Back to History Reports

A HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS

By Thomas Armitage

1890

[Note from the publisher. This valuable out-of-print book was scanned from an original printing and carefully formatted for electronic publication by Way of Life Literature. We extend a special thanks to our friend Brian Snider for his labor of love in diligently scanning the material so that it might be available to God's people in these days. For a catalog of other books, both current and old, in print and electronic format, contact us at P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, [e-mail] (e-mail), http://wayoflife.org/~dcloud (web site).]

[Table of Contents for "A History of the Baptists" by Thomas Armitage]

POST-APOSTOLIC TIMES

THE WALDENSIANS

The cut on page 295 embodies the several Waldensian symbols, and portrays at a glance their struggles and triumphs. The first is a candle lighted in the night, with the motto: ‘Light Shines in Darkness.’ The flame is enkindled by one of the seven stars, which is fed by light from above. The second is a burning bush unconsumed, to show that their fiery persecutions left them undestroyed. The third is a lily growing amongst thorns, yet unchoked and rising above them--the sign of delicate weakness calmly rejoicing over annoying difficulties. The fourth is the anvil of truth, beaten by the hammers of its foes; Church and State, foreign and home enemies try to split it, but break their own hammers. The fifth is the serene Waldensian, standing bolt upright; he despises the bishop’s miter, crook and crosier, with the pope’s tiara and rosary, and tramples them under foot.

Walter Mapes, an Englishman of the twelfth century and a favorite of Henry II, was sent on a mission to the papal court, and first met the Waldensians at the Lateran Council, A.D. 1179. He calls them ‘Valdesii, from their primate, Waldo,’ PETER WALDO, whose name answers closely to the English name Wood. There is fair ground for the belief that an Evangelical people lived in the isolated Cottian Alps before the twelfth century, but the evidence is too scanty and fragmentary to be used with confidence for historical purposes. Some Waldensian writers think that they can trace their origin back to the days of Constantine and even to the Apostles, but Dieckhoff and Herzog have shown that this claim will not bear critical investigation. The ablest modern historians do not find them beyond the great reformer Waldo, an ideal figure of whom, in merchant’s dross, now stands in the great Luther monument at Worms.

This man of God was born at Vaux, in Danphine, on the Rhone, and became a rich merchant at Lyons, where he lived in a street known for generations after his banishment as ‘Cursed Street.’ The sudden death of a friend, who fell by his side at a feast, led him to consecrate himself to Christ, A.D. 1160. While his heart was touched by pondering upon the vanity of earthly things, he joined a crowd in the street who were listening to the song of a troubadour, whose theme was the blessed death of St. Alexis. He first took the singer home with him, and then visited a learned divine to ask more about the way to heaven, who replied: ‘There are many roads to heaven.’ But Peter asked him, ‘Which is the surest? and was answered, ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go sell all that thou hast and give to the poor.’ That day he made the Gospel his only rule and literally obeyed the injunction. He paid his creditors, gave his house, field and vineyard to his wife, provided for his daughters, and then spent three days in the week relieving the wants of the poor in the public square. Many thought him insane, but he said: ‘I am not mad, as you suppose, I am avenging myself of my enemies (his wealth), who have reduced me to such servitude as made me more mindful of them than of God.’

He also put his money to a use uncommon in those days. He employed Stephen of Ansa and Bernard Ydross to translate the Gospels from the Latin Vulgate of Jerome into the Romance dialect for the common people, as well as the most inspiring passages from the Christian Fathers. Then, filled with the love of Christ, he took preaching tours and sent his converts on the same errand. These three acts were prophetic of the whole Waldensian career: the voluntary poverty of its preachers; the free use of the Bible; the right of laymen to preach the Gospel. No other layman except William the Conqueror, Peter’s contemporary, had ventured on such work, and no sect had yet commenced its existence with a popular translation of the New Testament; a bold step which soon aroused opposition.

