The truth as to why the Waldensians were persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church?

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The Waldensians also known as Vallenses, Valdesi or Vaudois are a Christian movement and religious cultural group in the southern French region of the French Alps and centered on Piedmont in northern Italy. History says the Waldensians as they became known, were organized by Peter Waldo, a wealthy merchant who gave away his property around 1173, but they had a much longer line in history. Soon after the Eastern Roman Empire fell, and the Roman Catholic Church unveiled its true nature, Waldensian teachings came into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. By 1215, the Waldensians were declared heretical and subject to intense persecution; the group endured near annihilation in the seventeenth century.

The Roman Inquisitor Reinerus Sacho writing c. 1230 held the sect of the Vaudois to be of great antiquity, thus long preceding Waldo by centuries. In the Waldensians, Sabbatati or Insabbatati, there was a more or less continuous tradition of Sabbath-keeping from the early church of the Apostles, throughout southern Europe. There are also accounts of Paulicians, Petrobusians, Pasaginians along with the Waldenses of the Alps, who kept the Saturday for the Lord's day or Sabbath, which was in conflict with the change to Sunday held by the Roman Catholic Church. The Sabbatati were known also by the name Pasigini. In reference to the Sabbath-keeping Pasigini, one scholar wrote: "The spread of heresy at this time is almost incredible. From Bulgaria to the Ebro, from Northern France to the Tiber, everywhere we meet them. Whole countries are infested, like Hungary and southern France; they abound in many other countries; in Germany, in Italy, in the Netherlands and even in England they put their efforts."

Another scholar, Bonacursus, is also quoted in writing against them:

"Not a few, but many know what are the errors of those who are called Pasigini. ... First, they teach that we should obey the sabbath. Furthermore, to increase their error, they condemn and reject all the church Fathers, and the whole Roman Church" In Spain the persecution was specifically directed at the Waldensian Sabbath-keepers.

Concerning their antiquity and origin, Alexis Muston in his monumental work, based on sources, says:

The Vaudois of the Alps are, in my opinion, primitive Christians, or descendants and representatives of the primitive church, preserved in these valleys from the corruptions successively introduced by the Church of Rome into the religion of the gospel. It is not they who have separated from Catholicism, but Catholicism which has separated from them by changing the primitive religion. History of the Waldenses, Vol. I, p. 17, 1875.

The noted Waldensian authority, William S. Gilly, M. A. states the same essential fact in these words:

The terms, Vaudois in French, Vallenses in Latin, Valdesi, or Vallesi in Italian, and Waldenses in English ecclesiastical history, signify nothing more or less than Men of the Valleys; and as the valleys of Piedmont have had the honor of producing a race of people, who have remained true to the faith introduced by the first missionaries, who preached Christianity in those regions, the synonyms Vaudois, Valdesi, and Waldenses, have been adopted as the distinguishing names of a religious community, faithful to the primitive creed, and free from the corruption of the Church of Rome.

Long before the Roman Church, (that new sect, as Claude, Bishop of Turin in 840, called it,) stretched forth its arms, to stifle in its Antæan embrace the independent flocks of the Great Shepherd, the ancestors of the Waldenses were worshiping God in the hill countries of Piedmont, as their posterity now worship Him. For many ages they continued almost unnoticed. Waldensian Researches During a Second Visit to the Vaudois of Piemont, p. 6. London: Printed for C. J. G. & F. Rivington, 1831.

 

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But the bishops in the region of Piedmont and the adjoining provinces did more than decline to go to Rome for ordination.

In the year 590, the bishops of Italy and the Grisons (Switzerland) to the number of nine, rejected the communion of the pope, as a heretic. Dr. Allix s Remarks on the Ancient Churches of Piedmont, chap. 5, p. 32, quoted in The History of the Christian Church, William Jones, chap. 4, sec. 1, p. 244.

About a century later, Paulinus, Bishop of Aquileia, in Italy, stood firmly against the domination and the innovations of the papacy, and was joined by other bishops in condemning the worship of images as idolatrous.

