3 tolic life to the present time."-To Ecolampadius, Vaudois sectaries, then living, declared in 1530 that they had endured as a little people for more than 400 years, -yea, from the time of the apostles. In the Treaties of the Waldenses with the Savoy Government, Muston declares that they asserted (and here the tradition has reference to the time of their inhabiting the Alpine Vallies of Piedmont) that they were possest of the Vallies before Savoy held Piedmont; i. e. I believe, before the middle of the 12th Century. Again, in one of the later Waldensian manuscripts delivered to Morland in 1658, and which must therefore have borne date before (perhaps much before) that year,-to the question, "How long have the Valdenses inhabited the vallies?" the answer returned is, "On the actual authority of many histories, about 500 years; but according to our belief, from the time of the Apostles." 5-Thus we see that from no very long time after Peter Valdes' epoch, and ever after, instead of referring their origin as a sectarian or religious community to him, the Waldensian sectaries are declared to have dated it back to the remote antiquity of Pope Sylvester I, or even of the apostles: also that in the 15th and 16th centuries they asserted the further fact,—and appealed for its truth to historical authorities then existing,-of their inhabitation of the Piedmontese vallies as a sect of separatists as early, or thereabouts, as the year 1100. 3. Nor, let me add, are there wanting admissions, though partial and self-contradictory, in the hostile chroniclers themselves to the antiquity of the Waldenses; at least to their antiquity before Peter of Lyons.-Thus Conrad of Lichtenau, Abbot of Ursperg in the diocese of Augsburgh, states in his Chronicle, under the year 1212, that he had in that year seen some of the Poor 2 Muston, 409. 3 Ib. p. 351. Gilly's Waldenses, 78, Faber, 282. So too the Waldenses, if I may thus call them, of the Alpine Vallies of Dauphiny, in their Memorial to the French King Francis I, in the year 1542. See Muston, 350, Faber, 288, 433. 5 Leger, Part i. ch. 26, from one of the lost Cambridge Manuscripts. 1 men of Lyons at Rome: and observes respecting the sect they belonged to, that, "having arisen some considerable time before (olim) in Italy," (not Lyons or France, be it observed,) "the sect still continued: " thus obviously implying that the origin of the sect was not from Peter of Lyons.-The same is the testimony of the writer of the Tractatus in Martene.2 "The sect is divided into two parts; the Ultramontane or Gallic Pauperes, and the Lombard Pauperes and of these the former descended from the latter."-So too Reinerius. Although he had said before that the Leonista, or Poor men of Lyons, had their origin from the Lyonnese merchant, Peter Valdes, yet he presently after speaks of the sect as being formidable from its superior antiquity to other sects then existing; viz. the Manichæans, Arians, and Runcarians. And though by the Manichæans, &c., 3 1 Mr. Maitland gives the extract from Conrad at p. 398 of his Facts and Documents; but ascribes the notice of having seen the Lyonnese Pauperes at Rome not to Conrad himself, though speaking of it in the first person, but to some anonymous writer quoted by him. His reason is that he supposes the transaction described to have taken place at Rome under Pope Lucius III, in the year 1183; a time when Conrad would probably have been too young to be present. But there is nothing whatever in the extract from the Chronicle to fix it to that date. On the contrary it represents the time of the transaction as near that of the institution of the Dominican and Franciscan orders; which latter event was in the 4th Lateran Council under Innocent III, in the year 1215. See Hard. vii. 83. The "vidimus tunc temporis," evidently refers not to the time of Lucius' Decree but to the year 1212 noted in his Chronicle.-The correctness of this view of the matter is confirmed by the statement in the Tractatus de Haresi Pauperum de Lugduno, given from Martene's Anecdot. by Maitland, at p. 468 of the same Volume; it being there said expressly that it was to Innocent III that the Lyonnese Poor Men made their application.-Conrad's Chronicle concludes at the year 1229. Moreri says that he died in 1240. 2 See on the authorship of this Tract, Maitland's Remarks in answer to King, p. 45. Martene, from whose collection it is taken, ascribes it to Stephen de Borbonne, the same writer that I have already quoted: Semler, on the authority of D'Argentré, to Ivonetus, a writer who lived a century and half, I believe, after Stephen: Muston (p. 127) to the Summa De Cath. et Leon. of Reinerius. In this uncertainty as to the date of its author, I have prefixed the extract to that from Reinerius. 