Peter did not at first call in question any doctrine of the Romish communion, nor did he contemplate separation from it, his simple purpose being to win men to a holy life. Hence, he and his followers were not treated as ‘heretics; ‘but the Bishop of Lyons demanded why they preached and expounded the Scriptures without Church authority? They replied, according to Stephen of Borbone: ‘We ought to obey God rather than man. Christ commanded his disciples to preach.’ They said but little at this time about the superstitions and corruptions of the Catholics. This they left to the fidelity of those in that communion, who, like themselves, wished to see the spiritual life of that body revived. Amongst these, Peter Vidal said: ‘The pope and his false doctors have put the Holy Church in such distress, that God himself is incensed at it. Thanks to their sins and follies, the heretics have arisen; for when they give the example of iniquity, it is hard to find any who will abstain.’ And Pierre Cardinal exclaimed: ‘The priests grasp on every hand, and are reckless of the sorrow they cause. The whole world is theirs, they make themselves its masters. Usurpers toward some, generous toward others, they employ indulgences and use deceit, they give absolutions and they make good cheer. Now they have recourse to prayers, and now pursue their ends by murders. Some they seduce with God, the rest with the devil.’

The crime of Waldo and his followers was that they were ‘schismatics,’ because they established a new apostolate, and usurped the office of preaching without papal authority. The real trouble was that the common people would listen no longer to the greedy, lazy and immoral priests, who addressed them in an unknown tongue and ground them down with tithes. These self-sacrificing, new teachers brought them the Gospel in their mother dialect, claimed no authority over them, preached Bible truth without money or price, and recommended the whole by godly lives. Whether they intended to undermine the hierarchy or not, the priesthood saw the peril, took the alarm, and plied its ecclesiastical authority to save its existence.

Unable to persuade and powerless to compel them to stop, the Bishop excommunicated them A.D. 1176 for preaching without his authority. Instead of accepting this excision, they appealed for redress to Pope Alexander III, and because he wanted them to remain in the Church he laid the matter before the Lateran Council at Rome in 1179. He praised Peter for his vow of poverty, embraced him; and would have permitted him to preach, provided that he maintained the faith of the Fathers Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory and Jerome. For this forbearance Waldo was indebted to Cardinal Pullia; and thus encouraged he sent two of his disciples to the council to secure fuller recognition, as he was not satisfied with the right of preaching himself. The pope turned these over to Walter Mapes for examination, who says of them: ‘There were brought to me the two Waldenses, who seemed to be the chief of their sect, to dispute with me, and shut my mouth as one who spoke evil. I confess I sat in fear lest in so great a Council the privilege of speaking might be denied me, seeing that it was at the request of sinners.’ But he soon overcame his fear, with good zest began to make light of the simple preachers, and even ridiculed them before the Council because they avowed that Christ had sent them to preach and clothed them with power by the Holy Spirit. He, however, betrayed trepidation, for he said: ‘If we let them in, we shall be driven forth ourselves.’ They were virtually condemned, for they were granted permission to preach only on condition that the local priest requested it, a thing that he was slow to ask. The reason given for this prohibition was: ‘That the Roman Church cannot endure your preaching.’ This enforced silence made them all the bolder: ‘Did not Christ send us?’ said they, ‘why should his Church hinder us?’ And they went everywhere preaching the Word.

This, of course, could not be endured, and in 1183-84 a special council was held at Verona by Pope Lucius III, in the presence of the Emperor Barbarossa, ‘to bind in the chain of perpetual anathema those who presumed to preach, publicly or privately, without the authority of the bishop.’ Though excommunicated, they were held as less perverse than other disowned ones, their sentence stating that they presumed to preach without any ‘authority received either from the Apostolic See or from the bishops of their respective dioceses.’ This ban did not class them with the Catherists, with whom they had no part; and often when the priests had controversies with these, they appealed to the Waldensians with their ready store of Scriptural truth to help them. Even as late as 1190 the Archbishop of Narbonne held a colloquy with them to win them back. Their first great contest, then, concerned the right of lay preaching and not doctrine. Pope Innocent, their great enemy, expressly says, long afterward, that they ‘would usurp the office of preaching’ as an innovation. On the ground of doctrine, they were not obnoxious to Rome at that time. Yet when Lucius anathematized them they were obliged to fly in every direction. Waldo, with one band of his disciples, fled to the rugged fastnesses of the Cottian Alps, the dividing line between Dauphine in Southern France and Piedmont in Northern Italy. These first settled in Dauphine. on the French side, but soon crossed the border to the Italian. They labored, however, in both fields, and the great body of the people soon embraced their doctrines.

