. The Waldenses, or “Poor of Lyon,” were members of a lay spiritual movement founded on three principal points: the adoption of voluntary poverty, access to the Scriptures through a vernacular translation, and public preaching. In many ways, the form that this movement took is a product of the developing “profit economy” of the 12th century. The founder was a certain Waldo, a rich merchant of Lyon, who, upon hearing a jongleur sing the Vie de saint Alexis, had a conversion experience ca. 1173. He then had two priests translate the Bible into French and decided upon the apostolic life: giving away his wealth and placing his wife and daughters in convents, he memorized his translated Bible and began to preach. He quickly gained a following of laymen who called themselves “the poor” and traveled in pairs, begging and preaching repentance.
Doctrinally orthodox, Waldo and his followers preached against Cathar heretics, but their ostentatious poverty and public preaching soon roused clerical opposition. Waldo sought the pope’s approval of his mission and his vernacular Bible (1179), but the clergy proved both contemptuous of these unlettered laymen and unalterably opposed to their preaching, despite their usefulness in combating the church’s primary concern— Catharism. Waldo disobeyed rather than forsake the Lord’s command to preach the gospel, and by 1184 the group was condemned as heretical. In response, some Walden-sians (especially the Lombards) claimed that the church had become the “Whore of
Babylon.” Rejecting clerical sacraments, prayers for the dead, and relic cults, they established their own church of perfecti, who administered sacraments and confession. Waldo himself never gave up hope of a reconciliation, and some followers, such as Durand of Huesca and the “Catholic Poor,” returned to the church. Radical Waldensianism spread rapidly throughout Europe from the Pyrenees to central Europe, developing a parallel ecclesiastical structure while maintaining a commitment to evangelical Christianity. Despite inquisitorial persecution, they survived into the modern period, providing fertile ground for Protestantism in the 16th century. A Waldensian church survives in Italy to this day.
Richard Landes
[See also: HERESIES, APOSTOLIC; HERESY: INQUISITION; PREACHING; SAINT ALEXIS, VIE DE; WITCHCRAFT: WOMEN, RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF]
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World History
