Excerpt from The Pilgrim Church regarding Waldenses.

[Deleted member 13126]

There was recently a thread on PB that I lost track of where the ancient history of the Waldenses was being discussed, possibly predating Peter Waldo considerably. I came across this excerpt in the book The Pilgrim Church by E. H. Broadbent and thought it would be good to share and solicit others for comments on.

The Period (70-1700)

In the Alpine valleys of Piedmont there had been for centuries congregations of believers calling themselves brethren, who came later to be widely known as Maldenses, or Vaudois, though they did not accept the name. They raced their origin in those parts back to apostolic times. Like many of the so-called Cathar, Paulician, and other churches, these were not reformed?" never having degenerated from the New Testament pattern as had the Roman, Greek, and others, but having always maintained, in varying degree, the apostolic tradition. From the time of Constantine there had continued to be a succession of those who preached the gospel and founded churches, uninfluenced by the relations between Church and State existing at the time. This accounts for the large bodies of Christians, well established in the Scriptures and free from idolatry and the other evils prevailing in the dominant, professing Church, to be found in the Taurus Mountains and the Alpine valleys.

These latter, in the quiet seclusion of their mountains, had remained unaffected by the development of the Roman Church. They considered the Scriptures, both for doctrine and church order, to be binding for their time, and not rendered obsolete by change of circumstances. It was said of them that their whole manner of thought and action was an endeavor to hold fast the character of original Christianity. One mark of their nor being "reformers" is to be observed in their comparative tolerance of the Roman Catholic Church, a reformer almost inevitably emphasizing the evil of that from which he has separated, in order to justify his action. In their dealings with contemporaries who seceded from the Church of Rome, as well as later in their negotiations with the reform. ers of the Reformation, this acknowledgment of what was good in the Church that persecuted them is repeatedly seen.


The inquisitor Reinerius, who died in 1259, has left it on record:


Concerning the sects of ancient heretics, observe that there have been more than seventy: all of which, except the sects of the Manichaeans and the Arians and the Runcarians and the Leonists which have infected Germany, have through the favor of God, been destroyed. Among all these sects, which either still exist or which have formerly existed, there is not one more pernicious to the Church than that of the Leonists: and this for three reasons. The first reason is: because it has been of longer continu-ance, for some say that it has lasted from the time of Sylvester, others, from the time of the Apostles. The second reason is: because it is more general, for there is scarcely any land in which this sect does not exist.


The third reason is: because, while all other sects, through the enormity of their blasphemies against God, strike horror into the hearers. this of the Leonists has a great semblance of piety, inasmuch as they live justly before men, and believe every point well respecting God together with all the articles contained in the creed; only they blaspheme the Roman Church and clergy, to which the multitude of the laity are ready enough to give credence.


A later writer, Pilichdorf, also a bitter opponent, says that the persons who claimed to have thus existed from the time of Pope Sylvester were the Waldenses.


ANTIQUITY of the WALDENSES


Some have suggested that Claudius, Bishop of Turn. was the founder of the Waldenses in the mountains of Piedmont. He and they had much in common, and must have strengthened and encouraged one another,
but the brethren called Waldenses were of much older origin. A Prior of St. Roch at Turin, Marco Aurelio Rorenco, was ordered in 1630 to write an account of the history and opinions of the Waldenses. He wrote that the Waldenses are so ancient as to afford no absolute certainty in regard to the precise time of their origin, but that, at all events, in the ninth and tenth centuries they were even then not a new sect. And he adds that in the ninth century so far from being a new sect, they were rather to be deemed a race of fomenters and encouragers of opinions which had preceded them. Further, he wrote that Claudius of Turin was to be reckoned among these fomenters and encouragers, inasmuch as he was a person who denied the reverence due to the holy cross, who rejected the veneration and invocation of saints, and who was a principal destroyer of images. In his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, Claudius plainly teaches justification by faith, and points out the error of the Church in departing from that truth.


The brethren in the valleys never lost the knowledge and consciousness of their origin and unbroken history there. When from the fourteenth century onward the valleys were invaded and the people had to negotiate with surrounding rulers, they always emphasized this. To the Princes of Savoy, who had had the longest dealings with them, they could always assert without fear of contradiction the uniformity of their faith, from father to son, through time immemorial, even from the very age of the apostles.


To Francis I of France they said, in 1544: "This Confession is that which we have received from our ancestors, even from hand to hand, according as their predecessors in all time and in every age have taught and delivered." A few years later, to the Prince of Savoy they said: "Let your Highness consider, that this religion in which we live is not merely our religion of the present day, or a religion discovered for the first lime only a few years ago, as our enemies falsely pretend, but it is the religion of our fathers and of our grandfathers, yea, of our forefathers and of our predecessors still more remote. It is the religion of the Saints and of the Martyrs, of the Confessors and of the Apostles." When they came into contact with the Reformers in the sixteenth century, they said: "Our ancestors have often recounted to us that we have existed from the time of the Apostles. In all matters nevertheless We agree with you, and thinking as you think, from the very days of the Apostles themselves, we have ever been consistent respecting the
farth " On the return of the Vaudois to their valleys, their leader, Hear Arnold in 1689 said "That their religion is as primitive as their name is venerable is attested even by their adversaries." and then quotes Reinarius the Inquisitor who, in a report made by him to the pope on the subject of their faith, admits, "they have existed from time immemorial." "It would not," Arnold continues, "be difficult to prove that this poor band of the faithful were in the valleys of Piedmont more than four centuries before the appearance of those extraordinary per. sonages, Luther and Calvin and the subsequent lights of the Reformation. Neither has their Church ever been reformed whence arises its title of Evangelic. The Vaudois are in fact descended from those refugees from Italy, who, after St. Paul had there preached the gospel, abandoned their beautiful country and fled, like the woman mentioned in the Apocalypse, to these wild mountains, where they have to this day handed down the gospel, from father to son, in the same purity and simplicity as it was preached by St. Paul."

The above excerpt is roughly from Page 111-114, After Peter Waldo is introduced, Broadbent goes on to write on Page 115..

The relations of Peter Waldo with the Waldenses were so intimate that many call him the founder of that sect, though others derive the name from the Alpine valleys, Vallenses, in which so many of those believers lived. It is true that Waldo was highly esteemed among them, but not possible that he could have been their founder, since they founded their faith and practice on the Scriptures and were followers of those who from the earliest times had done the same. For outsiders to give them the name of a man prominent among them was only to follow the usual habit of their opponents, who did not like to admit their right to call themselves, as they did, "Christians" or "brethren."

Thoughts?

 

[Phil D.]

There are many competing ideas as to the origins and linage of the Waldenses, and not enough hard historical evidence to fully vindicate or totally discredit most. Broadbent's obvious intent was to show historical continuity between various non-conforming evangelical groups and his Plymouth Brethren. In that respect his work is akin to the those of various Baptist secessionists, although he didn't get quite as carried away as the Landmarkians. Still, I do think the certainty with which he makes various claims is unwarranted and problematic. In some ways his is an alternate version of church history, over and against the general consensus of most other historians.