Podcasts about waldensian

Have you ever heard about the Waldensians? Who were they? Why did they have to leave their homeland and how did they manage to return? Learn about this exciting story as Emma, Christian, and Linus talk with Dr. Erica Scroppo, Executive Secretary of the Waldensian Church Mission.   Show Notes: Dr. Scroppo found out that the exact distance the Waldensians walked on their march was 160 miles from near Geneva to the first top of the Waldensian mountains! Article by Simonetta Carr about Francis Turretin: https://www.placefortruth.org/blog/joshua-janavel-and-the-plight-of-the-waldensians

St. Francis of Assisi was the first Christian mystic to manifest the Stigmata, and he went on to experience almost every other mystic physical phenomena along with divine encounters with Christ. Francis had a deep love for God's creation and was known as the "Nature Mystic," but he also extolled the virtues of poverty and was on the front lines confronting the Cathar heresy and Waldensian heresy in the 13th century.If you have any questions, you can email us at christianmysticismpodcast@gmail.com. Your question and the answer may appear in a future episode of the podcast.You can visit our podcast website HERE. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paula the Waldensian

My guest today is Kelly Smith Trimble, an editor, writer, and gardener living in Knoxville, TN. Her book Vegetable Gardening Wisdom, a collection of seasonal advice and inspiration for edible gardeners, was released in April 2019 by Storey Publishing. Kelly is the senior digital editorial director for HGTV. She answers vegetable gardening questions in a social video series called Dig It, with more than a million views collectively. She has also been a writer and editor for Southern Living, the National Park Foundation, and Bonnie Plants. Her vegetable garden was featured in the June 2020 issue of Southern Living magazine. She was born in Knoxville and has spent her life in various parts of southern Appalachia. Today we hear about Kelly's book, her gardening perspectives, and her thoughts on growing collard greens. In Fred Sauceman's “Potluck Radio” series, he features “Soutissa sausage” with a recording he made in 2018 with the Waldensian community of Valdese, North Carolina. Dee Dee Constantine shares a recipe for sautéed trout with spinach and roasted red bell peppers from the Tupelo Honey Cookbook.

Today we are setting the table with gardening wisdom. My guest today is Kelly Smith Trimble an editor, writer, and gardener living in Knoxville, TN. Her book Vegetable Gardening Wisdom, a collection of seasonal advice and inspiration for edible gardeners, was released in April 2019 by Storey Publishing. Kelly is currently the senior digital editorial director for HGTV, where she answers vegetable gardening questions in a social video series called Dig It, with more than a million views collectively. She has also been a writer and editor for Southern Living, the National Park Foundation, and Bonnie Plants. Her vegetable garden was featured in the June 2020 issue of Southern Living magazine which is some serious “Southern Woman Credibility right there” She was born in Knoxville and has spent her life in various parts of southern Appalachia. Today we hear about Kelly’s book, her perspectives on gardening, and also her thoughts on growing collard greens. In Fred Sauceman’s “Potluck Radio” series, he features “Soutissa sausage” with a recording that he made in 2018 with the “Waldensian” community of Valdese, North Carolina. Dee Dee Constantine shares a recipe for Sautéed trout with spinach and roasted red bell peppers from the Tupelo Honey Cookbook

As we continue talking about early Baptists, hear the stories of the Paulician's and the Waldensian's in today's episode! They suffered persecution but they stood up for their faith. They were executed but they spread the gospel anyway. They were told to not serve God but they continued just the same. May we have the same fighting spirit for our faith today as they did back then. Join me for their inspiring story! Submit a question for our Q&A: https://sandycreekstirrings.com/contact/

Professor Mario Del Pero, Professor of International History, Institut d’études politiques at Sciences Po, Paris, speaks about his paper 'In the Shadow of the Vatican' with PhD student Christopher Schaefer. The pair discuss the missionary efforts of a small group of evangelical Christians, members of the 'Church of Christ', who moved from Lubbock, Texas to Castelli Romani, Italy, in 1948. They explore the history of Pentecostalism and the Waldensian movement in Italy, concerns about the pressures of the Vatican on the Italian state, and the constant spectre of communism that loomed over debates regarding religious practice and the growing American presence in Europe in the years following the Second World War. They also discuss the promises and perils of microhistory for historians of modern Europe. As mentioned during the introduction, after this week all seminars until the end of term have been cancelled on account of scheduled industrial action. That means that unless something drastically changes, you won't hear from us again until the end of April. If you have any questions, suggestions or feedback, get in touch via @camericanist on Twitter or ltd27@cam.ac.uk. Spread the word, and thanks for listening!

Waldo (Valdes) was a rich merchant in Lyons, France, who gave up his wealth to dedicate himself to a life of radical poverty and preaching the gospel -- but without the approval of the Church. Waldo and his followers would go on to develop many theological errors that would put them at odds with Catholic doctrine. Vestiges of the Waldensian movement still survive today, including in North Carolina!

From 1949 to 1953, thousands of young people participated in the construction of the first buildings of Crêt-Bérard under the leadership of Pastor Albert Girardeau. He made an appeal to the Waldensian youth to help him build a place of retreat in order to help Christians grow in their faith. Today Crêt-Bérard continues to do this but is also open to many other groups and individuals to use their facilities. I spent a wonderful afternoon finding out about the centre with Neil Wallace who attends the Scots Kirk in Lausanne. This podcasts reflects a little of that afternoon.

From 1949 to 1953, thousands of young people participated in the construction of the first buildings of Crêt-Bérard under the leadership of Pastor Albert Girardeau. He made an appeal to the Waldensian youth to help him build a place of retreat in order to help Christians grow in their faith. Today Crêt-Bérard continues to do this but is also open to many other groups and individuals to use their facilities. I spent a wonderful afternoon finding out about the centre with Neil Wallace who attends the Scots Kirk in Lausanne. This podcasts reflects a little of that afternoon.

