Who Were They?
The Waldensians-The People
Revelation 18:1-5
1And after these things I saw another angel come
down from heaven, having great power; and the
earth was lightened with his glory. 2And he cried
mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the
great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the
habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul
spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
3For all nations have drunk of the wine of the
wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth
have committed fornication with her, and the
merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the
abundance of her delicacies. 4And I heard another
voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my
people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that
ye receive not of her plagues. 5For her sins have
reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered
her iniquities.
[JFR]
We will continue our consideration of those groups
that existed in the Dark Ages and during the
Reformation. I again turn to the work presented by
Pastor K. David Oldfield, pastor of the Calvary
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Baptist Church in Post Falls, Idaho. The reason that
I use his work is because he has used The Trail of
Blood as his basis and put the information in a
consistent and concise order. He has saved me hours
upon hours to obtain the same information and put it
in the same order.
[Oldfield]
Originally,
most people’s family names had
some special
significance –
they
had
some meaning. Some of you may know what your last name meant in its original language. My family
name probably means something in its original
language, but
I’m not sure I really want to
know what it is – “Oldfield.” But for the sake of
illustration let’s
make
some
silly
assumptions. Could I assume, based on my name
that I am the legal heir of the oldest property ever
owned by man? Could I go to the World Court in the
Hague and argue that my name proves my rights to
the property first farmed by Adam after he was
driven from Eden? If not Adam’s property,
then perhaps Noah’s – that might have an even
better chance of being true. Of course, the idea
is ludicrous. My name doesn’t prove anything of the
kind. But it does provide an illustration which
applies to this lesson.
In our study of the names applied to the people of
God from the days of the Bible down to today, we
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come
to
the
famous “Waldensians.” I
say “famous,” because they are or were a people
who came out on OUR side of the Dark Ages, we
have more information about them than we do
others
– like the Paulicians and Montanists.
However, after saying that, it must also be said that
they still felt the wrath of Catholicism and
experienced the propensity of fallen Christendom
to re-write history. We have documents of the
Waldensians,
but
we
also
have conflicting
histories of the Protestants and Roman Catholics. So,
we must still be careful in our research, and it
is hard to be absolutely dogmatic about certain
points. The truth is – even Baptist historians are
divided on certain aspects of the Waldensian history.
And that is why I am going to start with Peter Waldo
and the “Poor men of Lyon.”
Peter Waldo was a wealthy merchant from Lyon,
France, about 550 miles northeast of Abigia. After the death
of
a
close
friend,
he
heard
a troubadour singing or talking about the death of
St. Alexius. It is interesting to learn from Wylie and
others that the evangelists of the Albigenses were
sometimes
known
as “troubadours.” The
first definition of “troubadour” in Google is – “a
French medieval lyric poet composing and singing in
Provençal
in
the
11th to
13th centuries.” Anyway, when Peter Waldo took
this troubadour home with him, they became
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engaged
in conversation about
the way
of
salvation and
other Biblical
doctrines. Peter
came under
conviction,
knowing
he
was unprepared for eternity. It appears that he fully
repented of
his
sinfulness
before
God
and accepted the message of the gospel – which of course is Christ Jesus. I can’t tell you with
assurance he became a child of God, but it appears
so, and I’d like to believe so.
At that point, the life of Peter Waldo was completely
changed. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature: old things are passed away; behold, all
things are become new.” He paid off his
creditors, gave his house, vineyards and other
properties to his wife and daughters, and began to
give away the rest of his wealth to the poor and to
other causes... He employed two scholars to
translate the
New
Testament from
Latin into
the Romance
dialect of
the
region
– “Provençal.” Not only did he relieve the poor, but
he also began to {be} just like the people to whom
he offered relief.
He also began to publicly preach and teach his ideas
of simplicity and poverty. “No man can serve two
masters; ye cannot serve God and mammon” as he
had been doing before. In the process he
also condemned the opulent excesses of the Pope
and the Catholic church. From there he preached
against transubstantiation, indulgences, purgatory,
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Catholic
idolatry
and
so
on. As
people
gathered around him, they became known as
the “Poor men of Lyon.” Eventually driven out of
town, Peter, and his followers, when not traveling
around Europe as peddlers and evangelists,
they settled in the high valleys of the Piedmont of
France, amongst the Albigenses.
Waldo was excommunicated by Pope Lucius III in
1184 – please note that date. The doctrines of the
Poor men of Lyons were again condemned by
the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. It was there
that
they
were officially
branded with
the
name “Waldensians” – which was interpreted to
mean followers of Waldo. Ultimately some of these
people joined with
the Calvin and
the Genevan
Protestants. But others remained true to the Truth
and
eventually
became identified with
the
term “Anabaptists,” which were condemned by
those same Genevan Protestants.
Perhaps you wondered why I begin this lesson with
that illustration about my last name. It is because, I
don’t believe that Peter Waldo had anything to do
with the origin of the Waldenses. The names
are simply
coincidental. They
are
like “Oldfield” and my claims for the pasture land
used by Abraham outside of Hebron.
