THE WALDENSES--THEIR MISSIONS AND MARTYRDOMS.
Their Synod and College--Their Theological Tenets--Romaunt Version
of the New Testament--The Constitution of their Church--Their
Missionary Labours--Wide Diffusion of their Tenets--The
Stone Smiting the Image.
One would like to have a near view of the _barbes_ or pastors, who
presided over the school of early Protestant theology that existed in
the valleys, and to know how it fared with evangelical Christianity
in the ages that preceded the Reformation. But the time is remote,
and the events are dim. We can but doubtfully glean from a variety of
sources the facts necessary to form a picture of this venerable Church,
and even then the picture is not complete. The theology of which
this was one of the fountain-heads was not the clear, well-defined,
and comprehensive system which the sixteenth century gave us; it was
only what the faithful men of the Lombard Churches had been able to
save from the wreck of primitive Christianity. True religion, being a
revelation, was from the beginning complete and perfect; nevertheless,
in this as in every other branch of knowledge, it is only by patient
labour that man is able to extricate and arrange all its parts, and to
come into the full possession of truth. The theology taught in former
ages in the peak-environed valley in which we have in imagination
placed ourselves was drawn from the Bible. The atoning death and
justifying righteousness of Christ was its cardinal truth. This, the
_Nobla Leyçon_ and other ancient documents abundantly testify. The
_Nobla Leyçon_ sets forth with tolerable clearness the doctrine of the
Trinity, the fall of man, the incarnation of the Son, the perpetual
authority of the Decalogue as given by God,[5] the need of Divine grace
in order to do good works, the necessity of holiness, the institution
of the ministry, the resurrection of the body, and the eternal bliss
of heaven.[6] This creed its professors exemplified in lives of
evangelical virtue. The blamelessness of the Waldenses passed into a
proverb, so that one more than ordinarily exempt from the vices of his
time was sure to be suspected of being a Vaudés.[7]
If doubt there were regarding the tenets of the Waldenses, the charges
which their enemies have preferred against them would set that doubt
at rest, and make it tolerably certain that they held substantially
what the apostles before their day, and the Reformers after it, taught.
The indictment against the Waldenses included a formidable list of
“heresies.” They held that there had been no true Pope since the days
of Sylvester; that temporal offices and dignities were not meet for
preachers of the Gospel; that the Pope’s pardons were a cheat; that
purgatory was a fable; that relics were simply rotten bones which had
belonged to one knew not whom; that to go on pilgrimage served no end,
save to empty one’s purse; that flesh might be eaten any day if one’s
appetite served him; that holy water was not a whit more efficacious
than rain-water; and that prayer in a barn was just as effectual as if
offered in a church. They were accused, moreover, of having scoffed at
the doctrine of transubstantiation, and of having spoken blasphemously
of Rome as the harlot of the Apocalypse.[8]
There is reason to believe, from recent historical researches, that the
Waldenses possessed the New Testament in the vernacular. The “Lingua
Romana,” or Romaunt tongue, was the common language of the south of
Europe from the eighth to the fourteenth century. It was the language
of the troubadours and of men of letters in the Dark Ages. Into this
tongue--the Romaunt--was the first translation of the whole of the New
Testament made so early as the twelfth century. This fact Dr. Gilly has
been at great pains to prove in his work, _The Romaunt Version[9] of
the Gospel according to John_. The sum of what Dr. Gilly, by a patient
investigation into facts, and a great array of historic documents,
maintains, is that all the books of the New Testament were translated
from the Latin Vulgate into the Romaunt, that this was the first
literal version since the fall of the empire, that it was made in the
twelfth century, and was the first translation available for popular
use. There were numerous earlier translations, but only of parts of
the Word of God, and many of these were rather paraphrases or digests
of Scripture than translations, and, moreover, they were so bulky, and
by consequence so costly, as to be utterly beyond the reach of the
common people. This Romaunt version was the first complete and literal
translation of the New Testament of Holy Scripture; it was made, as
Dr. Gilly, by a chain of proofs, shows, most probably under the
superintendence and at the expense of Peter Waldo of Lyons, not later
than 1180, and so is older than any complete version in German, French,
Italian, Spanish, or English. This version was widely spread in the
south of France, and in the cities of Lombardy. It was in common use
among the Waldenses of Piedmont, and it was no small part, doubtless,
of the testimony borne to truth by these mountaineers to preserve and
circulate it. Of the Romaunt New Testament six copies have come down
to our day. A copy is preserved at each of the four following places:
Lyons, Grenoble, Zurich, Dublin; and two copies at Paris. These are
small, plain, and portable volumes, contrasting with those splendid and
ponderous folios of the Latin Vulgate, penned in characters of gold
and silver, richly illuminated, their bindings decorated with gems,
inviting admiration rather than study, and unfitted by their size and
splendour for the use of the people.
The Church of the Alps, in the simplicity of its constitution, may be
held to have been a reflection of the Church of the first centuries.
The entire territory included in the Waldensian limits was divided
into parishes. In each parish was placed a pastor, who led his flock
to the living waters of the Word of God. He preached, he dispensed the
Sacraments, he visited the sick, and catechised the young. With him
was associated in the government of his congregation a consistory of
laymen. The synod met once a year. It was composed of all the pastors,
with an equal number of laymen, and its most frequent place of meeting
was the secluded mountain-engirdled valley at the head of Angrogna.
