Waldensians

Lecture 27, what is Lucic in Tenebrus, the Valgencians? As a catechism that was written in the Middle Ages, that as this question, do you believe in the Holy Catholic Church and the answer given in this catechism is this, no, for it is a creature, but I believe that it exists. And then the next question is this, what do you believe regarding the Holy Church? In the answer in this catechism is this, the Holy Catholic Church is made up of all gods elect from the beginning to the end who are according to the grace of God by the merits of Christ, have been gathered together by the Holy Spirit and previously ordained to eternal life. Their number and names being done only to the one having chosen them. Well, what's going on here, this is obviously not a Roman Catholic catechism, it sounds more like St. Augustine or actually Westminster Confession of Faith than the typical sacramental theology of the Middle Ages. Well, what we have in this catechism is a catechism from the Waldensians, and in this lecture today I'm going to try to answer the question, who were the Waldensians? Now, this is a lecture I do look forward to giving. I said last time that I never was very happy when I had to come to the Crusades, but I'm always happy when I can talk about the Waldensians, because with this group of believers, we see something of a steady light shining in the darkness. Actually that is the motto in Latin that the Waldensians use often, Lux Lucit in Tenebrus, the light shines in the darkness. There's a drawing by a modern Waldensian with a light, the candle, and it's illuminating the word of God, which is so important to Waldensian faith and Waldensian history, and that light shines in the darkness. As we pray today, we're going to pray together the Lord's Prayer. Waldensians as other Christians use the Lord's Prayer in their worship, and as we pray together in the words of the Lord's Prayer, we can remember that we're joining with these ancient believers, sometimes called the first Protestants, or the first evangelicals. So let's pray the Lord's Prayer as we begin. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our deaths as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen. Waldensians like to talk about what they call the first reprimation that took place 300 years before what we Protestants who are not Waldensians usually call the Reformation of the 16th century of Luther in Calvin, but the Waldensians are rightly proud of the fact that a long time before Luther in Calvin, there was an earlier Reformation in the church. We need to go back to the 12th century for a moment and talk about that period. The 12th century was a time of great activity in the Roman church, it was a time of religious reform, and all sorts of unrest and new movements, it was the time of the Crusades, as we saw last time, the Crusades were still going on, although not producing very much in the 12th century. It was also a time in which the papacy had for some time tried to improve the teaching and the morals of the Catholic church without too much success. The Gregorian reforms of the 11th century came and went and made some mark on the church, but many of the problems persisted. St. Bernard and Clare Vaux died in the middle of the 12th century, a little bit later in that century. Dominic was born, the founder of the Dominicans, and then just a little later, Francis, the founder of the Franciscans, so much is going on, a lot of format, a lot of turmoil in the Catholic church. It's also a time of the churches having to deal with a very serious, heretical movement in the south of France, the movement of the cathars, or the albogencians, as they're sometimes called, a medieval sect that reached back to the ancient Gnostic or Manichian dualism, taught that the created were always all evil, could not have consequently been made by a good God. For many cathars in southern France and the Roman church organized itself against these people, produced a crusade not against the Muslims this time, but against Christian heretics in southern France, and before too many years wiped out that entire movement largely by putting to death many of the people who belonged to the albogencian heresy. That altered place in southern France from too loose over to Leon, this was an area of concentration of the cathars, and that movement was obliterated, nothing remained of it. But in a similar geographical area, here between Leon and Turin, between this town in modern France and this town in modern Italy, in this part of the Alps, another movement arose. The Waldensian movement, and the Waldensians are the only medieval sect, we can use the word sac to mean a group not part of the Catholic church, that survived the persecution of the Middle Ages, and actually the Waldensians have survived all the way down to the present. Well how did these people come into being, and what did they believe? Sometimes scholars have argued that the Waldensians have their own particular heritage, their line of descent, all the way back to the New Testament, that there was a kind of underground church or secret church or trail of blood that was separate from the Roman Catholic church. You can read some books in church history which argue that, I don't think, successfully, I don't think that we can find a separate, pure church from the New Testament down to the Waldensians, down to the present, certainly we haven't been studying that church in this class most of the time we've been talking about Roman Catholic church, and I think it's more accurate historically as modern Waldensian scholars admit that the Waldensian movement was a movement that came out of the Catholic church, it did not have its own