Piedmont had five valleys, but the mountain tract on the southern side had only three. In these gorges, caverns, passes and dizzy peaks, their descendants still survive, after a period of seven hundred years. Their first real settlements were in the thinly populated and half cultivated valleys of Angrogna and Sail Martino, where the Romans erected an arch, calling it the ‘Gate of Italy.’ The house of the Count Lucerna, the ruler of the land, had on its escutcheon the words: ‘The light shines in darkness,’ which became the Waldensian motto. Their greatest triumphs were in Italy, in the Duchy of Savoy, on the eastern slopes of the Cottians; and their secondary were on the western, under the scepter of France. This Count may have favored the new settlers, but the Benedictine monks, who had a monastery and lands in Savoy, were greatly alarmed at the inroad of this flock of emigrants. In time, however, the Dukes of Savoy assailed them, but the Kings of France were too much engaged to trouble these godly mountaineers, and so they found refuge under one government when the other persecuted them, flight being their only safeguard. For this reason, in part, the history of the Italian Waldensians is far more complicated than that of the French, and more full of adventure by invasion, defense, defeat, suffering and triumph. For a time their very obscurity protected them against the curses of Rome. After a while Waldo turned to the North, but his ferocious persecutors drove him into Bohemia, where it seems likely that, as an old man, he finished his work in peace and fell asleep in Jesus.

The anathema of Lucian, A.D. 1183-84, was followed in 1192 by a demand from the Bishop of Turin that all who found a Waldensian should bring him to his court bound with fetters to be punished, and his successor followed in his steps. But constant persecution sharpened their appetite for the truth and they soon began to fall into so-called ‘heresy.’ Gradually they claimed the right of private judgment in the interpretation of the Scriptures, and came to oppose some doctrines and practices of the Church of Rome touching the power of the clergy, the sacraments and ecclesiastical authority. They resented the yoke of the pope and the bishops; asserted the right of laymen, and even of women, to preach; avowed that the wickedness of the priest neutralized the effect of the ordinances; declared that confession might be made to a good layman, and that absolution from him was effective. They, also, like the Catharists, denied the oblation of the mass, all oaths, war, begging and capital punishment; while a few of them went so far as to deny infant baptism. It is of this class that Du Pin says, they regarded ‘The washings of infants’ as ‘of no avail to them; the sureties do not understand what they say to the priest.’

DISPERSED WALDENSIANS

Persecution soon scattered small bodies of them in every direction. Individuals wandered where they could, and little companies took refuge in various countries, soon becoming the founders of small communities--who, for convenience, we may call the WALDENSIANS OF THE DISPERSION. Sometimes these bands merged into other sects, or they grew up a separate people, constantly developing new views; and at last they became much more radical protestants against Rome than the original Romance Waldensians. Failure to make this distinction clear, and even sharp, will lead us to confound one Waldensian sect with another, and to mix their doctrines and practices in a medley of confusion; for scarcely two sections of them believed and practiced the same things throughout. Nor did any one class of Waldensians hold the same doctrines and follow the same rites at all times. When we lose sight of these changes and variations we fall both into confusion and contradiction concerning this whole people. Those of the Dispersion had so increased to the West as far as Spain, in 1192, that Alphonso, King of Aragon, issued a decree expelling them from his realm, and they were treated nowhere else with greater severity. Edict after edict, the last generally the worst, drove them out. The wrath of God and the charge of treason were launched upon all who shielded a Waldensian, gave him food, heard him preach, or treated him kindly. The king commanded: ‘Let this our edict be read on the Sabbath by the clergy in all cities, forts and villages of oar kingdom, and be enforced by our vicars, bailiffs and judges. Any person, noble or not, who shall find a Waldensian anywhere in our kingdom, after three days’ notice has been given to leave, may injure him in any way, that will not mutilate his body or take his life, without fear of punishment, but rather with the assurance of receiving our favor. We grant the Waldensians till All Saints’ Day to leave or begin to leave the land, or expose themselves to the risk of being plundered and scourged.’ In the face of this edict, which was renewed by Alphonso’s son, Peter II, the Waldensians continued to spread even as far as Seville. Peter’s son, James I, 1227, at Pope Gregory’s request, established an Inquisition which caused the flight of many into Castile. They were tracked to its valleys, thrust into prison and severely punished; but not one yielded, and the king himself carried wood to the pile and set fire to the martyrs. Thereafter any one who heard the Waldensians preach, knelt with them in prayer, gave them a kiss or called them ‘good men,’ was suspected and punished.