3 Ch. 4 of his Tract on Heresies. "Sectæ hæreticorum fuerunt plures quam LXX: quæ omnes per Dei gratiam deletæ sunt, præter sectas Manichæorum, Arianorum, Runcariorum, et Leonistarum, quæ Alemaniam infecerunt. Inter omnes has sectas non est perniciosior ecclesiæ quàm Leonistarum. Et hoc tribus de causis. Prima quia est diuturnior." Bib. P. Max. xxv. p. 264. • Dr. Gilly informs me that there is a discussion in Echart, Vol. i. p. 484, to prove that this Ivonetus was identical with Moneta, (who wrote, we have already said, about 1240 A.D.) or Simoneta Cremonensis. it is pretty clear that he meant the novi Manichæi,' that had made themselves conspicuous in comparatively modern times in Western Christendom, yet it is scarce credible but that, inquisitor as he was, and a brother of the Dominican order, he must have known alike from the anti-Albigensian writings so famous of St. Bernard, from sundry Chronicles of the preceding age, and from the Acts of the Councils of Orleans, Arras, Charroux, Rheims, Oxford, &c, particularized in a preceding Section, that heretics had been condemned as Manichæans in the xith and first half of the xiith century. Hence his statement, even though thus understood and limited, must be regarded as referring back the origin of the sect at least to the commencement of the xith Century.2Once more I must not omit the later testimony of Rorenco, Prior of St. Roch in Turin about 1640: who being commissioned to inquire into the history and antiquity of the Waldenses of the Alps adjacent, reported that they were not a new sect in the ixth and xth Centuries, and that Claude of Turin must have detached them from the Romish Church in the ixth. For we can scarcely doubt but that many old Documents of authority on the subject existed in the Ducal Archives; and, if so, that Rorenco, whose work was dedicated to the Duke of Savoy, had access to them. So that, though a late one, his testimony is important.-Let me again observe, however, respecting these various testimonies, that what they witness to is chiefly the antiquity of the sect; and in so far as locality is concerned, only to its having originated in Lombardy before appearing at Lyons. As to its location in the Piedmontese Alpine Vallies before the xiiith Century they furnish no testimony.-It has been said 1 See Maitland against King. 2 Having no exact knowledge as to the time of Petrus of Lyons, he may possibly have supposed this statement not inconsistent with the former. 3 Morland, p. 13, &c. 4 Leger informs us how the Records and Books of the Waldenses were sought out by their enemies, in the crusades against them, and carried away to Turin. He was himself spoiled in this way of all his manuscripts and books in the massacre of 1655, and saved nothing but a Bible.-See Leger i. 4; also Gilly's Wald. Res. p. 79, &c. and the extract from Morland in the Note next but two following. indeed that one Ebrard of Bethune partly furnishes it; inasmuch as about the year 1212 he wrote of their calling themselves Vallenses.' But he was a writer far distant from the scene, and evidently not well acquainted with the subject. The date usually assigned him of 1212 is more than doubtful: 2 and the appellation professedly applied by him figuratively. 4. Next comes the argument (an argument that will detain us somewhat longer) from certain of the Waldensian Documents still extant.3-The manuscripts, as is well known, were collected in the Piedmontese vallies by Sir S. Morland, ambassador from Cromwell in 1650 to Savoy; by him brought to England; and in August 1658 (so Morland himself states) deposited in the Cambridge University Library. They were then bound in 1 This occurs in his 25th chapter, (B. P. Max. xxiv. 1572) headed “Contrà eos qui dicuntur Xabatati;" a well-known appellative, from some peculiarity in their shoes or sandals, of the disciples of Peter Valdes. In it he says; "Vallenses se appellant eo quòd in valle lachrymarum maneant:" and again, “Omnia ista vobis objiciuntur à Salomone O Vallenses."-He elsewhere uses the word Waldenses, apparently of other heretics: evincing in his description that he knew but little about them.-Bernard of Fontcaud's pun on the word Valdenses, “ quasi à valle densa" the dark vale of error, (Bib. P. Max. xxiv. 1585,) will not much help the hypothesis. 