Download Peter is currently in the process of opening Valdese's first brewery! A native of the town of Deal in England, he is bringing the flavor of English craft beer to the Waldensian foothills. We talk to him about his plans for the brewery, brewing influences, and how the beer culture is across the pond

The Community of Sant’Egidio, a Catholic lay association, provides services to and advocates on behalf of underprivileged, disadvantaged, and low income social groups around the world. Started in Rome by Andrea Riccardi in 1968, the Community has grown to 60,000 members across more than 73 countries and four continents. In this episode, CMSOnAir speaks with Paola Piscitelli, president of the Community’s chapter in the United States, on one of the Community’s innovative programs – The Humanitarian Corridors Project. The project was launched on December 16, 2015 when the Community of Sant’Egidio, the Federation of Protestant Churches, and the Waldensian and Methodist Churches in Italy joined with the Italian Interior and Foreign Ministries to protect migrants and refugees making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe. The Humanitarian Corridors Project aims to: • Prevent deaths at sea and exploitation by human traffickers; • Provide legal and safe entry to vulnerable people; • Plan reception and integration processes; and • Self-fund with no costs to the host country. Under the initiative, 1,000 of the most vulnerable refugees (e.g., women, children, the disabled, the sick, and the elderly) in Lebanon were allowed to travel to Italy over a two-year period with humanitarian visas. The success of the project has led to the opening of new humanitarian corridors agreements to allow 500 refugees from Eritrea, Somalia and South Sudan in Ethiopia to resettle in Italy and 500 Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Lebanon to resettle in France. In this episode, Piscitelli describes the history of the Community of Sant-Egidio and explains its Humanitarian Corridors Project, including the process of identifying refugee beneficiaries and the communities to host them, the services and programs coordinated to welcome refugees, and the importance of ecumenical partnerships to serve people in need.

This 107th episode is titled, “Reform Around the Edges.”It's difficult living in the Modern World to understand the Late Medieval norm that a State had to have a single religion all its subjects observed. You'd be hard pressed to find a European of the 16th C who didn't assume this to be the case. About the only group who didn't see it that way were the Anabaptists. And even among them there were small groups, like the extremists who tried to set up the New Jerusalem at Munster, who did advocate a State Church. Mainstream Anabaptists advocated religious tolerance, but were persecuted for that stance.As we've seen in the story of the Church in Germany and as was hammered out in the Peace of Augsburg, peace was secured by deciding some regions would be Lutheran, others Catholic by the principle of cujus regis eius religio [coo-yoos regio / ay-oos rel-i-gio] meaning, “Whose realm, whose religion.” The religion of a region's ruler determined that regions subjects' religion. Under Augsburg, people were supposed to be free to relocate to another region if a ruler's religion didn't square with their convictions.Sounds simple enough >> for moderns who are highly mobile and have little sense of the historic connection between identity and place. Many think nothing today of packing up and moving to a new place across town, or across a state, nation, or even some other part of the globe. Not so most Europeans for most of their history. Personal identity was intimately connected to family. And Family was identified by location. That's why long before people had surnames, they were identified by their town. John of Locksley. William of Orange. Fred of Fillsbury. Families built a house and lived in it for many generations. Losing that home to whatever cause was one of the great tragedies that could befall one. It was a betrayal of previous generations who'd handed down both a family name and home, as well as all those future generations who now would have no home to call their own.On the surface, the Peace of Augsburg sounded like a sound solution to the religious conflicts that raged after the Reformation. But it was in fact, a highly disruptive force that ultimately helped spark the Thirty Years War.The wars of religion that washed over Europe in general and France in particular is evidence that the rule a region could have but one religion wasn't workable. Even the Edict of Nantes, passed by French King Henry IV after the bloody St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, only guaranteed the survival of French Protestantism by granting a number of Protestant cities as enclaves in an otherwise Roman Catholic realm.We've given a thumbnail sketch of the spread of the Reformation over Germany, France, England, Scotland, the Low Countries and in Scandinavian.Let's take a look now at Spain.Before the Reformation reached the Iberian Peninsula, many hoped the Spanish Church would lead the way in long-overdue reform. Queen Isabella's faith was earnest. She and Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros implemented a massive reform—including a renewal of biblical studies centered on the Complutensian Polyglot Bible. Today a polyglot is known as a parallel Bible, where multiple versions of the bible are arranged in side-by-side columns for comparison. But in parallel Biblr, these version are all the same language. A polyglot is the comparison of different languages. The Complutensian Polyglot had the Hebrew, Latin and Greek texts of the OT as well as the Aramaic of the Torah. The NT was both Greek and Latin. Spain also had many humanists scholars similar to Erasmus—some of them in high places—who longed for reform.The arrival of the Protestant Reformation saw attitudes in Spain changed. At Worms, the upstart monk Martin Luther defied Emperor Charles V, who just happened to be King Charles I of Spain. Charles became the champion of opposition to Protestantism. The Spanish Inquisition, previously aimed at Jews and occultists, turned its attention toward those calling for reform and anything that smacked of the now-dreaded Lutheranism. Several leading humanists fled to places like the Low Countries where they were welcomed. Others stayed in Spain and tried to lay low, devoting themselves to their studies and hoping the storm would pass them by.The Inquisition wasn't able to halt the “Lutheran contagion,” as it was called. Valladolid and Seville became centers of Reformation despite frequent burnings at the stake by the Inquisition. A monastery in Santiponce near Seville was a reform center where Bibles and Protestant books were smuggled in barrels labeled as oil and wine. When one of the smugglers was captured and burned, a dozen of monks fled, agreeing to meet in a year in Geneva. One of them became pastor to a Spanish congregation there. Another, Casiodoro de Reina, spent the rest of his life translating the Bible into Spanish; a recognized masterpiece of Spanish literature released in 1569. A few years later, another of the 12, Cipriano de Valera, revised de Reina's version, which is known as the Reina-Valera Bible. Back in their monastery in Santiponce and throughout the area around Seville, the Inquisition cleansed the Church of all trace of Protestantism.We hop over now to Italy.Among the inaccessible valleys of the Alps, some more reachable parts of Northern Italy and Southern France, the ancient community of the Waldensians continued a secluded but threatened existence. They were repeatedly attacked by armies hoping to suppress their supposed heresy. But