FIRST PERSECUTIONS OF THE WALDENSES.
Their Unique Position in Christendom--Their Twofold Testimony--
They Witness against Rome and for Protestantism--Hated by
Rome--The Cottian Alps--Albigenses and Waldenses--The
Waldensian Territory Proper--Papal Testimony to the
Flourishing State of their Church in the Fourteenth
Century--Early Bulls against them--Tragedy of Christmas,
1400--Constancy of the Waldenses--Crusade of Pope Innocent
VIII.--His Bull of 1487---The Army Assembles--Two Frightful
Tempests approach the Valleys.
The Waldenses stand apart and alone in the Christian world. Their place
on the surface of Europe is unique; their position in history is not
less unique; and the end appointed them to fulfil is one which has been
assigned to them alone, no other people being permitted to share it
with them.
The Waldenses bear a twofold testimony. Like the snow-clad peaks amid
which their dwelling is placed, which look down upon the plains of
Italy on the one side, and the provinces of France on the other, this
people stand equally related to primitive ages and modern times, and
give by no means equivocal testimony respecting both Rome and the
Reformation. If they are old, then Rome is new; if they are pure,
then Rome is corrupt; and if they have retained the faith of the
apostles, it follows incontestably that Rome has departed from it.
That the Waldensian faith and worship existed many centuries before
Protestantism arose is undeniable; the proofs and monuments of this
fact lie scattered over all the histories and all the lands of mediæval
Europe; but the antiquity of the Waldenses is the antiquity of
Protestantism. The Church of the Reformation was in the loins of the
Waldensian Church ages before the birth of Luther; her first cradle was
placed amid those terrors and sublimities, those ice-clad peaks and
great bulwarks of rock. In their dispersions over so many lands--over
France, the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, England,
Calabria, Naples--the Waldenses sowed the seeds of that great spiritual
revival which, beginning in the days of Wicliffe, and advancing in the
times of Luther and Calvin, awaits its full consummation in the ages to
come.
In the place which the Church of the Alps has held, and the office
she has discharged, we see the reason of that peculiar and bitter
hostility which Rome has ever borne this holy and venerable community.
It was natural that Rome should wish to efface so conclusive a proof
of her apostacy, and silence a witness whose testimony so emphatically
corroborates the position of Protestantism. The great bulwark of
the Reformed Church is the Word of God; but next to this is the
pre-existence of a community spread throughout Western Christendom,
with doctrines and worship substantially one with those of the
Reformation.
The persecutions of this remarkable people form one of the most heroic
pages of the Church’s history. These persecutions, protracted through
many centuries, were endured with a patience, a constancy, a bravery,
honourable to the Gospel as well as to those simple people, whom the
Gospel converted into heroes and martyrs. Their resplendent virtues
illumined the darkness of their age; and we turn with no little relief
from a Christendom sunk in barbarism and superstition to this remnant
of an ancient people, who here in their mountain-engirdled territory
practised the simplicity, the piety, and the heroism of a better age.
It is the main object of this work to deal with those persecutions of
the Waldenses which connect themselves with the Reformation and which
were, in fact, part of that mighty effort made by Rome to extinguish
Protestantism. But we must introduce ourselves to the great tragedy by
a brief notice of the attacks which led up to it.
That part of the Alpine chain which extends between Turin on the east
and Grenoble on the west is known as the Cottian Alps. This is the
dwelling-place of the Waldenses, the land of ancient Protestantism.
On the west the mountains slope towards the plains of France, and on
the east they run down to those of Piedmont. That line of glittering
summits, conspicuous among which is the lofty snow-clad peak of Monte
Viso on the west, and the craggy escarpments of Genèvre on the east,
forms the boundary between the Albigenses and the Waldenses, the
two bodies of these early witnesses. On the western slope were the
dwellings of the former people, and on the eastern those of the latter.
