Dominicans The Order of Preachers (Latin: Ordo Praedicatorum, hence the abbreviation OP used by members), is more commonly known since the 15th century as the Dominican Order or Dominicans. It is a Roman Catholic religious order founded in the Languedoc by the Spanish canon Dominic Guzmán, and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216. After Dominic completed his studies, Bishop Martin Bazan and Prior Diego d'Achebes appointed him to the cathedral chapter and he became a regular canon under the Rule of St Augustine and the Constitutions for the cathedral church of Osma. At the age of twenty-four or twenty-five, he was ordained to the priesthood. Membership in the Order includes friars, nuns, active sisters, and lay or secular Dominicans affiliated with the Order. The friars are all ordained Catholic priests. Members of the order generally carry the letters O.P., standing for Ordinis Praedicatorum, meaning of the Order of Preachers, after their names. It was founded to combat Catharism, and Domnicans soon established the Inquisition when it became apparent that preaching and debating produced almost no converts from Catharism. (The first Grand Inquistor of Spain, Tomás de Torquemada, was also a Dominican). Their identification as Dominicans gave rise to the pun that they were the Domini canes, or Hounds of the Lord. In England and other countries the Dominican friars are referred to as Black Friars because of the black cappa or cloak they wear over their white habits between Halloween and Easter. Dominicans were Blackfriars, as opposed to Whitefriars (such as Carmelites) or Greyfriars (Franciscans). They are also distinct from the Augustinian Friars (the Austin friars) who wear a similar habit. (Dominic Guzmán had been an Augustinian canon). In France, the Dominicans were known as Jacobins, because their convent in Paris was attached to the church of Saint-Jacques, now disappeared, on the way to Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, which belonged to the Italian Order of San Giacomo dell Altopascio - St. James in English - Sanctus Jacobus in Latin. The Dominican Order came into being in the Middle Ages at a time when men of God were no longer expected to stay behind the walls of a cloister. Instead, they traveled among the people, taking as their example the Cathars who emulated tthe apostles of the primitive Church. Dominic Guzmán's new order was to be a preaching order, trained to preach in local languages - again copying the Cathars who preached in Occitan. Rather than earning their living, Dominican friars would survive by begging, "selling" themselves through persuasive preaching. They were both active in preaching, and contemplative in study, prayer and meditation. As today, the Brothers preached while the Sisters prayed for the the success of the Brothers' teaching. In the spring of 1203, Dominic Guzmán joined Prior Diego de Acebo on an embassy to Denmark for the monarchy of Spain, to arrange the marriage between the son of King Alfonso VIII of Castile and a niece of King Valdemar II of Denmark. At that time the Languedoc was the stronghold of the Cathar or Albigensian belief, Prior Diego saw immediately one of the paramount reasons for the spread of Catharism: the representatives of the Holy Church lived openly with an offensive amount of pomp and ceremony. On the other hand, the Cathars lived in a state of self-sacrifice that was widely appealing. For these reasons, Prior Diego suggested that the papal legates begin to live a reformed Cathar style (ie apostolic) life. The prior and Dominic Guzmán dedicated themselves to the (largely unsuccessful) conversion of the Cathars According to legend, Dominic Guzmán became the spiritual father to nine women he had reconciled to the Catholic faith, by miraculously facing down a demonic black cat in the church at Fanjeaux. In later traditions they would become Cathar Perfects converted by his convincing arguments. In 1206 the alleged converts were established them in a convent in Prouille, near Fanjeaux. This convent would become the foundation of the Dominican nuns, and later become Dominic Guzmán's headquarters for his missionary efforts in the Lauragais. Prior Diego died, after two years in the mission, on his return trip to Spain, leaving Dominic Guzmán to develop his new Order. Guzmán established a religious community in Toulouse in 1214, to be governed by the rule of St Augustine and statutes to govern the life of the friars, including the Primitive Constitution. (The statutes borrowed from the Constitutions of Prémontré.) Founding documents establish that the Order was created for two purposes: preaching and the salvation of souls. In July 1215, with the approbation of Bishop Foulques of Toulouse, Dominic Guzmán ordered his followers into an institutional life. Friars were organized and trained in religious studies. The Rule of St Augustine was an obvious choice for the Dominican Order, Like Augustinians, Dominicans were to be not monks, but canons-regular. They could practice ministry and common life. The Order of Preachers was approved in December 1216 and January 1217 by Pope Honorius III in the papal bulls Religiosam vitam and Nos attendentes. On January 21, 1217 Honorious issued the bull Gratiarum omnium recognizing Dominic Guzmán's followers as an Order dedicated to study and universally authorized to preach, a power formerly reserved to local episcopal authorization. On August 15, 1217 Dominic dispatched seven of his followers to the university center of Paris to establish a priory focused on study and preaching. The Convent of St. Jacques, would eventually become the Order's first studium generale. Dominic Guzmán was to establish similar foundations at other university towns of the day, Bologna in 1218, Palencia and Montpellier in 1220, and Oxford just before his death in 1221. In 1219 Pope Honorius III invited Dominic Guzmán and his companions to take up residence at the ancient Roman basilica of Santa Sabina, which they did by early 1220. The order developed rapidly into Inquisitors in Carcassonne, Toulouse and Albi, a position regularised by later popes. Dominicans were formally appointed by Pope Gregory IX to conduct the Papal Inquisition. In his Bull Ad extirpanda of 1252, Pope Innocent IV authorised the Dominicans' use of torture.