Turin, an important city a short distance to the west of Milan, was the center of an important diocese at the beginning of the ninth century. About the year 817 A. D. Claudius was appointed Archbishop of Turin, by Emperor Louis. Of him we read:

This man beheld with dismay the stealthy approaches of a power which, putting out the eyes of men, bowed their necks to its yoke, and bent their knees to idols. He grasped the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and the battle which he so courageously waged, delayed, though it could not prevent, the fall of his church s independence, and for two centuries longer the light continued to shine at the foot of the Alps. The History of Protestantism, J. A. Wiley, Vol. I, p. 21.

This is all supported by Lawrence, the learned essayist, who writes:

Here, within the borders of Italy itself, the popes have never been able, except for one unhappy interval, to enforce their authority. Here no Mass has been said, no images adored, no papal rites administered by the native Vaudois. It was here that Henry Arnaud, the hero of the valleys, redeemed his country from the tyranny of the Jesuits and Rome; and here a Christian church, founded perhaps in the apostolic age, has survived the persecutions of a thousand years. Historical Studies, Eugene Lawrence, p. 199.

Soon after the dawn of Christianity, they assert, their ancestors embraced the faith of St. Paul..."

"The Scriptures became their only guide; the same belief, the same sacraments they maintain today they held in the age of Constantine and Sylvester. They relate that, as the Romish Church grew in power and pride, their ancestors repelled its assumptions and refused to submit to its authority; that when, in the ninth century, the use of images was enforced by superstitious popes, they, at least, never consented to become idolaters; that they never worshiped the Virgin, nor bowed at an idolatrous Mass. When, in the eleventh century, Rome asserted its supremacy over kings and princes, the Vaudois were its bitterest foes. The three valleys formed the theological school of Europe. The Vaudois missionaries traveled into Hungary and Bohemia, France, England, even Scotland, and aroused the people to a sense of the fearful corruption of the church. They pointed to Rome as the Antichrist, the center of every abomination. They taught, in the place of Romish innovations, the pure faith of the apostolic age. Lollard, who led the way to the reforms of Wycliffe, was a preacher from the valleys; the Albigenses of Provence, in the twelfth century, were the fruits of the Vaudois missions; Germany and Bohemia were reformed by the teachers of Piedmont; Huss and Jerome did little more than proclaim the Vaudois faith; and Luther and Calvin were only the necessary offspring of the apostolic churches of the Alps. The Advocate, 200, 201."

Now interestingly the Waldensians held and preached a number of truths as they read from the Bible. These included:
1. The atoning death and justifying righteousness of Christ
2. The Godhead
3. The fall of man
4. The incarnation of the Son
5. A denial of purgatory as the "invention of the Antichrist"
6. Valued voluntary poverty

They held that temporal offices and dignities were not meant for preachers of the Gospel; 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 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 of having scoffed at the doctrine of transubstantiation, and of having spoken of the Roman Catholic Church as the harlot of the apocalypse.

 

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John Wesley has this to say about the Vaudois or Waldenses: "It is a vulgar mistake, that the Waldenses were so called from Peter Waldo of Lyons. They were much more ancient than him; and their true name was Vallenses or Vaudois from their inhabiting the valleys of Lucerne and Agrogne. This name, Vallenses, after Waldo appeared about the year 1160, was changed by the Papists into Waldenses, on purpose to represent them as of modern original." (Notes on the Revelation of John, Revelation, Chapter 13, Verse 6, p. 936.)

Here is an important fact cited by Jonathan Edwards: "Some of the popish writers themselves own, that this people never submitted to the church of Rome. One of the popish writers, speaking of the Waldenses, says, The heresy of the Waldenses is the oldest heresy in the world. It is supposed that they first betook themselves to this place among the mountains, to hide themselves from the severity of the heathen persecutions which existed before Constantine the Great [272-337 AD]. And thus the woman fled into the wilderness from the face of the serpent" (The Works of Jonathan Edwards Vol. 4, Work of Redemption., Period 3 - From Christ's Resurrection to the End Of the World, Part 4, p. 229.)

