THE ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF THE WALDENSES.
After enquiring as to the geographical position of the Waldensian valleys,
the next most frequent questions which arise are: Who are the Waldenses?
how long have they been in the valleys of Piedmont? what circumstances led
to their taking up their abode there? and what has given to their history
that peculiar characteristic which makes every detail both of their past
and present so intensely interesting to all the lovers of piety and
patriotism wherever the story of their high-souled courage or their
long-enduring faith has reached? It is to answer these questions, as
briefly and yet as accurately as possible, that we address ourselves in
this chapter.
And, first of all, we would state very distinctly that there is no ground
for believing that their name of Waldenses is taken from that of Peter
Waldo, the celebrated merchant of Lyons. Not only because they date their
origin centuries before his time, but also because the names they bear of
Waldenses, Vaudois, and Valdesi all refer to the place of their abode, and
not to that of any individual whose opinions they had embraced, or whose
leadership they had followed. It may further be observed, in opposition to
the opinion of the Waldenses being named after Peter Waldo, that his
second name does not appear as applied to him prior to his condemnation as
an heretic; and, moreover, the various ways in which it is written, _e.g._,
sometimes Valdo, sometimes Valdus, at other times Valdesius or Valdensis,
shows that the word was not a proper name, but a mere appellative. So with
regard to the idea that Vaudois comes from Vaudes, a sorcerer, it would be
more correct to say that the term sorcerer was one applied by the
inhabitants of the plains to those who were Vaudois, or hill-men, under the
notion that the inhabitants of such localities practised sorcery. Hence we
are compelled to assume that the name is purely geographical, and applied
from time immemorial to the persons living in those valleys of Piedmont
which have ever formed part of the Italian territory, and are not to be
confounded with the Swiss Canton de Vaud, bearing a name so like because of
the similarity of geographical conformation.
In answer to the next question, How long have the Waldenses lived in the
locality from which they derive their name? _Da ogni tempo, da tempo
immemoriale_--from all time, from time immemorial--is the claim set up by
them in their earliest documents, and repeated over and over again in their
petitions to the House of Savoy for liberty of conscience.[A] Nor is there
any attempt to refute this claim of antiquity on the part of their princes
or their persecutors.
To this statement of the Waldenses themselves we will add corroborative
testimony from others.
Their enemies. We begin with Reinerius the Inquisitor, A.D. 1250. He refers
to the Waldenses under the term of Leonists, and says that this sect has
been of longer continuance (than the others to which he refers), having
lasted, some say, from the time of Pope Sylvester (314), and others from
the time of the apostles.
Pilichdorf, a writer of the same date, expressly asserts that the Waldenses
claimed to have existed from the time of Pope Sylvester, and Claude
Seyssel, Archbishop of Turin from the close of the fifteenth century to the
beginning of the sixteenth, and whose diocese extended to the valleys of
Piedmont, says that the Waldenses took their origin from Leo, a person in
the time of ye Emperor Constantine, who, hating the avarice of Pope
Sylvester and the immoderate endowment of the Church of Rome, seceded from
her communion, and "_drew after him all who entertained right sentiments
about the Christian religion_."
Next in order we may take the testimony of Rorenco, Grand Prior of St. Roch
in Turin, and one of the lords of the valley of Luserne. He was
commissioned to investigate the history of the "men of the valleys," and
published the result of his labours in the year 1632. He says "that the
Waldenses were no new sect, but had been in those valleys for more than
five or six centuries," and in proof of this remarks further, that "no
edict of any prince who gave permission for the introduction of this
religion into these parts can be found. Princes only give permission to
their subjects to continue in the religion of their ancestors." Cassini, an
Italian priest, declares that the tradition handed down was, that "the
Waldenses were as ancient as the Christian Church."
Another writer, Henri de Corvie, describes them as men descended from "an
ancient race, inhabiting the Alps, and have been always attached to ancient
customs." Voltaire, an impartial witness, speaks of the Waldenses as "the
remains of the first Christians of Gaul." If it be asked for documentary
proof, in the possession of the Waldensians themselves, it should be
remembered that Leger, the historian, collected together all that he could
find, and that these were taken from him when he was imprisoned in Turin,
A.D. 1655. Still, documents of great value and antiquity have been
preserved, and among these must be enumerated "The Noble Lesson," a
didactic poem of about five hundred lines. Three MSS. of this poem are
preserved in the libraries of the Universities of Cambridge, Geneva, and
Dublin, and the date assigned is _early_ in the twelfth century. The
dialect in which it is written is also considered by some as an
unquestionable proof of the high antiquity of the document. For example,
the eminent philologist, M. Renouard, writing as a philologist, and not as
an historian, remarks that "_the dialect of the Vaudois is an idiom
intermediate between the decomposition of the language of the Romans and
the establishment of a new grammatical system_." This philological
circumstance shows the extreme earliness of the period at which the
Waldenses must have betaken themselves to the Cottian Alps, inasmuch as it
proves that they left the Italian plains before the establishment of the
new grammatical system referred to by M. Renouard. This is the opinion of
Mr. Faber, who contends that "the primevally Latin Vaudois must have
retired from the lowlands of Italy to the valleys of Piedmont in the very
days of primitive Christianity, and _before_ the breaking up of the Roman
empire by the incursions of the Teutonic nations." And this leads to
another question. Why did these people leave their homes in the fertile
plains and betake themselves to the less temperate climate and the rugged
soil of a mountainous region? Plainly there must have been some very urgent
cause, and that cause may be readily perceived in the record of the
persecutions against the Christians under the Pagan emperors during the
second, third, and fourth centuries.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] E.G.--In a memorial to Philibert Emmanuel, A.D. 1559, they say, "This
religion which we profess is not only ours ... but it was the religion of
our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and other yet more ancient
predecessors of ours, and of the blessed martyrs, confessors, prophets, and
apostles; _and if any can prove the contrary, we are ready to subscribe and
yield thereunto_."