Franciscans The Franciscans played a relatively small role in the events of the medieval Languedoc. A few Franciscan Inquisitors supplemented the Dominican Inquisitors, apparently to soften their harshness and reduce their extensive corruption. Perhaps the most notable role played was that of Bernard Délicieux (c. 1260-1270  1320), a Spiritual Franciscan friar who resisted the Inquisition in the Languedoc. Bernard Délicieux Born in Montpellier, France sometime in 1260-1270, Délicieux joined the Franciscan Order in 1284 and worked in Paris before the 1299. Around 1299, Délicieux became prior of the Franciscan convent in Carcassonne where he led a revolt against the city's oppressive Inquisitors, preventing the arrest of two alleged Cathars who were given sanctuary in the Franciscan convent. In July 1300, Délicieux appealed the accusation that Castel Fabre, deceased in 1278 and buried at the Franciscan convent, had been a heretic. Délicieux claimed the Inquisition registers were fraudulent and contained accusations from non-existent informants. This incident caused the Inquisitors to temporarily flee Carcassonne. In 1301, Délicieux befriended the newly appointed viceregent of Languedoc, Jean de Picquigny. Together, they visited King Philip The Fair in October and argued that Carcassonne Inquisitor Foulques de Saint-Georges and Bishop Castanet were corrupt and abused their power, and thereby endangered loyalty to the French King. As a result, friar Foulques was reassigned and support from royal constables to arrest subjects suspected of heresy was reduced. Bishop Castanet was fined 20,000 livres and had his temporal authority restricted. Around. 1302, Délicieux was transferred from Carcassonne to the Franciscan convent in Narbonne. He travelled extensively throughout Languedoc preaching. In the spring, a second visit to the royal court failed to secure the release of Inquisition prisoners held in Albi and Carcassonne. In 1303, Délicieux returned to Carcassonne and pressured to reveal the secret accord of 1299, which reversed Carcassonne's earlier excommunication in 1297 by the Inquisitor Nicholas d'Abbeville. On August 4, 1303, Délicieux gave a fiery sermon and claimed the 1299 accord admitted people of Carcassonne were (reformed) heretics and, hence, liable to be burned at the stake if they found to have relapsed.:120121 The following week, the Inquisitor Geoffroy d'Ablis tried to dispel the accusations that the accord was unfair for Carcassonne, but a riot ensued:128 Based upon encouragement from Délicieux and to reduce tensions between the townsfolk and the Inquisitors, Jean de Picquigny, backed by royal troops, forcibly transferred the prisoners from Inquisitor's jail to the more humane royal jail. In January 1304, Délicieux and Picquigny met with King Philip The Fair in Toulouse along with Dominican and other church officials as well as town representatives from Carcassonne and Albi. Délicieux angered the King by suggesting he was a foreign occupier of Languedoc. Consequently, there was no policy change and the Inquisition would continue under oversight from local bishops. In the spring of 1304, Délicieux travelled to Kingdom of Majorca to encourage Prince Ferran to back a revolt in Languedoc as an alternate ruler. However, King Jaume, an ally of King Philip, learned of the plot and ejected Délicieux from his kingdom. On April 16, 1304, Pope Benedict XI wrote a bull Ea nobis ordering the Franciscans to arrest Délicieux for "saying such things as we must not". The instruction was unfulfilled due to Benedict XI's death. Délicieux's succession plot was uncovered by royal authorities in the fall of 1304 and he travelled to Paris to attempt to gain an audience with King Philip IV. In Paris, Délicieux was placed under house arrest, but otherwise unpunished. After the election of Pope Clement V in 1305, Délicieux was transferred to the papal authority, where he formed part of the Pope's entourage that ultimately moved to Avignon in 1309. Shortly thereafter (c. 1310), Délicieux was released and joined the Spiritual Franciscan convent in Béziers. In April 1317, Pope John XXII ordered the Spiritual Francisions from Béziers and Narbonne, including Délicieux, to come to Avignon and answer for their alleged disobedience. Upon arrival, Délicieux was arrested. Over the next year, he was interrogated and tortured. Bernard de Castanet created forty charges, later expanded to sixty-four charged by the Dominican Inquisitor Bernard Gui. The charges against Délicieux were: Disobeying the Franciscan Order as a Spiritual

Treason against the French King

Murdering Pope Benedict XI

Obstructing the Inquisition Délicieux was transferred from Avignon to Carcassonne for his trial, which ran from September 12 to December 8, 1319. The judges and prosecutors were Jacques Fournier, the Bishop of Pamiers (future Pope Benedict XII), and Raimond de Mostuéjouls, the Bishop of St. Papoul. Following torture and threat of excommunication, Délicieux confessed to the charge of obstructing the Inquisition. Délicieux was also found guilty of treason, but not guilty of murdering Pope Benedict XI. No verdict was given for being a Spiritual Franciscan, the original reason for his arrest in Avignon. As punishment, Délicieux was defrocked and sentenced to life in prison in solitary confinement. The judges sentencing Délicieux ordered that his penance of chains, bread and water be omitted in view of his frailty, age and prior torture, Pope XXII countermanded their order and delivered the friar to Inquisitor Jean de Beaune. Serving this harsh sentence, Délicieux died shortly thereafter in early 1320. The Fraticelli ("Little Brethren") or Spiritual Franciscans were extreme proponents of the rule of Saint Francis of Assisi, especially with regard to poverty, and regarded the wealth of the Church as scandalous, and that of individual churchmen as invalidating their status. They were thus forced into open revolt against the whole authority of the Church and were declared heretical in 1296 by Boniface VIII.

Cathar views of Catholics and Catholicism Before the persecutions started, Cathars seem to have regarded the Roman Church much the same as everything else in this material world. But increasingly evidence seemed to confirm that the Roman Church was actively allied to the wrong God. In the first place the Roman Catholics venerated the Old Testament. But the God of the Old Testament was not the Good God that Cathars recognised. He was, as anyone can confirm themselves by reading the Old Testament, ignorant, cruel, bloodthirsty and unjust. For Cathars the God of the Old Testament was the Demiurge, the supernatural being that we associate with the Devil. In other words, for the Cathars, Roman Catholics were voluntarily worshipping Satan. Other Catholic beliefs and practices seemed to provide confirmation. Anyone who attached great value to material things was at best mistaken and at worst a disciple of the Bad God, and here again the Roman Church seemed to qualify. Cardinals, bishops and priests lived in great luxury and dressed in gorgeous robes. Even Churchmen recognised the fault of their fellow shepherds. Pope Innocent III, the richest man in Christendom, noted of the Archbishop of Narbonne: " He knows no other god but money and has a purse where his heart should be. His monks and canons take mistresses and live by usury Throughout the region the prelates are the laughing stock of the laity." Cathars knew their scripture and could cite Matthew 7:22 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate one and love the other; or else he will hold to one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. Further, the Roman Church encouraged the worship of material objects such as the relics of saints. And worse yet it venerated the cross - not only a material object but also an instrument of torture. All this seemed to confirm that Roman Catholics were worshipping the God of Evil who had created this world. That the Roman Church perverted Christian Scripture, replaced ancient rites with new ones, and persecuted minorities provided yet more confirmation. They drew what seemed obvious conclusions from Matthew 7, 15-16: Watch out for the false prophets who come to you in the guise of lambs, when within lurk voracious wolves. Only their fruit will tell them apart. So it was that Cathars referred to the Roman Church as the Church of Wolves.

