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PFO Report No. 38 Aug 2003

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PFO Report No. 38 Aug 2003 P F O REPORT Piedmont Family Organization Number 38 Aug 2003 organized church. In each case, it was some of their FYI - To date, we have abstracted all the early associates who provided leadership for an genealogically useful information from 214 increasingly organized movement. volumes of the notary records, completing 15 In the case of the Waldensians, no formal, towns, and the villages depending on them for centralized church was established for several notary service. We’re therefore about 2/3 centuries. Rather, the Waldensians were a through the volumes that predate the parish brotherhood loosely united on certain fundamental registers. interpretations of doctrines and lifestyles of the ************************************************** New Testament church. However, before a We owe Giovanni Cena $10,000. generation had passed some fairly significant He is working for us and we need to pay him. differences developed between the two leading Your continued support branches of the movement. In Part 1 of this account, moves this work forward! we noted that the group which centered in Milan, Thank you!!! Lombardy (known as the “Lombard Poor”) Please send donations to: practiced a more settled lifestyle than that of the PFO itinerant preachers who typified the original Poor of 987 W. 2200 N. Lyons. Waldo himself opposed the changes Pleasant Grove, UT 84062 introduced by the Lombard branch, but he died These donations are tax deductible. about 1206. In 1207 one of his chief assistants, the ******************************************************** theologian Durand of Osca, accepted reconciliation with the Catholic Church. He and a significant Waldensian History – Part 2 portion of the Poor of Lyons were allowed by the By Louis B. Cardon pope to establish a monastic order, known as the Poor Catholics, dedicated to observing the Peter Waldo of Lyons, France, now Waldensian principles of poverty, preaching, and generally recognized as the founder of the good works, within the jurisdiction of the Catholic “Waldensian movement” in the 1170’s, was similar Church. Within a few years Durand had half a in certain respects to the German monk, Martin dozen communities of Poor Catholics in southern Luther, recognized as the instigator of the great France, where they directed much of their preaching Protestant Reformation in the early 1500’s. Though against the Cathars, an extremist group which more than three centuries separated these two considered everything material to be evil and totally important critics of the Catholic Church, they were rejected the Catholic Church. The Pope of the alike in that both initially hoped that their criticisms period, the great Innocent III, was willing to tolerate of the worldliness and false doctrines of the Church the Poor Catholics, and even, to some extent the could spark the needed reforms from within the more independent Poor of Lyons. But the crusade Church. They were also alike in that, when their which he launched against the Cathars (also called proposed reforms were rejected by the Church, they Albigensians) was so indiscriminately destructive became founders of movements which provided an that the Poor of Lyons were seriously decimated, alternative home, outside the Catholic Church, for and even the Catholic Poor were sometimes taken those willing to accept a religion and lifestyle drawn for Cathars by the crusaders. The Cathars, in spite from the Bible. A further resemblance is evident in of their radical doctrines, had become widely that both these path-breakers were disinclined to admired in southern France for their abstemious and assume the position of active director of an charitable lifestyle. Hence most of the feudal lords 1 of southern France refused to join Pope Innocent’s into the common language of the people (Franco- crusade against them. The crusaders were mainly Provencal in his area) and disseminated as broadly from the north, forces of the French king, and were as possible. The Waldensians soon became widely led by the particularly brutal Simon de Montfort. A known for their assiduous study of their pocket favorite battle cry, as they charged into villages in scriptures, and for their ability to quote scriptural southern France, was: “Kill them all; God will passages as evidence for all their doctrinal beliefs. know his own.” As we saw in Part 1 of this history, however, By the mid 1300’s the Poor Catholics had ceased even among the Waldensians there were significant to exist as a separate order; some of their remnants differences in interpretation of the Bible. Waldo and being absorbed into the new mendicant orders of the Poor of Lyons believed that it was essential for Dominicans and Franciscans. These important new the righteous to live like Christ and the apostles, religious orders, called friars (“brothers”) rather without involvement in the affairs of this world . than monks, were in several respects a nemesis of They were for the most part full-time traveling the Waldensians, whom they greatly resembled. mendicant