they'd long stood firm in their mountain fastness. By the early 16th C the movement lost steam as constant persecution suppressed them. Many among them felt that the price paid for disagreeing with Rome was too high, and increasing numbers returned to Catholicism.Then, strange rumors were heard. News of a great Reformation arrived. An emissary sent to inquire about these rumors returned in 1526 announcing they were true. In Germany, Switzerland, France, and even more distant regions dramatic change was afoot. Many of the doctrines of the Reformers matched what the Waldensians had held since the 12th C. More delegations met with leading reformers like Martin Bucer, who warmly received them and affirmed most of their beliefs. They suggested some points where they differed and the Waldensians ought to consider revising their stand to bring it into closer alignment with Scripture. In 1532, the Waldensians convened a synod where they adopted the main tenets of the Protestant Reformation. By doing so, they became the oldest Protestant church—existing more than 3 Cs before the Reformation.Sadly, that didn't make things any easier for the Waldensians. Their communities in Southern France, whose lands were more vulnerable than the secluded Alpine valleys, were invaded and virtually exterminated. The survivors fled to the Alps. Then a series of edicts ensued, forbidding attendance at Protestant churches and commanding attendance at Mass.  Waldensian communities in southern Italy were also exterminated.Large armies raised by the Pope, the Duke of Savoy, and several other powerful nobles wanting to prove their loyalty to Rome repeatedly invaded the Waldensian mountain enclaves, only to be routed by the defenders. On one occasion, only six men with crude firearms held back an entire army at a narrow pass while others climbed the mountains above. When rocks began raining on them, the invaders were routed.Then, in what has to be a premier, “Can't a guy catch a break?” moment, when the Waldensians had a prolonged respite from attack, a plague broke out decimating their population. Only two pastors survived. Their replacements came from the Reformed centers of Switzerland, bringing about closer ties between the Waldensians and the Reformed Church. In 1655, all Waldensians living in Northern Italy were commanded under penalty of death to forfeit their lands in three days as the lands were sold to Catholics, who then had the duty to go take them from recalcitrant rebel-Waldensians.In the same year, the Marquis of Pianeza was given the assignment of exterminating the Waldensians.  But he was convinced if he invaded the Alps his army would suffer the same fate as earlier invaders. So he offered peace to the Waldensians. They'd always said they'd only fight a war of defense. So they made peace with the Marquis and welcomed the soldiers into their homes where they were fed and housed against the bitter cold. Lovely story huh? Well, wait; it's not over yet. Two days later, at a prearranged time, the guests turned on their hosts, killing men, women and children. This “great victory” was then celebrated with a Te Deum; a short church service of thanksgiving to God.Yet still the Waldensians resisted, hoping their enemies would make peace with them. King Louis XIV of France, who ordered the expulsion of all Huguenots from France, demanded the Duke of Savoy do as the Marquis had done with his Waldensians. This proved too much for many of them who left the Alps to live in Geneva and other Protestant areas. A few insisted on remaining on their ancestral lands, where they were constantly menaced. It wasn't until 1848 that the Waldensians and other groups were granted freedom of worship in Italy.Ah, time for a breather, we'd hope. But again, it was not to be. Because just two years later, famine broke out in the long exploited and now over-populated Alpine valleys. After much debate, the first of many Waldensian groups left for Uruguay and Argentina, where they flourished. In 1975, the two Waldensian communities, one on each side of the Atlantic, made it clear that they were still one church by deciding to be governed by a single synod with two sessions, one in the Americas in February, the other in Europe in August.The Waldensians weren't the only Protestant presence in Italy. Among others, Juan de Valdés and Bernardino Ochino deserve mention.Valdés was a Spanish Protestant Humanist of the Erasmian mold. When it was clear Charles V was determined to wipe Protestantism out of Spain, he fled to in Italy in 1531 where we settled in Naples and gathered a group of colleagues who devoted themselves to Bible study.  They didn't seek to make their views public, and were moderate in their Protestant leanings. Among the members of this group was the historically fascinating Giulia Gonzaga, a woman of such immense beauty the Muslim ruler Suleiman the Great tried to have her kidnapped so he could make her the chief wife of his huge harem.  Another member of the group, Bernardino Ochino, a famous and pious preacher, was twice elected leader of the Capuchins. Ochino openly promulgated Protestant principles. When the Inquisition threatened him, he fled to Geneva, then went to Basel, Augsburg, Strasbourg, London, and finally Zürich. Ochino's journeys from city to city marked a concurrent journey from Biblical orthodox to heresy. He became ever more radical, eventually rejecting the Trinity and defending polygamy; another reason he moved around a lot. He kept getting kicked out of town.  He died of the plague in 1564.Now we take the Communio Sanctorum train to HUNGARYAt the beginning of the Reformation, Hungary was ruled by the 10-year-old boy, King Louis II. A decade later, in 1526, the Ottoman Turks defeated the Hungarians and killed him. The Hungarian nobility elected Ferdinand of Hapsburg to take the throne while nationalists named John Sigismund as king. After complex negotiations,  western Hungary was under Hapsburg rule while the East was Ottoman. Stuck between West Hungary ruled by devoted Catholic Hapsburgs and the East ruled by Muslim Ottomans, was Royal Hungary, known as Transylvania, where King Sigismund managed to carve out a small holding.Sigismund knew that religious division would weaken his already tenuous hold on the realm, so he granted four groups to have equal standing; Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism,  and Unitarianism, which we'll take a closer look at when we consider Poland.The Ottomans, ever seeking to weaken the powerful Hapsburgs, supported whichever one of these four was weakest, so that it would continue to cause trouble to the others and so weaken the entire realm. If that group then began to gain power and influence, the Ottomans switched their support to the new underdog.Lutheranism reached Hungary early. There's evidence Luther's 95 theses circulated in Hungary only a year after their original posting in Wittenberg. By 1523, the Hapsburgs ordered Lutherans to be burned to prevent their spread. A few years later, Zwingli's teachings entered the scene, and similar measures were taken against them.Though Ottoman rule was harsh and atrocities were committed against all Christians, it was in the territories occupied by Ottomans that Protestantism grew most rapidly.Hungarians preferred the Reformed Tradition coming out of Switzerland to the church government advocated in Lutheranism. They already suffered under a highly centralized government. In the Swiss-Reformed tradition, pastors and laity shared authority. Also, this decentralized form of church government made it more difficult for Ottoman authorities to exert pressure on church leaders. Records make it clear that Ottoman authorities accepted the appointment of a parish priest on the condition the congregation pay if the priest was arrested for any reason. So, priests were often arrested, and freed only when a bribe was paid.Both Hapsburgs and Ottomans tried to prevent the spread of what they called heresy by means of the printing press. In 1483, long before the Reformation, the Sultan issued a decree condemning printers to have their hands cut off. Now the Hapsburg King Ferdinand I issued a similar ruling; except that, instead of having hands amputated, printers were drowned. But that didn't stop the circulation of Protestant books. Those were usually printed in the vernacular, the language of the common people, climaxing in the publication of the Karoly Bible in 1590 and the Vizsoly Bible in 1607, which in Hungary played a role similar to that of Luther's Bible in German. It's estimated that by 1600 as many as 4 out of 5 Hungarians were Protestant.Then conditions changed. Early in the 17th C, Ottoman power waned, and Transylvania, supported by Hungarian nationalists, clashed with the Hapsburgs.  