STATE AND PROSPECTS OF THE VAUDOIS CHURCH.
Dawn of the Reformation--Waldensian Territory a Portion of
Italy--Two-fold Mission of Italy--Origin of the Vaudois--Evidence
of Romanist Historians--Evidence of their own Historians--Evidence
arising from the Noble Leycon from their Geographical
Position--Grandeur of the Vaudois Annals--Their Martyr Age--Their
Missionary Efforts--Present
Condition--Population--Churches--Schools--Stipends--Students--Social
and Moral Superiority--Political and Social Disabilities--The Year
1848 their Exodus--Their Mission--A Sabbath in the Vaudois
Sanctuary--Anecdote--Lesson Taught by their History.
How often during the long night must the Vaudois have looked from their
mountain asylum upon a world engulphed in error, with the mingled wonder
and dismay with which we may imagine the antediluvian fathers gazing
from the window of their ark upon the bosom of the shoreless flood! What
an appalling and mysterious dispensation! The fountains of the great
deep had a second time been broken up, and each successive century saw
the waters rising. Would Christianity ever re-appear? Or had the Church
completed her triumphs, and finished her course? And was time to close
upon a world shrouded in darkness, with nought but this feeble beacon
burning amid the Alps? Such were the questions which must often have
pressed upon the minds of the Vaudois.
Like Noah, too, they sent forth, from time to time, messengers from
their ark, to go hither and thither, and see if yet there remained
anywhere, in any part of the earth, any worshippers of the true God.
They returned to their mountain hold, with the sorrowful tidings that
nowhere had they found any remnant of the true Church, and that the
whole world wondered after the beast. The Vaudois, however, had power
given them to maintain their testimony. In the midst of universal
apostacy, and in the face of the most terrible persecutions, they bore
witness against Rome. And ever as that Church added another error to her
creed, the Vaudois added another article to their testimony; and in this
way Romish idolatry and gospel truth were developed by equal stages, and
an adequate testimony was maintained all through that gloomy period. The
stars of the ecclesiastical firmament fell unto the earth, like the
untimely figs of the fig-tree; but the lamp of the Alps went not out.
The Vaudois, not unconscious of their sacred office, watched their
heaven-kindled beacon with the vigilance of men inspired by the hope
that it would yet attract the eyes of the world. At length--thrice
welcome sight!--the watch-fires of the German reformers, kindled at
their own, began to streak the horizon. They knew that the hour of
darkness had passed, and that the time was near when the Church would
leave her asylum, and go forth to sow the fields of the world with the
immortal seed of truth.
We must be permitted to remark here, that the fact that the Waldensian
territory is really a part of Italy, and that the Vaudois, or Valdesi,
or People of the Valleys (for all three signify the same thing), are
strictly an Italian people, invests ITALY with a new and interesting
light. In all ages, Pagan as well as Christian, Italy has been the seat
of a twofold influence,--the one destructive, the other regenerative. In
classic times, Italy sent forth armies to subjugate the world, and
letters to enlighten it. Since the Christian era, her mission has been
of the same mixed character. She has been at once the seat of idolatry
and the asylum of Christianity. Her idolatry is of a grosser and more
perfected type than was the worship of Baal of old; and her Christianity
possesses a more spiritual character, and a more powerfully operative
genius, than did the institute of Moses. We ought, then, to think of
Italy as the land of the martyr as well as of the persecutor,--as not
only the land whence our Popery has come, which has cost us so many
martyrs of whom we are proud, and has caused the loss of so many souls
which we mourn,--but also as the fountain of that blessed light which
broke mildly on the world in the preaching of John Huss, and more
powerfully, a century afterwards, in the reformation of the sixteenth
century. Though there was no audible voice, and no visible miracle, the
Waldenses were as really chosen to be the witnesses of God during the
long night of papal idolatry, as were the Jews to be his witnesses
during the night of pagan idolatry. They are sprung, according to the
more credible historical accounts, from the unfallen Church of Rome;
they are the direct lineal descendants of the primitive Christians of
Italy; they never bowed the knee to the modern Baal; their mountain
sanctuary has remained unpolluted by idolatrous rites; and if they were
called to affix to their testimony the seal of a cruel martyrdom, they
did not fall till they had scattered over the various countries of
Europe the seed of a future harvest. Their death was a martyrdom endured
in behalf of Christendom; and scarcely was it accomplished till they
were raised to life again, in the appearance of numerous churches both
north and south of the Alps. Why is it that all persons and systems in
this world of ours must die in order to enter into life? We enter into
spiritual life by the death of our old nature; we enter into eternal
life by the death of the body; and Christianity, too, that she might
enter into the immortality promised her on earth, had to die. The words
of our Lord, spoken in reference to his own death, are true also in
reference to the martyrdom of the Waldensian Church:--"Verily verily, I
say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it
abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."
