The Waldensian Protestants

Historians have brought to light a vast amount of information about the people and events that center in the Christian church, or churches, known as the Waldenses, or Vaudois. It is now certain that the Waldenses were not a single, isolated class of one nation only. In their broadest and most comprehensive history, they embrace and represent, under variant names, many of the protesting, reforming groups of Christians from early centuries to the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and on for a hundred years later. Concerning their antiquity and origin, Alexis Muston in his monumental work, based on sources, says:AGP 206.2

“The Vaudois of the Alps are, in my opinion, primitive Christians, or descendants and representatives of the primitive church, preserved in these valleys from the corruptions successively introduced by the Church of Rome into the religion of the gospel. It is not they who have separated from Catholicism, but Catholicism which has separated from them by changing the primitive religion.” “History of the Waldenses,” Vol. I, p. 17, 1875.

The noted Waldensian authority, William S. Gilly, M. A. states the same essential fact in these words:AGP 206.3

“The terms, Vaudois in French, Vallenses in Latin, Valdesi, or Vallesi in Italian, and Waldenses in English ecclesiastical history, signify nothing more or less than ‘Men of the Valleys;’ and as the valleys of Piedmont have had the honor of producing a race of people, who have remained true to the faith introduced by the first missionaries, who preached Christianity in those regions, the synonyms Vaudois, Valdesi, and Waldenses, have been adopted as the distinguishing names of a religious community, faithful to the primitive creed, and free from the corruption of the Church of Rome.

“Long before the Roman Church, (that new sect, as Claude, Bishop of Turin in 840, called it,) stretched forth its arms, to stifle in its Antæan embrace the independent flocks of the Great Shepherd, the ancestors of the Waldenses were worshiping God in the hill countries of Piedmont, as their posterity now worship Him. For many ages they continued almost unnoticed.” “Waldensian Researches During a Second Visit to the Vaudois of Piemont,” p. 6. London: Printed for C. J. G. & F. Rivington, 1831.

Speaking further of these relationships, he adds:AGP 207.1

“The Waldenses of Piemont are not to be regarded as the successors of certain reformers, who first started up in France and Italy at a time, when the corruptions of the Roman Church and priesthood became intolerable, but as a race of simple mountaineers, who from generation to generation have continued steadily in the faith preached to their forefathers, when the territory, of which their valleys form a part, was first Christianized. Ample proof will be given of this, as I proceed, and without attempting to fix the exact period of their conversion, I trust to be able to establish the fact, that this Alpine tribe embraced the gospel as it was first announced in all its purity, and continued true to it, in the midst of almost general apostasy. Nothing is more to be regretted than the mistakes which have been made upon this point, even by Protestant authors.” Id., pp. 8, 9.