Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/416

 Readings in European History on account of these deficiencies and on account of the fact that he was accused of incontinence and quarrelsomeness, judged that our examination showed that he was not a suit- able person to whom to give the church. 150. Waldo of Lyons, the founder of the Walden- sians. (From an anonymous chronicle written about 1218.) III. THE WALDENSIAN AND ALBIGENSIAN HERETICS And during the same year, that is the n73d since the Lord's Incarnation, there was at Lyons in France a certain citizen, Waldo by name, who had made himself much money by wicked usury. One Sunday, when he had joined a crowd which he saw gathered around a troubadour, he was smitten by his words and, taking him to his house, he took care to hear him at length. The passage he was reciting was how the holy Alexis died a blessed death in his father's house. When morning had come the prudent citizen hurried to the schools of theology to seek counsel for his soul, and when he was taught many ways of going to God, he asked the master what way was more certain and more perfect than all others. The master answered him with this text : " If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast," etc. Then Waldo went to his wife and gave her the choice of keeping his personal property or his real estate, namely, what he had in ponds, groves and fields, houses, rents, vineyards, mills, and fishing rights. She was much displeased at hav- ing to make this choice, but she kept the real estate. From his personal property he made restitution to those whom he had treated unjustly; a great part of it he gave to his two little daughters, who, without their mother's knowledge, he placed in the convent of Font Evrard; but the greatest part of his money he spent for the poor. A very great famine was then oppressing France and Germany. The prudent citizen, Waldo, gave bread, with vegetables and meat, to every one who came to him for three days in every week from Pentecost to the feast of St. Peter's bonds. At the Assumption of the blessed Virgin, casting some money among the village poor, he cried, " No man can serve