The first question touching this extraordinary people respects their
origin. When did they come into being, and of what stock are they
sprung? This question forces itself with singular power upon the mind of
the traveller, who, after traversing cities and countries covered with
darkness palpable as that of Egypt of old, and seeing nought around him
but image-worship, lights unexpectedly, in the midst of these mountains,
upon a little community, enjoying the knowledge of the true God, and
worshipping Him after the scriptural and spiritual manner of prophets
and apostles of old. He naturally seeks for an explanation of a fact so
extraordinary. Who kindled that solitary lamp? Their enemies have
striven to represent them as dissenters from Rome of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries; and it is a common error even among ourselves to
speak of them as the followers of Peter Waldo, the pious merchant of
Lyons, and to date their rise from the year 1160. We cannot here go into
the controversy; suffice it to say, that historical documents exist
which show that both the Albigenses and the Waldenses were known long
before Peter Waldo was heard of. Their own traditions and ancient
manuscripts speak of them as having maintained the same doctrine "from
time immemorial, in continued descent from father to son, even from the
times of the apostles." The Nobla Leycon,--the Confession of Faith of
the Vaudois Church, of the date of 1100,--claims on their behalf the
same ancient origin; Ecbert, a writer who flourished in 1160--the year
of Peter Waldo--speaks of them as "perverters," who had existed during
many ages; and Reinerus, the inquisitor, who lived a century afterwards,
calls them the most dangerous of all sects, because the most ancient;
"for some say," adds he, "that it has continued to flourish since the
time of Sylvester; others, from the time of the apostles." This last is
a singular corroboration of the authenticity of the Nobla Leycon, which
refers to the corruptions which began under Sylvester as the cause of
their separation from the communion of the Church of Rome. Rorenco, the
grand prior of St Roch, who was commissioned to make enquiries
concerning them, after hinting that possibly they were detached from the
Church by Claude, the good Bishop of Turin, in the eighth century, says
"that they were not a new sect in the ninth and tenth centuries."
Campian the Jesuit says of them, that they were reputed to be "more
ancient than the Roman Church." Nor is it without great weight, as the
historian Leger observes, that not one of the Dukes of Savoy or their
ministers ever offered the slightest contradiction to the oft-reiterated
assertions of the Vaudois, when petitioning for liberty of conscience,
"We are descendants," said they, "of those who, from father to son, have
preserved entire the apostolical faith in the valleys which we now
occupy."[1] We have no doubt that, were the ecclesiastical archives of
Lombardy, especially those of Turin and Milan, carefully searched,
documents would be found which would place beyond all doubt what the
scattered proofs we have referred to render all but a certainty.