The conflict was settled by the Treaty of Vienna, granting equal rights to both Catholics and Protestants. But the Thirty Years' War—in which Transylvania opposed the Hapsburgs and their allies—brought devastation to the country. Even after the end of the War, the conflict among the Hapsburgs, Royal Hungary and Ottomans continued. The Hapsburgs eventually gained the upper hand, and the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699 gave them control over all Hungary—a control they retained until 1918 and the end of WWI. In Hungary, as elsewhere, the Hapsburgs imposed virulent anti-Protestant measures, and eventually the country became Catholic.We end with a look at POLAND.When Luther posted his theses on that door in Wittenberg, there was already in western Poland a growing number of the followers of the Pre-Reformer, Jan Hus; Hussites who'd fled the difficulties in Bohemia. They were amped by the prolific work of the German monk. The Poles, however, had long been in conflict with Germans, and distrusted anything coming from such a source. So Lutheranism did spread, but slowly. When Calvinism made its way to Poland, Protestantism picked up steam.The king at the time was Sigismund I who vehemently opposed all Protestant doctrine. But by the middle of the 16th C, Calvinism enjoyed a measure of support from Sigismund II, who even corresponded with Calvin.The leader of the Calvinist movement in Poland was Jan Laski, a nobleman with connections to a wide circle of people with Reformed leanings, including Melanchthon and Erasmus. He purchased Erasmus' library. Exiled from Poland for being a Calvinist, he was called back by the nobility who'd come to favor the Reformed Faith. Laski translated the Bible into Polish, and worked for a meeting of the minds between Calvinists and Lutherans. His efforts led to the Synod of Sendomir in 1570, 10 years after Laski's death.The Polish government followed a policy of greater religious tolerance than most of Europe. A large number of people, mostly Jews and Christians of various faiths, sought refuge there. Among them was Faustus Socinius, who denied the Doctrine of the Trinity, launching a group known as Unitarians. His views were expressed in the Racovian Catechism, authored not by Socinius, but by two of his followers. Published in 1605, this document affirms and argues that only the Father is God, that Jesus is not divine, but purely human, and that the Holy Spirit is just a way of referring to God's power and presence.Throughout most of the 16th C and well into the 17th, Protestantism as affirmed at the Synod of Sendomir, had a growing number of Polish followers—as did Socinian Unitarianism. But as the national identity of Poland developed in opposition to Russian Orthodox Church to the East, and German Lutherans to the West, with both Russia and Germany repeatedly seeking to take Polish territory, that identity became increasingly Roman Catholic, so that by the 20th C, Poland was one of the most Catholic nations in Europe.This brief review of the Reformation around the edges of Europe reveals that within just a few decades of Martin Luther's time the ideas of Protestant theology had covered the continent and caused large scale upheaval. What we HAVEN'T considered yet, is the impact of the Reformation further East. In a later episode we'll take a look at the impact it had on the Eastern Church.

This 85th episode of CS, is titled, Dawn.I want to take a brief moment here at the start to say “Thank you” to all those who've spread the word about CS to their friends and family. We've had a significant bump in subscribers and lots of new likes on the FB page. So—Kudos to all who've spread the word.As most of you know, iTunes is by far the major portal for podcasts. So, if you use iTunes, a review of CS is a great way to boost our rating – and ratings usually translate into new subscribers. Why do we want more subscribers since there's no commercial interest in CS? Because information and knowledge about history are crucial to a well-rounded worldview. I'm convinced an accurate view of history is crucial to overcoming prejudice, to tearing down the walls that divide people. That is when we discover not just WHAT people believe but WHY – it helps puts things in perspective and disabuses us of errant opinions.Anyway, that's my hope.As I've learned about different groups, I've revised my opinions. Traditions almost always have some origin in history, in some ground that at the time seemed perfectly reasonable to the people who created them. We may not agree with them today, hundreds and even thousands of years later, but at least we can respect those who originally framed them; and if not respect, gain a modicum of understanding for the complexities they wrestled with.Okay, back to it …We've come now to one of the most significant moments in Church History; the Reformation. Since it's considered by many the point at which the Protestant church arose, it's important to realize a couple of things.First – The student of history must remember almost all those who are today counted as the first Protestants were Roman Catholics. When they began the movement that would later be called the Reformation, they didn't call themselves anything other than Christians of the Western, Roman church. They began as an attempt to bring what they considered to be much-needed reform to the Church, not to start something new, but to return to something true. When the Roman hierarchy excommunicated them, the Reformers considered it less as THEY who were being thrust forth out of the Church as it was those who did the thrusting, pushed them out of the true church which was invisible and not to be equated with the visible religious institution HQ'd in Rome, presided over by the Pope. It's difficult to say for certain, but you get the sense from the writing of some of the Reformers that they hoped the day would come when the Roman church would recognize in their movement the true Gospel and come to embrace it. Little did they envision how deep and wide the break between them would become, and how their movement would shatter and scatter into so many different sects, just as the Roman hierarchy worried and warned.Second - There'd been groups that diverged from Roman Catholicism and its Eastern cousin the Orthodox Church, for a long time. We've already considered the Nestorian Church which dominated the Church in the Far East for hundreds of years and didn't lose its place of prominence until the Mongol invasions of the 13th C. There were little communities of what can be called non-aligned Christians scattered throughout Europe. And we'll consider some of those as we turn now to the Reformation.Long before Luther nailed his list of 95 topics for discussion to the chapel door at Wittenberg, others had sniped at the theological position of the Roman church.  