Waldenses, a famous Christian community which originally grew out of an anti-sacerdotal movement originated by Peter Waldo of Lyons in the second half of the 12th century. A rich merchant, pious and unlearned, he caused the New Testament and a collection of extracts from the Fathers to be translated into Romauit, and, naturally failing to find the apostolic simplicity in the ecclesiastical condition of the time, sold his movable goods for the support of the poor, and devoted himself to preaching the truth to the people by the wayside. Everywhere he found eager listeners, and was followed by groups of simple and earnest persons of both sexes who did their best, even to their dress, to carry out the apostolic ideal, loving to bear the name of the Poor Men of Lyons. The tenets ascribed to them in the earliest accounts are chiefly that oaths even in a court of justice are not allowable, that homicide is under no circumstances justifiable, that every lie is a mortal sin, that all believers are capable of priestly functions, and that the sacraments are invalidated by uncleanness of life in the officiating priest. We find at first no special doctrines that could be condemned as heretical, and even in later days, as Mr Lea points out, the documents of the Inquisition constantly refer to 'heresy and Waldensianism,' the former meaning Catharism. The Archbishop of Lyons forbade them to preach, but in vain; Pope Alexander III. gave them a modified approval, but Lucius III. anathematized them at Verona in 1184, and Innocent III. at the fourth council of the Lateran in 1215. But it was impossible to compel silence, for the missionary zeal of these sincere enthusiasts was boundless, and their influence quickly grew. Alonso II. of Aragon ordered them to quit his dominions in 1194, and in southern France they became involved in the common destruction of the Albigenses, although their quarrel with the church differed from that of the latter in relating to matters of practice rather than of doctrine. But under persecution their divergences from the church naturally grew ever the greater, and we find that gradually, though never uniformly, they came to repudiate the invocation of the Virgin and saints, transubstantiation, and purgatory with all its consequences. Thus the Waldensian martyrs at Strasburg in 1212 made no distinction between laity and priesthood, while at the same time both the French and Lombardian Waldenses held that the Eucharist could be celebrated only by an ordained priest, and it was at that time still the latter only who believed it invalid if the priest was living in sin. Yet they themselves maintained a kind of order of preachers (perfecti), living in voluntary poverty and celibacy, in contradistinction to the ordinary credentes. And by some accounts there was a kind of hierarchy among the perfecti, a theory which gains some support from the frequent use of such terms as majoralis, magnus magister, major, and minor. Their morality was austere, and we find the very inquisitors acknowledging their chastity, sobriety, truthfulness, and industry. Their crowning offences were their paramount regard for Scripture and the unrelenting proselytism of their preachers, who went abroad two by two, ostensibly practising some calling, as pedlars or tinkers, but ceaselessly exhorting the faithful in sequestered places, hearing confessions, and administering absolution. Their principal seats were the slopes and fastnesses of the Cottian Alps, east in Piedmont, west in Provence and Dauphiné. After the Cathari were finally crushed they supplied the chief work that remained to the Inquisition in France. They had grown strong among the poorer class in Lauguedoc, with schools, a good organisation, and missionaries reputed to have skill in medicine. They next spread into Lorraine, Burgundy, Franche Comté, Narbonne, and the mountains of Auvergne. We find Bernard Gui burning them at Toulouse in 1316, and by this time persecution had done its perfect work as well in refining their piety as in completing their estrangement from Rome. Their doctrine of non-resistance made it easy to harry and confiscate their property, yet we find the victims often too poor to pay for the wood that burned them. During the years 1336-46 especially they were severely harassed; twelve were burned in front of the cathedral at Embrun in 1348. Popes Clement VI. and Urban V. stimulated the zeal of the Inquisition, and we read how the fierce inquisitor, François Borel, burned 150 at Grenoble in one day in 1393. Gregory XI. urged on the unholy work in Provence, Dauphiné, and the Lyonnais, and in 1375 the prisons were crowded with far more prisoners than could be fed, and charity was actually asked for them by the church. During the Great Schism they contrived to escape, and after the Council of Constance the Hussites engaged for a time all the energies of the church. We hear, however, of the persecutions again in 1432 and later years, and by this time, says Mr Lea, so completely had the Waldenses monopolised the field of misbelief in the public mind of France that sorcery became popularly known as vauderie, and witches as vaudoises. Sixtus IV. tried to stir up Louis XI. in vain; but Charles VIII. was more docile, and Pope Innocent VIII. was able in 1488 to organise a crusade against them in both Dauphiné and Savoy. The valley of Pragelato, Val Cluson, and Freyssinières were ravaged pitilessly with fire and sword and wholesale confiscations, many barbes (pastors) were burned, and in Val Louise the poor fugitives were smoked to death in their caves. Louis XII. stopped the proceedings, with consent of Pope Alexander VI., whose son César Borgia had just received the duchy of Valentinois. Their remnants continued to cherish their own faith, more or less under disguise of Catholicism, until they finally merged with the Calvinists after the Reformation.
