Who Were the Waldenses?

Nathan Barker is not alone in claiming the Waldenses as precursor to the 2x2's - there are many Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Plymouth Brethren, Evangelicals, and countless nondemominational "remnant" groups, all of whom point to the Waldenses as a group that most closely followed the "New Testament church". There is, however, no evidence that this group originated in the first century. They were merely a Christian sect of dissenters that originated in southern France in the late 12th century and adopted Calvinist doctrines in the 16th century; known in the French language as Vaudois. (1) Nate writes, "

The Doctrines and Practices of these Brethren, known as Waldenses, and also by other NAMES, were of such a character that it is evident they were NOT the fruits of an effort to reform the Roman and Greek churches and bring them back to more Scripture ways. Bearing no TRACES of the influence of those churches, they indicate, on the Contrary, the CONTINUANCE of an OLD tradition, handed down from quite another source---the teaching of Scripture and the Practice of the Primitive Church. Their existence proves that there HAD always been men of FAITH, men of Spiritual Power and Understanding, who had Maintenance in the Churches a tradition close to that of Apostolic days, and far removed from that which the dominant Catholic Churches had developed.

The group's name comes from its founder, a wealthy merchant named Peter Waldo. An anonymous account of his conversion is available, and it gives good insight into his thought processes at the time:

And during the same year, that is the 1173d since Lord's Incarnation, there was at Lyons in France a certain citizen, Waldo by name, who had made himself much money by wicked usury. One Sunday, when he had joined a crowd which he saw gathered around a troubadour, he was smitten by his words and, taking him to his house, he took care hear him at length. The passage he was reciting was the holy Alexis died a blessed death in his father's house. When morning had come the prudent citizen hurried to the schools of theology to seek counsel for his soul, and when he was taught many ways of going to God, he asked master what way was more certain and more perfect than all others. The master answered him with this text: thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast," etc

Then Waldo went to his wife and gave her the choice of keeping his personal property or his real estate, namely, he had in ponds, groves and fields, houses, rents, vineyards, mills, and fishing rights. She was much displeased at having to make this choice, but she kept the real estate. From his personal property he made restitution to those whom he had treated unjustly; a great part of it he gave to his little daughters, who, without their mother's knowledge he placed in the convent of Font Evrard; but the greatest of his money he spent for the poor. A very great famine was then oppressing France and Germany. The prudent citizen, Waldo, gave bread, with vegetables and meat to every one who came to him for three days in every week from Pentecost to the feast of St. Peter's bonds.

On the next day, coming from the church, he asked a in citizen, once his comrade, to give him something to eat for God's sake. His friend, leading him to his house, "I will give you whatever you need as long as I live." When this came to the cars of his wife, she was not a little troubled, and as though she had lost her mind, she ran to the archbishop of the city and implored him not to let her husband beg bread from any one but her. This moved all present to tears. [Waldo was accordingly conducted into the presence of the bishop.] And the woman, seizing her husband by the throat, said, "Is it not better, husband, that I should redeem my sins by giving you alms than that strangers should do so? " And from that time he was not allowed to take food from any one in that city except from his wife. (2)

So, Waldo became impressed with his need to follow Christ when he heard about the legend of St. Alexis, the son of a Roman senator of enormous wealth and power in the 4-5th Century. He was raised as a Christian and even as a child was known for his charity He left his wife and wealth behind in order to embarke on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to care for the poor. (3)

To those who questioned him for such a radical change, Waldo is reported to have answered:

"Citizens and friends, I am not out of my mind, as you seem to think, but I am avenging myself on those who are oppressing me in making me a lover of money more than God. This act I do for myself and for you: for me, so that if from now on I possess anything you may call me a fool; for you, in order that you, too, may be led to put your hope in God and not in riches." (4)

At this point, it should be noted that there was nothing about Waldo's statements that were even remotely heretical. In fact, there was nothing about his newly-discovered asceticism that was unprecedented. As Baptist scholar McGoldrick points out, "Vows of poverty and the study of scripture had been regular features of monastic living for centuries and "enjoyed the approval of the Church". (5) Waldo lived a generation before St. Francis of Assisi, who also lived a life monastic poverty and evangelism. Waldo initially sought approval from the Catholic Church for his Poor of Lyons, and in 1180 even signed a confession of faith accepting all the major tenets of Catholic theology:

"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and of the Blessed and Ever-Virgin Mary. Be it noted by all the faithful that I, Valdesius [Waldo], and all my brethren, standing before the Holy Gospels, do declare that we believe with all our hearts, having been grasped by faith, that we profess openly that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three Persons, one God....