The historical evidence for the antiquity of the Vaudois Church is
greatly strengthened by a consideration of the geographical position of
"the Valleys." They lie on what anciently was the great high-road
between Italy and France. There existed a frequent intercourse betwixt
the Churches of the two countries; pastors and private members were
continually going and returning; and what so likely to follow this
intercourse as the evangelization of these valleys? There is a tradition
extant, that the Apostle Paul visited them, in his journey from Rome to
Spain. Be this as it may, one can scarce doubt that the feet of Irenaeus,
and of other early fathers, trod the territory of the Vaudois, and
preached the gospel by the waters of the Pelice, and under the rocks and
chestnut trees of Bobbio. Indeed, we can scarce err in fixing the first
rise of the Vaudois Churches at even an earlier period,--that of
apostolic times. So soon as the Church began to be wasted by
persecution, the remote corners of Italy were sought as an asylum; and
from the days of Nero the primitive Christians may have begun to gather
round those mountains to which the ark of God was ultimately removed,
and amid which it so long dwelt.
"I go up to the ancient hills,
Where chains may never be;
Where leap in joy the torrent rills;
Where man may worship God alone, and free.
There shall an altar and a camp
Impregnably arise;
There shall be lit a quenchless lamp,
To shine unwavering through the open skies.
And song shall 'midst the rocks be heard,
And fearless prayer ascend;
While, thrilling to God's holy Word,
The mountain-pines in adoration bend.
And there the burning heart no more
Its deep thought shall suppress;
But the long-buried truth shall pour
Free currents thence, amidst the wilderness."
How could a small body of peasants among the mountains have discovered
the errors of Rome, and have thrown off her yoke, at a time when the
whole of Europe received the one and bowed to the other? This could not
have happened in the natural order of things. Above all, if they did not
arise till the twelfth or thirteenth century, how came they to frame so
elaborate and full a testimony as the _Noble Lesson_ against Rome? A
Church that has a creed must have a history. Nor was it in a year, or
even in a single age, that they could have compiled such a creed. It
could acquire form and substance only in the course of centuries,--the
Vaudois adding article to article, as Rome added error to error. We can
have no reasonable doubt, then, that in the Vaudois community we have a
relic of the primitive Church. Compared with them, the house of Savoy,
which ruled so long and rigorously over them, is but of yesterday. They
are more ancient than the Roman Church itself. They have come down to us
from the world before the papal flood, bearing in their heaven-built and
heaven-guarded ark the sacred oracles; and now they stand before us as a
witness to the historic truth of Christianity, and a living copy, in
doctrine, in government, and in manners, of the Church of the Apostles.
Fain would we tell at length the heroic story of the Vaudois. We use no
exaggerated speech,--no rhetorical flourish,--but speak advisedly, when
we say, that their history, take it all in all, is the brightest, the
purest, the most heroic, in the annals of the world. Their martyr-age
lasted five centuries; and we know of nothing, whether we regard the
sacredness of the cause, or the undaunted valour, the pure patriotism,
and the lofty faith, in which the Vaudois maintained it, that can be
compared with their glorious struggle. This is an age of hero-worship.
Let us go to the mountains of the Waldenses: there we will find heroes
"unsung by poet, by senators unpraised," yet of such gigantic stature,
that the proudest champions of ancient Rome are dwarfed in their
presence. It was no transient flash of patriotism and valour that broke
forth on the soil of the Vaudois: that country saw sixteen generations
of heroes, and five centuries of heroic deeds. Men came from pruning
their vines or tending their flocks, to do feats of arms which Greece
never equalled, and which throw into the shade the proudest exploits of
Rome. The Jews maintained the worship of the true God in their country
for many ages, and often gained glorious victories; but the Jews were a
nation; they possessed an ample territory, rich in resources; they were
trained to war, moreover, and marshalled and led on by skilful and
courageous chiefs. But the Waldenses were a primitive and simple people;
they had neither king nor leader; their only sovereign was Jehovah;
their only guides were their _Barbes_. The struggle under the Maccabees
was a noble one; but it attained not the grandeur of that of the
Vaudois. It was short in comparison; nor do its single exploits, brave
as they were, rise to the same surpassing pitch of heroism. When read
after the story of the Vaudois, the annals of Greece and Rome even,
fruitful though they be in deeds of heroism, appear cold and tame. In
short, we know of no other instance in the world in which a great and
sacred object has been prosecuted from father to son for such a length
of time, with a patriotism so pure, a courage so unshrinking, a
devotion so entire, and amidst such a multitude of sacrifices,
sufferings, and woes, as in the case of the Vaudois. The incentives to
courage which have stimulated others to brave death were wanting in
their case. If they triumphed, they had no admiring circus to welcome
them with shouts, and crown them with laurel; and if they fell, they
knew that there awaited their ashes no marble tomb, and that no lay of
poet would ever embalm their memory. They looked to a greater Judge for
their reward. This was the source of that patriotism, the purest the
world has ever seen, and of that valour, the noblest of which the annals
of mankind make mention.