Sometimes as many as a hundred and fifty _barbes_, with the same
number of lay members, would assemble. We can imagine them seated--it
may be on the grassy slopes of the valley--a venerable company of
humble, learned, earnest men, presided over by a simple moderator (for
higher office or authority was unknown amongst them), and suspending
their deliberations respecting the affairs of their Churches, and the
condition of their flocks, only to offer their prayers and praises to
the Eternal, while the majestic snow-clad peaks looked down upon them
from the silent firmament. There needed, verily, no magnificent fane,
no blazonry of mystic rites to make their assembly august.
The youth who here sat at the feet of the more venerable and learned
of their _barbes_ used as their text-book the Holy Scriptures. And not
only did they study the sacred volume; they were required to commit to
memory, and be able accurately to recite, whole Gospels and Epistles.
This was a necessary accomplishment on the part of public instructors
in those ages when printing was unknown, and copies of the Word of God
were rare. Part of their time was occupied in transcribing the Holy
Scriptures, or portions of them, which they were to distribute when
they went forth as missionaries. By this, and by other agencies, the
seed of the Divine Word was scattered throughout Europe more widely
than is commonly supposed. To this a variety of causes contributed.
There was then a general impression that the world was soon to end.
Men thought that they saw the prognostications of its dissolution in
the disorder into which all things had fallen. The pride, luxury, and
profligacy of the clergy, led not a few laymen to ask if better and
more certain guides were not to be had. Many of the troubadours were
religious men, whose lays were sermons. The hour of deep and universal
slumber had passed; the serf was contending with his seigneur for
personal freedom, and the city was waging war with the baronial castle
for civic and corporate independence. The New Testament--and, as we
learn from incidental notices, portions of the Old--coming at this
juncture in a language understood alike in the court as in the camp, in
the city as in the rural hamlet, was welcome to many, and its truths
obtained a wider promulgation than perhaps had taken place since the
publication of the Vulgate by Jerome.
After passing a certain time in the school of the _barbes_, it was
not uncommon for the Waldensian youth to proceed to the seminaries in
the great cities of Lombardy, or to the Sorbonne at Paris. There they
saw other customs, were initiated into other studies, and had a wider
horizon around them than in the seclusion of their native valleys.
Many of them became expert dialecticians, and often made converts of
the rich merchants with whom they traded, and the landlords in whose
houses they lodged. The priests seldom cared to meet in argument the
Waldensian missionary.
To maintain the truth in their own mountains was not the only object
of this people. They felt their relations to the rest of Christendom.
They sought to drive back the darkness, and re-conquer the kingdom
which Rome had overwhelmed. They were an evangelistic as well as
an evangelical Church. It was an old law among them that all who
took orders in their Church should, before being eligible to a home
charge, serve three years in the mission field. The youth on whose
head the assembled _barbes_ laid their hands saw in prospect not a
rich benefice, but a possible martyrdom. The ocean they did not cross.
Their mission field was the realms that lay outspread at the foot of
their own mountains. They went forth two and two, concealing their
real character under the guise of a secular profession, most commonly
that of merchants or pedlars. They carried silks, jewellery, and other
articles, at that time not easily purchasable save at distant marts,
and they were welcomed as merchants where they would have been spurned
as missionaries. The door of the cottage and the portal of the baron’s
castle stood equally open to them. But their address was mainly shown
in selling, without money and without price, rarer and more valuable
merchandise than the gems and silks which had procured them entrance.
They took care to carry with them, concealed among their wares or about
their persons, portions of the Word of God, their own transcription
commonly, and to this they would draw the attention of the inmates.
When they saw a desire to possess it, they would freely make a gift of
it where the means of purchase were absent.
There was no kingdom of Southern and Central Europe to which these
missionaries did not find their way, and where they did not leave
traces of their visit in the disciples whom they made. On the west
they penetrated into Spain. In Southern France they found congenial
fellow-labourers in the Albigenses, by whom the seeds of truth were
plentifully scattered over Dauphiné and Languedoc. On the east,
descending the Rhine and the Danube, they leavened Germany, Bohemia,
and Poland[10] with their doctrines, their track being marked with the
edifices for worship and the stakes of martyrdom that arose around
their steps. Even the Seven-hilled City they feared not to enter,
scattering the seed on ungenial soil, if perchance some of it might
take root and grow. Their naked feet and coarse woollen garments made
them somewhat marked figures, in the streets of a city that clothed
itself in purple and fine linen; and when their real errand was
discovered, as sometimes chanced, the rulers of Christendom took care
to further, in their own way, the springing of the seed, by watering it
with the blood of the men who had sowed it.[11]
[Illustration: WALDENSIAN MISSIONARIES IN GUISE OF PEDLARS.]
Thus did the Bible in those ages, veiling its majesty and its mission,
travel silently through Christendom, entering homes and hearts, and
there making its abode. From her lofty seat Rome looked down with
contempt upon the Book and its humble bearers. She aimed at bowing the
necks of kings, thinking if they were obedient meaner men would not
dare revolt, and so she took little heed of a power which, weak as it
seemed, was destined at a future day to break in pieces the fabric of
her dominion. By-and-by she began to be uneasy, and to have a boding
of calamity. The penetrating eye of Innocent III. detected the quarter
whence danger was to arise. He saw in the labours of these humble men
the beginning of a movement which, if permitted to go on and gather
strength, would one day sweep away all that it had taken the toils
and intrigues of centuries to achieve. He straightway commenced those
terrible crusades which wasted the sowers but watered the seed, and
helped to bring on, at its appointed hour, the catastrophe which he
sought to avert.