569 



VAUDOIS. 



VAUDOIS. 



670 





the Cottiau Alps. The Albigenses properly so called were quite distinct 

 from the Vaudoia. [ALBIGEXSES.] 



This little community is remarkable for having kept itself from time 

 immemorial separate from the Church of Rome, in ages when that 

 church is generally considered as having been the only existing church 

 in the West, and for being the only Italian church which continues to 

 this day separate from Rome. We have memorials of the doctrines of 

 the Vaudois written in the early part of the 12th century : their 

 tenets were then such as they are now. The ' Nobla Leycon ' is a sort 

 of abridgment of the history and doctrine of the Old and New Testa- 

 ments. It speaks of the mission 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. It is a poem in the Vaudes dialect, nearly the same as that 

 which is spoken at the present time, and records in the text its having 

 been composed in the early part of the 12th century. 



There is also a confession of faith of the Valdenses, bearing date 

 A.D. 1 1 20, acknowledging the Apostles' Creed and the canonical books 

 of the Old and New Testaments, recognising no other mediator and 

 advocate with God the Father but Jesus Christ, denying purgatory, 

 admitting 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 from flesh on certain days, the mass, &c. 

 And another manuscript dated 1100, speaks of the Valdeuses as having 

 maintained the same doctrines from tune immemorial in continued 

 descent from father to son, even from the tunes of the Apostles. 

 Besides these, there are two controversial treatises, one entitled ' Of 

 Antichrist,' and the other upon ' The Invocation of Saints,' which seem 

 to bear this internal evidence of their antiquity, that in enumerating 

 the various tenets and practices of the Roman Church which the Val- 

 deuses reject, they speak of the doctrine of the real presence, and of 

 the adoration of the Virgin Mary and the Saints, but in so doing they 

 do not use the words transubstantiation and canonisation. Now the 

 term transubstantiation was first introduced under Pope Innocent III., 

 and confirmed in the council of Lateran, A.D. 1215, and the first papal 

 bull in which the word canonisation occurs is dated 1165. Nor do 

 these treatises speak of the devotional exercise of the Rosary introduced 

 by St. Dominic, nor of the Inquisition, which began in the 13th cen- 

 tury. Had those institutions existed when the treatises were written, 

 they could hardly have escaped the notice of the writer. Manuscript 

 copies of these and other ancient documents relative to the Vaudois, 

 amounting to twenty-one volumes, were brought to England by Sir 

 Samuel Morland, who was sent by the Protector Cromwell as envoy to 

 the Duke of Savoy in 1655, and were by him presented, in 1658, to the 

 library of the University of Cambridge.. Moriand wrote a ' History o! 

 the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont,' London, 1658, 

 giving a transcript and English translation of the 'Nobla Leycon.' 

 I'. Allix, D.D., who published ' Remarks upon the Ecclesiastical History 

 <if the Antient Churches of Piedmont,' in 1690, notices the manuscripts 

 brought by Morland. But now only fourteen out of the twenty-one 

 volumes are existing in the University Library, and nobody can tell 

 what is become of the rest. The ' Nobla Leycon ' is one of those which 

 are missing. In 1669, Jean Leger, a paator of the Valdenses, published 

 at Leyden, ' HUtoire Ge'ne'rale des Eglises Evangc'liques des Vallees du 

 Pie'mont,' in two books, the first of which treats of the early date and 

 continuity of their doctrine, and he gives transcripts of several of the 

 manuscripts brought to England by Morland. 



The question about the early date of the ' Nobla Leycon,' the Vaudois 

 confession, and the other manuscripts above mentioned, is of consider- 

 able importance in an historical as well as a religious point of view. 

 There is however further evidence brought forth for the antiquity of 

 the Vaudois doctrines. The name of Valdenses does not appear in 

 historical records till the end of the 12th or early part of the 13th cen- 

 tury, but we find allusions as early as the 9th century to the existence 

 of non-conformist churches on the borders of Italy. Jonas, bishop of 

 Orleans, in his work ' De Cultu Imaginurn,' addressed to Charles the 

 Bald, A.D. 840, speaks of Italian churches which he accuses of hetero- 

 doxy because they refused to worship images, and he charges Claudius, 

 bishop of Turin, with encouraging the people of his diocese in their 

 separation from the Catholic unity. 



The fragments existing of the works of Claudius show his opinions 

 concerning faith and merits, prayers after death, the worship of images, 

 the invocation of saints, tradition, and church authority, to have been 

 the same as are expressed in both the old and modern Vaudois cate- 

 chisms, as well as in the catechisms of the modern reformed churches, 

 Aii'l it is worthy of remark, that Claudius in his epistle, ' Ad Theode- 

 miniin,' says, in reply to the charge of promulgating novelty in religion, 

 " I teach no new sect, but keep myself to the pure truth, and 1 will 

 persist in opposing to the uttermost all superstitions and schisms." 

 Claudius died about AD. 840, and contemporary with him Agobardus, 

 bishop of Lyon, as appears by his ' Treatise against Pictures,' edited by 

 8. Baluze, was also preaching against the worship of images. The 

 valleys of the Cottian Alps must have been under one or the other of 

 these bishops. In the synod held at Arras, A.D. 1025, it was repre- 

 sented to the president, Bishop Gerard, that certain persons had come 

 fruni tho border* of Italy and had introduced heretical dogmas about 

 the u.itupj of justification, the real presence, and against images, relics, 



altars, &c. About 1140, Bernard of Clairvaux, iu his sixty -sixth sermon 

 upon the Canticles, speaking of heretics who then were disturbing the 

 church, mentions, among others, " a sect which calls itself after no 

 man's name, which affects to be in the direct line of apostolical suc- 

 cession, and rustic and unlearned though it is, yet it contends that we 

 are wrong and that it only is right. It must derive its origin from the 

 devil, since there is no other extraction which we can assign to it." 

