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This work—which is a reprint of the Sixteenth Book of the
HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM—is exclusively occupied with the subject of the
Waldenses. It describes succinctly the conflicts they waged and the martyrdoms
they endured in defence of their faith and their liberty, and is published in
the present form to meet the requirements of those who take a special interest
in this remarkable people.
Recent events in Europe have brought the Waldenses into
prominence, and thrown a new light upon the grandeur of their struggle and the
important and enduring issues which have flowed from it. To them, in a very
particular manner, are we to trace the constitutional liberties which Italy at
this hour enjoys. In the eventful year of 1848, when a new constitution was
being framed for Piedmont, the Waldenses made it plain to the Government that
there would not be standing-room for them within the lines of that constitution,
unless it embraced the great principle of freedom of conscience. For that
principle they had contended during five hundred years, and nothing short of it
could they accept as a basis of national settlement, persuaded that any other
guarantee of their liberties would be illusory. Their demand was conceded: the
principle of freedom of conscience—the root of all liberty—was embodied in the
new constitution, and thus the whole inhabitants of Piedmont shared equally with
the Waldenses in a boon which the struggles of the latter had been mainly
instrumental in securing.
Not only so: in process of time the constitution of Piedmont
was extended to the rest of Italy, and the whole Italian nation is at this hour
sharing in the fruits which have sprung from the toil and the blood, the
unswerving faith, and the heroic devotion of the Waldenses. Nor is their work
finished even yet. They have understood the end for which they have been
preserved through so many ages of darkness and conflict, and have energetically
thrown themselves into the evangelisation of modern Italy, and doubtless these
ancient confessors are destined to win, in the land where they endured so many
dark sorrows, not a few brilliant triumphs, and by the labours of the present to
add to the obligations which Christendom owes them for the services of the
past.
CHAPTER 1
The Waldenses—Their Valleys
It was the ninth century, and superstitious beliefs and
idolatrous rites were overspreading the Church, when Claudius, Bishop of Turin,
who was deeply imbued with the spirit of Augustine, set himself to arrest the
growing corruption with all the fervour of a living faith, and the vigour of a
courageous and powerful intellect. To the battle for the purity of doctrine he
joined that for the independence of the Churches of Lombardy. Even in Claude’s
day they remained free, although many Churches more remote from Rome had already
been subjugated by that all-conquering power. The Ambrosian Liturgy was still
used in the cathedral of Milan, and the Augustinian doctrine continued to be
preached from many of the pulpits of Lombardy and Piedmont. This independence of
Rome, and this greater purity of faith and worship, these Churches mainly owed
to the three Apostolic men whose names adorn their annals—Ambrose, Vigilantius,
and Claude.
When Claude went to his grave, about the year 840, the
battle, although not altogether dropped, was but languidly maintained. Attempts
were renewed to induce the Bishops of Milan to accept the episcopal pall, the
badge of spiritual vassalage, from the Pope; but it was not till the middle of
the eleventh century (1059), under Nicholas II., that these attempts were
successful. Petrus Damianus, Bishop of Ostia, and Anselm, Bishop of Lucca, were
dispatched by the Pontiff to receive the submission of the Lombard Churches, the
popular tumults amid which that submission was extorted sufficiently show that
the spirit of Claude still lingered at the foot of the Alps. Nor did the clergy
conceal the regret with which they surrendered their ancient liberties to a
power before which the whole earth was then bowing down; for the Papal legate,
Damianus, informs us that the clergy of Milan maintained in his presence that
"The Ambrosian Church, according to the ancient institutions of the Fathers, was
always free, without being subject to the laws of Rome, and that the Pope of
Rome had no jurisdiction over their Church as to the government or constitution
of it" [Petrus Damianus, Opuse., p. 5. Allix, Churches of Piedmont. p. 113.
M’Crie, Hist. of Reform. in Italy, p. 2].
But if the plains were conquered, not so the mountains. A
considerable body of Protesters stood out against this deed of submission. Of
these some crossed the Alps, descended the Rhine, and raised the standard of
opposition in the diocese of Cologne, where they were branded as Manicheans, and
rewarded with the stake. Others retired into the valleys of the Piedmontese
Alps, and there maintained their scriptural faith and their ancient
independence. What has just been related respecting the dioceses of Milan and
Turin settles the question of the apostolicity of the Churches of the Waldensian
valleys. It is not necessary to show that missionaries were sent from Rome in
the first age to plant Christianity in these valleys, nor is it necessary to
show that these Churches have existed as distinct and separate communities from
early days; enough that they formed a part, as unquestionably they did, of the
great evangelical Church of the North of Italy. This is the proof at once of
their apostolicity and their independence. It attests their descent from
apostolic men, if doctrine be the life of Churches. When their co-religionists
on the plains entered within the pale of the Roman jurisdiction, they retired
within the mountains, and, spurning alike the tyrannical yoke and the corrupt
tenets of the Church of the Seven Hils, they preserved in its purity and
simplicity the faith their fathers had handed down to them. Rome manifestly was
the schismatic, she it was that had abandoned what was once the common faith of
Christendom, leaving by that step to all who remained on the old ground the
indisputably valid title of the True Church.