There'd always had been some who didn't agree with its teaching, and many had broken off into separate religious communities.By way of review …Peter Waldo was one of the most effective of the pre-Reformers. A wealthy merchant of Lyons, France, moved by Matthew 19:21, he was convinced that poverty in the service to Christ was the path to heaven. So three centuries before Martin Luther, he sold his estate and gave the proceeds to the poor. Within a year, he was joined by others, both men and women, who called themselves the “Poor Men of Lyons,” and took on an itinerant ministry of preaching repentance and living from handouts. These were an early form of what came to be the mendicant monks.Thinking themselves to be good Roman Catholics, they appealed to the Third Lateran Council in 1179 for permission to preach but were refused because they were considered ignorant and unlearned laymen. But they were convinced they were like the first followers of Jesus and should obey God rather than men. So, Peter and his followers continued to preach.In 1184, Pope Lucius III excommunicated them for their disobedience. Contrary to what we might expect, this brought numerous supporters, and the movement spread into southern France, Italy, Spain, the Rhine Valley, and Bohemia. That they gained such support after being drop-kicked by Rome leaves the impression the Church's reputation wasn't so grand, at least in the regions where the Waldensians lived and worked.It's hard to know if all those called “Waldensian” were really followers of Peter Waldo or if contemporary opponents just used that term as a blanket description for the many disaffected individuals who opposed the Church. It's possible as well that many smaller groups of non-aligned Christians emerged from hiding to join the Waldensians.Whatever the case, they took the New Testament as a rule of life and used it in what we might call a legalistic sense. They went about 2 by 2, wearing simple clothing, preaching repentance, frequent fasting, and living from the gifts of others. They rejected the doctrine of purgatory, masses and prayers for the dead, and promoted the necessity for translations of Scripture in people's native language. They insisted on the right of anyone to preach, man or woman—but they did have some organization among their clergy, with bishops, priests, and deacons.While Peter Waldo never embraced the doctrines we'd call genuinely evangelical, his emphasis on Scripture as the basis of faith and practice opened the door for his followers to become so.The Waldensians were persecuted harshly for centuries. Part of the reason for their widespread distribution in Europe was that they were driven from their homeland. In Bohemia, they ultimately became part of the followers of Jan Hus. In their mountain retreat of the Alps between France and Italy, their homeland by the time of the Reformation, they met with representatives of the Swiss Reformation in 1532 and adopted the theology and government of the Swiss Reformers. Then, in 1545, about 4000 were massacred in Provence, France. It wasn't until 1848 that they won recognition. Today they number about 20,000, the only medieval separatist group to survive to the present.That brings us to the next pre-reformer, the Englishman JOHN WYCLIFFE, who we've already looked at.John Wycliffe lived about 200 yrs after Peter Waldo. Like Waldo, Wycliffe was determined to derive his theology, both theoretical and practical, from Scripture. Like the Waldensians, Wycliffe encouraged the translation of the Bible into the common language and that anyone ought to be able to preach, not just sanctioned and licensed clergy.Though he personally translated or supervised the translation of parts of the Bible, the version given his name wasn't completed until after his death. Its widespread use had an influence on the development of the English language. Wycliffe was educated at Oxford and later became a master of Balliol College there. For a while chaplain to the king, with access to Parliament, he was able to reach some of the upper-class English. But he also sought to reach the common people, sending out lay evangelists to instruct them.After 1375, Wycliffe's reforming views developed rapidly. Pope Gregory XI condemned him in 1377 for his efforts, but he was protected by some of the nobles and the powerful John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and son of Edward III. These were the days of the Hundred Years War between England and France, when it was unthinkable an Englishmen would surrender one of their most outstanding countrymen to a pope at Avignon, under the domination of England's French foes.To Wycliffe, Scripture, which he interpreted literally, was the sole authority for the believer. Decrees of the pope were not infallible except as based on Scripture. The clergy were not to rule, but to serve and help people. He concluded that Christ and not the pope was the head of the church; in fact, the pope, if he were too eager for worldly power, might even be regarded as the Antichrist. Ultimately, Wycliffe repudiated the entire papal system. He also attacked transubstantiation, the Roman doctrine that the bread and wine of Communion become the actual body and blood of Christ in the Mass.  Wycliffe condemned the doctrine of purgatory, the use of relics, pilgrimages, and indulgences. For all this, he's called the Morningstar of the Reformation.Wycliffe's followers were forcefully suppressed in 1401. Those who held his views went underground and helped to prepare the way for the British Reformation a century later. Bohemians studying at Oxford in Wycliffe's day carried his ideas to their homeland, where they influenced the teachings of Jan Hus, another pre-reformer we've already looked at, but whom we'll consider again now in this set up for the Reformation.Hus was the professor of philosophy at the University of Prague and lead preacher at Bethlehem Chapel.  Historians used to think Hus transported Wycliffe's views to Prague but it seems clear now that while Hus was later influenced by Wycliffe's views, his reforms ran tandem to what was happening in England.Hus's approach was similar to Wycliffe's but his influence in Europe was greater than that of the Englishman's. Luther was greatly impressed with the work of Jan Hus. His greatest work was titled On the Church. He said that all the elect are members of Christ's church, of which Christ, rather than the pope, is head. He argued against simony, indulgences, and abuses of the mass. He demanded a reform in the lives of clergy, and the right of laymen to take both the bread and wine in Communion.Hus became the leader of a reform movement that spread across Bohemia. Almost the entire realm supported him, in spite of being excommunicated by the pope. After Hus's death the reform carried on, and in the middle of the 15th Century the Bohemian Brethren rose out of the embers of the fire Hus lit. They still exist as the Moravians.The 4th pre-Reformer was Savonarola who lived in Florence, Italy in the late 15th C. He was a fiery preacher against the worldliness and corruption of church and society. A Dominican, he was transferred to the priory of San Marco in 1482 and rose in influence and power in the city. His studies in the OT prophets and the book of Revelation made him a powerful preacher against the evils of a decadent society.Savonarola served as the spiritual leader of the political party that came to power in Florence when the Medicis fled the city in 1494. Exercising a virtual dictatorship, he tried to reform both the church and state. But over time, the people of Florence found his rule too strict and used his criticism of the Roman Church as the excuse to remove him