later period, their lawful feudal Sovereigns, the Count of Toulouse, the Count of Foix, the Count of Cominges, the Viscount of Bearn, and even the young Viscount of Beziers though himself a professed Romanist, against whom all these pretended deeds of violence, if committed at all, must indisputably have been committed, not only endured but protected them; and, when the Pope, through the agency of his military apostles, kindly undertook to free those princes from such troublesome subjects, actually made common cause with the lawless miscreants, and suffered in their defence every calamity which the unchristian zeal of the misnamed holy croisards could inflict *.

There is, however, a character with which the God of truth has branded every liar: and that is SELFCONTRADICTION. It is impossible to escape it. No tale of falsehood can be so artfully framed, as not to contain within itself its own confutation. This is manifestly the case with the stories fabricated respecting the Albigenses †. Their credibility is destroyed by their inconsistency.

* For the extraordinary moral influence, which the Albigenses exercised over the minds both of the Count of Toulouse and of the Count of Foix, see Petr. Vallisarnens. Hist. Albig. c. vi., vii.

Introd. to Translat. of Sismondi's Hist. of the Crusades against the Albig. p. 18.

BOOK III.

THE VALLENSES.

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF THE TESTIMONY OF REINERIUS RESPECTING THE ANTIQUITY OF THE VALLENSES, WITH REMARKS ON THEIR DIALECT AND THEIR OWN CONCURRING TRADITIONS.

BUT it is time, that I should leave the much persecuted and calumniated Albigenses, to introduce a pure and never-reformed Church still older than that of the Paulicians.

The Church, to which I allude, is that of the Vallenses of Piedmont: and, in order to my purpose of connecting the Churches of the Reformation with the Church of the Primitive Ages, the two points of its Remote Antiquity and of its Evangelical Purity must be successively considered.

Agreeably, then, to the present arrangement, the point of its Remote Antiquity will first come under discussion.

This topic requires the production of a continued line of witnesses through the whole period of what are usually called the Middle Ages. But, before I enter directly upon such a production, the decisive general testimony of Reinerius Sacco a well-informed Inquisitor who flourished during the earlier part of the thirteenth century, assoIciated with the dialect and traditions of the Vallenses themselves, may, under the aspect of preliminary matter, be usefully and properly brought forward.

I. The following is the testimony of Reinerius. Concerning the sects of ancient heretics, observe, that there have been more than seventy: all of which, except the sects of the Manichèans and the Arians and the Runcarians and the Leonists which have infected Germany, have, through the favour 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 continuance 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 exists not. The third reason is; because, While all other sects, through the immanity 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, together with all the Articles contained in the Creed, every point well respecting the Deity: only they blaspheme the Roman Church and Clergy; to which the multitude of the Laity are ready enough to give credence.*

De sectis antiquorum hæreticorum nota: quod sectæ hæreticorum fuerunt plures quam septuaginta; quæ omnes, per Dei gratiam, deletæ sunt, præter sectas Manichæorum, Arianorum, Runcariorum, et Leonistarum, quæ Alemanniam infecerunt. Inter omnes has sectas, quæ adhuc sunt vel fuerunt, non est perniciosior Ecclesiæ, quam Leonistarum et hoc, tribus de causis. Prima est; Quia est diuturnior: aliqui enim dicunt, quod duraverit a tempore Sylvestri; aliqui, a tempore Apostolorum. Secunda; Quia est generalior: fere enim nulla est terra, in qua hæc secta non sit. Tertia; Quia, cum omnes aliæ sectæ ; immanitate blasphemiarum in Deum, audientibus horrorem inducant, hæc, scilicet Leonistarum, magnam habet speciem pietatis; eo quod, coram hominibus, justè vivant, et bene omnia de Deo credant et omnes articulos qui in Symbolo continentur : solummodo Romanam Ecclesiam blasphemant et Clerum; cui multitudo Laicorum facilis est ad credendum. Reiner. de hæret. c. iv. in Biblioth. Patr. vol. xiii. p. 299.

Respecting the Church of the comparatively modern French Leonists or Poor Men of Lyons, which was founded in the twelfth century by Peter the Valdès, and which is fully described by Reinerius in the fifth or immediately following chapter of his Tractate, see below, book iii. chap. 8. § II. and book iii. chap. 12. § I. 2.

Speaking of these French Valdenses, whose founder is recorded to have been an Italian Valdensis, and who thus through him stand connected as an offshoot with the remotely ancient

T

for the purpose

1. I have adduced this passage for the of exhibiting Reinerius, as attesting the remote antiquity of the Vallenses of Piedmont. Yet, by name, he mentions not, in it, the Vallenses: he speaks only of a body of contemporary religionists, whom he denominates Leonists. These, in regard to the origin of the sect, he carries back to a very distant period: and, at the same time, he broadly distinguishes them from the Albigenses or Cathari, whom he here simply alludes to under the names of Manichèans and Runcarians, but whom he afterward fully describes under the systematic charge of being deeply tainted with the Manichèan Heresy. Hence, to make his attestation at all available to my purpose, I have to shew that the Leonists, whom he thus characterises, were the Vallenses or Valdenses or Vaudois of Piedmont.

My proof, then, runs in manner following.

Reinerius, a writer of the thirteenth century, tells us that, In the judgment of some inquirers,

Vallensic or Leonistic Church of Piedmont, Moneta, the contemporary of Reinerius, says, no doubt, with much truth:

Non multum temporis est quod esse cœperunt; quoniam, sicut patet, a Valdesio cive Lugdunensi exordium acceperunt: qui hanc viam incepit, non plures sunt quam octoginta anni. Monet. adv. Cathar. et Valdens. lib. v. c. 1. § IV. P. 402.

A good deal of confusion has sometimes arisen from want of attention to the accurate distinction which Reinerius makes between the ANCIENT Leonists and the MODERN Leonists.