Behind this rampart of mountains, which Providence,
foreseeing the approach of evil days, would almost seem to have reared on
purpose, did the remnant of the early apostolic Church of Italy kindle their
lamp, and here did that lamp continue to burn all through the long night which
descended on Christendom. There is a singular concurrence of evidence in favour
of their high antiquity. Their traditions invariably point to an unbroken
descent from the earliest times, as regards their religious belief. The Nobla
Leycon, which dates from the year 1100 [recent German criticism refers the Nobla
Leycon to a later date, but still one anterior to the Reformation], goes to
prove that the Waldenses of Piedmont did not owe their rise to Peter Waldo of
Lyons, who did not appear till the latter half of that century (1169). The Nobla
Leycon though a poem, is in reality a confession of faith, and could have been
composed only after some considerable study of the system of Christianity, in
contradistinction to the errors of Rome. How could a Church have arisen with
such a document in her hands? Or how could these herdsmen and vine-dressers,
shut up in their mountains, have detected the errors against which they bore
testimony, and found their way to the truths of which they made open profession
in times of darkness like these? If we grant that their religious beliefs were
the heritage of former ages, handed down from an evangelical ancestry, all is
plain; but if we maintain that they were the discovery of the men of those days,
we assert what approaches almost to a miracle. Their greatest enemies, Claude
Seyssel of Turin (1517), and Reynerius the Inquisitor (1250), have admitted
their antiquity, and stigmatised them as "the most dangerous of all heretics,
because the most ancient."
Rorenco, Prior of St. Roch, Turin (1640), was employed to
investigate the origin and antiquity of the Waldenses, and of course had access
to all the Waldensian documents in the ducal archives, and being their bitter
enemy he may be presumed to have made his report not more favourable than he
could help. Yet he states that "they were not a new sect in the ninth and tenth
centuries, and that Claude of Turin must have detached them from the Church in
the ninth century."
Within the limits of her own land did God provide a dwelling
for this venerable Church. Let us bestow a glance upon the region. As one comes
from the south, across the level plain of Piedmont, while yet nearly a hundred
miles off, one sees the Alps rise before one, stretching like a great wall along
the horizon. From the gates of the morning to those of the setting sun, the
mountains run on in a line of towering magnificence. Pasturages and
chestnut-forests clothe their base; eternal snows crown their summits. How
varied are their forms! Some rise like castles of stupendous strength; others
shoot up tall and tapering like needles; while others again run along in
serrated lines, their summits torn and cleft by the storms of many thousand
winters. At the hour of sunrise, what a glory kindles along the crest of that
snowy rampart! At sunset the spectacle is again renewed, and a line of pyres is
seen to burn in the evening sky.
Drawing nearer the hills, on a line about thirty miles west
of Turin, there opens before one what seems a great mountain portal. This is the
entrance to the Waldensian territory. A low hill drawn along in front serves as
a defence against all who may come with hostile intent, as but too frequently
happened in times gone by, while a stupendous monolith—the Castelluzzo—shoots up
to the clouds, and stands sentinel at the gate of this renowned region. As one
approaches La Torre the Castelluzzo rises higher and higher, and irresistibly
fixes the eye by the perfect beauty of its pillar-like form. [The new and
elegant temple of the Waldenses now rises near the foot of the Castelluzzo.] But
to this mountain a higher interest belongs than any that mere symmetry can give
it. It is indissolubly linked with martyr-memories, and borrows a halo from the
achievements of the past. How often, in days of old, was the confessor hurled
sheer down its awful steep, and dashed on the rocks at its foot! And there,
commingled in one ghastly heap, growing ever the bigger and ghastlier as another
and yet another victim was added to it, lay the mangled bodies of pastor and
peasant, of mother and child! It was the tragedies connected with this mountain
mainly that called forth Milton’s noble sonnet:
"Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold.
Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold,
Slain by the bloody Piedmonteses, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven."
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold.
Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold,
Slain by the bloody Piedmonteses, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven."
The Waldensian valleys are seven in number; they were more in
ancient times, but the limits of the Vandois territory have undergone repeated
curtailment, and now only seven remain, lying between Pinerolo on the east and
Monte Viso on the west—that pyramidal hill which forms so prominent an object
from every part of the plain of Piedmont, towering as it does above the
surrounding mountains, and, like a horn of silver, cutting the ebon of the
firmament.
