PREFACE.

Peter Waldo (1) might well have been the occasion that caused them to be named Waldensians, but he was by no means the founder of their society. He found it already established, and only expanded it and carried its faith into countries where it was unknown. Regarding their dogmas, they have for a long time no longer been uncertain. The truth has made its way through calumny. Among so many indubitable monuments of their belief, we have the account of the conferences that Claude de Seyssel, Archbishop of Turin, held with them in their valleys, and which was printed in Paris after his death. But it is not the same for the Albigensians. They have perished, and the Waldensians still survive: They wrote, but their books have been suppressed: almost everything we know of their doctrine comes from their persecutors, who represent it as the most impious and monstrous that one could imagine.

The first members of this society who appeared in France were those fourteen persons from the nobility and the clergy of Orléans, against whom King Robert assembled a kind of council in the year 1022, and whom he had burned alive under the pretext of Manichaeism Manichaeism was often used as a "catch-all" label by the medieval church for any group practicing dualism or opposing the established hierarchy.. Historians agree that the ten canons who perished in this execution were regarded as among the most sanctified and

(1) I say that this might be possible, but it is not certain. If the Noble Lesson original: Noble Loiçon. A famous poem in the Occitan language used to date the Waldensian movement; modern scholars often debate its precise 1100 AD dating. is from the year 1100, which is the date of the manuscript, the name Waldensian is older than Peter Waldo, who did not appear until toward the middle of the 12th century. For one finds in this manuscript the name Valdese, or Waldensian.

On the other hand, the learned Ussher James Ussher (1581–1656), Archbishop of Armagh, famous for his biblical chronology and studies of early church history. testifies in his book On the Succession of the Christian Churches original: de successione. etc. that he found this name only in writings posterior to Peter Waldo. Might this come from the fact that the Waldensians, enclosed within their valleys, had until then been unknown to the whole world?