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The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1 - Contents
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    VI. Independent Spirit of Southeastern France and Northern Italy

    It would be interesting to know just what factors operated to make certain territories, more than others, nests of discontent with the secularized church, areas where we find repeated outcroppings of the spirit of antisacerdotalism, of yearning for the return of the church to the old ways, and of independence of the increasingly centralized hierarchy. Such an area in the Middle Ages was what is now northern Italy and southwestern France. We find various voices and movements for reform, but we do not have sufficient information to trace their continuous history and their interrelationships. Unauthorized and persecuted minorities do not leave an abundance of records, for their enemies tend to destroy their writings and to question and to challenge those that remain. All this conspires to make their study particularly difficult, but the more important and necessary.PFF1 816.1

    In the succeeding pages we shall trace a series of proto-Protestants whose roots go back into the history of north Italy and southeast France. We have found roots of protest in that region before the Middle Ages began, as testified by Jerome, in the time of Vigilantius, 10See page 819. with organized opposition to the unscriptural innovations of the dominant church of the day. The archdiocese of Milan, which at one time stretched westward far enough to embrace the valley dwellers of the Cottian Alps, was a nest of independence from the time of the fourth century, and we learn from Pope Pelagius I (about 555) that the bishops of Milan and Aquileia did not come to Rome for ordination, for “this was an ancient custom” of theirs. 11Translated from a fragment of a letter of Pelagius I, in J. D. Mansi, op. cit., vol. 9, col. 730. See also Thomas McCrie, History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Italy, p. 9. And about 590 several of the bishops of northern Italy refused to adhere to the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon, rejected the communion of the pope, and renewed their declaration of independence of the Roman church. 12Peter Allix, Some Remarks Upon the Ecclesiastical History of the Ancient Churches of Piedmont, chap. 5.PFF1 816.2

    The independence of northern Italy, from the fourth century onward—when Rome’s claims began to be pressed—was a challenge to that ecclesiastical supremacy that had been sought for several centuries, and finally was achieved under the emperor Justinian. By imperial authority all priests and bishops—so far as Justinian had power and jurisdiction—were subjected to the bishop of Rome, and were to be instructed and corrected by him. 13See pages 510 ff. Rome spread out until she dominated much of Europe, but here, in Italy itself, was an insubordination and an open defiance that was intolerable and perilous—the more so since it was near home, in the very land where the Papacy had its seat.PFF1 817.1

    1. PROMINENCE AND INDEPENDENCE OF MILAN

    In the early centuries of the Christian Era, Milan, situated in the midst of the plain at the foot of the Alps, and commanding the natural gateways between Italy and the countries north and west, was hardly less important in the north of Italy than Rome to the south. When Rome lost its controlling position in the empire, Milan assumed an almost independent status. In the period of the divided empire its powerful diocese was virtually independent of the church of Rome. From Constantine onward for a time Milan was honored almost constantly by the presence of emperors. Under Ambrose, who became one of the most powerful figures of his time, began a struggle between temporal and spiritual interests. During the supremacy of the kingdom of the Lombards the Roman pontiffs steadily increased their power, before which the Ambrosian church had to succumb in the end. 14See page 419.PFF1 817.2

    This independence of Milan is likewise noted by Turner:PFF1 818.1

    “Just about the same time with the commencement of the continuous series of councils whose canons were taken up into our extant Latin codes, commences a parallel series of papal decretals.... with the letter of Pope Siricius to Himerius of Tarragona in 385. Such decretal letters were issued to churches in most parts of the European West, Illyria included, but not to north Italy, which looked to Milan, and not to Africa, which depended on Carthage, ... Each district in the West had its separate Church Law as much as its separate liturgy or its separate political organisation; and it was not till the union of Gaul and Italy Under one head in the person of Charles the Great, that the collection of Dionysius, as sent to Charles by Pope Hadrian in 774, was given official position throughout the Frankish dominions.” 15Turner, op. cit., p. 182. (Italics supplied.)PFF1 818.2

    This independence was possible because the see of Rome in the early centuries embraced only the capital and surrounding provinces. Even after the Roman bishop’s claim to primacy came to be recognized over all the West, and even farther, his direct episcopal jurisdiction could be exercised only over his archdiocese. For hundreds of years the powerful archdiocese of Milan-including the plains of Lombardy, the Piedmontese Alps, and part of France—was nonsubservient to the papal chair. Thus the independence of these outlying districts pro vided the opportunity for a freedom which was impossible nearer Rome. And the mountainous regions in this territory provided a haven for independence.PFF1 818.3

    How early the Alpine valleys and the foothills were inhabited by seekers for liberty, and to what extent the older usages and beliefs of the church persisted there from primitive times, we have no contemporary historical sources. But it is not impossible to suppose that the evangelical tendencies noticeable later were to an undetermined extent a genuine survival. 16Albert H. Newman, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 541.PFF1 818.4