Innocent III., who hid under a sanctimonious guise the boundless
ambition and quenchless malignity of Lucifer, was the first to blow the
trumpet of extermination against the poor Vaudois. And from the middle
of the thirteenth to the end of the seventeenth century they suffered
not fewer than thirty persecutions. During that long period they could
not calculate upon a single year's immunity from invasion and slaughter.
From the days of Innocent their history becomes one long harrowing tale
of papal plots, interdicts, excommunications, of royal proscriptions and
perfidies, of attack, of plunder, of rapine, of massacre, and of death
in every conceivable and horrible way,--by the sword, by fire, and by
unutterable tortures and torments. The Waldenses had no alternative but
to submit to these, or deny their Saviour. Yet, driven to arms,--ever
their last resource,--they waxed valiant in fight, and put to flight the
armies of the aliens. They taught their enemies that the battle was not
to the strong. When the cloud gathered round their hills, they removed
their wives and little ones to some rock-girt valley, to the caverns of
which they had taken the precaution of removing their corn and oil, and
even their baking ovens; and there, though perhaps they did not muster
more than a thousand fighting men in all, they waited, with calm
confidence in God, the onset of their foes. In these encounters,
sustained by Heaven, they performed prodigies of valour. The combined
armies of France and Piedmont recoiled from their shock. Their invaders
were almost invariably overthrown, sometimes even annihilated; and their
sovereigns, the Dukes of Savoy, on whose memory there rests the
indelible blot of having pursued this loyal, industrious, and virtuous
people with ceaseless and incredible injustice, cruelty, treachery, and
perfidy, finding that they could not subdue them, were glad to offer
them terms of peace, and grant them new guarantees of the quiet
possession of their ancient territory. Thus an invisible omnipotent arm
was ever extended over the Vaudois and their land, delivering them
miraculously in times of danger, and preserving them as a peculiar
people, that by their instrumentality Jehovah might accomplish his
designs of mercy towards the world.
Nor were the Waldenses content simply to maintain their faith. Even when
fighting for existence, they recognised their obligations as a
missionary Church, and strove to diffuse over the surrounding countries
the light that burned amid their own mountains. Who has not heard of the
Pra de la Torre, in the valley of Angrona? This is a beautiful little
meadow, encircled with a barrier of tremendous mountains, and watered by
a torrent, which, flowing from an Alpine summit, _La Sella Vecchia_,
descends with echoing noise through the dark gorges and shining dells of
the deep and romantic valley. This was the inner sanctuary of the
Vaudois. Here their _Barbes_ sat; here was their school of the prophets;
and from this spot were sent forth their pastors and missionaries into
France, Germany, and Britain, as well as into their own valleys. It was
a native and missionary of these valleys, Gualtero Lollard, which gave
his name, in the fourteenth century, to the Lollards of England, whose
doctrines were the day-spring of the Reformation in our own country. The
zeal of the Vaudois was seen in the devices they fell upon to distribute
the Bible, and along with that a knowledge of the gospel. Colporteurs
travelled as pedlars; and, after displaying their laces and jewels, they
drew forth, and offered for sale, or as a gift, a gem of yet greater
value. In this way the Word of God found entrance alike into cottage and
baronial castle. It is a supposed scene of this kind which the following
lines depict:--
Oh! lady fair, these silks of mine
Are beautiful and rare,--
The richest web of the Indian loom
Which beauty's self might wear;
And these pearls are pure and mild to behold,
And with radiant light they vie:
I have brought them with me a weary way;--
Will my gentle lady buy?
