controversy which has Peter Waldo (Pierre de Lyons in the middle of

settled, notwithstanding the gathered round the subject. Veaux) was a rich citizen of the twelfth century. While attending a meeting of his fellow-citizens, one of them suddenly fell down and expired. The incident made a deep impression upon him, and returning home he resolved to give himself to the study and advancement of religion. He disposed of his wealth among the poor, assumed himself the garb of poverty, and invited others to share with him a life of evangelical simplicity and self-denial. In so far, we see in him only the same characteristic reaction against clerical worldliness that distinguish all the Reformers of the period; but his love of Scripture, and the means which he took to promote its knowledge, gave to his labours a peculiar and enduring stamp. Unsatisfied with the mere fragments of Scripture retailed by the preachers or accessible in the ritual of the Church, he employed two persons with competent attainments to translate for him the whole of the Gospels, and other portions of the Bible, into the Romance language. These he studied with great avidity, and multiplied and spread abroad copies among the people. Gradually he had the whole or the greater part of Scripture translated and widely circulated; and from this source of knowledge and quickening more than from anything else, the movement connected with his name made progress and gathered a permanent meaning and influence. This connection with Scripture, and the vigorous and unextravagant evangelical life which was the consequence, signalise the Waldensian Reformation from the similar attempts that mark the

age, and enabled it to absorb them, while it warrants the popular idea which brings the Waldensian movement more prominently than any that preceded it into connection with the Great Reformation.

Peter Waldo and his followers seem at first to have had no inclination to separate from the Church. They desired rather to be recognised within the Church-to be allowed to study Scripture and follow their self-chosen mission of instructing the ignorant and neglected under its highest sanctions. For this purpose, when they were forbidden by the Archbishop of Lyons to expound Scripture, they appealed to the Pope, Alexander III. They sent delegates to Rome, bearing a copy of their Romance version of the Bible, and soliciting the approval of the Holy See to their formation into a spiritual society. The knowledge of this fact we derive from the account of an English Franciscan monk* who was present in Rome at the time, and who has left us a graphic account of the external aspect of the poor men of Lyons, as they appeared in the streets of the Holy City, but who discovers too plainly, at the same time, that he did not understand the spirit that animated them. "They go about barefoot, two by two," he says, "in woollen garments, possessing nothing, but, like the apostles, having all things in common— following naked Him who had not where to lay his head." The Pope appointed a commission to converse with the poor men, and inquire into their story. The members of the commission, of whom the Franciscan monk was one, performed their part ill. When they could find no harm or heresy in the men, they sought to * Walter de Mapes. NEANDER, viii. p. 426.

cover them with ridicule, and by their advice the Pope refused the request of the deputation. It was one of those critical moments in the history of the Papacy when its usual penetration and policy forsook it, and its very consciousness of strength proved a source of weakness. The opportunity once passed, it could never be recalled. The Waldenses had no wish to separate from the Church; but the thought of abandoning their mission of scriptural instruction and preaching never entered into the minds of these simple men, and the result was, they were driven outside of the Church, to which they might have given a new life and strength, throughout the south of Europe. Innocent III, with his higher discernment, saw the mistake of his predecessors, and sought to correct it by forming the then widelyspread sect into a church society of Pauperes Catholici, but it was then too late. They had by that time learned to look with indifference on the sanction of the Church, and assumed somewhat of an attitude of hostility to it.

In the course of thirty years the poor men of Lyons had multiplied into the great Albigensian sect, covering the whole of the south of France. It was in 1170 that the deputation waited in Rome the decision of the Lateran Council in their case; it was in the opening of the thirteenth century that a special embassage, headed by no fewer than three papal legates, met on its pompous journey a Spanish ecclesiastic, who condoled with its members on the almost universal disaffection towards the Church of the fair district through which they passed. Something more than condolence, however, was already moving the heart of St Dominic. He saw far more clearly than his companions the real

state of matters, and the remedy that was needed. "It is not by the display of a pompous procession, by the celebration of worldly dignity and a host of retainers,” he said, "that the cause of the truth will be advanced among these poor and ignorant, but zealous and simpleminded people. Zeal like theirs must be met by zeal, humility by humility, preaching falsehood by preaching the truth." Such was the great work which he undertook amongst them. Now, as later, zeal called forth zeal, earnestness without the Church awoke earnestness within it; and Dominic, at the head of his black friars, was the historical reaction within the Church of Romeof Peter Waldo and his followers without it. Dominic, however, or at any rate his followers, soon brought more than spiritual weapons to their aid. The Inquisition, with all its gloomy horrors, was set up in Toulouse, and its secret and terrible power soon reached to every village and family of the suspected heretics. Unmoved by friars' preaching, unyielding before the darkest tortures, the bloody sword of the Crusader was finally invoked to crush the poor peasants of Languedoc. Under the leadership of one of those men who live in history, branded by its vilest stigma of religious ruffianism— Simon de Montfort-a war of devastation was carried into those beautiful provinces. Men, women, and children were massacred or driven from their homes to seek a precarious shelter amid the wild fastnesses and lonely valleys, whose romance still receives its most hallowed charm from the sanctified memory of their faith and the pathetic glory of their sufferings.

Temporarily strengthened by such a bloody triumph

and the earnestness and zeal everywhere called forth by her new mendicant orders, the Church of Rome seemed once more alone in its proud predominance— its enemies crushed, and its members elated with the fire of a freshly-kindled energy. During a century and a half longer, it may be said to have maintained the unchallenged ascendancy to which the rivalrous zeal of Dominican and Franciscan, the tortures of the Inquisition, and the sword of the Crusader had once more raised it. This long period, indeed, was not without witnesses to the reforming earnestness, for which Arnold of Brescia and Peter Brueys had suffered, and the simple truth, for which the poor men of Lyons had been massacred or driven from their homes. Robert Grostête, of Lincoln, by his simple and quiet dignity, and blameless holiness of life, withstood the insolent pride of Innocent III. in his last years. William of Ockham attacked the scandals of the Papacy by his withering satire. The Fraticelli and Spirituals, as they were called among the Franciscans, and many of the Tertiaries or secular fraternity attached to the same body, raised their voice against the disorders of the Church; and in a book, entitled the Everlasting Gospel, supposed to be the production of the Abbot Joachin, anticipated a reformation which should come through the humble power of the preaching of the Word. The spirit of evangelical purity and simple-minded and benevolent zeal which so prominently characterised the movements of the twelfth century, continued to live, especially in Flanders and Germany, in societies known under various names, such as Beghards and Cellites, and the "Vineyard of the Lord." Through