from office. Pope Alexander VI's excommunication of Savonarola in 1497 was all the Florentines needed to arrest and try him for sedition and heresy. He was cruelly tortured then hanged in the piazza before the city hall, not far from where Michelangelo's David would stand just 5 years later.Although Savonarola demanded reform in the church, he never took the more advanced position of Wycliffe and Hus. He had no quarrel with the teachings or the organization of the church but seems to have believed in justification by faith.At the same time, Wycliffe and Hus were leading their attempts at reform, a mystical movement flowered in northern Europe. Known as The Brethren of the Common Life, they emphasized Bible reading, meditation, prayer, personal piety, and religious education. The main aim of the Brethren was to secure a revival of practical religion. They gathered in homes rather than monasteries, held property in common, worked to support themselves, and avoided the ill-will of the communities in which they lived by not seeking tax-exempt status or begging. They had good relations with the townspeople but sometimes incurred the suspicion and opposition of the clergy and monks. They attended parish churches and had no peculiar doctrinal positions.The Brethren were committed to education. They established several schools in the Netherlands and Germany that were outstanding for scholarship and piety. Four of their best-known students were Nicholas of Cusa, Erasmus, Luther, and Thomas à Kempis, who's credited with writing the widely distributed Imitation of Christ.Europe was a seething kettle by 1500, ready to boil over. In the realms of economics, politics, education, and religion, the time had come for change. All that was needed was someone who could mold these explosive elements into a single movement. Such a movement could, and eventually would cover Europe.There are a couple of reasons that need to be stated for why the Reformation succeeded—besides the obvious one many Protestant Christians would note first > It was God's Will.The more pedantic reasons are two-fold:First – The Great Papal Schism had left a bad taste in the mouth of many Christians in Europe. How could the Pope, the Vicar of Christ not be able to keep the Church together? And how could the Pope become such an obvious tool in the hand of secular rulers? The corruption of the Church was so obvious, so blatant, even the most devoted churchmen were embarrassed and wrote impassioned pleas for reform.And that leads us to the second reason the Reformation occurred; this was the age when the nation-states of Europe were emerging. Kings and regional governors were coming out from under the thumb of the Church hierarchy. Instead of Popes being king-makers, kings made popes. And some kings decided they didn't want to play Rome's game at all. They wanted to take their ball and go home to start their own game. If only someone would write some new rules.Enter: Martin Luther.In central Europe, the Holy Roman Empire which was essentially a German entity, had an emperor check-mated by numerous states with only slight allegiance to him. Muslim armies knocked at the doors of the empire not long after Luther tacked his theses to the church door at Wittenberg. After toppling Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Turks strolled across Eastern Europe until they stood at the gates of Vienna in 1529.What really happened was this. Charles, a Hapsburg with holdings in central Europe and king of the Netherlands and Spain, was elected in 1519 as Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire. Francis I of France, surrounded by Charles' territory and defeated by him in 1525, made an alliance with the Ottomans in 1526 to apply a pincer movement against Charles. The Emperor needed the help of all his German vassals to defeat the Muslims. When some of the German princes became supporters of Luther, Charles was no longer able to put religious pressure on them. If he did, they'd withhold aiding him politically and militarily. So Charles wasn't able to force Luther's political covering, the powerful Frederick of Saxony, to surrender Luther when the Pope demanded his head on a pike.This is all very fun, isn't it?Now consider this à Just a few years after Luther's birth, Columbus reached the New World in 1492 and launched the Spanish Empire in the West. Shortly after Luther posted his theses, Magellan's expedition sailed around the world. At the same time, the Portuguese were establishing outposts of empire in Brazil, Africa, India, and the Far East.Did you know Columbus and Luther were contemporaries?Let's not forget as well that a whole new world of thought had come in with the tide of the Renaissance. Rediscovering the literature and thoughts of the classical age, contributed to a greater secularization of life.Humanism was one of the main features of the Renaissance, involving a new emphasis on man and his culture and an effort to make the world a better place in which human beings might live. The pull of the future life was not so great for the true child of the Renaissance as it had been for his ancestors during the Middle Ages. As has been said, the Renaissance man would rather eat his pie now than have it in the sky by and by.In harkening back to the literature of the Classical Age, humanists put renewed emphasis on the study of Greek and Hebrew in an effort to read the classics in the original languages. The greatest of all ancient documents was the Bible, and the renewed emphasis on ancient languages led many to the Scripture.The literary humanists included a good deal of biblical study in their academic diet, and it was in the north that the Reformation gained the most headway, among scholars like Zwingli, Calvin, Melanchthon, and Erasmus.Erasmus was a great satirist of the evils of the institutional church and society. That he got away with it and was so popular proves that criticism of Romanism by Renaissance leaders contributed to the success of the Reformation.Adding to the effectiveness of the Reformation was the Renaissance spirit of individualism, which paved the way for Luther's emphasis on the priesthood of the believer and its attendant ideas of the right of believers to go directly to God and to interpret the Scriptures for themselves.Another important ingredient of the intellectual development of Europe on the eve of the Reformation was the invention of movable type and the spread of printing. Without it the Reformers would not have had the same impact. The tremendous literary activity of the Reformers was largely responsible for building the printing trade.Lastly, an important phenomenon of the period was the rapid growth of universities, which provided education for a larger number of people, fostered a critical spirit, and provided a means for leaders of the emerging generation to be reached with Reformation principles.As we end this episode, I wanted to let you know that the donation feature is once more active on the CS site. We had to block it for a while because fraud did a lot of damage. You've heard reports of identity theft. It seems once crooks snag a bunch of credit accounts, they check to see if they're still valid by using sites like CS to post a bogus donation of 1 to $5. If it goes through, they know the accounts good and make real charges. Problem is, EVERY time my account gets one of these bogus donations, the bank charges me a transaction fee. Let's just say, 10K bogus donations made for a hefty cost to the CS account. So we had to block the donation feature until the proper security could be installed. That's done now thanks to the excellent work of Dade Ronan at Win at Web. Thanks, Dade. You're a genius!So, if you'd be so kind, a donation to keep the site up would be marvelous.

