The Waldensian Church in the valleys of Piedmont/Appendix
Sixteenth Day.—On Sunday, the 1st of September, the Vaudois spent the day at Bobbio and at Sibaoud. Here Monsieur Montoux, the only assistant (ajoint) of Monsieur Arnaud, having placed the door of a house between two
rocks, mounted upon it, and preached an excellent sermon from the words o our Lord Jesus Christ, Luke xvi. 16. After this sermon the Vaudois continued their assembly for the purpose of making different regulations the first of
which was the taking the oath of fidelity. Monsieur Arnaud read the following formula aloud, at the conclusion of which all took the oath by raising their hands to God.
The Oath.
God, by His Divine grace, having happily reconducted us to the inheritance of our fathers, there to establish the pure service of our holy religion, by continuing and finishing the great enterprise which this great God of hosts has hitherto conducted so favourably towards us: we, pastors, captains, and other officers, swear and promise before the face of the living God, and upon the damnation of our souls, to observe union and order, and neither to separate nor disunite while God grants us life, even should we have the misfortune to be reduced to three or four; not to parley or treat with our enemies, either Piedmontese or French, without the consent of the whole council of war; to put together the booty we have made, or may make, and to use it for the wants of our people, and on extraordinary occasions. We, soldiers, promise and swear before God, this day, to obey the orders of all our officers, and we swear fidelity to them, even to the last drop of our blood; also, to place the prisoners and booty at their disposal. Further, it is ordered that all officers and soldiers shall be forbidden, under heavy penalties, to search, either during or after any action, any of the dead, wounded, or prisoners, excepting those officers or soldiers especially appointed for the purpose. The officers are enjoined to see that all the soldiers keep their arms and ammunition in order; and above all to punish very severely any who blaspheme the holy name of God, or swear. And to the intent that union, which is the soul of our affairs, should remain inviolable among us, the officers shall swear fidelity to the soldiers, and the soldiers to the officers, promising together to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to deliver, if possible, our brethren from the cruel woman of Babylon, and with them to re-establish and maintain His kingdom till death, and observe all our lives, with good faith, this present ordinance.
B. Page 231.
A similarity of faith and character between the colonists and the German people, who so cordially welcomed them, has occasioned so complete a union that little vestige can now be traced of the Vaudois settlers, who were established to the west and north of Stuttgart, but the names of some of the villages called after the places of their nativity, and a remnant of the Vaudois patois still understood in the more retired districts. In a Swiss periodical we have not at hand to quote from, we remember to have met an interesting letter written by a Vaudois pastor (we believe M. Appia), describing a visit he had paid to this locality, and his entire failure, owing to his ignorance of the language, in making known the object of his research, until some person hit on the happy expedient of fetching a little girl who had come from a more retired part, and whose native patois bore sufficient resemblance to that of the Vaudois to enable her to become a very efficient interpreter. The joy of the Vaudois pastor appears to have been very great in the discovery of this undeniable trace of his lost tribe of the “Israel of the Alps.”