Another body of the Dispersed Waldensians was found at Metz, in Northern France, as early as 1199, when the bishop of that city informed Pope Innocent III of the trouble which they made him. He sought the pope’s advice in the matter, telling him that both in the city and diocese a large number of laymen and women were reading the Bible in the Gallic tongue and preaching from place to place. Some of them had come from Montpellier, bringing translations with them which they used in secret assemblies. When the parish priests undertook to correct these things they spurned their interference, telling them plainly that the Bible was better than any thing that they could give them. The pope’s reply against the little flock said, that ‘Although the desire to understand the Scriptures and edify one another out of them is not blamable, but rather commendable; still, he could not favor the secrecy of their meetings.’ He warned them against Pharisaic pride, and threatened them with discipline if they would not hear his fatherly exhortations. But the ‘heretics’ went on with their Bible teachings; and a delegation of abbots came from Borne, A.D. 1200, who dispersed the assemblies, burned the Bibles and, according to the Chronicles of Albericus, ‘extirpated the sect.’

In order to stop these Christ-like proceedings of the Waldensians, the fourth Lateran Council. A.D. 1215, and the Council of Toulouse, 1229, forbade laymen to read the Bible either in the language of the people or in the Latin, and the Council of Tarragona, 1242, bound the prohibition on the clergy also.

The Waldensians of the Dispersion became established in various cities, as Geneva, Aquileia, with others in Switzerland and Italy; and, in fact, they stretched all the way from Aragon to Milan and Florence, and dotted Lower Germany. The Bishop of Turin was greatly disturbed by some of them about 1209. He had been a Benedictine Abbot, and took advantage of the passage of the Emperor Otto IV, on his way to be crowned at Rome, to secure the right of expelling the Waldensians who were ‘sowing tares in his diocese,’ and of expurgating every thing that contradicted the Catholic faith. But the Counts of Lucerna befriended them and secured the free exercise of their religion, in the treaty made with the Duke of Savoy, in 1233. This protected them for many years.

In 1212 a congregation of five hundred Waldensians was discovered at Strasburg. At first the bishop of that city sought to reason them out of their position against the Catholic faith; but such was their ready use of Scripture that disputations always inured to their advantage. Then he proclaimed that all of them who would not forsake their errors should be put to death by fire without delay. Many recanted, surrendered their books, and reported to him that they had three chief centers and three leaders--in Milan, in Bohemia, and on the ground in Strasburg. These leaders, they said, were not clothed with authority like the pope, but owed their influence to the personal confidence reposed in them by their brethren. One of their chief duties was to collect money for the poor. Eighty persons in all, amongst whom were twenty-three women and twelve preachers, would not surrender their faith. John, the Strasburg leader, answered in the name of all. His appeal to Scripture could not be overthrown, and when his persecutors would apply the test of red-hot iron to see if ho were sent of God, he replied: ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.’ ‘Ah, he does not want to burn his fingers,’ scornfully cried the monks. ‘I have the word of God,’ he answered, ‘and for that I would not only burn my fingers but my whole body.’ All who stood with him were put to death. Before their execution they were charged with all sorts of heresy, to which John replied from the Scriptures, moving the bystanders to tears. And when the final demand was made: ‘Will you maintain your belief?’ he replied, ‘Yes, we will.’ They were then led, amid the cries of kindred and friends, to the church-yard, where a broad and deep ditch had been dug. Into this they were driven, wood was piled around them and they perished in the flames. To this day men tremble when the ‘Heretics’ Ditch’ is pointed out in Strasburg. [Bender, p. 62]