"We firmly believe and explicitly declare that the incarnation of the Divinity did not take place in the Father and the Holy Spirit, but solely in the Son, so that he who was the divine Son of God the Father was also true man from his Mother.

"We believe one Church, Catholic, Holy, Apostolic and Immaculate, apart from which no one can be saved, and in the sacraments therein administered through the invisible and incomprehensible power of the Holy Spirit, sacraments which may be rightly administered by a sinful priest....

"We firmly believe in the judgment to come and in the fact that each man will receive reward or punishment according to what he has done in this flesh. We do not doubt the fact that alms, sacrifice, and other charitable acts are able to be of assistance to those who die. "And since, according to the Apostle James, faith without works is dead, we have renounced this world and have distributed to the poor all that we possess, according to the will of God, and we have decided that we ourselves should be poor in such a way as not to be careful for the morrow, and to accept from no one gold, silver, or anything else, with the exception of raiment and daily food. We have set before ourselves the objective of fulfilling the Gospel counsels as precepts.

"We believe that anyone in this age who keeps to a proper life, giving alms and doing other good works from his own possessions and observing the precepts from the Lord, can be saved. "We make this declaration in order that if anyone should come to you affirming that he is one of us, you may know for certain that he is not one of us if he does not profess this same faith." (6)

In 1179, the Waldenses sent a delegation to the Third Lateran Council to obtain official approval for their movement, known as The Poor (of Lyon). An English friar named Walter Mapes who evaluated them wrote, "We saw Waldensian men in the Roman Council held by Pope Alexander the Third. They were simple and unlearned, and were thus called from the name of their founder, Valdo, who was a citizen of Lyons on the Rhone. They presented to the Pope a book written in the old Provencal language, in which there were texts and comments of the Psalms, and of many books of the Old and New Testament" (De Nugis Curialium). Furthermore, the Waldenses, in a statement to the bishop of Albano, affirmed their belief in transubstantiation, prayers for the dead, and infant baptism.(7) and additional evidence is seen in a poem entitled Noble Lesson, a Waldense writing that affirms the Catholic teaching on the sacrament of penance:

"To make our confession sincerely, without any defect: and to do penance during the present life: to fast, to give alms, and to pray with a fervent heart; indeed, through these things the soul finds salvation." (8)

It becomes clear that the early Waldenses considered themselves to be Catholic in theology and the movement to establish the "Poor of Lyons" as a Catholic order was considered; the only proposition that the pope denied was the unauthorized preaching of Waldo and his followers. Although as late as 1508 the Waldense Confession of Faith still contained all 7 of the Catholic sacraments including infant baptism, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and priestly absolution from sin (9); however, they eventually moved away from orthodox Catholicism, and it is the later development the Waldenses to whom Protestants point in support of their primitive roots from the time of Jesus. They eventually came to reject wealth, the Catholic clergy and the sacraments and this movement began to spread from Southern France to Germany and Northern Italy. (10) The French Waldenses (Vaudois) were known as the Poor of Lyons, and their Italian counterparts, were known as the Poor of Lombardy. The Poor of Lombardy were more radical in their beliefs, and eventually the two groups split apart into their own sects. As a foreshadowing of the coming Protestant Reformation, doctrinal differences of opinion between the two Waldense groups led to a disintegration into developing schism between the two groups, as seen in a letter from the Poor of Lombardy to the Poor of Lyons:

"To the question they [the Poor of Lyons] raised concerning baptism, we replied as follows : We affirm that no one can be saved who refuses the material water of baptism and that unbaptized infants are not saved. This we called on them to believe and profess....

"One point of difference between us and the companions of Valdes...concerned the breaking or SACRIFICE [emphasis author] of the bread. As we have verified, their judgment differs from ours...

"In the first place, some of the companions of Valdes maintain that the substance of the bread and wine is transformed into the body and blood of Christ by the Word of God, adding that the power comes not from men but from God.

