Читать книгу The Vaudois of Piedmont: A Visit to Their Valleys - J. N. Worsfold - Страница 8

Table of Contents

After enquiring as to the geographical position of the Waldensian valleys, the next most frequent questions which arise are: Who are the Waldenses? how long have they been in the valleys of Piedmont? what circumstances led to their taking up their abode there? and what has given to their history that peculiar characteristic which makes every detail both of their past and present so intensely interesting to all the lovers of piety and patriotism wherever the story of their high-souled courage or their long-enduring faith has reached? It is to answer these questions, as briefly and yet as accurately as possible, that we address ourselves in this chapter.

And, first of all, we would state very distinctly that there is no ground for believing that their name of Waldenses is taken from that of Peter Waldo, the celebrated merchant of Lyons. Not only because they date their origin centuries before his time, but also because the names they bear of Waldenses, Vaudois, and Valdesi all refer to the place of their abode, and not to that of any individual whose opinions they had embraced, or whose leadership they had followed. It may further be observed, in opposition to the opinion of the Waldenses being named after Peter Waldo, that his second name does not appear as applied to him prior to his condemnation as an heretic; and, moreover, the various ways in which it is written, e.g., sometimes Valdo, sometimes Valdus, at other times Valdesius or Valdensis, shows that the word was not a proper name, but a mere appellative. So with regard to the idea that Vaudois comes from Vaudes, a sorcerer, it would be more correct to say that the term sorcerer was one applied by the inhabitants of the plains to those who were Vaudois, or hill-men, under the notion that the inhabitants of such localities practised sorcery. Hence we are compelled to assume that the name is purely geographical, and applied from time immemorial to the persons living in those valleys of Piedmont which have ever formed part of the Italian territory, and are not to be confounded with the Swiss Canton de Vaud, bearing a name so like because of the similarity of geographical conformation.

In answer to the next question, How long have the Waldenses lived in the locality from which they derive their name? Da ogni tempo, da tempo immemoriale—from all time, from time immemorial—is the claim set up by them in their earliest documents, and repeated over and over again in their petitions to the House of Savoy for liberty of conscience.[A] Nor is there any attempt to refute this claim of antiquity on the part of their princes or their persecutors.

To this statement of the Waldenses themselves we will add corroborative testimony from others.

Their enemies. We begin with Reinerius the Inquisitor, a.d. 1250. He refers to the Waldenses under the term of Leonists, and says that this sect has been of longer continuance (than the others to which he refers), having lasted, some say, from the time of Pope Sylvester (314), and others from the time of the apostles.

Pilichdorf, a writer of the same date, expressly asserts that the Waldenses claimed to have existed from the time of Pope Sylvester, and Claude Seyssel, Archbishop of Turin from the close of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth, and whose diocese extended to the valleys of Piedmont, says that the Waldenses took their origin from Leo, a person in the time of y^e Emperor Constantine, who, hating the avarice of Pope Sylvester and the immoderate endowment of the Church of Rome, seceded from her communion, and "drew after him all who entertained right sentiments about the Christian religion."

Next in order we may take the testimony of Rorenco, Grand Prior of St. Roch in Turin, and one of the lords of the valley of Luserne. He was commissioned to investigate the history of the "men of the valleys," and published the result of his labours in the year 1632. He says "that the Waldenses were no new sect, but had been in those valleys for more than five or six centuries," and in proof of this remarks further, that "no edict of any prince who gave permission for the introduction of this religion into these parts can be found. Princes only give permission to their subjects to continue in the religion of their ancestors." Cassini, an Italian priest, declares that the tradition handed down was, that "the Waldenses were as ancient as the Christian Church."

Another writer, Henri de Corvie, describes them as men descended from "an ancient race, inhabiting the Alps, and have been always attached to ancient customs." Voltaire, an impartial witness, speaks of the Waldenses as "the remains of the first Christians of Gaul." If it be asked for documentary proof, in the possession of the Waldensians themselves, it should be remembered that Leger, the historian, collected together all that he could find, and that these were taken from him when he was imprisoned in Turin, a.d. 1655. Still, documents of great value and antiquity have been preserved, and among these must be enumerated "The Noble Lesson," a didactic poem of about five hundred lines. Three MSS. of this poem are preserved in the libraries of the Universities of Cambridge, Geneva, and Dublin, and the date assigned is early in the twelfth century. The dialect in which it is written is also considered by some as an unquestionable proof of the high antiquity of the document. For example, the eminent philologist, M. Renouard, writing as a philologist, and not as an historian, remarks that "the dialect of the Vaudois is an idiom intermediate between the decomposition of the language of the Romans and the establishment of a new grammatical system." This philological circumstance shows the extreme earliness of the period at which the Waldenses must have betaken themselves to the Cottian Alps, inasmuch as it proves that they left the Italian plains before the establishment of the new grammatical system referred to by M. Renouard. This is the opinion of Mr. Faber, who contends that "the primevally Latin Vaudois must have retired from the lowlands of Italy to the valleys of Piedmont in the very days of primitive Christianity, and before the breaking up of the Roman empire by the incursions of the Teutonic nations." And this leads to another question. Why did these people leave their homes in the fertile plains and betake themselves to the less temperate climate and the rugged soil of a mountainous region? Plainly there must have been some very urgent cause, and that cause may be readily perceived in the record of the persecutions against the Christians under the Pagan emperors during the second, third, and fourth centuries.