Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/348

Rh 324 WALDENSES followed again the conclusion that obedience was not due to an unworthy priest, and that his ministrations were invalid. These opinions were subversive of the system of the mediaeval church, and were naturally viewed with great disfavour by its officials ; but it cannot fairly be said that they have much in common with the opinions of the Reformers of the 16th century. The mediaeval church set forth Christ as present in the orderly community of the faithful ; Protestantism aimed at setting the individual in immediate communion with Christ, without the mechanical intervention of the officers of the community ; the Wal- denses merely set forward a new criterion of the orderly arrangement of the church, according to which each mem ber was to sit in judgment on the works of the ministers, and consequently on the validity of their ministerial acts. It was a rude way of expressing a desire for a more spiritual community. The earliest known document pro ceeding from the Waldensians is an account of a confer ence held at Bergamo in 1218 between the Ultramontane and the Lombard divisions, in which the Lombards showed a greater opposition to the recognized priesthood than did their northern brethren. 1 As these opinions became more pronounced persecution became more severe, and the breach between the Waldenses and the church widened. The Waldenses withdrew alto gether from the ministrations of the church, and chose ministers for themselves whose merits were recognized by the body of the faithful. Election took the place of ordination, but even here the Lombards showed their difference from the Ultramontanes, and recognized only two orders, like the Cathari, while the northern body kept the old three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons. Gradually the separation from the church became more complete : the sacraments were regarded as merely sym bolical ; the priests became helpers of the faithful ; ceremonies disappeared ; and a new religious society arose equally unlike the medieval church and the Protestantism of the 16th century. The spread of these heretical sects led to resolute attempts at their suppression. The crusade against the Albigensians could destroy prosperous cities and hand over lands from a heedless lord to one who was obedient to the church ; but it could not get rid of heresy. The revival of preach ing, which was the work of the order of St Dominic, did more to combat heresy, especially where its persuasions were enforced by law. The work of inquisition into cases of heresy proceeded slowly in the hands of the bishops, who were too busy with other matters to find much time for sitting in judgment on theological points about which they were imperfectly informed. The greatest blow struck against heresy was the transference of the duty of inquiry into heresy from the bishops to Dominican inquisitors. The seeular power, which shared in the proceeds of the confiscation of those who were found guilty of heresy, was ready to help in carrying out the judgments of the spiritual courts. Everywhere, and especially in the district round Toulouse, heretics were keenly prosecuted, and before the continued zeal of persecution the Waldenses slowly disappeared from the chief centres of population and took refuge in the retired valleys of the Alps. There, in the recesses of Piedmont, where the streams of the Pelice, the Angrogne, the Clusone, and others cleave the sides of the Alps into valleys which converge at Susa, a settlement of the Waldensians was made who gave their name to these valleys of the Vaudois. In the more accessible regions north and south heresy was exposed to a steady process of persecution, and tended to assume shifting forms. Among the valleys it was less easily reached, and retained its old organization and its old con- 1 Preger, Jleitriiye zur Geschichte der Waldesier. tents. Little settlements of heretics dispersed throughout Italy and Provence looked to the valleys as a place of refuge, and tacitly regarded them as the centre of their faith. At times attempts were made to suppress the sect of the Vaudois, but the nature of the country which they inhabited, their obscurity, and their isolation made the difficulties of their suppression greater than the advantages to be gained from it. However, in 1487 Innocent VIII. issued a bull for their extermination, and Alberto de Capitanei, archdeacon of Cremona, put himself at the head of a crusade against them. Attacked in Dauphine and Piedmont at the same time, the Vaudois were hard pressed ; but luckily their enemies were encircled by a fog when marching upon their chief refuge in the valley of the Angrogne, and were repulsed with great loss. After this Charles II., duke of Piedmont, interfered to save his territories from further confusion, and promised the Vaudois peace. They were, however, sorely reduced by the onslaught which had been made upon them, and lost their ancient spirit of independence. When the Lutheran movement began they were ready to sympathize with it, and ultimately to adapt their old beliefs to those of the rising Protestantism. Already there were scattered bodies of Waldenses in Germany who had influenced, and afterwards joined, the Hussites and the Bohemian Brethren. The last step in the development of the Waldensian body was taken in 1530, when two deputies of the Vaudois in Dauphine and Provence, Georges Morel and Pierre Masson, were sent to confer with the German and Swiss Reformers. A letter addressed to GEcolompadius 2 gives an account of their practices and beliefs at that time, and shows us a simple and unlettered community, which was the survival of an attempt to form an esoteric reli gious society within the mediaeval church. It would appear that its members received the sacraments of baptism and the holy communion from the regular priesthood, at all events sometimes, but maintained a discipline of their own and held services for their own edification. Their ministers were called larba, a Provencal word meaning guide. They were chosen from among labouring men, who at the age of twenty-five might ask the body -of ministers to be admitted as candidates. If their character was approved they were taught during the winter months, when work was slack, for a space of three or four years; after that they were sent for two years to serve as menial assistants at a nunnery for women, which curiously enough existed in a recess of the valleys. Then they were admitted to office, after receiving the communion, by the imposition of hands of all ministers present. They went out to preach two by two, and the junior was bound absolutely to obey the senior. Clerical celibacy was their rule, but they admit that it created grave disorders. The ministers received food and clothing from the contributions of the people, but also worked with their hands ; the result of this was that they were very ignorant, and also were grasping after bequests from the dying. The affairs of the church were managed by a general synod held every year. The duties of the barbas were to visit all within their district once a year, hear their confessions, advise and admonish them ; in all services the two ministers sat side by side, and one spoke after the other. In point of doctrine they acknow ledged the seven sacraments, but gave them a symbolical meaning ; they prayed to the Virgin and saints, and admitted auricular confession, but they denied purgatory and the sacrifice of the mass, and did not observe fasts or festivals. After giving this account of themselves they ask for information about several points in a way which shows the exigencies of a rude and isolated society, and finally they say that they have been much disturbed by the 2 Scultetus, Antilles, ii. 294, &c.