In Italy the Waldenses had found the ground prepared by the Arnaldistæ, or followers of Arnold of Brescia (q.v.), and Umiliati, and spread rapidly even in Milan, but especially in the valleys of the Cottian Alps, Luserna, Angrogna, San Martino, Perosa. Poor, hard-working labourers as they were, they showed throughout their history examples of constancy and quiet heroism such as the world has seldom seen. The Inquisition destroyed Catharism in Italy; Waldensianism it could not destroy. About 1312 in Luserna and Perosa, we are told, as many as 500 attended their assemblies. Popes John XXII., Urban V., and Gregory XI. urged on the persecution, yet all the terrors of fire and sword and torture could not tear them from their faith. In 1375 many of the wretched fugitives from Pragelato perished in the snow, among them as many as fifty mothers with children at the breast. Again in 1475 a bitter war of extermination began under the Duchess Yolande, regent of Savoy, and another, as has been seen, in 1488 at the instigation of Pope Innocent VIII. During the persecutions in Savoy many had found refuge in Calabria and Apulia, and about 1400 there was a larger emigration, as during the 15th century the Inquisition was virtually extinct in Naples. These outlying settlements were visited every two years by barbes journeying under some pretext, the distance between Pignerol and Calabria being counted twenty-five days' journey by the western coast.
The Cathari never made much way in Germany, but on the other hand the Waldenses became strong. Some were burned at Strasburg in 1212, and especially in the diocese of Passau in the second half of the same century there was much persecution. Yet by the close of the century they had become very numerous, often succeeding in escaping notice by their quietness and outward conformity. In 1392 the Archbishop of Mainz persecuted them vigorously, burning thirty-six at Bingen together. At Steyer in Pomerania, in 1397, over a hundred of either sex were burned. Yet they were not extirpated, and remained strong, especially on the confines between Austria and Moravia. In 1467 they united themselves with the famous Bohemian Brethren. The Waldensians on the French side of the Cottian Alps in 1530 opened negotiations with the Swiss and German reformers, and in 1532 a five days' synod at Chaurans in the valley of Angrogne drew up articles of agreement. The Provence congregations were persecuted pitilessly under Francis I. in 1545, twenty-two villages being burned, and 4000 persons massacred, while as many were driven into flight. In Piedmont they defended their rights with such heroism that Emanuel Philibert in 1561 was forced to grant them freedom of worship in the valleys of St Martin, Perosa, and Luserna. In 1571 they formed the 'Union of Valleys' to guard their rights against a government that could not be trusted. From May 1630 to July 1631 plague raged in these valleys and carried off over 10,000—one-half of the whole population. But still more cruel was the persecution, which seldom indeed gave a long respite, and burst out in 1655 with a ferocious brutality that called forth a significant protest from Oliver Cromwell and from Milton one noble sonnet. In 1601 the Duke of Savoy had driven as many as 500 families into exile; again in 1686 Amadeus II. with the help of French troops coerced many through terror into conversion, and drove the recusants into exile, as many as 2600 to Geneva alone, others to the Palatinate, Hesse, and Nassau. In August 1689 more than 800 of these exiles returned to their native valleys, suffering incredible sufferings on their way. Under their pastor Henri Arnaud they made a valiant struggle against the French, and were finally added to Savoy by the peace of Utrecht. The 18th century was not a favourable age for persecution, yet even at its close the Waldenses could hold no office nor real estate, nor have physicians of their own faith. Napoleon allowed their church a constitution, but this Victor Emmanuel abolished in 1814, although two years later, urged by England and Prussia, he issued a milder edict. Meantime they prospered—Colonel John C. Beckwith (1789-1862), who had lost a leg at Waterloo, through reading Dr Gilly's Visit to the Valleys of Piedmont (1823), settled amongst the people for the last thirty-five years of his life, marrying a peasant girl, and succeeded in establishing as many as 120 schools. At last in 1848 Charles Albert gave the Waldenses equal political and religious rights, and since that time their progress has been constant if not rapid. In 1889-90 they had in Italy 44 churches and 53 stations, 58 pastors and evangelists, and a theological school at Florence.
Morland, Cromwell's emissary to Piedmont in 1658, brought back many Waldensian MSS. in Romaunt, which were lost and only rediscovered in the Cambridge University Library in 1862. (See H. Bradshaw in the Memoirs of Camb. Antiq. Soc., 1862, and Archdeacon Groome in Christian Advocate and Review for January 1863). The prose consists of translations from Scripture and the Fathers, and sermons; the finest thing in the poetry is the Nobla Leycon, an exhortation to good works. Gradually the Waldenses conceived a kind of mythical idea of the continuity from primitive times of their scheme of doctrine, and naturally this compelled them to push back the origin of their community until actually they came to regard theirs as the real mother of the Reformed Churches. The origin of their name was no longer found in Peter Waldo, but in the Lat. valles, the valleys which had sheltered the true faith from the Apostolic age. Their historical documents were interpolated and falsified to suit the requirements of this historical theory, which indeed was long accepted by the Protestant world, and only disproved by Dieckhoff, Die Waldenser im Mittelalter (1851); Herzog, Die Romanischen Waldenser (1853); Todd, Discourses on the Prophesies relating to Antichrist (1840); and Maitland, Facts and Documents of the Waldenses (1862). See the Bulletin de la Société d'Histoire Vaudoise appearing yearly in Torre Pellice; and of more modern books, especially Emile Comba, Histoire des Vaudois d'Italie (vol. i. 1887; Eng. trans. 1889); Édouard Montet, Histoire Littéraire des Vaudois du Piémont (1883); K. Müller, Die Waldenser bis zum Anfang des 14. Jahrhunderts (Gotha, 1886); Henry C. Lea's History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (3 vols. New York, 1887); and A. Bérard, Les Vaudois, leur Histoire du IVe au XVIIIe Siècle (1892). See the bibliographies appended to the articles in Herzog and in Holtzmann-Zöpfel.