The Noble Illusion

Those people who champion the theory of an apostolic origin of the Waldensians point to a poem called The Noble Lesson which, at first glance, seems to place Waldensian doctrines at the year 1100 A.D. which would be before the time of Peter Waldo. The wishful thinking is that if this truly represents evidence of Waldensian existence many decades before Waldo came along, then this proves that he was not their founder but rather they had been there all along, nestled in the security of the Alps since the time of Sylvester. Such an attitude is presented by Nathan Barker in one of his copious references to the Waldenses:

The Waldenses treatise title the Noble Lesson, dated 1100 A.D., stated: "Antichrist, the predicted murderer of the Saints has already appeared in his true character, seated monarchally in the seven-hilled city." In 1120 or 1160 A.D., A treatise Concerning Antichrist identifies the Pope of Rome as the Antichrist. George Faber, identifies this as a production of Peter the Valdo (Faber, Page 379-384)

In parroting the work of George Faber, Nathan Barker has uncritically accepted the date that best suits his efforts to establish Waldensian antiquity. However, in his work Waldo and the Waldensians Before the Reformation Emilio Comba identifies the root error. Comba, who was himself a professor at the Waldensian Theological College in Florence, writes:

"For awhile the question was to find the point of time a quo the herein-mentioned one thousand one hundred years and more were calculated, to establish the date of the poem. We can easily imagine how differently these verses must have been interpreted. Some, anxious to conclude that the first Waldensians had existed prior to Waldo, traced them back to the twelfth century; while others placed them in the thirteenth to avoid a gross error. This oscillation of opinions was still continuing when the manuscripts deposited in the library of Cambridge by Sir Morland in 1658 were found, and among them a third copy of the Nobla Leiczon - the oldest of all in which, by means of a magnifying glass, the following version was discovered. It read:
§"Ben ha mil e 4 cent anz compli entierament."
But, because of an erasure, the figure 4 was almost invisible; then this reading was confirmed by the discovery, in the same library, of a scrap of another manuscript of a later date, which reads:
"§Ben ha mil e ccc anz compli entierament."

Did Morland himself erase the number 4? Who knows, but Comba concludes, "If this cannot be said to settle definitely the question of the date, it nevertheless removes all anachronism, and thereby the last objections of those who complicated with their fancies a problem as clear and simple as that of the Waldensian origin." (p. 51)

Encyclopedia Britannica 13th ed. explains further:

"As regards their antiquity, the attempts to claim for them an earlier origin than the end of the 12th century can no longer be sustained...They rested upon the supposed antiquity of a body of Waldensian literature, which modern criticism has shown to have been tampered with." But it was pointed out that in the oldest MS. existing in the Cambridge university library the figure had been imperfectly erased before the word "cent," a discovery which harmonized with the results of a criticism of the contents of the poem itself. This discovery did away with the ingenious attempts to account for the name of Waldenses from some other source than from the historical founder of the sect, Peter Waldo or Valdez."

Source
Waldo and the Waldensians Before the Reformation
New York:
Robert Carter & Brothers,
and Dodd, Mead & Company.
1880.