Europe's inner demons

Persecuted, expelled from one diocese after another, sometimes burned at the stake, the Waldensians (as they were now called) nevertheless multiplied. The original French movement spread north to Liege, east to Metz, but above all south, to Provence, Languedoc, Catalonia, Aragon. And meanwhile new branches appeared in Italy, where the stronghold was Milan; along the Rhine, at Strasbourg, Trier and Mainz; in Bavaria and Austria.

The Waldensians were of two kinds, roughly corresponding to the clergy and the laity in the Church of Rome. Only the first of these were “the poor”; the layfolk were simply “friends”. Relatively few in number, “the poor” formed a religious elite: each member, after a noviciate of several years, pledged himself to observe strictly the law of Christ: to renounce the world, to model his way of life upon the apostles, to own nothing beyond what he needed to live from day to day, to be always chaste. Moreover “the poor” continued to specialize in preaching and to lead the hard life of itinerant preachers.

Unlike those other heretics, the Cathars, the Waldensians were practically untouched by non-Christian influences. They managed to get the Vulgate translated into their various vernaculars; and these (often rather inaccurate) renderings of the Bible supplied the framework of their faith. Though they were not learned people — being mostly peasants and artisans — they devoted themselves to an intensive study of the Scriptures; even the totally illiterate were often able to recite the four Gospels and the Book of Job by heart. All the peculiarities of their doctrine arose simply from a one-sided interpretation of the New Testament. For instance, they refused in any circumstances to take an oath; and they had an intense horror of any sort of lying, however trivial. They were opposed to capital punishment and also, it would seem, to military service. Passages to justify all these attitudes could easily be found in the New Testament.

Voluntary poverty remained the supreme value, and supplied the yardstick by which the Waldensians measured both themselves and their enemies, the Catholic clergy. As they saw it, in so far as the clergy failed to practise voluntary poverty, they could not really baptize, confirm, consecrate the Eucharist, ordain priests, hear confession or grant absolution. The power validly to administer these sacraments was reserved for the only true devotees of voluntary poverty, the Waldensians. Indeed, the “poor of Lyons” and their followers constituted the only true church; while the Church of Rome, because of its failure to impose absolute poverty on its clergy, was an abomination.

Such was the sect which, according to Conrad of Marburg and Pope Gregory IX, practised nameless orgies and worshipped the Devil. In the thirteenth century the discrepancy between the accusations and the reality was obvious to many even amongst the guardians of orthodoxy. The archbishop of Mainz, when he wrote to the pope after Conrad’s assassination, was clearly unimpressed; and so was the celebrated preacher David of Augsburg when, around 1265, he wrote his Treatise on the heresy of the poor of Lyons. In this systematic account of the sect and its doctrines, the charge of Devil-worship is flatly rejected, and the orgies are reduced to mere transgressions by individual Waldensian preachers who, having given up their wives for the sake of their vocation, found perpetual chastity too much for them.⁽⁴⁾ Nevertheless the old defamatory stereotype survived in the German-speaking lands, and early in the fourteenth century it woke to new life.

From 1311 to 1315 Duke Frederick of Austria joined with the archbishop of Salzburg and the bishop of Passau in a drive to clear the Austrian lands of heretics who, again, were clearly Waldensians.⁽⁵⁾ As usual, those who would not recant were burned; and these seem to have been the great majority. A contemporary chronicler notes that “all showed an incredible stubbornness, even to death; they went joyfully to execution”. The same chronicler summarizes the sect’s doctrine— and amongst tenets which the Waldensians really hold he intersperses some which come straight from the bull Vox in Rama. These people, he says, believe that Lucifer and his demons were unjustly expelled from heaven, and in the end will find eternal blessedness; whereas Michael and his angels will be eternally damned. Meanwhile God neither punishes, nor even knows of, anything done under the earth; so the heretics hold their meetings in subterranean caverns, where they indulge in incestuous orgies — father with daughter, brother with sister, son with mother.⁽⁶⁾ Conveniently, this view of the doctrine and behaviour of the Waldensians was confirmed by the confession which Dominican inquisitors extracted from one Ulrich Wollar, of Krems.⁽⁷⁾