Catholic Views of Cathars and Catharism Almost all modern historians are sympathetic to the Cathars. Even the most scholarly and objective works, laying out the bare facts as fairly as possible come across as sympathetic. Here is a quote from what is generally regarded as the best English language academic work of the twentieth century, referring to the Cathars: None were humbler; none were more assiduous in prayer, more constant under persecution; none made more insistent claims to be "good men", and it was on those terms that they were received by many of the common people. Walter Wakefield & Austin Evans, Heresies of The High Middle Ages (Columbia, 1991), p28. and again ... the Gospels were their guide for conduct; their celibacy and their austerities were those of the monastic ideal; their criticism of the orthodox clergy was hardly more severe than that characteristic of other puritans and reformers; their disdain for the material world was rivalled by that of anchorites whose sanctity was revered by the Church. Walter Wakefield & Austin Evans, Heresies of The High Middle Ages (Columbia, 1991), p50. Even the better quality contemporary medieval opponents recognised their merits. Here is James Capelli, a friar who was lector at a Franciscan convent at Milan writing around 1240. As Wakefield and Evans say, he "displays scruples rarely encountered in other authors of polemical tracts" ... they are, however, most chaste of of body. For men and women observing the vow and way of life of this sect are in no way soiled by the corruption of debauchery. Whence, if any of them, man or woman, happens to be fouled by fornication, if convicted by two or three witnesses, he forthwith either is ejected from their group or, if he repents, is re-consoled by the imposition of their hands, and a heavy penitential burden is placed upon him as amends for sin. Actually, the rumour of the fornication which is said to prevail among them is most false. For it is true that once a month, either by day or by night, in order to avoid gossip by the people, men and women meet together, not, as some lyingly say, for purposes of fornication, but so that they may hear preaching and make confession to their preaching official, as though from his prayers pardon for their sins would ensue. They are wrongfully wounded in popular rumour by many malicious charges of blasphemy from those who say that they commit many shameful and horrid acts of which they are innocent. A number of manuscripts of James Capelli's work survive. This extract is a version based on Dino Bazzocchi, La Eresia catara: Saggio storico filosofico con in appendice Disputationes nonnullae adversus haereticos, codice inedito de secolo XIII della biblioteca Malatestiana di Cesena, but with errors corrected by reference to other surviving manuscripts. For further detail see Walter Wakefield & Austin Evans, Heresies of The High Middle Ages (Columbia, 1991), p305.

Roman Catholic Propaganda This is not how the Roman Catholic Church sees the Cathars and their "heresy". The Church's modern views, expressed by writers like Hilaire Belloc, and are not very different from those of the Medieval Roman Catholic Church (see Hilaire Belloc, The Albigensian Attack, Chapter Five of The Great Heresies ) To most objective authorities the more serious accusations against the Cathars appear to be based on no more than propaganda. No organisation has ever used propaganda to such good effect as the Roman Church. The very word propaganda is derived from the name of the part of the Roman Church set up to propagate the faith. For many centuries the Catholic Church provided a set-menu of accusations against any group of which it did not approve: pagans, Eastern Churches, apostates, schismatics, heretics, Jews, Moslems, witches, Templars, numerous peoples of the New World, and so on. They were all accused of black magic, worshipping Satan, consorting with demons, aping Catholic rituals, murder, cannibalism, incest, bestiality, sodomy and a range of sexual excesses. Cathars were no exception. All of the preceding accusations were made against them, however scant or contrary the evidence. An example of the contrast between propaganda and truth is provided by the disparity between alleged and real attitudes to sex. According to Catholic propaganda, Cathars including Parfaits and Parfaites habitually engaged in sexual excesses, including regular orgies. At the same time as propagating these calumnies the Catholic Church authorities were detecting heretics not by their sexual excesses but by their sexual purity. We have a striking example from the twelfth century in the Archdiocese of Rheims where a group of heretics ("Poblicani") were discovered through the refusal of a young girl to submit to the attentions of a clergyman. The refusal of a girl to submit to a clergyman's sexual demands appears to have been so unusual that she was questioned and admitted that she believed she had an obligation to keep her virginity. As a result, she and her friends were investigated more closely and soon a nest of heretical believers was exposed. The heretics were described by the Archbishop, Samson, who asserted that heresy was being spread by itinerant weavers who encouraged sexual promiscuity. The event is also described in a chronicle by Ralph the abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Coggeshall (1207-1218). An English translation can be found in Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, §42A (pp251-2). Click on the following link to read an English translation of Ralph's account. See Radulf [Ralf] of Coggeshall, in Bouquet, Recueil des Historiens de France, vol. xviii p 92: Mansi, Concilia, vol. xxi, coll. 843ff. cited by Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee (Cambridge University Press, 1999) p 121. Runciman places the event around 1157 while Wakefield and Evans place it between 1176 and 1180. The Roman Church accused Cathars of various crimes and sins. These claims ranged from the true to the preposterous. Here we untangle them. Each of the following charges is dealt with separately: Claims of Cathar "blasphemies"

Claims that Cathars rejected marriage

Claims that Cathars practised incest

Claims that Cathars practised sodomy

Claims that Cathars practised bestiality

Claims that Cathars practised other sex crimes

Claims that Cathars practised suicide

Claims that Cathars practised contraception

Claims that Cathars practised vegetarianism

Claims that Cathars advocated sexual equality

Claims that Cathars perverted the natural order

Roman Catholic Propaganda: Blasphemy A Sexual Retainship Between Jesus and Mary Magdelene? An intriguing accusation made against the Cathars was that they taught that Jesus and Mary Magdelene had engaged in a sexual relationship. It is difficult to know if this was just propaganda. On the one hand it hardly matches the Cathar view that Jesus was a divine phantom. On the other hand there does seem to have been a school of Gnostic Dualist thought that there were two Jesus Christs - one divine and good, the other earthly and bad. Cathars could well have believed that the bad earthly Jesus had married. Also this was an accusation made frequently in the very earliest years of Christianity and it is consistent with other hints. Early Gnostic gospels have Mary ranking above the "other apostles" and one refers to Jesus kissing Mary on the .... (tragically, there is a gap in the manuscript here, but most scholars slot in the word "mouth" as a best guess). In any case the accusation concerning a sexual relationship is not an invention of modern fiction writers as is sometimes claimed. The accusation appears in works by thirteenth century Inquisitors and Church chroniclers. Here is one example from a Cistercian Monk: Further, in their secret meetings they said that Christ who was born in the earthly and visible Bethlehem and crucified at Jerusalem was evil, and that Mary Magdelene was his concubine - and that she was the woman taken in adultery who is referred to in the scriptures [John 8:3] Peter des Vaux-de-Cernay, Historia Albigensis (In WA & MD Sibly's translation into English (Boydell, 2002) at {11} p 11). The accusation is repeated at {91} p51. Incidentally the Roman Catholic Church later adopted the Cathars' identification of Mary Magdelene with the woman taken in adultery (hence for example terms such as "the Magdelene Sisters") According to some authorities the Cathars believed that Mary Magdelene was not merely Jesus's concubine, but had been married to him. As Durand de Huesca tells us, writing between 1208 and 1213: Also they teach in their secret meetings that Mary Magdelene was the wife of Christ. She was the Samaritan woman to whom he said "Call thy husband" [John 4:16]. She was the woman taken in adultary, whom Christ set free lest the Jews stone her, and she was with Him in three places, in the temple, at the well, and in the garden [cf John 8:3-11]. This English translation (with my square brackets) is from Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, p 231, and based on the text printed by Antoine Dondaine "Durand de Huesca et la polemique anti-cathare" Archivum fratrum praedicatorum, XXIX (1959) 268-71.