Here is some history..."There is abundant evidence that the history of the Waldenses dates back to the time of the apostles. It is their claim that their religion passed to them from the apostles and in fact even the writings of their enemies give credence to this. (Note that the Waldenses were called by several different names: Leonists, Vallenses, Valsenses, Vaudois and others.)

Reinerius Sasso was a well informed Inquisitor of the thirteenth century. He had once been a pastor among the Waldenses but had apostatized and become their persecutor. The book The History of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses by George Faber gives a translation of this testimony on page 272. His testimony described the Leonists (Waldenses) as being the most pernicious of the sects of heretics for three reasons. The first reason was because of their longer continuance, for they had lasted from the time of Pope Sylvester or even from the Apostles. Secondly, because there was scarcely a land where they did not exist. And the third reason being because they lived justly before all men and blasphemed only against the Roman church and clergy while maintaining every point concerning the Deity and the articles of faith which made their doctrine appeal to the populous. He also writes that they were simple, modest people who instructed their children first in the Decalogue of the law, the Ten Commandments. (See Truth Triumphant, 254.)

Faber also shares the testimony of Pilichdorf, also of the thirteenth century, who writes that the Valdenses claimed to have existed from the time of Pope Sylvester. Claude Scyssel, the Archbishop of Turin, who lived in the neighborhood of the Waldenses in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries tells us that the Valdenses of Piedmont were followers of a person named Leo. In the time of Emperor Constantine, Leo, on account of the avarice of Pope Sylvester and the excesses of the Roman Church, seceded from that communion, and drew after him all those who entertained right sentiments concerning the Christian Religion. (See The History of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses, 276.).."


James A. Wylie (1808-1890) describes the "apostolicity of the Churches of the Waldensian valleys" with the observation that "Rome manifestly was the schismatic," while the Vaudois or Waldenses deserved the "valid title of the True Church," and even the Waldenses' "greatest enemies, Claude Seyssel of Turin (1517), and Reynerius the Inquisitor (1250), have admitted their antiquity, and stigmatized them as 'the most dangerous of all heretics, because the most ancient'" (excerpted from "The History of Protestantism" Volume 1, Book 1, Chapter 6 "The Waldenses - Their Valleys" ---New Window [1878] by James A. Wylie). Since the Byzantine Manuscripts commonly accessible to Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) were used in his production of the Greek New Testament, which formed the Textus Receptus (1516, 1519, 1522, 1527, 1535), their use demonstrated a continuity with the Vaudois. The Vaudois Christians had likewise used and preserved the ancient Byzantine manuscripts of Antioch in the form of Latin Scripture; and, their survival.. from the time of the Early Church until the sola scriptura ("Scripture alone") of the Protestant Reformation (1521) is testament that the True Church and the True Word of God did continuously testify against the False Church and False Scriptures of the harlot of Rome-- and triumphed! "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our Faith" (1John 5:4). The Vaudois rendezvous with the Protestant Reformation represents a Divine Approval of the Reformation, in that the Ancient Christian Church of the Vaudois attested to the Truth of the Reformers, and specifically to the validity of the Scriptures of the Reformers, which were used to translate the Textus Receptus Bibles of the Reformation, i.e., the Spanish Reina-Valera (1569), the Italian Diodati (1603), the Coverdale Bible (1535), the Tyndale New Testament (1536), the Great Bible (1539), the Bishops Bible (1568), the Geneva Bible (1560-1599), and, of course, the King James Bible (1611). "For by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war: and in multitude of counsellors there is safety" (Proverbs 24:6). Significantly, men of God, such as John Wesley (1703-1791) and Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), have attested to the accuracy of understanding that the Vaudois Christians were not merely a more recent vintage of Protestant reaction to the Church of Rome, coming upon the scene through Peter Waldo in twelfth century France (1171 AD), but that the Vaudois were ancient Christians, who preserved their Christianity along with the Scriptures-- separate from the Church of Rome-- as far back as the early second century AD.