"To this we objected, saying that, if the bread and wine are transubstantiated...by the mere mention of the Word of God, it follows that any person, Jew or pagan, could pronounce the Word of God on the bread and wine, and, according to this opinion, it would be transformed into the body and blood of Christ.

"This is absolutely impious and cannot be sustained by any valid authority and is unreasonable....They have acknowledged that the sacrament cannot be performed by women or laymen, but only by the PRIEST. They also said that no one, good or bad, but only He who is God and man, that is, CHRIST, can transubstantiate the bread and wine into the body and blood." (11)

Despite the fact that fractures were beginning to appear within the Waldense Movement, it is clear that both groups affirmed the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation of the Bread and Wine. So, when faced with the fact that the Waldenses were early Catholic schismatics who only later became more Protestant in theology, there are some who attempt to show that their beliefs predate Waldo himself. They do so by referring to the work of Samuel Morland, a 17th Century author who claimed to have found evidence that verified that the Waldenses were a primitive New Testament church by presenting a Waldense confession of faith that was supposedly dated 1120 A.D. Morland tried to make it appear that Waldense beliefs were Protestant even before Luther. (12) The documents, however, are shown to be spurious, because the alleged Waldense Bible was divided into chapters - an innovation that did not appear until 1250 A.D. (13) Furthermore, the documents are now known to originate from the 16th Century, being almost exact copies of Protestant reformer Martin Bucer. (14)

Still another attempt to prove Waldensian apostolicity involves the Catholic Inquisitor Reinerius, where proponents of this view try to quote Reinerius as saying that the Waldenses originated "from the beginning". This is completely untrue, however, as he was merely reporting the belief mistakenly held by some people. (15) For further discussion, see the essay on Reinerius. So untrue is this assertion that even Pius Melia, a Waldense himself, denies it, as do current Waldense scholars. (16) The irrefutable fact remains that there is no evidence that the Waldenses existed before Waldo came along.

The final attempt to support a primitive Waldense church (and therefore a 2x2 precursor) usually entails trying to discredit the Roman Catholic Church for persecuting the heretics and destroying all evidence - such was the position Gilly, who wrote in 1823:

"It is a singular thing that the destruction or rapine, which has been so fatal to Waldensian documents, should have pursued them even to the place of security, to which all, that remained, were consigned by Morland, in 1658, the library of the University of Cambridge. The most ancient of these relics were ticketed in seven packets, distinguished by letters of the alphabet, from A to G. The whole of these were missing when I made inquiry for them in 1823." (17)

McGoldrick responds to the assertion that documents produced by the opponents of a sect are unreliably biased by pointing out "when two or more hostile sources who have had no evident contact with one another relate the same account, there is a very high degree of probability that the account is substantially correct." (18) He also suggests that "enough primary material produced by the sectarians themselves and by their enemies has survived, so that an informed judgment about their beliefs and practices is still possible". (19)

So, despite the conspiracy theories that would make Oliver Stone proud, it simply is untrue that such evidence ever existed. McGoldrick, a Baptist, reminds us that even scholars eminently hostile to the Catholic Church admit that the Waldenses began with Peter Waldo, not the Apostles, (20) a fact even supported by modern-day Waldenses (21) , whose organization follows the Presbyterian-Synod model. In 1975, they joined with the Italian Methodist Evangelical Church and have around 22,000 members in Italy and 15,000 members in Uruguay. (22)

Accordingly, so clear is the evidence against an Apostolic origin that Emilio Comba, a Waldense theologian himself, concluded:

"we shall...seek in vain in the creed of the early Waldenses for those tenets which characterize Protestantism." (23)

Leading Mennonite scholar Harold Bender agrees:

"The tempting and romantic theory of apostolic succession from the apostles down to the Anabaptists through successive Old Evangelical groups, which has been very popular with those among the Mennonites and Baptists who feel the need of such an apostolic succession, always includes the Waldenses as the last link before the Anabaptists. It has...no basis in fact." (24)

Henry Vedder also concurs:

"Waldo was the founder, and 'traditions of an earlier origin, stretching back even to the days of the apostles, are fables." (25)

And Baptist historian A.H. Newman sums it up in the most concise way:

