We will now say a few words on the opinions of the other party on this contested point, who, whilst bearing an equally favourable testimony to the purity and fidelity of the Vaudois Church, assign her a more recent origin, maintaining that she received both her faith and her appellation from the merchant Reformer of Lyons, Peter Waldo, of whom we shall speak hereafter. They, too, quote from the Roman Catholic writers. Allian de l'Ile, or de Lille, who lived at the end of the twelfth century, speaks of the Vaudois as "wolves in sheep's clothing, called Valdenses, from the name of their leader, Valdus." Pierre de Vaus-Cernay, an author known at the beginning of the thirteenth century, styles them, "the heretics called Valdenses, after the name of one Valdus of Lyons." And a few of the more modern historians take the same side, considering it a sufficient honour for the Vaudois Church "to be descended from a simple layman of Lyons, whose piety, moderation, and courage may serve us for a perpetual example, and to have brought out the truths of the Gospel three ages before the Reformation, as well as to have preserved it since that time amid sufferings and privation."[1] And high praise it un doubtedly is; but we must not therefore omit to state the objections raised against this view of the subject, even by those who equally esteem the intrepid Reformer of Lyons. Again we refer to our opponents - for instance, to the bull of Pope Urban II., which sets forth that the Vaudois had been "infected with heresy from the year 1096," long before the birth of Peter Waldo. We may also again quote the assertion of Pierre de Vaus-Cernay, who in his laudatory history of Simon de Montfort, observes, that "this great Defender of the Faith especially signalized himself in his extermination
- ↑ Israel des Alpes, p. 22.