Roman Catholic Propaganda:

Cathar Views on Marriage One of the claims of the Catholic Church was that Cathars rejected marriage. Since God had enjoined marriage, it must be sinful, and heretical to reject it. There was some truth to the underlying charge. Cathar teaching was that procreation enslaved more angels in human bodies. It followed that procreation was bad. In Catholic thought one of the three explicit purposes of marriage was procreation (In Cannon Law people who could not procreate. Eunuchs for example were - and still are - disbarred from marrying). If procreation was undesirable for Cathars then marriage must be undesirable too. The reasoning held in some respects, but failed to accommodate nuances and qualifications. The first is the Cathar concept of marriage, which was very different from our modern idea of marriage. For Cathars the word denoted not a ceremony joining a man and a woman, but a ceremony joining the entrapped human soul with its spiritual body in heaven. This was one of the functions of the Cathar ceremony called the Consolamentum, a ceremony preserved from the earliest days of Christianity, from which the various Orthodox Mysteries and Catholic Sacrament evolved over the centuries. This interpretation enabled Cathars to read and interpret the New Testament without discomfort, since references to marriage could be interpreted as referring to this "Spiritual Marriage." The Second qualification is that in Cathar thought the horror of sex and reproduction applied principally to Parfaits (men) and Parfaites (women). Ordinary believers or credentes were not expected to remain chaste, though it would be desirable if they did so. There appears to have been no stigma associated with marriage between ordinary believers and it is known that many believers did marry and raise families. In this, the practice of the Cathars again represented a preservation of the earliest Christian practices, where Virginity was the ideal and marriage was an acceptable second best (As Paul put it: "It is better to marry than to burn"). Virginity could be combined with a form of spiritual marriage. In different ways both Cathars and Catholics retained the idea. Virginity and chastity for Cathars was associated with their spiritual interpretation of marriage. Virginity and chastity for Catholics was associated with a different form of spiritual marriage. Monks were thought to marry the Church on their induction. Nuns were thought to marry Christ (In some orders they are known as "Brides of Christ". They still don wedding dresses, wedding crowns and even wedding rings on their inception). Another ancient practice preserved in different ways was that of becoming celibate after having been married. This was extremely common practice - indeed standard practice - in the Early Christian Church, just as it remained standard among Cathars. It was for example very common for noblewomen with Cathar sympathies to marry and raise families and then, with their husband's consent, to begin an ascetic life culminating in taking the Consolamentum and so joining the ranks of the Parfaites. This too had a parallel in the Catholic Church, where it was common for men to abandon their wives in order to become monks or priests (Folque of Toulouse is just one of innumerable examples from the thirteenth century). Similarly, Catholic noblemen often packed their unwanted wives off to nunneries. In both cases the Church regarded the original marriage as dissolved so that the person could remarry either the female Church or the male Christ, according to gender. Related to this practice is the apparent anomaly that although a Catholic priest may not marry, the Church has no ban on married men becoming priests, as many have done and still do today. From all the evidence, no Cathar seems to have been undully exercised by the fact that believers married and raised families. How else could those awaiting reincarnation ever be freed from their cycle of imprisonment? Even so, the simplistic interpretation by which Cathars should abhor marriage seems to have some practical implications. For example it seems to have provided a strand of argument for propagandists. According to them all Cathars rejected marriage and were therefore heretics. The propagandists appear to have fudged the distiction between believers and Parfaits, and presented the rejection of marriage as an horrific heresy in itself. The audience were unlikely to know that virginity was such an ideal in the earliest Church, and the propagandists could hardly admit that the real Cathar practice of chastity represented represented exactly the ideal of chastity that monks aspired to or the ideal of celibacy that priests aspired to. Anyone who believed the propaganda could deduce that Cathars would not marry and that anyone who was married could not therefore be a Cathar. Although the reasoning is flawed on two different counts, it does seem to have been articulated as an argument by people accused of being Cathars by the Inquisition. Here is a revealing appeal by one Jean Teisseire accused of heresy: Listen to me! I am not a heretic, for I have a wife and I sleep with her. I have sons. I eat meat and I lie and swear, and I am a faithful Christian. The quotation is from Guillaume de Pélhisson, Chronicle, translated by Walter L Wakefield, Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Southern France 1100-1250, University of California, Berkeley, 1974, pp 213-14. It did not save him. Further enquiries were made. Teisseire was burned alive and his wife condemned to perpetual imprisonment.

Roman Catholic Propaganda: Incest There is no evidence that Cathars were given to practice incest. The accusation probably stems from the observation that the Cathars regarded all procreative sex as equally bad. So, Catholic theologians reasoned, Cathars must regard sex between man and wife as being as sinful as sex between man and mother (true) and they they must have practiced the later (false).

Roman Catholic Propaganda: Sodomy. There is no evidence that Cathars were given to practice sodomy. The accusation probably stems from the observation that the Cathars regarded procreative sex as worse than non-procreative sex. So, Catholic theologians reasoned, Cathars must regard sodomy as being less culpable than conventional sex (true) and they must have practiced the former (false). This was an effective and persistent accusation. Remember that Cathars were given many names. When they first appeared in Western Europe they were known to have come from the area be know as Bulgaria. They were thus called Bulgres, a word that Church propaganda turned into French Bougre and English Bugger. Ironically, sodomy has always been widely practiced in the Catholic Church, though never formally condoned. Various church orders were famous for it - Voltaire was particularly fond of ribbing the Jesuits about how widespread it was in their Order. And it was not only practised between Catholic men - anal sex was commonly practiced in Catholic countries between man and wife as a means of contraception. Since Cathars had no moral objection to other forms of contraception it seems likely that, on average, Cathars would have had less need for recourse to this practice as a means of contraception, so it is possible that they practised sodomy rather less than their Catholic counterparts.