"Waldo and his early followers had more in common with...Roman Catholicism than with any evangelical party. His views of life and doctrine were scarcely in advance of many earnest Catholics of the time." (26)

Even the Waldensian Church in Turin, Italy, admits that their origins lay with Peter Waldo (Valdo), saying "The Waldensian Church, today a member of both the Ecumenical Council of Geneva and the World Alliance of Reform Churches, traces its origins to the Waldensian movement founded by Peter Valdo (Pietro Valdo) of Lyon (1140-1217)", and "Waldensian history is related to one of the most lively and most fruitful periods of European history - the XII century. The Waldensian movement, in fact, emerged from the immense wave of religious restlessness which accompanied the communal civilization at its rise. Its founder was a strong religious personality, a merchant from Lyon (France), called Valdo or Valdes, who gave up his trade to live in poverty and in meditaion the Christian faith in its primitive purity. Like Francis, the poor man of Assisi, he was to discover, under the moral and spiritual ruins of the medieval society, the original values of Christianity."

Their website can be linked here.

CONCLUSION

1) The Waldenses originated in medieval Europe from an earthly founder Peter Waldo, not the 1st Century from Jesus.

2) Waldense theology was originally too Catholic to be considered a 2x2 precursor, and later became too Calvinistic to be considered a 2x2 development.

3) The fact that Baptists, Mennonites, Seventh Day Adventists, Plymouth Brethren, evangelicals, and even modern-day Waldenses claim a heritage from this medieval sect in and of itself demonstrates the futility and inaccuracy of such a position.

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(1) The American Heritage� Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright � 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Houghton Mifflin Company.)
(2) Anonymous Chroncicle written about 1218 and translated in J. H. Robinson, Readings in European History, (Boston: Ginn, 1905), pp. 381-383.
(3) D.H. Farmer., 1997 The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford, England.
(4) Georgio Tourn, The Waldensians : The First 800 Years tr. C.P. Merlino (Torino, Italy: Claudiana Editrice, 1980), p. 6.
(5) James E. McGoldrick., Baptist Successionism: A Crucial Crusade in Baptist History (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1994) p. 71.
(6) Tourn, pp. 13-14.
(7) Rosalind B. Brooke., The Coming of the Friars (NY: Barnes and Noble, 1975) pp. 72-73.
(8) Pius Melia, The Origin, Persecutions, and Doctrines of the Waldenses (NY: AMS Press, 1978 reprint of 1870 edition) p. 98.
(9) Emilio Comba, History of the Waldenses of Italy, tr. Teofilo Comba (NY: AMS Press, 1978 reprint of 1889 edition) p. 96.
(10) Matthew Bunson, Encyclopedia of Catholic History, (Our Sunday Visitor, 1995) p. 43.
(11) "Letter from the Poor Lombards to the Poor of Lyons who are in Germany," in Tourn, pp. 21-23.
(12) Samuel Morland, The History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont (London: Henry Hills, 1658); cf. JM Holliday, Baptist Heritage, pp. 29-32
(13) Facts and Documents Illustrative of the History, Doctrine, and Rites of the Ancient Albigenses and Waldenses, p. 132.
(14) Walter F. Adeney, "Waldenses," Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, XII, 665.
(15) Reinerius Saccho, "Summa," in Facts and Documents Illustrative of the History, Doctrine, and Rites of the Ancient Albigenses and Waldenses, p.406.
(16) Tourn, 3-13.
(17) Gilly, Waldensian Researches, p. 80.
(18) McGoldrick, p. 3.
(19) ibid, p. 2.
(20) Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, 7th ed. tr. ed. James Murdock (London: William Tegg, 1848), pp. 428-29.
(21) Comba, p. 246.
(22) Europa Publications Limited 1995 1:1641.
(23) Comba, p. 246.
(24) Christian Neff and H.S. Bender, "Waldenses," Mennonite Encyclopedia, IV, pp. 874-76.
(25) Henry C. Vedder, "Origin and Early Teachings of the Waldenses," American Journal of Theology, IV (1900), p. 47.
(26) A.H. Newman, A History of Anti-Pedobaptism from the Rise of Pedobaptism to A.D. 1609 (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1897), p.41.