* * * * *
Oh! lady fair, I have got a gem,
Which a purer lustre flings
Than the diamond flash of the jewell'd crown
On the lofty brow of kings:
A wonderful pearl of exceeding price,
Whose virtue shall not decay,--
Whose light shall be as a spell to thee,
And a blessing on the way!
* * * * *
The cloud went off from the pilgrim's brow,
As a small and meagre book,
Unchased by gold or diamond gem,
From his folding robe he took.
Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price;--
May it prove as such to thee!
Nay, keep thy gold--I ask it not;
_For the Word of God is free!_
* * * * *
And she hath left the old gray halls,
Where an evil faith hath power,
And the courtly knights of her father's train,
And the maidens of her bower;
And she hath gone to the Vaudois vale,
By lordly feet untrod,
Where the poor and needy of earth are rich
In the perfect love of God!
But, turning from this inviting theme, to which volumes only could do
justice, let us lift the curtain, and look at this simple, heroic
people, as they appear now, after the "great tribulation" of five
centuries. The Protestant population of "the Valleys" is 22,000 and
upwards. They have fifteen churches and parishes, and twenty-five
persons in all engaged in the work of the ministry. This was their state
in 1851. Since then, two other parishes, Pignerolo and Turin, have been
added. To each church a school is attached, with numerous sub-schools.
It is to the honour of the Vaudois that they led the way in that system
of general education which is extending itself, more or less, in every
State in Europe. Repeated edicts of the Waldensian Table rendered it
imperative upon the community to provide means of religious and
elementary education for all the children capable of receiving it. They
have a college at La Tour, fifteen primary schools, and upwards of one
hundred secondary schools. The whole Waldensian youth is at school
during winter. In their congregations, the sacrament of the Supper is
dispensed four times in the year; and it is rare that a young person
fails to become a communicant after arriving at the proper age. There
are two preaching days at every dispensation of the ordinance; and the
collections made on these occasions are devoted to the poor. There was
at that time no plate at the church-door on ordinary Sabbaths; and no
contributions were made by the people for the support of the gospel. I
presume this error is rectified now, however; for it was then in
contemplation to adopt the plan in use in Scotland, and elsewhere, of a
penny-a-week subscription. The stipends of the Waldensian pastors are
paid from funds contributed by England and Holland. Each receives
fifteen hundred francs yearly,--about sixty-two pounds sterling. Their
incomes are supplemented by a small glebe, which is attached to each
_living_. The contribution for the schools and the hospitals is
compulsory. In their college, in 1851, there were seventy-five students.
Some were studying for the medical profession, some for commercial
pursuits; others were qualifying as teachers, and some few as pastors.
The Waldenses inhabit their hills, much as the Jews did their Palestine.
Each man lives on his ancestral acres; and his farm or vineyard is not
too large to be cultivated by himself and his family. There are amongst
them no titles of honour, and scarce any distinctions of rank and
circumstances. They are a nation of vine-dressers, husbandmen, and
shepherds. In their habits they are frugal and simple. Their peaceful
deportment and industrial virtues have won the admiration, and extorted
the acknowledgments, even of their enemies. In the cultivation of their
fields, in the breed and management of their cattle and their flocks, in
the arrangements of their dairies, and in the cleanliness of their
cabins, they far excel the rest of the Piedmontese. To enlarge their
territory, they have had recourse to the same device with the Jews of
old; and the Vaudois mountains, like the Judaean hills, exhibit in many
places terraces, rising in a continuous series up the hill-side, sown
with grain or planted with the vine. Every span of earth is cultivated.
