Story: A Study in Faith, Intolerance and Survival. Lewes, Sussex, England: Book Guild Ltd, 1998. p.113.

[77] Gabriel Audisio. “La Fin des vaudois (XVIe siècle)?” Les vaudois des origins à leur fin (XXIe – XVIe siècles). Torino: Albert Meynier, 1990. pp. 77-78. [Text in French; English translation my own.]

[78] Prescot Stephens. The Waldensian Story: A Study in Faith, Intolerance and Survival. Lewes, Sussex, England: Book Guild Ltd, 1998. p.113.

[79] George Morel quoted in Prescot Stephens. The Waldensian Story: A Study in Faith, Intolerance and Survival. Lewes, Sussex, England: Book Guild Ltd, 1998. p.113.

[80] Prescot Stephens. The Waldensian Story: A Study in Faith, Intolerance and Survival. Lewes, Sussex, England: Book Guild Ltd, 1998. p.115.

[81] Prescot Stephens. The Waldensian Story: A Study in Faith, Intolerance and Survival. Lewes, Sussex, England: Book Guild Ltd, 1998. p.115.

[82] Prescot Stephens. The Waldensian Story: A Study in Faith, Intolerance and Survival. Lewes, Sussex, England: Book Guild Ltd, 1998. pp. 118-119.

[83] Prescot Stephens. The Waldensian Story: A Study in Faith, Intolerance and Survival. Lewes, Sussex, England: Book Guild Ltd, 1998. p.115.

[84] Gabriel Audisio. The Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival, c. 1170–c. 1570. Tr. Claire Davison. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1999. P.173.

[85] Attributed to Peter Waldo (quoting Acts 5:39) in Stephen of Bourbon, “On the Early Waldensians.” in Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages. New York: Columbia, 1969. p. 210.

[86] Georgio Torun. You Are My Witnesses: The Waldensians across 800 years. Torino: Claudina, 1989. pp. 226-231.

[87] Euan Cameron. Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe. p. 298.

[88] Prescot Stephens. The Waldensian Story: A Study in Faith, Intolerance and Survival. Lewes, Sussex, England: Book Guild Ltd, 1998. p.115.

[89] English Homepage. Chiesa Evangelica Valdese. <http://www.chiesavaldese.org/eng/indexen.php>