or WALDO, PETE, (or VALDES as he is termed in contemporary documents) is usually described as the Lyonesse reformer of the twelfth century. As to the place and date of his birth, and the events of his earlier days, contemporary and documentary history is silent; but tradition states that he was born in a place which, by some, has been called Vaud, Vaux, Vaudram; by others Walden and Val-Grant. There is still a village near Lyon called Vaux, and another in the mountain-region, between Mount Dauphiné and Briançon, called Vaux de Rame. The first authentic mention of the Gallic reformer appears in the Chronicle of Laon, under the year 1173. He is there introduced to our notice as a citizen of Lyon, who, having amassed considerable wealth by usurious practices, had his conscience alarmed in a very remarkable manner. One Sunday in the year 1173, hearing a Troubadour in the streets of the city reciting passages from the Romant called the Life of Alexis, Valdo invited him home, and listened with earnest attention to the whole of the poem. The narrative made a deep impression on the mind of Valdo, of which the Troubadour failed not to take advantage. Moved by the serious discourse of his guest, Valdo went the next morning to unburthen his mind to a priest of great reputation in the city, and consulted him as to what he should do for the attainment of Christian perfection. "If thou wouldest be perfect," was the answer, "Go, sell all thou hast, and give to the poor." Valdo resolved to obey the injunction to the very letter. He converted his property into money; he placed his two daughters in the convent of Fontevrault; he distributed largely to the poor; he fed all who came to him three days in the week; and on the festival of the assumption of the Virgin Mary, he publicly proclaimed his intention of abandoning the service of mammon for that of God, and invited his fellow-citizens to follow his example. His wife, alarmed by these proceedings, implored the archbishop of Lyon to check the imprudent zeal of her husband, and that prelate and his suffragan, the bishop of Bourg-en-Bresse, gave Valdo some advice upon the occasion. Nothing, however, could damp his ardour; he persevered in his system of self-denial, and gained over a number of followers, who imitated his example by embracing voluntary poverty, and by ministering bountifully to the wants of the poor.

A severe famine, which desolated the whole of Gaul at this time, gave them full opportunities of exercising the virtue of almsgiving, and they did so to the very utmost. Forming themselves into a fraternity, under the name of "Poor Men of Lyon," Valdo and his disciples at first made themselves conspicuous by the sanctity of their lives only, but they soon began to attract further notice, by rebuking the rapaciousness and corrupt manners of the ecclesiastical and monkish orders. But though he was one of the most eminent of early reformers, he was not the first to rouse Christendom from her unholy slumber; for we have the testimony of Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter of

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1 See Orders of the House of Commons, 15th May 1832, and Remarks to an Address to his Majesty, dated 24th January 1832. 2 In those days many of the jolly-gentlemen and wandering troubadours often combined the several characters of pedlars, poets, and religious instructors. They were a privileged order, whose harp, and song, and news, obtained for them admission into the castles of the barons and the houses of the citizens. They would oftentimes begin by diverting their hearers, and, after touching some string which roused devout feelings, they would launch into sacred subjects, produce transcripts of Scripture, and converse on the deepest points of sacred truth. 3 In Poitou. A fraternity, called "The Poor of Christ," was settled here in 1103, under the government of a woman; an institution which has been severely attacked by Bayle. Clugny, and Evervinus of Cologne, who flourished between 1120 and 1150, to prove that, in that age, zealous and holy men were to be found, who declaimed against the vices and errors of the clergy, and proposed schemes of reformation.