2 Mr. Maitland says, Facts and Doc. p. 99; "I believe the only authority on the point is the distich following, respecting a certain Grammarian of the same name and place; Anno milleno centeno bis duodeno, Condidit Ebrardus Græcismum Bethuniensis." And he argues that the bis refers to the duodeno, not the centeno, making the date 1124, not 1212; so proving what might otherwise have been suspected, that the Grammarian was a different person from the anti-Waldensian writer.— That Mr. M. is correct in his construction of the bis will appear from the two following versicular dates of similar character, quoted by Waddington, p. 380, from Pagi -the first respecting the foundation of the Cistercian order, A.D. 1098; Anno milleno centeno bis minus uno, --the second respecting the Præmonstratensian order, under Norbert, a friend of Pope Innocent II, who died A.D. 1144; Anno milleno centeno bis quoque deno Sub Patre Norberto Præmonstratensis viget ordo. 3 The account of his collecting them, as given by Sir S. Morland, is too illustrative of the subject, as well as too interesting, to omit. "Some days," he says, "before my setting out for Savoy," (i. e. as ambassador from Cromwell about the year A.D. 1650,) "the late Lord Primate of Ireland, Archbishop Usher, sent for me to his chamber; and there gave me a serious charge to use my uttermost diligence in the enquiry after, and to spare no cost in the purchase of, all those 21 volumes; but of these the seven first are now missing. Of some, however, of the missing Treatises, copies remain in the works of Morland and Leger and of the most valuable of all, the Noble Lesson, there exists an ancient manuscript copy in the Library of Geneva ; though less ancient, it is supposed, than that of Morland.3 2 It is with the Noble Lesson alone that I have to do for the present. -Objections have been made by Maitland, after Bossuet, to the assigned dates and even genuineness of other of the manuscripts; more especially of one entitled a Confession of Faith, and another a Treatise on Antichrist. And so far as regards the dates assigned by Morland's collector,5 or by previous copyists of the manuscripts, his objections have weight; though not so manuscripts and authentic pieces, which might give any light into the ancient doctrine and discipline of those (the Waldensian) Churches :-adding there was nothing he was more impatient to know, as being a point of exceeding moment for stopping the mouths of our Popish adversaries, and discovering the footsteps of our religion in the dark intervals of the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries. This serious injunction of that reverend and worthy man, together with my own real inclination, caused me to leave no stone unturned, nor to lose any opportunity, during my abode in those parts for the effecting this thing. And although the Pope's emissaries had already gathered the more choice clusters and ripe fruits, yet I met at least with the grape-gleanings of the vintage :-I mean divers pieces of antiquity: some whereof had been a long time buried under dust and rubbish; others had been scattered about in the vallies, some here, some there, in desert and obscure places, and without a singular providence had never come to light." Waldensian Researches, p. 136. 1 Inquiry having been made as to the time and manner of the loss, no account it seems can be given. All that is known is that Allix, who published his work on the Waldenses in 1689 or 1690, speaks of having seen, and quotes from, one of the missing and now not extant volumes; also that a catalogue of the Library made in 1753, mentions only the fourteen volumes yet remaining, numbered from H. to W. The necessary conclusion is that between the years 1690 and 1753 these seven volumes were abstracted ;-how, or by whom, is a matter of conjecture. Wald. Res. pp. 154, 447. 2 Both Gilly and Muston give fac-similes of the six first lines of the Poem, as written in the Geneva Manuscript.-The Poem itself will be found in my Appendix. 3 So Raynouard, the learned author of the Poesies des Troubadours; Vol. ii. p. 142. "Je suis porté à croire que le manuscript de Cambridge avoit été fait sur un exemplaire plus ancien que celui de Geneve." ap. Muston 146. 4 Facts and Doc. p. 114, and Second Answer to King, p. 55.-Has Mr. Maitland fully considered the difficulty of a successful forgery of the antique? The case of Chatterton is a memorable modern example of its being no easy matter of execution. 5 "It" (The Confession of Faith)" was packed with sundry other Documents, including the Treatise on Antichrist, in one parcel; to the envelope of which the Collector had affixed the general date of 1120.-I do not suppose there was any intentional imposition on the part of him who affixed the date: but the action must be viewed as arbitrary, and altogether unauthoritative." Faber, 370, 372. |