separate history back to the New Testament period. It began with a man named Waldo, he lived in the city of Lyon in France, and he was a wealthy merchant, it's interesting to see this emerging social class, either the aristocracy, the elite, nor the peasants, but a new class of merchants, of some means, and Waldo represented this particular new class in society, but he became convinced that God was calling him to give away his money and to take up preaching. He was not a priest, of course, he was a layman, and he followed that leading, and was converted to a life of apostolic poverty, this happened about the year 1170, which would have been 10 years before Saint Francis was born. So before Francis is doing something very similar down in Italy, further south, Waldau has adopted a lifestyle of poverty in Lyon, and pretty soon people began to be gathered around him, he not only gave away his money to the poor, but he memorized portions of scripture in the vernacular language of the people, and also portions of some of the writings of the church fathers, such as a guest in, and Waldo would go out and preach, mainly reciting the scripture and quoting the church fathers, and people joined him in this venture called the poor men of Lyon, that was the first name that they used, not Waldensians, but the poor. And as the movement began to grow a little bit, they did what every movement in the middle ages eventually had to do, and that was since the money to Rome, to tell the Pope about it, and to get papal permission to exist as a movement or an order within the Catholic church. Some of these Waldensians went down to Rome, the Pope was Alexander the third, and the Pope's were always a little reluctant, quite reluctant actually, to endorse a new movement like this. Some movements do get approval, like the Franciscans and the Dominicans. Other movements were turned down, because the Pope's did not want too many movements like this around, because this kind of movement should gather its own momentum and actually challenge the authority of the church in some ways. So it was not automatic that a movement like this would be approved by the Pope. There would be some lengthy questioning and examination of the views, of the people who were proposing to begin a new movement. We do have a very interesting account of what happened when those Waldensians arrived in Rome because different people were appointed to question them in the delegation of the doctors and scholars of the Roman Catholic Church, and there was one English bishop whose name was Walter Mapp, who was asked to question the Waldensians. He said Mapp said I was actually quite nervous, because this was my big chance to put down these heretics and to establish my reputation as a theologian and an inquisitor. So he wanted to make the best impression that he could on everybody who was listening. So he said I knew these people were very simple and illiterate. They really weren't. That was his description of them. They had memorized large portions of Scripture, and they were using those scriptures in their preaching, but thinking them to be untudored, at least in the ways of theology and the church, he sat out to question them and he said first I proposed the very simplest question, do you believe in God the Father? And they replied we believe, and then he said do you believe in God the Son? Again we believe, do you believe in the Holy Spirit? Yes, we believe, and do you believe in the mother of Christ? And once more they said we believe, whereupon everyone present broke out into a roar of laughter and they retired in confusion as well they might. Well they had fallen into a trap. Perhaps you can identify the trap that they fell into. Do you believe in the mother of Christ? What would a good Orthodox Roman Catholic answer to that question? No, I believe in the mother of God because to say I believe in the mother of Christ indicated something of the taint of the Nestorian heresy that we have already talked about. So the Waldensians, according to Walter map, maps on brilliance in questioning them in this way, failed the test and actually they were not approved as an order in the Catholic Church. The Pope did not care if they wanted to be poor. They could give away everything that they had if they wanted to but the Pope did not permit them then to carry on preaching which is really what they had come to Rome to ask permission to do. He said you cannot do that unless the local clergy will allow you to do that. So they went back home to Leon disappointed in that verdict but they did not hesitate to begin preaching again when they got back to France because they believe that the authority to preach did not come from the Pope or from the bishops but from Christ. The local archbishop refused to give them permission but Waldo replied it's better to obey God than man. Well he chose a very good text for his answer because that was the text, those were the words of Peter when he and the apostles in Jerusalem were forbidden to preach and actually we think that Waldo is later called Peter Waldo. We think that he gets the name Peter because he often used this text. He was quoting Peter better to obey God than man. Peter was not his original name. Later Waldo called him Peter Waldo probably in reference to his frequent use of that text. Waldo and his followers were then expelled from Leon by the archbishop but like those early Christians in Jerusalem when they were scattered by persecution they went everywhere preaching the gospel and it's not long before Waldensians are all over Europe. They have to move and act in secrecy but they turn up in many places. The English monk Walter Mapp who had questioned them in Rome said