By degrees, Valdo and the "Poor Men of Lyon" took upon themselves to exhort and to admonish, in fact to preach both in public and private. "Coperunt paulatim," says the Chronicle of Laon, "tam publicis quam privatis admonitionibus sua et aliena culpae peccata." This was no slight matter of exasperation to a powerful body of men, whose priesthood was disgraced by priestcraft; but another proceeding of the reformer called forth their fiercest animosity. Valdo employed his time and property in the translation and circulation of Scripture in the vernacular tongue of the country; and the manner in which he set about his work attests the soundness of his judgment, as well as the devotedness of his zeal. In the first place, he obtained the assistance of three eminent scholars, who had a critical acquaintance with the sacred writings; Bernard of Ydros, who was afterwards held in great estimation by the Dominican order; Stephen of Ansa or Empis, eminent as a grammarian and linguist, who was promoted in course of time to a benefice in the city of Lyon; and John of Lugio, a biblical scholar of high reputation, who became the head of a religious congregation in Lombardy. The latter was the only one of the three who remained faithful to the cause of Valdo, and the silence of the two former, after they deserted him, as to any spots in his moral character, is a strong attestation in his favour. Stephen translated into the Gallo-Provençal language, John examined authorities and corrected the translations, and Bernard transcribed the version so prepared for the use of the copyists, who were to multiply copies for general circulation. But not satisfied with these means for procuring correct translations of the Bible, Valdo also collected sentences of the ancient fathers, particularly of Ambrose, Augustin, Gregory, and Jerome, in illustration of the books of Scripture, of which copies were to be made; and these, too, he put in circulation to serve as notes or comments for the help of his Scripture readers. This being done, the master and his disciples committed many passages of Scripture to memory, and thus armed with the Word of God, they went forth into the streets and houses of Lyon, and into the villages of the neighbourhood, and delivered the gospel message with so much ardour and success, as largely to increase the number of their adherents. In some few places the churches were open to them by consent of the secular clergy; and where they could not have access to the sanctuaries, they preached and expounded Scripture in the streets and highways. It is uncertain how many books of the Bible were translated and circulated by the Lyonese Reformer, and the Poor Men of Lyons. Walter Mapes says, that the volume of Valdo which was presented to Pope Alexander, contained the text and a gloss of the Psalms, and of many books of the Old and New Testament. Reiner leads us to believe that the whole of the New Testament was circulated by them in the vulgar tongue. Stephen de Borbono speaks only of many books of the Bible, without designating them. The effect produced by the gospel tidings, as they were delivered by these new expounders, was felt like an electric spark throughout the whole of the province and diocese of Lyon. The common people heard them gladly, for now, for the first time in their lives, they listened to preachers who spoke in the language of Scripture, and pointed to the sacred page in confirmation of every doctrine which they urged.*

After persevering in this course for five years, Valdo found that the increasing enmity of the monks and clergy of Lyon had become dangerous to him. In 1178, he therefore took the bold and honest step of going to Rome, to make his views known to the sovereign pontiff Alexander III., and to request the papal sanction to his proceedings. In fact, he asked the pope to recognise his fraternity of the "Poor Men of Lyon" as an ecclesiastical order of authorised preachers, and licensed circulators of Scripture. Never did the founder of a religious community experience a better reception from prince or pontiff. The pope embraced Valdo, "Valdesium amplexatus est papa, approbat votum quod fuerat voluntarie paupertatis," &c., says the faithful narrator whom we have before cited.* He approved of the order of the "Poor Men of Lyon," as professors of voluntary poverty; but while he gave them a limited license as preachers, he forbade them to exercise it without the especial permission of the regular priesthood. Up to this period, the conduct of Valdo and his disciples had been irreproachable even at Rome, or the pope would not have shown him such favour. In fact, all his proceedings hitherto had been strongly characteristic of one who acted as a dutiful member of the holy Catholic church. It was a church-legend which first made a serious impression upon him; it was to a priest that he first went for spiritual counsel, after his conscience had been awakened. The adviser whom he next consulted was a bishop; so closely did he observe the canon of Ignatius, "nihil sine episcopo." He placed his daughters in a convent; an act which savoured of the most rigid adherence to ecclesiastical customs. The holy book on which the church builds its faith was his constant study; and his chosen fellow-labourers in the work of transcribing and translating were members of the sacerdotal order. So blameless was his career, and so conscious was he himself of the purity of his motives, that he sought, as we have shown, an interview with him who was called the supreme Head of the Church, and was received with indulgence and honour. The childlike submission and meekness of this exemplary Christian were carried to such an extent, that for a time he obeyed the pope, and forbore to preach, except on the terms imposed upon him. At length, however, his ardent zeal, sharpened by the opposition of the clergy, who hated the spirituality and fervour which condemned their own negligence, could no longer be restrained, and he preached without their permission. He and his disciples were commanded by episcopal authority not to speak at all, nor preach in the name of Jesus; They however persevered, and from disobedience, says one of our historical witnesses, they fell into contumacy, and from contumacy, into the penalty of excommunication.* The fearful sentence, which was meant to deprive them of all the ordinances of religion, to exclude them from the church and the altar, to deny baptism to their children, burial to their dead, marriage to their betrothed, and to banish them from Lyon, was passed by John de Bellesmais, archbishop of Lyon, in 1181. Pope Lucius confirmed the excommunicati on in 1184. In the Lateran council of 1215, the same dread sentence was again fulminated against all who should embrace their doctrines, or receive them into their houses. They were driven ignominiously from their homes; and seeing no hope of producing a reformation in the bosom of the imperious church, out of which they had been cast, or of being received back into it, without doing violence to their consciences, Valdo and his followers had no other alternative than to form themselves into a community, in which persons, selected from their own body, were appointed to