The Vaudois excel the rest of the Piedmontese in point of morals, just
as much as they excel them in point of intelligence and industry. All
who have visited their abodes, and studied their character, admit, that
they are incomparably the most moral community on the Continent of
Europe. When a Vaudois commits a crime,--a rare occurrence,--the whole
valleys mourn, and every family feels as if a cloud rested on its own
reputation. No one can pass a day among them without remarking the
greater decorum of their deportment, and the greater kindliness and
civility of their address. I do not mean to say that, either in respect
of intelligence or piety, they are equal to the natives of our own
highly favoured Scotland. They are surrounded on all sides by
degradation and darkness; they have just escaped from ages of
proscription; books are few among their mountains; and they have
suffered, too, from the inroads of French infidelity; an age of
Moderatism has passed over them, as over ourselves; and from these evils
they have not yet completely recovered. Still, with all these drawbacks,
they are immensely superior to any other community abroad; and, in
simplicity of heart, and purity of life, present us with no feeble
transcript of the primitive Church, of which they are the
representatives.
The lotus-flower is said to lift its head above the muddy current of the
Nile at the precise moment of sunrise. It was indicative, perhaps, of
the dawning of a new day upon the Vaudois and Italy, that that Church
experienced lately a revival. That revival was almost immediately
followed by the boon of political and social emancipation, and by a new
and enlarged sphere of spiritual action. The year 1848 opened the doors
of their ancient prison, and called them to go forth and evangelize.
Formerly, all attempts to extend themselves beyond their mountain abode,
and to mingle with the nations around them, were uniformly followed by
disaster. The time was not come; and the integrity of their faith, and
the accomplishment of their high mission, would have been perilled by
their leaving their asylum. But when the revolutions of 1848 threw the
north of Italy open to their action, then came forth the decree of
Charles Albert, declaring the Vaudois free subjects of Piedmont, and the
Church of "the Valleys" a free Church. The disabilities under which the
Waldenses groaned up till this very recent period may well astonish us,
now that we look back to them. Up till 1848 the Waldensian was
proscribed, in both his civil and religious rights, beyond the limits of
his own valleys. Out of his special territory he dared not possess a
foot-breadth of land; and, if obliged to sell his paternal fields to a
stranger, he could not buy them back again. He was shut out from the
colleges of his country; he could not practise as a member of any of the
learned professions; every avenue to distinction and wealth was closed
against him,--his only crime being his religion. He could not marry but
with one of his own people; he could not build a sanctuary,--he could
not even bury his dead,--beyond the limits of "the Valleys." The
children were often taken away and trained in the idolatrous rites of
Romanism, and the unhappy parents had no remedy. They were slandered,
too, to their sovereigns, as men marked by hideous deformities; and
great was the surprise of Charles Albert to find, on a visit he paid to
the Valleys but a little before granting their emancipation, that the
Vaudois were not the monsters he had been taught to believe. I have been
told, that to this very day they carry their dead to the grave in open
coffins, to give ocular demonstration of the falsehood of the calumnies
propagated by their enemies, that the corpses of these heretics are
sometimes consumed by invisible flames, or carried off by evil spirits
before burial. But now all these disabilities are at an end. The year
1848 swept them all away; and a bulwark of constitutional feeling and
action has since grown up around the Vaudois, cutting off the prospect
of these disabilities ever being re-imposed, unless, indeed, Austria and
France should combine to put down the Piedmontese constitution. But
hitherto that nation which gave religious liberty to the people of God
has had its own political liberties wonderfully protected.
The year 1848, then, was the "exodus" of the Vaudois. And why were they
brought out of their house of bondage? Surely they have yet a work to
do. Their great mission, which was to bear witness for the truth during
the domination of Antichrist, they nobly fulfilled; but are they to have
no part in diffusing over the plains of Italy that light which they so
long and so carefully preserved? This undoubtedly is their mission. All
the leadings of Providence declare it to be so. They were visited with
revival, brought from their Alpine asylum, had full liberty of action
given them, all at the moment that Italy had begun to be open to the
gospel. They are the native evangelists of their own country: let them
remember their own and their fathers' sufferings, and avenge themselves
on Rome, not with the sword, but the Bible. And let British Christians
aid them in this great work, assured that the door to Rome and Italy
lies through the valleys of the Vaudois.