Roman Catholic Propaganda: Bestiality. There is no evidence that Cathars were given to practice Bestiality. The accusation is based on the idea that heretics were interested in, and given to kissing, the backside of cats. There seems to be no genuine evidence for this practice, nor any plausible explanation of how the accusation arose. One Catholic Authority, writing about 1182, tells us about "many" reformed Cathars who admitted that at night groups of heretics : ... sit waiting in silence in their respective synagogues, and a black cat of marvellous size climbs down a rope which hangs in their midst. On seeing it, they put out the lights. They do not sing hymns or repeat them distinctly, but hum them through clenched teeth and pantingly feel their way toward the place where they saw their lord. When they have found him they kiss him, each the more humbly as he is the more inflamed with frenzy - some the feet, more under the tail, most the private parts. And, as if drawing license for lasciviousness from the place of foulness, each seizes the man or woman next to them, and they commingle as long as each is able to prolong the wantonness. Walter Mapp was the Chancellor of the Bishop of Lincoln. Here he is referring to "Publicans or Patarnes", names by which Cathars were known to Roman Catholic authorities. The quotation is from his "Courtier's Trifles, De nugis curialium I.xxx edited by Montague R James (Anecdota oxoniensa..., medieval and modern series, XIV (Oxford, 1914) pp 57-59. English translation based on wakefield & Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, §42B, p254. It is notable that such accusations were made against other groups that the Roman Church regarded as its enemies. For example, the same accusation was used a century later against the Knights Templars and then against supposed witches. One factor is that Catholics imagined that the devil liked to adopt the form of a cat - which also explains why cats are still associated with witches in the mainstream Christian mind. The most likely explanation seems to be the fevered imagination of some unknown medieval churchman. All it would take was one deranged Episcopal Inquisitor plagued by fantasies of the feline podex. Such an Inquisitor could extract whatever confession he wanted from anyone who came into his power. The confession would then establish an accepted view of how heretics and the devil operated. This could be confirmed by any number of further confessions extracted under torture or duress. Positive feedback loops like this proved any number of unlikely accusations - sailing in sieves, flying through the air, taking animal form, demonic visitations, and so on. The name Cathar may be derived from a German word referring to this particular calumny about cats' backsides, but it rather backfired when everyone assumed that the name must come from the Greek word for pure.

Roman Catholic Propaganda: Contraception In line with St Augustine's views of proper functions for each organ of the body, Catholics abhored contraception. In contrast, Cathars despising all things physical and especially reproduction, found contraception perfectly acceptable. The theory is simple, but the practice more complicated. There is some evidence that Cathars practiced contraception, but it is difficult to know if they practiced it more than their Catholic neighbours. The best documented case of contraception being used comes from the Inquisition's records of the interogation in 1320 of a suspected Cathar, Béatrice de Planissolles, and her lover, by the Inquisitor-bishop Jacques Fournier. Unfortunately the picture is clouded by the fact that the lover was also a Catholic priest - the curé at the famous village of Montaillou. Click on the following link to read Beatric's testimony concerning her and her lover priest's favoured methods of contraception Click on the following link for more information about the events at Montaillou

Roman Catholic Propaganda: Sexual Equality The idea of women having power over men was hateful to the Roman Church, relying on an injunction by St Paul that women should have no dominion over men, and a number of similar biblical assertions. Soon after it had developed a priesthood in the early centuries, the Orthodox Church (from which the Roman Church would later split off), started to minimalise the role of women. They were barred from the new priesthood, and prominant women in the bible were concealed by a simple name change (eg Julia "who was prominent among the disciples" became Julian). Deaconesses disappeared later, and later still women were even excluded from choirs. By the Middle Ages the role of women in the early Church had been forgotten, and St Paul said everything on the matter that was needed. From this perspective, it seemed anti-Christian to allow any form of equality to women. Churchmen were horrified therefore to learn that Cathars had not only Parfaits (male members of the elect) but also Parfaites (women members of the elect). This was probably exacerbated by misunderstandings - for example Catholics never seem to have understood that Cathars did not recognise a priesthood, nor did they understand the nature of the Melhoramentum.. In their minds women Parfaites were priestesses, worshipped by ordinary believers. The truth would have been bad enough, but this seemed to be an even more pernicious blasphemy. Although the Waldensians were doctrinally as opposed to the Cathars as the Catholic Church, they nevertheless adopted some Cathar ideas, for example permitting women a role in spreading the faith. Here is the Cistercian Alan of Lille writing against this heretical idea around 1190-1202: If it is a dangerous thing for wise and holy men to preach, it is most dangerous for the uneducated who do not know what should be preached; to whom, how, when, and where there should be preaching. These persons resist the Apostle [St Paul] in that they have women with them and have them preach in the gatherings of the faithful, although the Apostle says in the first Epistle to the Corinthians: "Let women keep silence in the curches, for it is not permitted them to speak, but to be subject, as also the law saith. But if they would learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home". [I Corinthians 14:34-35] Alain de Lille (Alani de Insulis), De fide catholica (or Quadripartita editio contra hereticos Waldenses, Judeos et paganos. book 2, ch 1. English translation cited by Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, 35 (p 219). The square brackets are mine. Times change, and equality of women is now regarded as laudible outside the Roman Church. There is therefore a danger of misreprenting Parfaites as being fully equal to Parfaits. The truth is not quite so straightforward. Certainly, Parfaites underwent the same training as Parfaits. They took the same vows at identical ceremonies. They led the same ascetic lives, and probably enjoyed the same rights at least in theory. In practice Parfaites do not seem to have travelled and preached, nor did they normally administer the Consolamentum, nor do they seem to have been elected as bishops. Instead they lived together in communities, often in large town houses. In summary, neither the propaganda of the Roman Church nor the rosy picture of the Cathar apologists is right, but both are near the truth, which is that women treated much more like the equals of men than they were in the Medieval Church (or in the modern Roman Church). It is possible that the Cathars treated women in the same way that the earlist Gnostic Christians had treated women - initially unaware of St Paul because they predated him, and later ignoring his innovative opinions. For an academic paper on the role of women among the Cathars of the Languedoc, see Richard Abels & Ellen Harison, "The Participation of Women in Languedocian Catharism," in Mediaeval Studies, vol. 41 published by the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, Canada, 1979.

Roman Catholic Propaganda:

Other Sex Crimes A Christian principle, adopted by St Augustine from the ancient Greeks, it that every part of nature has a proper function. This reasonable sounding proposition can be extended to a less reasonable conclusion: that every part of nature, and in particular every part of the human body, should be used for its proper function and for nothing else. This idea was still familiar to Christian believers into the twentieth century, generally to justify prohibition: If God had meant you to smoke, he would have given you a chimney. If God had intended you to swim, he would have given you fins. If God had intended you to fly, he would have given you wings. This sort of argument has largely been abandoned (applying it consistently takes theologians where they prefer not to go). But there is one example of this idea that is still applied almost as strongly as it was in the time of the Cathars. God had designed the sex organs for the purpose of reproduction, so it was and is wrong to use them for anything else. In particular it was, and is, of the utmost importance that semen should should be deposited in a human vagina. Every sperm is sacred. This idea explained many aspects of Catholic theology which seem odd to outsiders. Not only did it justify bans on sodomy and contraception, but also coitus interuptus and masturbation. On this question, Cathars held almost exactly the opposite view. While Catholics taught that semen should be deposited where it could lead to conception, Cathars held that semen could be deposited anywhere that it could not lead to conception. So it was that on one hand practices like masturbation could be no sin whatsoever to Cathars, and why on the other Catholics could believe it to be a heinous crime against God. Who practised it more is a different question, and one to which we do not know the answer. (Catholic teachings following the traditional line of argument have now been abandoned, or at least are no longer openly advocated. For example, as we know from medieval penitentials, experiencing a nocturnal emission was a far more serious sin than committing rape. The former involved spilling seed outside its divinely appointed receptacle, and the latter involved depositing it in the correct receptacle. The former therefore was a serious sin, and the latter was not.)