 The Valdenses have always rejected any distinctive sectarian appella- 

 tion, and have boasted of adhering from age to age to the primitive 

 faith. In the bull of Pope Lucius, A.D. 1183, four years after the 

 Lateran council, in which the Albigensea were anathematised, several 

 sorts of heretics are mentioned, Cathari, Paterini, the Poor Men of 

 Lyon, and the Passagini, or men of the passes, as lying under a per- 

 petual anathema. And in 1194, Alfonso, king of Aragou and marquis 

 of Provence, issued an edict, " commanding the Valdenses, the Insab- 

 batati, who otherwise are called the Poor Men of Lyon, and all other 

 heretics, to depart out of his dominions." About 1230, Reinerus, a 

 Dominican, who states that he had been himself a heretic, wrote a 

 treatise against heretics, ' Opusculum de Hajreticis,' in which ha 

 speaks, among others, of the Leouists, or Poor Men of Lyon (" Secta 

 Pauperum de Lugduno qui etiam Leom'stae dicuntur "), and describes 

 their tenets, which are exactly the same as those contained in the old 

 records of the Valdenses as well as in their modern catechism. Tho 

 Valdenses and the Poor Men of Lyon (Valdenses sive Lugdunenses) 

 are confounded together in the chronicles of that age ; and in the 

 Chronicon of Abbas Ursbergensis (A.D. 1212) the Pauperes de Lugduno 

 are represented as an ancient order which arose in Italy long ago. 

 Reinerus begins by saying, tliat these Leonists or Pauperes were tho 

 most pernicious of all the sects, for three reasons : 1, because they are 

 the most ancient more ancient than the Manich&ans or Arians, dating 

 their origin, according to some, from the time of Pope Sylvester I., and 

 according to others from the time of the Apostles ; 2, because they are 

 more universally spread ; 3, because they have the character of being 

 pious and virtuous, as they believe iu the Apostles' Creed, and are guilty 

 of no other crime than that of blasphemy against the Roman Church and 

 clergy. This book of Reinerus is very important, but we must refer 

 those who wish for further information to the Rev. W. S. Gilly's 

 ' Second Visit to the Vaudois of Piedmont,' section iii., where the 

 author has placed in parallel columns passages from Reiner's text, 

 the corresponding opinions of Italian writers previous to the 12th cen- 

 tury, and those of the ancient and modern Valdtmses concerning the 

 same topics. 



When Marcus Aurelius Rorenco, grand-prior of St. Roch, was sent 

 by Duke Charles Emmanuel, about the middle of the 17th century, to 

 make inquiries concerning the Vaudois, he reported that " these Apos- 

 tolicals, as they call themselves, were of an origin of which nothing 

 certain could be said, furthermore than that Bishop Claudius might 

 have detached them from the church in the 8th century, and that they 

 were not a new sect in the 9th and 10th centuries." And the monk 

 Belvidere, who went to the valleys of the Cottian Alps on a similar 

 inquiry, reported "that heretics have been found in the valley of 

 Angrogna in all periods of history." Claude Seissel, archbishop of 

 Turin, A.D. 1500, spoke of them as " the Vaudois sect, which originated 

 with one Leon, a devout man, in the time of Constantino the Great." 

 From all the above testimonies it is contended, with considerable show 

 of argument, by the Vaudois, that they arc not a sect that sprung up 

 in the 12th century, or was introduced by emigrants from abroad, but 

 that they are an aboriginal Alpine community, the offspring of early 

 Christianity implanted in these remote districts. The earlier edicts 

 of the dukes of Savoy speak of the " men of the valleys " and their 

 " ancient faith," which " it had been found impossible to eradicate 

 from thence, and which the dukes had been constrained to tolerate." 

 An edict of 1584 speaks of privileges granted by former dukes, and 

 cites edicts of 1448 and 1452. In the ' Theatrum Statuum K. C. 

 Sabaudiaj Ducis,' published in 1682, it is stated that treaties four 

 hundred years old secured personal and religious freedom to the 

 Vaudois. 



It is an historical fact that, some time in the 14th century, a colony 

 of emigrants from North Italy, professing the tenets of the Vaudois, 

 settled in Calabria, where they cleared the ground of whole districts, 

 and became thriving tenants of the great landlords. They built tho 

 towns of La Guardia (which is still called Guardia Lombunla), San 

 Sisto, La Rocco, and others, not far from Cosenza, where they lived in 

 peace and unnoticed for about three centuries. But after the spreading 

 of the Reformation in the 16th century they begau to correspond with 

 Geneva and other places, and invited some Protestant divines to como 

 among them. This excited the attention of the local authorities ; and 

 the Duke of Alcald, viceroy of Naples, sent commissioners and monks 

 with troops to convert or destroy them. They resisted, and were 

 destroyed with circumstances of great barbarity, in 1661. (Botta, 

 ' Storia d' Italia,' book x. ) 



At one time the valleys of tho Vaudois were subject to the marquises 

 of Saluzzo ; and the Vaudois have repeatedly asserted, without being 

 contradicted, that " their ancestors professed their ancient faith long 

 before the dynasty of Savoy was established in Piedmont." Their 

 religious community extended then over many other valleys on both 

 sides of the Alps; to the southward beyond the Po over part of tho 

 marquisate of Saluzzo, westwards in the valley of the Durance as far 