Not entirely so, however, for the Waldenses, crossing the summits,
had taken possession of the more elevated portion of the western
declivities, and scarcely was there a valley in which their villages
and sanctuaries were not to be found. But in the lower valleys, and
more particularly in the vast and fertile plains of Dauphiné and
Provence, spread out at the foot of the Alps, the inhabitants were
mainly of cis-Alpine or Gallic extraction, and are known in history as
the Albigenses. How flourishing they were, how numerous and opulent
their towns, how rich their corn-fields and vineyards, and how polished
the manners and cultured the genius of the people, we have already
said. Innocent III. exacted terrible expiation of them for their
attachment to a purer Christianity than that of Rome. He launched his
bull; he sent forth his inquisitors; and soon the fertility and beauty
of the region were swept away; city and sanctuary sank in ruins; and
the plains so recently covered with smiling fields were converted
into a desert. The work of destruction had been done with tolerable
completeness on the west of the Alps; and after a short pause it was
commenced on the east, it being resolved to pursue these confessors
of a pure faith across the mountains, and attack them in those grand
valleys which open into Italy, where they lay entrenched, as it were,
amid dense chestnut forests and mighty pinnacles of rock.
We place ourselves at the foot of the eastern declivity, about thirty
miles to the west of Turin. Behind us is the vast sweep of the plain
of Piedmont. Above us in front tower the Alps, here forming a crescent
of grand mountains, extending from the escarped summit that leans
over Pinerolo on the right, to the pyramidal peak of Monte Viso,
which cleaves the ebon like a horn of silver, and marks the farthest
limit of the Waldensian territory on the left. In the bosom of that
mountain crescent, shaded by its chestnut forests, and encircled by
its glittering peaks, are hung the famous valleys of that people whose
martyrdoms we are now to narrate.
In the centre of the picture, right before us, rises the pillar-like
Castelluzzo; behind it is the towering mass of the Vandalin; and in
front, as if to bar the way against the entrance of any hostile force
into this sacred territory, is drawn the long, low hill of Bricherasio,
feathery with woods, bristling with great rocks, and leaving open,
between its rugged mass and the spurs of Monte Friolante on the west,
only a narrow avenue, shaded by walnut and acacia trees, which leads up
to the point where the valleys, spreading out fan-like, bury themselves
in the mountains that open their stony arms to receive them. Historians
have enumerated some thirty persecutions enacted on this little spot.
One of the earliest dates in the martyr-history of this people is 1332,
or thereabouts, for the time is not distinctly marked. The reigning
Pope was John XXII. Desirous of resuming the work of Innocent III.,
he ordered the inquisitors to repair to the Valleys of Lucerna and
Perosa, and execute the laws of the Vatican against the heretics that
peopled them. What success attended the expedition is not known, and
we instance it chiefly on this account, that the bull commanding it
hears undesigned testimony to the then flourishing condition of the
Waldensian Church, inasmuch as it complains that synods, which the Pope
calls “chapters,” were wont to assemble in the Valley of Angrogna,
attended by 500 delegates.[12] This was before Wicliffe had begun his
career in England.
After this date scarcely was there a Pope who did not bear
unintentional testimony to their great numbers and wide diffusion.
In 1352 we find Pope Clement VI. charging the Bishop of Embrun, with
whom he associates a Francisan friar and inquisitor, to essay the
purification of those parts adjoining his diocese which were known
to be infected with heresy. The territorial lords and city syndics
were invited to aid him. While providing for the heretics of the
Valleys, the Pope did not overlook those farther off. He urged the
Dauphin, Charles of France, and Louis, King of Naples, to seek out
and punish those of their subjects who had strayed from the faith.
Clement referred doubtless to the Vaudois colonies, which are known to
have existed in that age at Naples. The fact that the heresy of the
Waldensian mountains extended to the plains at their feet, is attested
by the letter of the Pope to Joanna, wife of the King of Naples, who
owned lands in the Marquisate[13] of Saluzzo, near the Valleys, urging
her to purge her territory of the heretics that lived in it.