This is the 5th episode in the podcast mini-series we're calling “The Long Road to Reform.”What do you think of when I say “The Inquisition”?Many shudder. Some get a queasy feeling in their stomach because of the way the Inquisition has been cast in novels and movies. There's a bit of truth in that portrayal, one-sided and stereo-typed as it may be.We're backing up yet again in our timeline as we take a closer look at this sad chapter of Church History.The 4th Lateran Council of 1215 was the high-water mark of the medieval papacy under Innocent III. The Council was little more than a rubber-stamp committee for Innocent's reforms. Those brought much needed positive change to the morals of the clergy, but installed structures that worked against later reform. The 4th Lateran Council established the doctrine of transubstantiation and the sacrament of penance. It also made official the Inquisition, which had begun as a commission of inquiry under Pope Alexander III a generation before, but now became a permanent feature.The major challenge Innocent III faced was from the Albigensians, AKA the Cathars, inhabiting Southern France.  Since we covered this maybe-heretical group in an earlier episode, we'll just say that, if the reports by their opponents about them are true, they were a dualistic pseudo-Christian cult-turned-movement that possessed a lot of energy during its relatively short life. Innocent sought to convert them by preaching and debates, but early efforts met with little success. So he approved a Crusade against them from 1209 that lasted the next 20 yrs. The Crusade crushed the Albigensians, devastating Southern France in the process. It was the Albigensians that so provoked Dominic, and propelled his efforts in launching the Dominicans.Though this heresy was eventually put down, their earlier success convinced Innocent the Church would be better served if it had a means to conduct official investigations into questions of doctrine. Earlier popes authorized bishops to investigate accused heretics based on rumor alone. It was up to the accused to prove their innocence. This became the foundational premise of the Inquisition.The Inquisition was an ecclesiastical institution whose aim was to search out and punish heretics. The punishment for heresy was death, since heresy was regarded on par with treason and witchcraft; crimes that stood to imperil the health and well-being of thousands. In 1199, Innocent III issued a decretal saying for the first time that heresy was treason under Roman law.In the late 12th C, bishops turned confirmed heretics over to secular authorities for execution. The 4th Lateran Council confirmed these regulations and threatened excommunication of temporal rulers who failed to rid their territory of heresy.In 1229, the Synod of Toulouse drew up the procedures for seeking out and punishing heresy. The Inquisitor was subject to no law outside the Pope's authority and word. He was prosecutor and judge. The “trial” was secret, with the accused having to prove their innocence, as in all courts following Roman law, without the benefit of counsel or knowledge of the accusers.The final step came in 1252 when Pope Innocent IV authorized torture as a means of getting information and confessions from accused heretics.Till then, Church leaders and thinkers rejected with horror the very thought of using torture. But no such reserve remained after Innocent III ascended the papal throne and the Catholic Church achieved its majestic and powerful unity. Noteworthy among the tortures used by the Inquisition is that, while execution was still carried out by the civil government, it was priests who did the torturing, with fire, stretching on the rack, or beatings that allowed no blood-letting. Remember, good Christians can't shed blood.It was an ugly business, but following the ideas of Augustine, almost everyone agreed that saving the body by amputating a rotten limb was the path of wisdom. The Church was the body; the heretic the rotten limb. One more abhorrent idea we can attribute to Augustine.The Inquisition developed a complex system for classifying heresy and heretics. There were heretics who simply added additional beliefs to the essentials; then there were those who denied those essentials. There were perfect and imperfect heretics. Those accused of heresy were categorized as lightly suspect, vehemently suspect, or violently suspect.Typically, the Inquisitor would arrive in a town and begin his work by preaching a sermon calling for people to bring forth charges against those they knew were guilty of something damnable, or confessing something in themselves they feared was aberrant. People were given a period of grace to make this initial confession. This was called the “General Inquisition.” When that period expired, the “Special Inquisition” began and the accused were summoned to trial.The Inquisitor then functioned as Prosecutor, Judge and Jury. The trial was held in secret, the testimony of only two witnesses enough to condemn. The accused most often wasn't even aware of the charges against them. So they had no context for answering questions. Witnesses weren't named but there was no defense attorney. Well, there might have been, except for the fact that any lawyer who rode defense was likely to then be brought up on charges himself.Trials could last years, while the accused was kept in prison. Once torture was applied, it was kept on until a confession was secured. All this because the Inquisition followed strict rules. One of them the repeating of torture. It could only be used ONCE; in one hearing, which might last months, even years. So, once torture was applied, it was with the understanding the victim would either die or confess. As I said, the Inquisition followed a strict set of rules, except when it didn't; which as a rule, was often.Children, the elderly, and pregnant women were exempt from torture. Except when they weren't.Those convicted of lighter charges then recanted their error were allowed to do penance and bore physical markers of their having fallen afoul of the Inquisition for the rest of their lives. The worst of the heretics were hauled to the stake. Their lands and possessions confiscated by the Inquisitor, who kept them, adding them to the Church's treasury, or sold off. The heirs of heretics who'd lost lands were technically able to reclaim them, but were practicably rarely able to.The Inquisition met with varying success around Europe. In Spain, it was co-opted by the crown. The Spanish Inquisition then became a thing of abject terror; what most think of today when they hear the word “Inquisition.” The Spanish Inquisition was turned to both religious and political ends, with the accused often being convicted more for the acquisition of their property than for heresy.In Germany, the Inquisition was fierce under the zealous fanatic Conrad of Marburg, but when he was murdered, it fizzled out. France's Inquisitorial campaign differed from North to South. In Southern France, Inquisitors continued to root out the Cathars, while in the North, trials were often a reflection of old feuds, with nobles accusing one another for political and economic ends. Italy, with its patchwork of provinces saw spotty application of the Inquisition. In England, it hardly appeared.Modern Christians find it nearly impossible to understand the medieval attitude toward heresy. We regard faith as a matter of personal choice and seldom think of religious beliefs as a matter of life and death. Why should anyone die for their faith, or kill another for theirs?In Medieval Europe, Christians would consider our modern view equally odd. Faith wasn't a private and individual intellectual preserve. The Christian Faith was the cement of society. Denial of a single article of the Faith was understood as a kind of treason because it imperiled one's neighbors. An apostate or heretic, if not punished by the civil authorities might incur God's wrath. He might punish those who let the heretic get away with error.The heavy emphasis on the individual that's such a prominent feature of the Modern Western world is very far from the collective community that dominated the thinking of Medieval Europe. There was no such thing as private religious faith. Society itself was thought to be a manifestation of the Christian faith. The Church was society's soul. Under such a worldview, heresy was a spiritual malady that imperiled well à Everything!So the question follows: What is heresy? In the 12th C, it was the denial by a Christian of any doctrine of the Christian faith. But the list of what were considered inviolable doctrines was a bit different from what Protestants hold as essentials today.  The unity of the Church and the divine appointment of the Pope as head of the Church were part and parcel of the standard body of beliefs Christians were to hold.  