We find another body of Dispersed Waldensians, A.D. 1231, in the provinces of the Danube. They were subjected to a terrible persecution for three years by bloody Conrad of Marburg. An extended account of others is preserved in a ‘Chronicle of 1260,’ by an anonymous writer. They lived in the diocese of Passau, which was embraced in the Duchy of Austria. He gives the names of forty-two towns and villages in the diocese, some of them upon the Danube and others close to the borders of Bohemia, where Waldensian congregations were found. The Jesuit Gretser, in editing this report, omits the honest explanations which it gives for the spread of the Dispersed Waldensians. The manuscript lays it to the impure life of the priests, to the conversion of the sacraments into gain, to the multiplication of masses, to the prurient use of the confessional and to pretended miracles; such as, tears of blood flowing from a picture, the lighting of a lamp from heaven, the exaltation of false relics as those of angels, the sweat of Christ, and passing off the bones of oxen as those of saints. Great fault is also found with the adoration of the pope as God upon earth, greater than men and equal to angels, infallible and sinless. An additional cause for public favor was found in the Waldensians themselves; for the author says that they were content in poverty, avoided lying, profanity and theft, and were diligent in business. They were shoemakers, weavers and other artisans; temperate in eating and drinking, and they led godly lives.

Their converts were made by the Bible and religious books. They went as peddlers to a cottage or a nobleman’s castle, offering fabrics or jewelry for sale; and when asked if they had any thing else, they answered: ‘Yes, great rarities; I have one precious stone through which you can see God, and another that kindles love to him in the heart.’ With that these peddlers brought out the precious roll of Holy Writ. Whittier, our gentle Quaker poet, has beautifully pictured these heavenly, traveling Waldensian merchantmen with goodly pearls, thus:

‘O, lady fair, I have yet a gem, which a purer luster flings Than the diamond flash of the jeweled, crown on the lofty brow of kings; A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, whose virtue shall not decay, Whose light shall be as a spell to thee and a blessing on thy way.’ The cloud went off from the pilgrim’s brow as a small, meager book, Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from his folding robe he took. ‘Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price, may it prove as much to thee. Nay, keep thy gold, I ask it not, for the word of God is free.’

Still another reason for their increase is found in that they were loyal to their prince and country. About this time a violent contest between Pope Innocent IV and the Emperor Frederick II compelled every Austrian to choose between his civil and his ecclesiastical allegiance. As Bishop Rudiger took sides with the Emperor and smote the papal legate with his fist, love for the pope was turned into hate in many hearts. In these political convulsions, when the Inquisition and the pope were set at naught, every papal interdict brought a Waldensian jubilee and the sect spread rapidly. Frederick the Warlike, Duke of Austria, who died in 1246, unlike the Emperor, had shown favor to the Catholics by laying violent hands on the Waldensians.

But no class of the Dispersed Waldensians call for more important notice than those of Lombardy. Those who settled in and about Milan were known as the ‘Poor Italians,’ and were a mixture with dissenters already on the ground. Our interest in them is increased from the fact that many of the Waldensians of Lombardy were really the followers of Arnold of Brescia, of whom we ‘have spoken. For as the followers of Waldo were scattered abroad after his death, so the Arnoldists were driven everywhere after the martyrdom of their leader. These, with the ‘Humble Men,’ so called, of Lombardy, multiplied ‘like fishes,’ and grew in favor with the magistrates of Milan, who gave them a piece of ground for a meetinghouse, and allowed them to rebuild it after the archbishop had destroyed their first structure. Those who were merged into this body were numbered with the Waldensians of Lombardy. In 1877 Preger published at Munich what is possibly the oldest Waldensian document extant, which throws some light on them. It gives a colloquy between six delegates of the original Romance and as many of the Lombard Waldensians. These held a conference on their general affairs at Bergamo, May, 1218; and this account thereof was sent a few years afterward by the Lombardy brethren to the party in Germany.