The last day of my sojourn in the Waldensian territory was Sabbath the
19th of October, and I worshipped with that people,--rare enjoyment!--in
their sanctuary. The day broke amid high winds and torrents of rain. The
clouds now veiled, now revealed, the hill-side, with its variously
tinted foliage, and its white torrents dashing headlong to the vale. The
mighty form of the Castelluzzo was seen struggling through mists; and
high above the winds rose the roar of the swollen waters. At a quarter
before ten, the church-bell, heard through the pauses of the storm, came
pealing from the heights. The old church of La Tour,--the new and more
elegant fabric which stands in the village was not then opened,--is
sweetly placed at the base of the Castelluzzo, embowered amid vines and
fragrant foliage, and commanding a noble view of the plains of Piedmont.
Even amidst the driving mists and showers its beauty could not fail to
be felt. The scenery was--
"A blending of all beauties, streams and dells,
Fruits, foliage, crag, wood, corn-field, mountain, vine."
General Beckwith did me the honour to call at my hotel, and I walked
with him to the church. Outside the building--for worship had not
commenced--were numerous little conversational parties; and around it
lay the Vaudois dead, sleeping beneath the shadow of their giant rock,
and free, at last and for ever, from the oppressor. They had found
another "exodus" from their house of bondage than that which King
Charles Albert had granted their living descendants. We entered, and
found the schoolmaster reading the liturgy. This service consists of two
chapters of the Bible, with at times the reflections of Ostervald
annexed; during it the congregation came dropping in,--the husbandmen
and herdsmen of the Val Lucerna,--and took their seats. In a little the
elders entered in a body, and seated themselves round a table in front
of the pulpit. Next came the pastor, habited, like our Scotch ministers,
in gown and bands, when the regent instantly ceased. The pastor began
the public worship by giving out a psalm. He next offered a prayer,
read the ten commandments, and then preached. The sermon was an
half-hour's length precisely, and was recited, not read; for I was told
the Waldenses have a strong dislike to read discourses. The minister of
La Tour is an old man, and was trained under an order of things
unfavourable to that higher standard of pulpit qualification, and that
fuller manifestation of evangelical and spiritual feeling, which, I am
glad to say, characterize all the younger Waldensian pastors. The people
listened with great attention to his scriptural discourse; but I was
sorry to observe that there were few Bibles among them,--a circumstance
that may be explained perhaps with reference to the state of the
weather, and the long distance which many of them have to travel. The
storm had the effect at least of thinning the audience, and bringing it
down from about 800, its usual number, to 500 or so. The church was an
oblong building, with the pulpit on one of the side walls, and a deep
gallery, resting on thick, heavy pillars, on the other. The men and
women occupied separate places. With this exception, I saw nothing to
remind me that I was out of Scotland. One may find exactly such another
congregation in almost any part of our Scottish Highlands, with this
difference, that the complexions of the Vaudois are darker than that of
our Highlanders. They have the same hardy, weather-beaten features, and
the same robust frames. I saw many venerable and some noble heads among
them,--men who would face the storms of the Alps for the lost wanderer
of the flock, and the edicts and soldiers of Rome for their home-steads
and altars. There they sat, worshipping their fathers' God, amid their
fathers' mountains,--victorious over twelve centuries of proscription
and persecution, and holding their sanctuaries and their hills in
defiance of Europe. In the evening Professor Malan preached in the
schoolhouse of Margarita, a small village on the ascent from La Tour to
Castelluzzo. He discoursed with great unction, and the crowded audience
hung upon his lips.