The zeal of the Pope, however, was but indifferently seconded by that
of the secular lords. The men they were enjoined to exterminate were
the most industrious and peaceable of their subjects; and willing as
they no doubt were to oblige the Pope, they were naturally averse to
incur so great a loss as would be caused by the destruction of the
flower of their populations. Besides, the princes of that age were
often at war among themselves, and had not much leisure or inclination
to make war on the Pope’s behalf. Therefore the Papal thunder sometimes
rolled harmlessly over the Valleys, and the mountain-home of these
confessors was wonderfully shielded till very nearly the era of the
Reformation. We find Gregory XI., in 1373, writing to Charles V.
of France, to complain that his officers thwarted his inquisitors
in Dauphiné; that the Papal judges were not permitted to institute
proceedings against the suspected without the consent of the civil
judge; and that the disrespect to the spiritual tribunal was sometimes
carried so far as to release condemned heretics from prison.[14]
Notwithstanding this leniency--so culpable in the eyes of Rome--on the
part of princes and magistrates, the inquisitors were able to make not
a few victims. These acts of violence provoked reprisals at times on
the part of the Waldenses. On one occasion (1375) the Popish city of
Susa was attacked, the Dominican convent forced, and the inquisitor put
to death. Other Dominicans were called to expiate their rigour against
the Vaudois with the penalty of their lives. An obnoxious inquisitor of
Turin is said to have been slain on the highway near Bricherasio.[15]
There came evil days to the Popes themselves. First, they were chased
to Avignon; next, the yet greater calamity of the “schism” befel
them; but their own afflictions had not the effect of softening their
hearts towards the confessors of the Alps. During the clouded era
of their “captivity,” and the tempestuous days of the schism, they
pursued with the same inflexible rigour their policy of extermination.
They were ever and anon fulminating their persecuting edicts, and
their inquisitors were scouring the Valleys in pursuit of victims. An
inquisitor of the name of Borelli had 150 Vaudois men, besides a great
number of women, girls, and even young children, brought to Grenoble
and burned alive.[16]
[Illustration: VIEW IN THE VALLEY OF ROUMEYER, DAUPHINÉ.]
The closing days of the year 1400 witnessed a terrible tragedy, the
memory of which has not been obliterated by the many greater which have
followed it. The scene of this catastrophe was the Valley of Pragelas,
one of the higher reaches of Perosa, which opens near Pinerolo, and
is watered by the Clusone. It was the Christmas of 1400, and the
inhabitants dreaded no attack, believing themselves sufficiently
protected by the snows which then lay deep on their mountains. They
were destined to experience the bitter fact that the rigours of the
season had not quenched the fire of their persecutor’s malice. Borelli,
at the head of an armed troop, broke suddenly into Pragelas, meditating
the entire extinction of its population. The miserable inhabitants fled
in haste to the mountains, carrying on their shoulders their old men,
their sick, and their infants, knowing what fate awaited them should
they leave them behind. In their flight a great many were overtaken
and slain. Nightfall brought them deliverance from the pursuit, but
no deliverance from horrors not less dreadful. The main body of the
fugitives wandered in the direction of Macel, in the storm-swept
and now ice-clad valley of San Martino, where they encamped on a
summit which has ever since, in memory of the event, borne the name
of the Alberge or Refuge. Without shelter, without food, the frozen
snow around them, the winter’s sky overhead, their sufferings were
inexpressibly great. When morning broke what a heartrending spectacle
did day disclose! Some of the miserable group lost their hands and feet
from frostbite; while others were stretched out on the snow, stiffened
corpses. Fifty young children, some say eighty, were found dead with
cold, some lying on the bare ice, others locked in the frozen arms of
their mothers, who had perished on that dreadful night along with their
babes.[17] In the Valley of Pragelas, to this day, sire recites to son
the tale of that Christmas tragedy.
The century, the opening of which had been so fearfully marked, passed
on amid continuous executions of the Waldenses. In the absence of
such catastrophes as that of Christmas, 1400, individual Vaudois were
kidnapped by the inquisitors, ever on the track for them, or waylaid,
whenever they ventured down into the plain of Piedmont, and were
carried to Turin and other towns, and burned alive. But Rome saw that
she was making no progress in the extermination of a heresy which had
found a seat amid these hills, as firm as it was ancient. The numbers
of the Waldenses were not thinned; their constancy was not shaken,
they still refused to enter the Roman Church, and they met all the
edicts and inquisitors, all the torturings and burnings of their great
persecutor, with a resistance as unyielding as that offered by their
rocks to the tempests of hail and snow which the whirlwinds of winter
hurl against them.
It was the year 1487. A great blow was meditated. The process of
purging the Valleys languished. Pope Innocent VIII., who then filled
the Papal chair, remembered how his renowned namesake, Innocent III.,
by an act of summary vengeance, had swept the Albigensian heresy from
the south of France. Imitating the vigour of his predecessor, he would
purge the Valleys as effectually and as speedily as Innocent III. had
done the plains of Dauphiné and Provence.