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1 Stephen de Borbono, apud Echart Script. Ordinis Predicatorum, vol. i. p. 192. 2 Referens de Cath. c. 6; and Pollichdorf, c. 1. 3 See Moneta contra Valdensium, lib. v. c. l. 4 Chronicle of Lyon. See Bouquet, vol. xiii. p. 680. 5 Ibid. 6 Stephen de Borbono, ut supra. perform the offices of religion, and administer the sacraments.

The "Poor Men of Lyon," exiled from their native city, found refuge in the secluded parts of Provence and Lombardy, and were hospitably received there by persons who held kindred opinions. The document which states this points to religious communities on each side of the Cottian Alps, to the territorial Valdenses of ecclesiastical history, whose situation providentially enabled them to maintain in safety opinions at variance with those of Rome. A remarkable passage in the authority which gives us this information adds, that the exiles imbibed the errors of these subalpine heretics, and became, when they mingled with them, the most determined enemies of the church.

From this time the "Poor Men of Lyon" and the Valdenses (territorially so called) of the Cottian Alps became mixed up in ecclesiastical history, as if they were one and the same. But the former, after their exile from Lyon, were never gathered together in any one district or province as a distinct people, but were scattered among the nations; and those who embraced their tenets sometimes adhered to them openly, sometimes secretly, but never in sufficient numbers or local strength to constitute a church. When or where Valdo died remains in obscurity, but his name was given to almost every sect who protested against papal usurpation.

The persecutions which, for two hundred years, swept Europe of all who were called Valdenses, except in the subalpine territories, were an outrage upon humanity, and have fixed an indelible stigma on the Church of Rome. Stephen de Borbone relates, without a breath of compunction, that he was present when 80 of Valdo's sect were condemned to the flames; and Albericus the chronicler states the number to have been 182, and speaks of it as a sacrifice of a sweet-smelling savour acceptable to the Lord—"Holocaustum placabile Domino." But with all the animosity of the early persecutors of Valdo and his disciples, they have not recorded one well authenticated accusation of immorality against them; and it is a singular attestation to the moral and religious character of Valdo, that none of those calumnies, which were afterwards circulated by Roman Catholic writers, were advanced against him during his lifetime. Walter Mapes, who was present at Rome when Valdo appealed to the pope, indulges in a vein of irony against the Valdesi, and ridicules them as a parcel of "houseless," "bare-footed," "indigent," and "illiterate idiots," unworthy of notice; but utters not a word against their morality. On the contrary, he admitted that they preserved the faith, and were ready to die for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The earliest calumniator of "the Poor Men of Lyon," Alanus insignis theologus, who inveighed with the utmost severity against them, said nothing worse of their founder than that he presumed to preach without inspiration or literature, to call himself an apostle without a mission, and a teacher without learning.

Moneta, who wrote a history of the Valdenses of Lyon, within half a century after their first appearance, speaks of a certain man named Valdesius, from whom they derived their origin, without casting any stain upon his moral fame; and though Moneta was an inquisitor, the bosom friend of Dominic, and condemned heretics to the flames, and wrote forty folio pages in defence of persecution, yet he admits that the Valdenses still respected the validity of Romish ordination, received the Old as well as the New Testament, and did not give reins to licentiousness.

Peter, the monk of Vaux Sernay, who wrote in 1217, and was clamorous for the total extinction of the Albigenzes by fire and sword, mentions the name of Waldus, the founder of a sect of heretics called Waldenses, without a syllable of reproach; and states the principal errors of those schismatics to have been "an affected imitation of the apostles, refusal to take an oath, denial of the power of the magistrate to inflict the punishment of death, and presuming, because they were sandal-wearers, to celebrate the eucharist without episcopal ordination."

Reiner, whose work bears the date of 1250, has no charge to bring against Valdo, and no other against his followers than their separation from, and hostility to, the Church of Rome, their use of Scripture in the vulgar tongue, and the estimation in which they held those of their sect who embraced a life of poverty, and believed in justification by faith.