So, what is the historical antiquity of the Waldenses?
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If
you
read
the Wikipedia
article on
the “Waldenses,” or
most
of
the Protestant
histories of these people, you’ll be told that the
name is derived from Peter Waldo. Most
dictionaries repeat what other dictionaries say,
declaring that the etymology of the word comes
from “Waldo.” In a few minutes, I will show you
how that is impossible. But before we get there, I’ll
just quote what historian Robert Robinson says
– “Vaudois. This is the true name which they gave
themselves. The word Vaudois signifies inhabitant of
the vaux, or vallies; and it is here to be understood
of the vallies of the Savoy, and the vallies of
Piedmont. Accurate Latin writers translate the word
Vallenses. Less attentive authors call them
Wallenses.” Orchard says, “They call themselves
Valdenses because they abide in a valley of tears.” In
other words, according to some historians,
the Waldenses derive their name from the valleys in
which they lived, not from man from Lyon named
Peter Waldo, who moved in among them.
Almost every Baptist historian has a chapter or two
on the people of the valleys – Orchard, Christian,
Armitage, Jarrel, Cramp and so on. But it might
be argued that their
opinions may
have
been clouded by their Baptist preferences. Some of
them earnestly wanted to prove the antiquity of
these people, and as a result their credibility and
accuracy is to be doubted. But there have also
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been a number of other major histories written
about these people of the Alps – Alex Muston,
Samuel Moreland, J.A. Wylie, to mention but
three. Not one of the men I just mentioned was a
Baptist. They were Protestants – Presbyterians,
Anglicans. None of them were trying to prove the
doctrine of church perpetuity and succession. They
only wanted to honestly present the facts about the
Vallenses. But at the same time, they may
have disliked the Church of Rome – just a little bit.
Along
with
most
Baptist
historians, these
Protestants take the Waldenses back to the
Apostles.
Moreland was the son of a Church of England pastor,
and his book clearly shows his bias. He quotes with
approval another Protestant who I didn’t recognize,
saying – “As for the Waldenses, give me leave to call
them the very seed of the Primitive and purer
Christian Church, being those who have been so
upheld (as is clear and manifest) by the admirable
Providence of God, that neither those infinite storms
and tempests whereby the whole Christian World has
been shaken for so many ages together, and at length
the western parts so miserably oppressed by that
Bishop of Rome, falsely so called, nor those horrible
persecutions which have been directly raised against
them, were ever able so far to prevail upon them, as
to make them bend or yield a voluntary subject to the
Roman Tyranny and Idolatry.”
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In Moreland’s third chapter he declares that there
were churches on the Italian side of the Alps since
the beginning of the Christian era. He says that
they remained in fellowship with other churches,
including the church in Rome “so long as it retained
the true religion.” In the year 794, a synod of
pastors was held in Frankfort, at which were many
Italian bishops, and it condemned the second
Nicene Council for decreeing image worship. In
other words, in the eighth century there
were churches in northern Italy who were breaking
fellowship with Rome because of growing heresy.
He says that these churches were planted by the
Apostles, their disciples and successors. “But when
as the Church of Rome began to corrupt itself, and
would by no means be persuaded to retain the purity
of that Apostolical doctrine and divine worship, then
those of the Valleys began to separate themselves
from them.” “And this is evident by divers very
ancient manuscripts, long since laid up and
preserved in the Valley of Pragela, which do strictly
strike and oppose the errors of the church of
Rome.” Moreland is saying that there has been a
protesting,
or
Protestant
people,
living
the Piedmont and the Alps since the moment the
Roman Catholics began corrupting the faith. They
have been there since the first and second
centuries until they were nearly destroyed by the
Catholics in 1655. He is not trying to defend the
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doctrine of church perpetuity, but that is in fact what
he does.
J. A. Wylie was a Presbyterian minister who
wrote “History of the Waldenses.” As strange as it
sounds, the
copy I
possess
was published by
the Seventh Day Adventists. Obviously, neither
one was trying to promote Baptist doctrine or
Baptist churches.
In Wylie’s first chapter he wrote – “It was the ninth
century, and superstitious beliefs and idolatrous
rites were overspreading the church, when Claudius,
bishop of Turin (in the foothills of the Alps)… set
himself to arrest the growing corruption with all the
fervor of a living faith, and the vigor of a courageous
and powerful intellect. When Claude went to his
grave, about the year 840, the battle, although not
altogether
dropped,
was
but
languidly
maintained.” So, the Pope believed that he had the
advantage
and renewed
his
attack on
these
churches. “Petrus Damianus, bishop of Ostia, and
Anselm, bishop of Lucca, were dispatched by the
pontiff to receive the submission of the Lombard
churches, (but) the popular tumults amid which that
submission was extorted sufficiently show that the
spirit of Claude still lingered at the foot of the Alps.”