    According to the claims of later Waldenses, the early Christians, under pagan Rome’s persecutions of the second, third, and fourth centuries, had found in the valleys of the Cottian Alps, separating Piedmont and Dauphiné, a citadel fashioned by Providence. By the fifth century, they contended, the dwellers of the valleys still held the essential doctrines and practices of the primitive church, and in so doing, they witnessed against the growing superstitions and perversions. They contended that the church of Rome had long ago departed from the primitive faith and that they really constituted the successors of the apostolic church.PFF1 818.5

    2. VIGILANTIUS’ EARLY DISSENT SENT FORTH FROM THE ALPS

    Vigilantius of Lyons, in Aquitaine, and presbyter of the church of Barcelona in Spain, had a controversy with Jerome about 396. 17See Jerome’s letters to Vigilantius and Riparius, in NPNF, 2nd series, vol. 6, pp. 131-133, 212-214; also his treatise Against Vigilantius, chaps. 1-4, pp. 417, 418 of the same volume. In 406 Vigilantius published a treatise against superstitions, celibacy of the clergy, the veneration of martyrs’ relics, burning of tapers, vigils, and the like, 18Cited by Jerome in Against Vigilantius, chaps. 1, 4, 9, 10, pp. 417, 418, 421; see also George Stanley Faber, An Inquiry Into the History and Theology of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses, pp. 291, 292. and his audacity drove Jerome, nurtured in adulterated Christianity, to frenzied defense of the relics of the saints:PFF1 819.1

    “Does the bishop of Rome do wrong when he offers sacrifices to the Lord over the venerable bones of the dead men Peter and Paul, as we should say, but according to you, over a worthless bit of dust, and judges their tombs worthy to be Christ’s altars? And not only is the bishop of one city in error, but the bishops of the whole world, who, despite the tavern-keeper Vigilantius, enter the basilicas of the dead, in which ‘a worthless bit of dust and ashes lies wrapped up in a cloth,’ defiled and defiling all else.” 19Jerome, Against Vigilantius, chap. 8, p. 420.PFF1 819.2

    But the significant point is that Vigilantius wrote from a region situated “between the Adriatic and the Alps of King Cotius,” 20Jerome, Letter to Riparius, chap. 2, p 213. a region which, as Faber points out, “formed a part of what was once styled Cisalpine Gaul.” 21Faber, op. cit., p. 293.PFF1 819.3

    This district to the east of the Cottian Alps is precisely the country of the Waldenses. Here, according to Faber, the secluded mountain and valley folk presented a striking contrast to the wealthy inhabitants of the cities of the plains corrupted by an opulent clergy 22Ibid., pp. 293, 294. Seclusion in a mountainous district naturally has a tendency to preclude change and innovation; opinions and practices are handed down from father to son. That the innovations of the great city churches were not so acceptable to the churches of the mountains and the country is apparent from the protest of Hilary that he feared a city Antichrist. 23See page 409.PFF1 819.4

    Declaring Vigilantius “a forerunner of the Reformation,” and one of the earliest of the protesters, Gilly places him in that line of dissentients which parallels the line of those who perpetuated “another gospel”-the pro-Roman fathers, the schoolmen, and later the Jesuits. He places Vigilantius in that-PFF1 820.1

    “sacred and indestructible line of Christianity, which has continued since our Lord’s promise of the duration of His Church, uncorrupted by those who boast of their succession from the Church of the Fathers, the Church of the Schoolmen, and the Church of Rome: often being in the visible Church, and yet not of it. The Wilderness-church, and the succession of Witnesses in sackcloth, have been predicted from the first, and this implies a condition the very reverse of Ascendancy, and Supremacy, and Prosperity. The succession of pure Gospel Truth has been perpetuated by despised and humble witnesses.” 24W. S. Gilly, Vigilantius and His Times, p. vi.PFF1 820.2

    Faber concludes, as the result of his researches:PFF1 820.3

    “Through the medium of the Vallensic Church, which, at the very beginning of the fifth century, not to speak of even a yet earlier period, subsisted where it still subsists, in the region geographically defined by the angry Jerome as lying between the waters of the Adriatic Sea and the Alps of King Cottius, we stand connected with the purity of the Primitive Church.” 25Faber, op. cit., pp. 593, 594.PFF1 820.4

    Coming to the ninth century, we shall find some of this north Italian community constituting a part of the flock of Claudius (Claude), bishop of Turin, the attacker of image worship. Later we find the outlying districts practically separated from the Roman church, functioning as an independent church in the wilderness, and retaining the simpler ways of the early church.PFF1 820.5

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