Variance from the beliefs of the official Church was considered heresy.In dealing with heretics, the church had 2 objectives:First was the return of the heretic to a position of approved faith. Second—The protection of Christian society.The central question was—How far can the Church go to protect the Faith and the Society that Faith sustained? Is it right to take a life in order to protect other lives, not just their physical lives, but their eternal souls?We won't understand the Medieval world's posture toward heresy until we understand it in these terms. The Church viewed itself as the moral and spiritual steward of European civilization.The challenge of heresy drove the Western Roman Church to its greatest internal conflict: The question of how the Church could employ violence as a safeguard to orthodoxy and a peaceful society? The tragic answer to that question was the Inquisition; a permanent blight on the Church's reputation. The Inquisition demonstrates what happens when people substitute common sense, political expediency, and pure reason for Biblical fidelity. On the surface, it's impossible to get from the crucified Christ who said “Follow Me,” to the horrors of the Inquisition. Yet à the prosecutors of the reign of terror known as the Inquisition saw themselves as the agents of Christ. The Inquisition not only executed heretics, it first subjected them to prolonged torture. In driving out one demon, the Church opened the door for 7 others. But, the absurdity of the entire thing wasn't apparent at the time. Oh sure, there were a few who were uncomfortable with what was being done in God's name, but they kept silent for fear of being the Inquisition's next victim.  Most went along with the Inquisition because the pace for killing in the name of God had already been set by the Crusades. A Church that sent crusading armies against infidels could certainly condemn and execute heretics. Everyone agreed a pure church was the will of God. The question was how to get there.While there were real threats to the doctrinal purity of the Church, many of the attacks the Church faced came from genuine believers who saw corruption in the clergy and wanted reform. It was easy for those church leaders being called out to use the power of their office to brand their critics as heretics and bring down the full weight of society on their sorry heads. Other critics didn't attack corrupt clergy, but rather—beliefs that diverged from Scripture. While these doctrinal challenges occasionally did see a realignment with God's Word, more often they were labeled as pernicious assaults by the forces of hell and the challenger was summarily done away with.One of the earliest voices against the worldliness of the Roman Church was Arnold, Abbot at Brescia, in northern Italy. In a sermons series, Arnold said the vices of the clergy were a result of the Church's marriage to civil power. He urged the Church to surrender its property and secular influence back to the civil government and return to the poverty and simplicity of the early church. He said that the True Church's mission was the Gospel.By 1139 Arnold managed to raise enough support that he turned the people against their bishop. Pope Innocent II banished Arnold from Italy. He went to Paris where he studied under Abelard, another thorn in the Church's side.After 5 years in exile, Arnold returned to Rome and joined a movement to overthrow the Pope. The Romans, filled with dreams of the ancient Roman republic, seized power during the Pope's absence and Arnold became the leader of a new, purely secular government. He announced that the clergy should live in apostolic poverty, and denounced the College of Cardinals as a den of thieves.Arnold and his group managed to retain power for 10 years before Pope Hadrian IV placed Rome under an interdict and persuaded the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to intervene. Arnold was captured and executed a year later in 1155 by being burnt. The final insult was having his ashes thrown in the Tiber River.People had barely forgotten Arnold when another voice for reform arose in eastern France, Peter Waldo, a rich merchant of Lyons. One day Waldo heard a wandering troubadour singing the virtues of the monastic life. The ballad was about young Alexis whose wealthy Roman parents pressed him into an arranged marriage. But the reluctant groom was dedicated to the ideal of chastity, so on his wedding night he made a pact of virgin purity with his bride and immediately left for the Holy Land. Alexis' parents searched for him in vain. Years later he returned home a beggar, so emaciated from his lifestyle of self–denial no one recognized him. He lived in the courtyard on scraps from the family table. Only as he lay dying did he reveal his identity, too late for the grieving family to claim him.The moral of the Ballad was clear to Peter à A Christian must be willing to sacrifice everything in this life for the sake of the next. Struck to the heart by the story, he sought a priest to find out how to live like Christ. The priest turned him to the answer Jesus gave to the rich young ruler in Matt. 19:21: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” The same text 9 centuries before had launched the monastic movement with Anthony in Egypt, first of the Desert Fathers.Waldo determined to follow the same path. He provided an adequate income for his wife, placed his two daughters in a convent, and gave the rest of his estate to the poor. To launch his mission, Waldo enlisted a couple priests to translate portions of the Bible into French. After memorizing long passages, Waldo began teaching commoners how to imitate Christ by practicing voluntary poverty. His innovations lay in applying the life of poverty and discipleship to all believers , not just monks, as Francis soon would. As followers joined his growing ranks, Waldo sent them out 2 by 2, after the apostolic pattern, into villages and market places, to teach and explain the Scriptures. They called themselves the “Poor in Spirit.” We know them as Waldenses.But Waldo's unauthorized preaching soon met the opposition by the Archbishop of Lyon, who ordered him to stop. Waldo refused, quoting Peter in Acts 5:29: “We must obey God rather than men”. The Archbishop excommunicated him.Waldo and his followers appealed to the Pope. They arrived in Rome and found it crowded with churchmen attending the 3rd Lateran Council of 1179. They were able to gain a hearing before the Council but had the misfortune of being ridiculed by a smooth, fast–talking Englishman named Walter Map. Pope Alexander III found no evidence of heresy among them and was impressed by their poverty. They were mere laymen, however, so he ruled that they could preach only by the invitation of bishops, which of course was highly unlikely.Peter Waldo was convinced the Scriptures commanded him to preach to the poor with or without approval. Along with a growing bevy of followers, he continued to preach and practice apostolic poverty. The movement spread into southern France and across the Alps into Italy. By 1184, their disobedience compelled Pope Lucius III to excommunicate them.The conflict is understandable. The Waldenses wanted to purify the church by a return to the simple life of the apostles. This meant the surrender of worldly power. Their aim, like that of the Roman church, was salvation. But their means were radically different.The Pope couldn't renounce the church's right to give the sacraments; He couldn't forfeit the priesthood, nor admit that faith in God might be something other than the mandates of Rome made it. From their side, the Waldenses came to feel more and more that no teaching except Christ's was binding. The Scriptures must rule. But how could they find support for their cause if everyone lived in apostolic poverty? Slowly they came to accept—just as early monastic houses had—two levels of Christian commitment. The main members of the movement were bound by special vows and worshiped together in simple services. Another circle of “friends” remained in the main Catholic church but supplied new recruits and support for the movement.Even after their excommunication, the Waldenses gained so many members the Church launched an all-out assault on them, encouraging some of the Crusades to begin in Europe by practicing the skills they'd need to use on the Muslims, by slaughtering the Waldenses.The Waldenses were so clearly a back–to–the–Bible movement that over the years some have called them “reformers before the Reformation.” Compared to the Roman church's doctrine of papal authority, the Waldensian call to return to the Bible does indeed sound like Luther or Calvin. But their view of salvation, a life of penance and poverty, lacks the clear note of God's grace that sounded so powerfully in the Reformation.