their beginnings are humble in the extreme for they have not yet much of a following but if we should leave them to their devices they will end by turning all of us out. So the Roman church even though this was a very small seemingly insignificant movement had some fear that a movement like this could grow and could become a very great movement and would oppose the teaching of the Catholic Church. Early in their history the Waldensians did not really form a separate church. They did not build their own church buildings until the middle of the 16th century. First Waldensian church building is about 1555 we think. Formally they were still part of the Catholic Church. They had their children baptized in the Catholic Church and they took communion or mass once a year in the Catholic Church as was the custom of the time but within the Catholic Church in southern France and northern Italy there were these groups of Bible-based Christians who were led by people they called them Barber Barbers. It's the Italian word for Uncle perhaps because the Catholic Church used Father for their priest the Waldensians used Uncle for their leaders and little groups of people in different places but mainly in the mountains and the alps between France and Italy we're meeting with their leaders for the study of the Bible and for the discipline of their Christian lives. They were persecuted, Roman Catholic Church even though they recognized that the Waldensians did not form a separate church realized that this was really a church within a church and the Catholics did everything they could to exterminate these Waldensian believers but as I've already said they not only were able to survive by hiding in the alps and in the valleys they are in northern Italy and southern France but moved in to Europe where they had great influence in pairing for the later reformation. We'll study John Huss a little bit later the reformer of Bohemia there's a 1558 confession of faith of the Bohemian brethren and on the title page of that 1558 confession of faith Husses followers are called Waldensians. They were probably not really Waldensians but they had come to view the Christian faith so much like the Waldensians that the word Waldensian had become a general word for Christians or Evangelicals by the time we come to John Huss. Now let's think a little bit about the theology of these people and their practice. What did they really believe? There is of course some diversity in this movement but I think we can summarize the movement in a number of major points. One point is poverty which I've already mentioned. Waldensians gave away their money in order to follow Christ. Now this was not an unusual occurrence at this time. Stephen Osnet, one of his books says large numbers of laity and clergy were gripped by the biblical ideal of apostolic poverty. There were some people that were gripped by the ideal of going on a crusade. There were others who were gripped by the idea of trying to live as Jesus and the apostles lived and the Waldensians were very much part of that second ideal. Peter Waldo said this, we have decided to live by the words of the gospel. Essentially that of the sermon on the mount and the commandments. That is to live in poverty without concern for tomorrow. But we hold that also those who continue to live their lives in the world doing good will be saved. So Waldau doesn't say it's necessary for everything to give up everything like we have. People can continue to live in the world that is without moving out into a kind of special community or order like the Waldensians. And those people can be saved as well. But the Waldensians felt called to give up their possessions. They were described by Walter Mapp. This way, and this was a common way that the Waldensians were spoken of naked following the naked Christ. Now Mapp did not use that as a complement for the Waldensians, but debuted it as a testimony to their faithfulness to Christ. That statement, naked following the naked Christ, a kind of startling way of describing these people. Probably had two meanings. One is that they were materially poor. Christ had nothing, so they had given away all that they had to follow him. But it could also mean, as it probably did, that they were stripped of religious trappings and followed Jesus and Jesus alone. They focused their understanding of what it meant to be Christians on a very strict and literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. And they attempted to put all of that into practice in their everyday lives. And so that poverty, giving away what they had, it meant a repudiation of violence in every form. And the Waldensians were totally opposed to the crusades and would not support that movement at all. And they would not take oaths, because they said that the Sermon on the Mount did not allow them to do this. So this kind of lifestyle is going to make them stand out as unusual in the area in which they lived. Actually, there's a story about a man who was suspected of being a Waldensian, who was brought before the bishop for a trial. And in his defense, he said of himself that he was not a Waldensian. He said, everybody here knows that I'm not because I swear and lie and drink like any good Catholic. And I could not then be accused of being a Waldensian. Well, poverty, literal following of the Sermon on the Mount and of any statements of scripture, not only there, but elsewhere, marked the Waldensian movement, a very strong commitment to the Bible. Certainly is part of the Waldensian movement. The Waldensians turned directly to the Bible, placed it in the hands of the people, translated it, and preached it in order that people might hear it for salvation