The first three valleys run out somewhat like the spokes of a
wheel, the spot on which we stand—the gateway, namely—being the nave. The first
is Luserna, or Valley of Light. It runs right out in a grand gorge of some
twelve miles in length by about two in width. It wears a carpeting of meadows,
which the waters of the Pelice keep ever fresh and bright. A profusion of vines,
acacias, and mulberry-trees, fleck it with their shadows; and a wall of lofty
mountains encloses it on either hand. The second is Rora, or Valley of Dews. It
is a vast cup, some fifty miles in circumference, its sides luxuriantly clothed
with meadow and corn-field, with fruit and forest trees, and its rim formed of
craggy and peaked mountains, many of them snow-clad. The third is Angrogna, or
Valley of Groans. Of it we shall speak more particularly afterwards. Beyond the
extremity of the first three valleys are the remaining four, forming, as it
were, the rim of the wheel. These last are enclosed in their turn by a line of
lofty mountains, which form a wall of defence around the entire territory. Each
valley is a fortress having its own gate of ingress and egress, with its caves,
and rocks, and mighty chestnut-trees, forming places of retreat and shelter, so
that the highest engineering skill could not have better adapted each several
valley to this very purpose. It is not less remarkable that, taking all these
valleys together, each is so related to each, the one opening into the other,
that they may be said to form one fortress of amazing and matchless
strength—wholly impregnable, in fact. All the fortresses of Europe, though
combined, would not form a citadel so enormously strong, and so dazzlingly
magnificient, as the mountain dwelling of the Vandois. "The Eternal, our God,"
says Leger, "having destined this land to be the theatre of his marvels, and the
bulwark of his ark, has, by natural means, most marvellously fortified it." The
battle begun in one valley could be continued in another, and carried round the
entire territory, till at last the invading foe, overpowered by the rocks rolled
upon him from the mountains, or assailed by enemies which would start suddenly
out of the mist or issue from some unsuspected cave, found retreat impossible,
and, cut off in detail, left his bones to whiten the mountains he had come to
subdue.
These valleys are lovely and fertile, as well as strong. They
are watered by numerous torrents, which descend from the snows of the summits.
The grassy carpet of their bottom; the mantling vine and the golden grain of
their lower slopes; the chalets that dot their sides, sweetly embowered amid
fruit-trees; and, higher up, the great chestnut-forests and the pasture-lands,
where the herdsmen keep watch over their flocks all through the summer days and
the starlit nights: the nodding crags, from which the torrent leaps into the
light; the rivulet, singing with quiet gladness in the shady nook; the mists,
moving grandly among the mountains, now veiling, now revealing, their majesty;
and the far-off summits, tipped with silver, to be changed at eve into gleaming
gold—make up a picture of blended beauty and grandeur, not equalled, perhaps,
and certainly not surpassed, in any other region of the earth.
In the heart of their mountains is situated the most
interesting, perhaps, of all their valleys. It was in this retreat, walled round
by "hills whose heads touch heaven," that their barbes or pastors, from all
their several parishes, were wont to meet in annual synod. It was here that
their college stood, and it was here that their missionaries were trained, and,
after ordination, were sent forth to sow the good seed, as opportunity offered,
in other lands. Let us visit this valley. We ascend to it by the long, narrow,
and winding Angrogna. Bright meadows enliven its entrance. The mountains on
either hand are clothed with the vine, the mulberry, and the chestnut. Anon the
valley contracts. It becomes rough with projecting rocks, and shady with great
trees. A few paces farther, and it expands into a circular basin, feathery with
birches, musical with falling waters, environed atop by naked crags, fringed
with dark pines, while the white peak looks down out of heaven. A little in
advance the valley seems shut in by a mountainous wall, drawn right across it;
and beyond, towering sublimely upward, is seen an assemblage of snow-clad Alps,
amid which is placed the valley we are in quest of, where burned of old the
candle of the Waldenses. Some terrible convulsion has rent this mountain from
top to bottom, opening a path through it to the valley beyond. We enter the dark
chasm, and proceed along on a narrow ledge in the mountain’s side, hung half-way
between the torrent, which is heard thundering in the abyss below, and the
summits which lean over us above. Journeying thus for about two miles, we find
the pass beginning to widen, the light to break in, and now we arrive at the
gate of the Pra.
There opens before us a noble circular valley, its grassy
bottom watered by torrents, its sides dotted with dwellings and clothed with
corn-fields and pasturages, with a ring of white peaks encircling it above. This
was the inner sanctuary of the Waldensian temple. The rest of Italy had turned
aside to idols, the Waldensian territory alone had been reserved for the worship
of the true God. And was it not meet that on its native soil a remnant of the
Apostolic Church of Italy should be maintained, that Rome and all Christendom
might have before their eyes a perpetual monument of what they themselves had
once been, and a living witness to testify how far they had departed from their
first faith?
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