Roman Catholic Propaganda: Vegetarianism. This is one charge that is undeniable. Cathars, or at least Parfaits and trainee Parfaits, refused to eat animal products - not only meat but also milk, cheese and eggs - anything that resulted from coition. Some at least refused to eat honey, apparently on the grounds that it, like the morning dew, was the product of monthly copulation between the sun and the moon In many respects Cathar parfaits resembled modern day vegans, except that they did eat fish. (The justification was that fish, as they believed, did not reproduce sexually and so could not imprison a soul as other animals could). That fish reproduced asexually was a genuine and widespread belief in the Middle Ages. The same error underlay the Catholic practice of eating fish on fast days. This practice is still alive in the Roman Church, and a vestige of the same error is the common practice of serving fish on Fridays - Fridays having been traditional fast days. Incidentally, the Roman Church classified such diverse animals as beavers and barnacle geese as fish with the happy consequence that their fast day diets were not as boring as they might otherwise have been. Another such wheeze was to eat animal embryos, on the grounds that they lived in water (the fluid within the womb) and so also counted as fish. Inexplicably, but happily, the logic does not seem to have been applied to human fetuses For many centuries the Roman Church regarded vegetarianism as a capital crime on the grounds that God had given man dominion over the earth and had provided animals for him to eat. Inquisition records include cases of people being required to kill and eat animals, often chickens, to prove that they were not Cathars. Failure to do so meant death. The Mainstream Church was hostile to vegetarianism well into the twentieth century. In Britain a Government Minister, John Selwyn Gummer, could still publicly ridicule vegetarians as being anti-Christian as late as the 1980s, citing the traditional argument that God had given man dominion over the earth and had provided animals for him to eat. Vegetarians are still regarded as vaguely anti-Christian by many denominations even today. The Inquisitor Alan of Lille noted that while Catholics refrained from eating meat because it promoted sexual desire (Concupiscence), Cathars abstained from it because of their teaching about the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis). They thought the flesh might contain a morsel of soul that, according to his accusation, would somehow become even more earthbound if ingested and metabolised. Alain de lille, Contra Hereticos, I, §74, Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, (Paris, 1844-55), vol ccx, col 376: Sacchoni, Summa, p 1762. In recent years some apologists have taken to denying that the Roman Catholic Church executed people for refusing to kill animals. Here is an extract of a Church document Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium from the period 1043-1048, translated from Latin into English. It is as far as I am aware the earliest case of people being executed for refusing to kill a chicken. The author, like his bishop, Wazo of Liège, was unusually liberal and often noted events that others regarded as unremarkable. Here he is taking about what happened to some people at Goslar: "... After much discussion of their vagaries and a proper excommunication for obstinacy in error, they were also sentenced to be hanged. When we carefully investigated the course of this examination, we could learn no other reason for their condemnation than that they refused to obey some one of the bishops when he ordered them to kill a chicken." Cited by Walter Wakefield & Austin Evans, Heresies of The High Middle Ages (Columbia, 1991) p 93

Roman Catholic Propaganda:

Perverting the Natural Order To the conventional Roman Catholic mind, human society is planned and ordered by God. God has ordained what is natural and what is not. The problem arises when we need to distinguish between what is natural and what is not. If we look to evolution or to human nature, we do not always arrive at the same results as the Medieval Church. To an objective outsider it looks as though the Medieval Church hierarchy used its own cultural preconceptions to distinguish between natural and unnatural. Broadly, anything the Church agreed with was natural, and anything the Church disagreed with was unnatural. Under these rules the Church and everything it stood for were natural, and anything opposed to the Church was unnatural. This outlook explains the enmity of the Roman Church to many aspects of the Cathars. For the Roman Church their views were orthodox, other views were heretical. Their ideas on sex were right, other views were perverse. Their views on women were God-given, other views were blasphemous. Their religious rites and books were divine, others were vile satanic parodies. So too for ideas about suicide and meat eating. For Medieval Catholics the feudal system was part of the natural order no less than the priesthood. Everyone was born to a particular station in life - the idea of monarchs reigning "by the Grace of God" was to be taken literally. Catholic Churchmen were horrified to find that in Cathar lands little value was placed on the feudal system, and the natural order seemed to be inverted. A knight might bow down to a Parfait who was an ordinary commoner. In theory it could be even worse: a Count might bow to a Parfaite. Perhaps the best illustration of how easily current fashion was mistaken for the natural God-given order is provided by attitudes to biblical injunctions. Catholics were horrified that Cathars would not swear oaths, and were not in slightest moved by the fact that the bible says clearly and repeatedly that oaths must not be sworn - the feudal system and Church courts relied on ignoring this part of scripture. Again, Catholics were mystified by the Cathars refusal to kill. Catholics took it granted that it was God's will that they should kill almost anyone or anything they wanted to (Click on the following link for more about ignoring biblical injunctions ).

Roman Catholic Propaganda:

Suicide & Euthenasia The Roman Church regarded suicide as a mortal sin. It therefore made much of this heinous crime. For Cathars, there was no reason to regard suicide as a sin. According to their theology, death represented an opportunity for the soul to escape this early hell and return to the realm of light. They apparently did not regard the Commandment "Thou shalt not kill" as applying to suicide. Theoretical acceptance does not imply, as some Catholic authors still suggest, that suicide was common. We know that ordinary believers led fairly ordinary lives, almost in spite of their theology - they married, copulated, raised and cared for their families much like anyone else. The Cathar practice was probably much the same as the one accepted by educated people in classical times and by the overwhelming majority of secular thinkers today. Greeks, Romans, Cathars and Humanists could all condone suicide, finding no moral objection to it, without manifesting any inclination to practise it themselves. Some Cathars are known to have undertaken the Endura, a form of voluntary euthenasia, generally in anticipation of imminent death. Similarly, believers who were mortally wounded might take the Consolamentum and then simply refuse to eat or drink. In this they saved themselves unimaginable suffering and, as they believed, won their place in heaven. Oddly, There is no record (as far as I know) of Cathars captured by the Inquisition choosing to undertake the Endura. Catholic propaganda might have been expected to make much of such heinous self-murder - it could easily have fabricated suicide stories (as some modern Catholic writers do) - but it did not. Why not?