and for discipleship. We know that one method that the early Waldensians used in getting the Bible out was to go about as merchants. They sold things like precious jewels or books or cloth. And this helped them to make a living. But they really were more concerned to distribute the scriptures as they were traveling from town to town as merchants selling their wares. John Greenleaf Whittier has a beautiful poem about this, which I've included in the syllabus, where the old merchant is selling this pearl of great price to a noble lady. And when she purchases the pearl, he tells her that he has something even greater than that pearl, even more beautiful, more wonderful. And he brings that a little copy of the Bible. And she wants to pay him. And he says, no, this is free. Here, lady, fair, is the pearl of price. May it prove as such to the nay, keep by go. I ask it not for the word of God is free. And Whittier captures in that beautiful poem something of the spirit of these early Waldensians who spread the Bible far and wide. We know too that as the persecution came to the valleys of the Waldensians, often from Catholics, troops, and soldiers would move into the valleys. And many of the Waldensians were killed. The scriptures were taken away from them. And some few would be able to escape to the higher mountains in the Catean Alps on the border of Italy and France. But according to this tradition, and I expect it's true, Waldensians had memorized the entire Bible. Different families were responsible for different books. And so when they would be stripped of all their Bibles, they would come together again and recite the whole Bible, in which by memory, as a community, they had the Bible and they were able to write it again as a result of their having memorized it. Another emphasis of the Waldensian movement, and you would expect this from their history, was an emphasis on lay preaching. These people preached. All of them preached. They were lay people, but they believe that every Christian should both know the Bible and should be able to preach it. And so wherever they went, they preached simple sermons, but sermons that included the message of the Bible. The modern Waldensian movement, Italy and South America, talk about that in a few minutes, but the modern Waldensian movement is true to this heritage in that it still allows lay people to preach and to administer the sacraments, even though the Waldensians do have ordained clergy today. You talk a bit about the Waldensian view of the sacraments, because that will bring us into some understanding of how the Waldensians view salvation. The Waldensians rejected the Roman Catholic sacramental theology. I'm going to go through all of that in more detail with you a little bit later, as we think of how a Roman Catholic person in the medieval world thought he or she could be saved. We call that the sacramental system or sacramental theology. The Waldensians did not accept this. Some sources indicate that the Waldensians held to only two sacraments, baptism in the Lord's Supper, which would bring the Waldensian movement right in line with later Protestant belief. It's probably true, as people have often pointed out, that the 16th century reformation stressed more justification by faith that may not have been as central to the Waldensians as their emphasis on the Bible alone. They certainly wanted to stress the fact that it's the Bible, not the church and not tradition, that is the source of our faith, but you can find in reading Waldensian source document some emphasis to on justification by faith. For instance, one of the early Waldensian poems puts it this way, it is God alone who pardons and no one else. If you take that in a very strong sense, as I think it was intended, then it's clear that salvation is not going to come through the sacraments of the church, but through God's pardoning grace which is received by faith alone. What did the Waldensians think about the church? We've already seen that early on, this group did not formally break with the church, but in spirit and temper, the Waldensians were far from being in accord with the contemporary standards and understanding of the Catholic Church. I have a book written by a modern Waldensian called Challenge to Constantinianism, the Waldensian theology in the Middle Ages. The Waldensians opposed the idea of Constantinianism, and they did not accept what was called the donation of Constantine. We've already passed that in our study, but you might remember that one of the popes, Sylvester, is supposed to have received from Constantine the Emperor a document in which the Emperor who is now in the process of moving from wrong to the new capital in Constantinople turns over the whole of Italy to the Pope, and some other territory as well. That's called the donation of Constantine. Later, that was proven to be a forgery. It was written in the 8th century or the 9th century when the popes were in bitter dispute with the Carolingian rulers of the Holy Roman Empire as to who was actually going to have temporal power in control over what used to be the Old Roman Empire, and the donation of Constantine was thrown up to give some support to the popes who said, we own all of this because the Emperor Constantine gave it to us. In the 15th century, that document was proven to be a forgery, but the Waldensians did not know that in their early history, but they rejected it anyway. They said, this is not the way a Pope ought to act to receive power and earthly dominion from an earthly ruler. Sylvester's acceptance of worldly political power is a denial of the humility and poverty fundamental to obedient Christians who are followers of Christ and the apostles. We