preachers. On the other hand, the Poor Rather than living apart from society as did of Lombardy, including many artisans and conventional religious orders, or leading merchants, could see no general condemnation in disreputable lives, as did many of the conventional the Bible of honest labor or of ownership of homes Catholic clergy, the Dominicans and Franciscans and shops. Furthermore, while Waldo and his initially resembled the Waldensians in their French followers considered that a call to serve God emphasis on poverty, preaching, and good works. was incompatible with marriage and family, the Saint Francis himself was inspired by the same Lombards, for the most part, lived in settled verse from Matthew 19 which had so impressed families, though some of their full-time missionary- Peter Waldo --Christ’s counsel to a rich young man preachers practiced celibacy. In 1218, a landmark to abandon his wealth and follow Him. And Saint in Waldensian history occurred when six delegates Dominic deliberately required his followers to live from each of the two wings met in the city of from alms (which is why they were called Bergamo, at the foot of the Alps, to try to avert a mendicants or beggers) and minister to the needs of full split in the movement. In this they succeeded, the populace, as did the Waldensians. Thus there deciding that there was much more that bound them were now popular and admired holy orders within than that divided them. Prescot Stephens the Catholic Church. The Waldensians had lost summarizes the results of this important conference some of their uniqueness and it had been shown that as follows: an admirable lifestyle was possible within The two groups continued side by side as part Catholicism. of the same loosely bound movement with its own The Waldensians still possessed some special distinctive character. It was not so much attractions, however. Perhaps chief among these differences of doctrine that prevented complete was their possession and common use of the Bible. centralized control as the wide spread of the The Catholic Church restricted study of the Bible movement throughout Europe and the need for to educated clergy. The laity were considered concealment. It became generally known in the incapable of understanding and applying its course of the thirteenth century as Waldensian, teachings and were prohibited to own or study it. though Bergamo had left Lombards, not the French Even Saint Francis discouraged book learning, disciples of Valdes, in the ascendant. From now on which he felt interfered with complete poverty and the movement was largely coloured by the beliefs humility. Waldo, on the contrary, believed that only and practices of the Lombard wing, and widespread knowledge of the Bible, particularly the was spread largely by their missionary activity. The New Testament, could take the corrupted Church of French followers of Valdes had been weakened by his time back to the purity of the church of Christ his death, by the defection of Durand and the and his apostles. Accordingly one of his first decimation of the Albigensian Crusade. Under the concerns had been to have the Latin Bible translated Poor Lombards the Waldensian movement became 2 more than a community of voluntary poverty Certainly many of the judges in Inquisition devoted to preaching; it gradually developed into an courts were men of conviction, who truly believed alternative Church. (Prescott Stephens, The that trial by torture and execution by burning were Waldensian Story, A Study in Faith, Intolerance and necessary means to protect members of the Survival, 1998, pp. 42-43.) community against an intolerable threat to their By the early years of the thirteenth century (the eternal salvation. Their logic held that it was better 1200’s), the Catholic papacy and leading Catholic that a few persons should experience extreme agony scholars were also drawing their lines for more in this life, than that they and all those they might effective action against the Waldensians, mislead should experience much greater agony in increasingly viewed by the Church as dangerous the un-extinguishable fires of hell. One of the heretics who must be eliminated. Common Catholic earliest documented cases of a trial and conviction complaints against them were that they refused of Waldensians by the Inquisition occurred in 1319- obedience to the local and central Catholic 20, in Pamiers, a town in southern France. The hierarchy; they insisted on preaching and on use of inquisitor was Jacques Fournier, a bishop who later the Bible, even when forbidden to do so; they became pope Benedict XII. The accused were a refused to recognize that the Catholic Church held group of four humble Waldensians. One was the “power of the keys”, to bind and to loose. In Raymond de la Cote, a forty-year-old deacon who addition they objected to war and to capital used his sixteen years of scripture study and his punishment, and some of them even rejected infant native courage and intelligence to give “lucid and baptism and all sacraments performed by sinful shrewd answers backed by relevant quotations from priests.
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