Cathar Beliefs and Waldensian Beliefs Waldensians or Waldenses were followers of Peter Waldo. They originated in the late 12th century around 1176 as the Poor Men of Lyons, a group organized by Waldo, a wealthy merchant of Lyon. Waldo was a model Christian who gave away all of his property and went about preaching apostolic poverty as the way to salvation. Waldo and his followers were Catholics, perfectly orthodox in every respect. But problems arose over the question of preaching. At the time, preaching required official Church permission, which Waldo was unable to secure from the Bishop in Lyon. In 1179 Waldo attended Pope Alexander III at the Third Lateran Council and asked for permission to preach. Walter Map, in De Nugis Curialium, narrates the discussions at one of these meetings. The pope, while praising Peter Waldo's ideal of poverty, ordered him not to preach unless he had the permission of the local clergy. He continued to preach without permission and by the early 1180s he and his followers were excommunicated and forced from Lyon. The Catholic Church declared them heretics - the group's principle error was "contempt for ecclesiastical power" - that they dared to teach and preach outside of the control of the clergy "without divine inspiration". They were also accused of the ignorant teaching of "innumerable errors" and condemned for translating literally parts of the Bible which were deemed heretical by the Church. Waldo's teaching was very similar to that of Francis of Assisi, and his followers experienced a similar fate. St Francis's closest adherents, the Spiritual Franciscans, like Waldensians would be declared heretic and persecuted. In attempting to justify their right to preach Waldensians read the bible closely and deduced that the papacy was mistaken not only in claiming the right to restrict their preaching, but also in a number of other respects - for example the role of priests as mediators between God and humankind, noting Matthew 23: "All of you are brethren." They also questioned the justification and extent of papal authority, and the interpretation of a number of biblical passages. Waldensians were declared schismatics by Pope Lucius III in 1184 and heretics in 1215 by the Fourth Lateran Council, which anathemamitised them. The rejection by the Church radicalised the movement; the Waldensians became anti-Catholic - rejecting the authority of the clergy, declaring any oath to be a sin, claiming anyone could preach and that the Bible alone was all that was needed for salvation, and rejecting the concept of purgatory along with the adoration of relics and icons. In 1211 more than 80 were burned as heretics at Strasbourg. So began centuries of severe persecution. They were in many respects early Protestants. Waldenses proclaimed the Bible as the sole rule of life and faith. They rejected the papal authority and indulgences along with theological novelties of the time such as purgatory and the doctrine of transubstantiation. They laid stress on gospel simplicity. The doctrines included absolute poverty and non-violence. As they diverged from Catholic orthodoxy they started refusing the sacraments and denying the efficacy of the cult of Saints. They translated the bible into Occitan and established their own clergy. Services consisted of readings from the Bible, the Lord's Prayer, and sermons, which they believed could be preached by all Christians as depositories of the Holy Spirit. As early as the twelfth century Waldensians were granted refuge in Piedmont by the Count of Savoy. Although the House of Savoy itself remained Roman Catholic this gesture angered the Papacy. The Holy See had been willing to tolerate Muslim populations in the Normans' Kingdom of Sicily, but it was not willing to accept a Christian sect in Piedmont. In 1207, one of Waldo's early companions, Durand of Huesca, converted to Catholicism after debating with Bishop Diego of Osma and Dominic Guzmán (St Dominic). Durand later went to Rome where he professed the Catholic faith to Innocent III. Innocent gave him permission to establish the Poor Catholics, a mendicant order, who continued the Waldensian preaching mission against the Cathars. Waldensianism became a diverse movement as it spread out across Europe in Spain, France, Italy, Germany and Bohemia. Concerted Catholic efforts against the Waldensians began in the 1230s with the Inquisition seeking the leaders of the movements. Within twenty years the movement had been almost completely exterminated in southern France. Waldensians held that the Pope and his bishops were guilty of homicides because of the Inquisition and the crusades. They believed that the land and its people should not be divided up, that bishops and abbots ought not to have royal rights and that the clergy should not own possessions. They reportedly believed that none of the sacraments, including marriage, were of any effect. They also denied the validity of the secular use of force, which they considered a mortal sin. Inquisitors often noted the Waldensian belief in early church fathers. Their distinctive doctrines are set forth in a Waldensian Catechism (c.1489). They had contact with similar groups, especially the Humiliati. They were altogether distinct from the contemporary Cathars, though the distinction escaped many contemporary Catholic writers, and continues to escape many modern Catholic and Protestant writers who are keen to identify Cathars as proto-Protestants. The confusion may be due to the fact that they shared common criticisms of the Catholic Church, which persecuted Cathars and Waldensians indiscriminately. They also shared a taste for following biblical injunctions. For example both Cathars and Waldensian preachers travelled in pairs, practicing as well as preaching poverty. Waldo and his followers developed a system whereby they would go from town to town and meet secretly with small groups of sympathisers. There they would confess sins and hold service. A traveling Waldensian preacher was known as a barba and could be either man or woman. The idea of a female preacher was yet another blasphemous idea that Waldensians shared with the Cathars. The group would shelter and house the barba and help make arrangements to move on to the next town in secret - again identical to Cathar practices. The Waldenses were most successful in Dauphiné and Piedmont and established permanent communities in the Cottian Alps southwest of Turin. In 1487 at the prompting of Pope Innocent VIII Church persecution overwhelmed the Dauphiné Waldenses, but those in Piedmont defended themselves successfully. Waldensians are also known as Vaudois. The term refers to inhabitants of the Swiss canton of Vaud, one of the places they were most heavily concentrated. A crusade against Waldensians in the Dauphiné region was declared in 1487. Papal representatives continued to devastate towns and villages well into the mid 16th century as the Waldensians became absorbed into the burgeoning Protestant Reformation. Waldensian absorption into Protestantism led to its transformation into a Protestant church adhering to the theology of John Calvin, which differed from the beliefs of Peter Waldo. In 1532, after the early stages of the Reformation, Waldensians met German and Swiss Protestants and soon adapted their beliefs to those of the Reformed Church. After they came out of clandestinity, the French king, Francis I, armed a crusade against the Waldensians of Provence, leading to a genocide that virtually exterminated them in 1545. A treaty of 5 June 1561 granted amnesty to the Protestants of the Italian Valleys, including liberty of conscience and freedom to worship. Prisoners were released and fugitives were permitted to return home. The Reformation was also somewhat beneficial to the Vaudois, with the religious reformers showing them respect, but they still suffered in the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598). In 1655 the French along with Charles Emmanuel II of Savoy began a campaign against them. Oliver Cromwell sent a mission of protest; prompting John Milton's famous poem on the Waldenses. In 1655 the Duke of Savoy commanded the Vaudois to attend Mass or remove to the upper valleys, giving them twenty days in which to sell their lands. In a most severe winter men, women and children, including the old and infirm, "waded through the icy waters, climbed the frozen peaks, and at length reached the homes of their impoverished brethren of the upper Valleys, where they were warmly received." There they found refuge. Deceived by false reports of Vaudois resistance, the Duke sent an army to pursue them. On 24 April 1655, at 4 a.m., the signal was given for a general massacre. The massacre was so brutal it aroused indignation throughout Europe. Oliver Cromwell, then ruler in England, began petitioning on behalf of the Vaudois, writing letters, raising contributions, calling a general fast in England and threatening to send military forces to the rescue. The most famous reminder in English of this persecution is John Milton's 1655 poem "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont." Survivors were promised restoration to their homes and freedom of worship. A few years of troubled peace followed, until Cromwell died. In 1685 Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had guaranteed freedom of religion to his Protestant subjects. In the renewed persecution, an edict decreed that all inhabitants of the Valleys should publicly announce their error in religion within fifteen days under penalty of death and banishment and the destruction of all the Vaudois churches. Armies of French and Piedmontese soldiers invaded the Valleys, laying them waste and perpetrating cruelties upon the inhabitants. A Waldensian leader, Henri Arnaud, led a band into Switzerland. He is the principal Waldensian writer. After the French Revolution the Waldenses of Piedmont were assured liberty of conscience. In 1848, the ruler of Savoy, King Charles Albert of Sardinia granted them full religious and civil rights. A group of Waldensians settled in the United States at Valdese, North Carolina. Today, the Waldensian Church is included in the Alliance of Reformed Churches of the Presbyterian Order. Anabaptists and Baptists point to the Waldensians as an example of Christians who were not a part of the Roman Catholic Church, and held beliefs similar to their own, including the belief in Believer's Baptism and opposition to infant baptism. John Milton in one of his sonnets professes a belief that the Waldensians are the true followers of Christ, who have preserved his original teachings, in contrast to Roman Catholics, who Milton firmly believed had distorted the original Christian message. The Mennonite book Martyrs Mirror lists them in this regard as it attempts to trace the history of believer's baptism back to the apostles.