On my way back to my hotel, Professor Malan narrated to me a touching
anecdote, which I must here put down. Monsignor Mazzarella was a judge
in one of the High Courts of Sicily; but when the atrocities of the
re-action began, he refused to be a tool of the Government, and resigned
his office. He came to Turin, like numerous other political refugees;
and in one of the re-unions of the workmen, he learned the doctrine of
"justification by faith." Soon thereafter, that is, in the summer of
1851, he and a few companions paid a visit to the Vaudois Church. A
public meeting, over which Professor Malan presided, was held at La
Tour, to welcome M. Mazzarella and his friends. Professor Malan
expressed his delight at seeing them in "the Valleys;" welcomed them as
the first fruits of Italy; and, in the name of the Vaudois Church, gave
them the right hand of fellowship. The reply of the converted exiles was
truly affecting, and moved the assembly to tears. Rising up, Mazzarella
said, "We are the children of your persecutors; but the sons have other
hearts than the fathers. We have renounced the religion of the
oppressor, and embraced that of the Vaudois, whom our ancestors so long
persecuted. You have been the people of God, the confessors of the
truth; and here before you this night I confess the sin of my fathers in
putting your fathers to death." Mazzarella at this day is an evangelist
in Genoa. In his speech we hear the first utterance of repentant
Christendom. "The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come
bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves
down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee the city of the
Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel."
I had now been well nigh a week in "the Valleys." A dream long and
fondly cherished had become a reality; and next morning I started for
Turin.
The eventful history of the Vaudois teaches one lesson at least, which
we Protestants would do well to ponder at this hour. The measures of the
Church of Rome are quick, summary, and on a scale commensurate with the
danger. Her motto is instant, unpitying, unsparing, utter extermination
of all that oppose her. Twice over has the human mind revolted against
her authority, and twice over has she met that revolt, not with
argument, but with the sword. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the
Waldensian movement had grown to such a head, that the dominion of Rome
was in imminent jeopardy. Had she delayed, the Reformation would have
been anticipated by some centuries. She did not delay. She cried for
help to the warriors of France and Savoy; and, by the help of some
hundred thousand soldiers, she put down the Waldensian movement as an
aggressive power. The next revolt against her authority was the
Reformation. Here again she boldly confronted the danger. She grasped
her old weapon; and, by the help of the sword and the Jesuits, she put
down that movement in one half the countries of Europe, and greatly
weakened it in the other half.
We are now witnessing a third revolt against her authority; and it
remains to be seen how the Church of Rome will deal with it. Will she
now adopt half measures? Will she now falter and draw back,--she that
never before feared enemy or spared foe? Will that Church that quenched
in blood the Protestantism of the Waldenses,--that put down the
Reformation in France by one terrible blow,--that by the help of
dungeons and racks banished the light from Italy and Spain,--will that
Church, we ask, spare the Protestantism of Britain? What folly and
infatuation to think that she will! What matters it that, in rooting out
British Protestantism, she should shed oceans of blood, and sound the
death-knell of a whole nation? These are but dust in the balance to her:
her dominion must be maintained at all costs. Her motto still is,--let
Rome triumph though the heavens should fall. But she tells us that she
repents. Repents, does she? She has grown pitiful, and tender hearted,
has she? She fears blood now, and starts at the cry of murdered nations!
Ah! she repents; but it is her clemency, not her crimes, of which she
repents. She repents that she did not make one wide St Bartholomew of
Europe; that when she planted the stake for Huss, and Cranmer, and
Wishart, she did not plant a million of stakes. Then the Reformation
would not have been. Yes, she repents, deeply, bitterly repents, her
fatal blunder. But it will not be her fault, the _Univers_ assures us,
if she have to repent such a blunder a second time. Let us hear the
priests speaking through one of the country papers in France:--"The wars
of religion were not deplorable catastrophes; these great butcheries
renewed the life of France. The incense cast away the smell of the
corpses, and psalms covered the noise of angry shouts. Holy water washed
away all the bloody stains. With the Inquisition, the most beautiful
weather succeeded to storms, and the fires that burned the heretics
shone like supernatural torches." The hand that wrote these lines would
more gladly light the faggot. Let only the present regime in France last
a few years, and the priests will again rejoice in seeing the colour of
heretic blood. There cannot and will not be peace in the world, they
say, till for every Protestant a gibbet or stake has been erected, and
not one man left to carry tidings to posterity that ever there was such
a thing as Protestantism on the earth.