Resist the Tyranny of Rome

Lawrence then discusses the Alpine church, in its stand against the furious destroying tyranny of Rome. He continues:AGP 211.1

“Yet one blot remained on the fair fame of the seemingly united Christendom. Within the limits of Italy itself a people existed to whom the Mass was still a vain idolatry, the real presence a papal fable; who had resisted with vigor every innovation, and whose simple rites and ancient faith were older than the papacy itself. What waves of persecution may have surged over the Vaudois valleys in earlier ages we do not know; they seem soon to have become familiar with the cruelty of Rome; but in the fifteenth century the popes and the inquisitors turned their malignant eyes upon the simple Piedmontese, and prepared to exterminate with fire and sword the Alpine church.

“And now began a war of four centuries, the most remarkable in the annals of Europe…. For four centuries a crusade almost incessant went on against the secluded valleys. Often the papal legions, led by the inquisitors, swept over the gentle landscape of Lucerna, and drove the people from the blazing villages to hide in caves on the mountains, and almost browse with the chamois on the wild herbage of the wintry rocks. Often the dukes of Savoy sent well-trained armies of Spanish foot to blast and wither the last trace of Christian civilization in San Martin or Perouse. More than once the best soldiers and the best generals of Mazarin and Louis XIV hunted the Vaudois in their wildest retreats, massacred them in caves, starved them in the regions of the glaciers, and desolated the valleys from San Jean to the slopes of Guinevert.

“Yet the unflinching people still refused to give up their faith. Still they repelled the idolatry of the Mass; still they mocked at the Antichrist of Rome. In the deepest hour of distress, the venerable barbes gathered around them, their famine-stricken congregations in some cave or cranny of the Alps, administered their apostolic rites, and preached anew the Sermon on the Mount. The Psalm of David, chanted in the plaintive melodies of the Vaudois, echoed far above the scenes of rapine and carnage of the desolate valleys; the apostolic church lived indestructible, the coronal of some heaven-piercing Alp.” “Historical Studies,” Eugene Lawrence, pp. 202-204.