Waldensian Sources Much of what is known about the Waldensians comes from reports from Reinerius Saccho (died 1259), a former Cathar who converted to Catholicism and wrote reports for the Inquisition. Summa de Catharis et Pauperibus de Lugduno (roughly) "Of the Cathars and the Poor of Lyon" (1254) (discovered and printed in S. R. Maitland), Facts and Documents Illustrative of the History, Doctrine, and Rites of the Ancient Albigenses and Waldenses, (London, 1832). Reinerius' lists of their tenets reveals that Waldensians considered themselves the true representatives of the apostolic Christian church, that statues and decorations were superfluous, that their obedience was to God, not to prelates, of whom the pope was the chief source of errors, and that no one is greater than another in the church, following Matthew 23: "All of you are brethren." Waldensian Bibles Copies of the Romaunt version of the Gospel of John were preserved in Paris and Dublin. The manuscripts were used as the basis of a work by Gilly published in 1848, in which it was related to the history of the New Testament in use by the ancient Waldensians.[2] The first French Bible translated by Pierre Robert Olivétan with the help of Calvin and published at Neuchâtel in 1535 was based in part on a New Testament in the Waldensian vernacular. The cost of its publication was defrayed by the churches in Waldensia who collected the sum of 1500 gold crowns for this purpose. Modern Waldensians Modern Waldensians in Italy After many centuries of harsh persecution, they acquired legal freedom under the King Carlo Alberto of the Piemonte, in 1848. Since then the Waldensian Evangelical Church developed and spread through the Italian Peninsula. During the Nazi occupation of North Italy in the Second World War, Italian Waldensians were active in saving Jews faced with extermination, hiding them in the same moutain valley where their own Waldensian ancestors had found refuge in earlier generations. In 1975 the Waldensian Church joined the Italian Methodist Church to form the Union of Waldensian and Methodist Churches, which is a member of the World Council of Churches, of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and of the World Methodist Council. Modern Waldensians in Germany In 1698 some 3,000 Waldenses fled from Italy to South Rhine valley. Most of them returned to their Piedmont valleys, but those who remained in Germany were assimilated by the State Churches (Lutheran and Reformed) and 10 congregations exist today as part of the Evangelische Kirche. Modern Waldensians in South America Waldensian settlers from Italy arrived in South America in 1856. Today the Waldensian Church of the Río de La Plata (which forms a united church with the Waldensian Evangelical Church) has approximately 40 congregations and 15,000 members shared between Uruguay and Argentina. Modern Waldensians in the United States of America Since colonial times Waldensians who found freedom in North America, as marked by their presence in New Jersey and Delaware. William Paca, one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence was a descendant of Waldenses immigrants. In the late 1800s many Italians, among them Waldensians, immigrated to the United States. They founded communities in New York City, Chicago, Monett, Galveston and Rochester as well as the most notable Waldensian settlement in North America in Valdese, North Carolina, where the congregation uses the name Waldensian Presbyterian Church. In 1906, through the initiative of church forces in New York City, Waldensian interest groups were invited to combine into a new entity, The American Waldensian Aid Society (AWS). Today, this organization continues as the American Waldensian Society. By the 1920s most of the Waldensian churches and missions merged into the Presbyterian Church due to the cultural assimilation of the second and third generations. The most well known Waldensian Churches in America were in New York and in Valdese North Carolina. There is no longer a church in New York City. The American Waldensian Society assists churches, organizations and families in the promotion of Waldensian history and culture. The Old Colony Players in Valdese, North Carolina, stage an annual outdoor drama telling the story of the Waldenses and the founding of Valdese. Both the Waldensian Presbyterian Church and the American Waldensian Society have links with the Italian-based Waldensian Evangelical Church, but, differently to the South American Waldensian communities, they are independent from it. Click on the following link to read an on-line copy of a book published by the American Tract Society in 1866, giving a Protestant account of the the persecution of proto-Protestants, Vaudois and Cathars: W. Carlos Martyn, A History of the Huguenots Catharism barely affected Provence, but the Waldensians were well represented in Provence and surrounding areas. For more on the Waldensians in Provence click on the following link which will open a new window to Beyond the French Riviera www.beyond.fr More Information on the Waldensians https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldensians Waldensian Families Research, Resources to research Waldensian family history

Chiesa Evangelica Valdese – Unione delle chiese metodiste e valdesi, Italy

American Waldensian Society, North America

Iglesia Valdense, South America

Waldensian Evangelical Church – Río de la Plata, South America

Waldenses at Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online

Waldenservereinigung, Germany

Waldensian History, A Brief Sketch, by Ronald F. Malan, M.A.

Waldensians: Medieval Reformers, Waldensian history from a Reformed perspective

The Waldensians chapter from the book The Great Controversy by Ellen White

by Ellen White The Waldensian Movement From Waldo to the Reformation