The first step of the Pope was to issue a bull, denouncing as heretical
those whom he delivered over to slaughter. This bull, after the
manner of all such documents, was expressed in terms as sanctimonious
as its spirit was inexorably cruel. It brings no charge against these
men, as lawless, idle, dishonest, or disorderly; their fault was that
they did not worship as Innocent worshipped, and that they practised
a “simulated sanctity,” which had the effect of seducing the sheep of
the true fold, therefore he orders “that malicious and abominable sect
of malignants,” if they “refuse to abjure, to be crushed like venomous
snakes.”[18]
To carry out his bull, Innocent VIII. appointed Albert Cataneo,
Archdeacon of Cremona, his legate, entrusting to him the chief conduct
of the enterprise. He fortified him, moreover, with Papal missives to
all princes, dukes, and powers, within whose dominions any Vaudois were
to be found. The Pope especially accredited him to Charles VIII. of
France and Charles II. of Savoy, commanding them to support him with
the whole power of their arms. The bull invited all Catholics to take
up the cross against the heretics; and to stimulate them in this pious
work it “absolved from all ecclesiastical pains and penalties, general
and particular; it released all who joined the crusade from any oaths
they might have taken; it legitimatised their title to any property
they might have illegally acquired; and promised remission of all their
sins to such as should kill any heretic. It annulled all contracts made
in favour of Vaudois, ordered their domestics to abandon them, forbade
all persons to give them any aid whatever, and empowered all persons to
take possession of their property.”
These were powerful incentives--plenary pardon and unrestrained
licence. They were hardly needed to awaken the zeal of the
neighbouring populations, always too ready to show their devotion to
Rome by spilling the blood and making a booty of the goods of the
Waldenses. The King of France and the Duke of Savoy lent a willing
ear to the summons from the Vatican. They made haste to unfurl their
banners, and enlist soldiers in this holy cause, and soon a numerous
army was on its march to sweep from the mountains where they had dwelt
from immemorial time, these confessors of the Gospel faith pure and
undefiled. In the train of this armed host came a motley crowd of
volunteers, “vagabond adventurers,” says Muston, “ambitious fanatics,
reckless pillagers, merciless assassins, assembled from all parts of
Italy”[19]--a horde of brigands in short, the worthy tools of the man
whose bloody work they were assembled to do.
Before all these arrangements were finished it was the month of June
of 1488. The Pope’s bull was talked of in all countries; and the
din of preparation rung far and near, for it was not only on the
Waldensian mountains, but on the Waldensian race, wherever dispersed,
in Germany, in Calabria, and in other countries, that this terrible
blow was to fall.[20] All kings were invited to gird on the sword,
and come to the help of the Church in the execution of her purpose of
effecting an extermination of her enemies that should never need to
be repeated. Wherever a Vaudois foot trod, the soil was polluted, and
had to be cleansed; wherever a Vaudois breathed, the air was tainted,
and must be purified; wherever Vaudois psalm or prayer ascended,
there was the infection of heresy, and around the spot a cordon must
be drawn to protect the spiritual health of the district. The Pope’s
bull was thus very universal in its application, and almost the only
people left ignorant of the commotion it had excited, and the bustle
of preparation it had called forth, were those poor men on whom this
terrible tempest was about to burst.
The joint army numbered about 18,000 regular soldiers. This force was
swelled by the thousands of ruffians, already mentioned, drawn together
by the spiritual and temporal rewards to be earned in this work of
combined piety and pillage.[21] The Piedmontese division of this host
directed their course towards the “Valleys” proper, on the Italian side
of the Alps. The French division, marching from the north, advanced to
attack the inhabitants of the Dauphinese Alps, where the Albigensian
heresy, recovering somewhat its terrible excision by Innocent III.,
had begun again to take root. Two storms, from opposite points, or
rather from all points, were approaching those mighty mountains, the
sanctuary and citadel of the primitive faith. That lamp is about to be
extinguished at last, which has burned here during so many ages, and
survived so many tempests. The mailed hand of the Pope is uplifted, and
we wait to see the blow fall.