After a few more paragraphs like this Wylie
concludes by saying, “What has just been related
respecting the dioceses of Milan and Turin settles the
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question of the apostolicity of the churches of the
Waldensian valleys. It is not necessary to show that
missionaries were sent from Rome in the first age to
plant Christianity in these valleys, nor is it necessary
to show that these churches have existed as distinct
and separate communities from early days; enough
that they formed a part, as unquestionably they did,
of the great evangelical church of the north of Italy.
This is the proof at once of their apostolicity and
their independence. It attests their descent from
apostolic men, if doctrine be the life of churches.
When their coreligionists on the plains entered
within the pale of the Roman jurisdiction, they
retired within the mountains, and spurning alike the
tyrannical yoke and the corrupt tenets of the Church
of the Seven Hills, they preserved in its purity and
simplicity the faith their fathers had handed down to
them. Rome manifestly was the schismatic; she it was
that had abandoned what was once the common faith
of Christendom, leaving by that step to all who
remained on the old ground the indisputably valid
title of the true church.”
Wylie goes on – “There is a singular concurrence of
evidence in favor of their high antiquity. Their
traditions invariably point to an unbroken descent
from the earliest times, as regards their religious
belief. The ‘Nobla Leycon,’ which dates from the
year 1100, goes to prove that the Waldenses of
Piedmont did not owe their rise to Peter Waldo of
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Lyons, who did not appear till the latter half of that
century (1160). The ‘Nobla Leycon,’’ though a
poem, is in reality a confession of faith, and could
have been composed only after some considerable
study
of
the
system
of
Christianity,
in
contradistinction to the errors of Rome. How could a
church have arisen with such a document in her
hands? Or how could these herdsmen and
vinedressers, shut up in their mountains, have
detected the errors against which they bore
testimony, and found their way to the truths of which
they made open profession in times of darkness like
these? If we grant that their religious beliefs were the
heritage of former ages, handed down from an
evangelical ancestry, all is plain; but if we maintain
that they were the discovery of the men of those days,
we assert what approaches almost to a miracle.
Their greatest enemies, Claude Seyssel of Turin
(1517) and Reynerius the Inquisitor (1250), have
admitted their antiquity, and stigmatized them as
“the most dangerous of all heretics, because the most
ancient.”
I love it when serious author says something in a
humorous sort of way. Baptist W.A. Jarrel, quotes
an encyclopedia which was printed in the first half of
the
19th century.
He
wrote
– “The Penny
Encyclopedia, at great expense, published by one of
the most learned societies of Europe, called ‘The
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge’ says
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of the Waldenses: ‘This little community is
remarkable for having from time immemorial kept
itself separate from the church of Rome, in ages when
that church is generally considered as having been
the only existing church in the West. We have
memorials of the doctrines of the Vaudois, written in
the early part of the twelfth century. The ‘Nobla
Leycon,’ a poem written in the Vaudois dialect,
records in the text its having been composed in the
twelfth century.” It speaks of the missions of the
Apostles and of the primitive church and of certain
practices that were introduced afterwards in its
bosom, of simony, the institution of masses and
prayers for the dead, of absolution and other tenets
of the church of Rome which it rejects.” “In one
place it speaks of censure of the practice of all the
popes… And in another says: ‘Now after the
Apostles, were certain teachers who went on
teaching the way of Jesus Christ, our Savior, some of
whom are found at the present day, but they are
known to a very few,’ and after describing the life
and conversation of such teachers, the text proceeds:
‘Such a one is called a Vaudois.’ There is also a
confession of faith of the Waldenses, bearing date A.
D. 1120… denying purgatory, administering only
two sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s supper, as
signs or visible forms of the invisible grace;
discarding the feasts and vigils of saints, the
abstinence of flesh on certain days, the mass, etc.
“Another MS. dated 1100, speaks of the Waldenses
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as having continued the same doctrines from time
immemorial, in continued descent from father to son,
even from the times of the Apostles. Besides these
there are two controversial treatises, one entitled ‘Of
Antichrist,’ and the other upon ‘The Intercession of
the Saints,’ which seem to bear this internal evidence
of their antiquity, that in enumerating the various
tenets of the Roman church, which the Waldenses
reject, they speak of the doctrine of the real presence
and of the adoration of the Virgin Mary and all the
saints, but in so doing they do not use the words
“transubstantiation”
and
“canonization”
suggesting a very early date. In other words, they
condemn certain Roman Catholic doctrines, but they
don’t use the language common in the Reformation
and pre-reformation days.
… My primary purpose in this lesson is to impress
upon you that the churches of Vaudois were
ancient – they predated Roman Catholicism. And
they predated Peter Waldo. Next week, we will
return to the doctrines of the Waldenses.
I would not be ashamed to be called a descendant of
the Vaudois or the Waldensians.
Conclusion
We will continue with the doctrines of the
Waldenses for our next chapter.
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