must reject all forms of compromise of the church with the world. So we have created by God's spirit and power a small group of faithful believers who impact not only their time, but later history as well. Before I end this lecture on the Waldensians, let me just trace that later history briefly. In the time of the Reformation, the Waldensians realized that what was going on in places like Geneva represented much of what they had already accepted and believed. In 1532, representatives of the reform part of the Reformation, including William Farrell, went down to the Italian Alps and met with Waldensian leaders and the Waldensian Church then formally became part of the Protestant church and particularly of the reform Protestant church. From that time on, the Waldensians separated themselves from the Catholics, built their own church buildings, had their own life independent of the Church of Rome. But this did not introduce a peaceful period because you know the Reformation was followed by at least a century and a half of what we call the wars of religion as Catholics and Protestants fought each other throughout Europe and the Waldensians suffered greatly during this time. You have John Milton's great poem written in defense of the Waldensians. Milton was Cromwell's secretary of state and Cromwell tried to do what he could in order to protect fellow Protestant Christians from the great suffering that the Waldensians were experiencing at the hands of the leaders of Savoy and Italian Catholics. The situation got so bad that surviving Waldensians finally had to flee their beloved mountains and valleys and went for a few years to Geneva where the Waldensian Church was a church in exile until 1689 when they returned in what is called a glorious return in Waldensian history. That is the return of the few Waldensians that still existed from Geneva back to the valleys. The Church was able to exist there, not without persecution, but with some measure from time to time of peace. Like so many of the Protestant churches during the time of the Enlightenment, the Waldensians were influenced by liberal, rational thought and then there was a period of revival actually coming out of England through Geneva in the days of Robert and James Haldane and the Evangelical Revival in Switzerland which reached down into the valleys and renewed the Old Waldensian Church brought life to it once again and then in the 19th century not so much due to religious persecution but due to lack of economic opportunities in the valleys, many Waldensians migrated to South America and to the United States. Actually the Waldensian Church today which exist in Italy also has a strong part of that church in Uruguay. So, Waldensian settled along the river plate between Uruguay and Argentina and that forms the province of the Waldensian Church in South America. The Waldensians who came to the United States settled in various places but have not maintained a separate Waldensian Church most of those Waldensians became Presbyterians. There is a little town in North Carolina called Valdez, North Carolina and you can tell from the name that Valdez is a Waldensian settlement. There's a Waldensian Presbyterian Church in Valdez and a museum of Waldensian history and in the summertime a historical drama that's given by the local people who tells the history of the Waldensians from the early beginnings in Italy to the migration from the Piedmont of Italy to the Piedmont of North Carolina in the early 20th century. There's also settlement of Waldensians in Missouri in a town called Monnet and there are Waldensians in other places as well. The Waldensian Church in Italy in 1979 merged with the Italian Methodist Church that did not help the Waldensians much because the Methodist did not represent the reformed history and theology of the Waldensian movement and also brought in much more of an emphasis on social activity as the kind of core and heart of Waldensian life in Italy. But within that ancient church there are still Bible believing people and we can pray that there might be a renewal of this church which has such a significant and wonderful history. Therefore seeing that we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses let us run with perseverance the race that is marked out for us. The question has to do with the Waldensian theology. You know in some ways I've simplified this for the sake of the lecture I've tried to make it accurate but you can probably get different expressions of theology as you read different Waldensians. Some are going to sound more Catholic some are going to sound more Protestant but the weight I think is toward the later Protestant position and very much in line with Augustine and with Calvinism as that develops later. But I think you're right when you say there is some difference there on the church. The Waldensians formally stay within the church but there is more of an emphasis on the sacraments in Augustine than you'll find in the later reformers and certainly the Waldensians are going to be more on the side of the reformers there. Well it's a great story. You would not find this much emphasis given to the Waldensians in a kind of general history of the church. Gonzales doesn't say a whole lot about the Waldensians but since I get to choose the topics that I'm going to lecture on I can spend the whole period on the Waldensians and I think it's important because these people are part of the movement that we'll call the pre-reformers or the four runners of the Reformation. We've got John Wickliffe to go, John Hus and the Italian general on most of Ana Rola. With Peter Waldo you've got the four great pre-reformers. We'll talk about those others later.