Facts and Documents Illustrative of the History, Doctrine and Rites of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses

Here they joined themselves to a community professing the same religious sentiments as their own: which community is described by the Inquisitor, as having then existed, in the Piedmontese Valleys of the Diocese of Turin, FROM A PERIOD FAR BEYOND THE MEMORY OF MAN.” p. 26.

Afterwards, referring to this same testimony, he says:

“The remnant of the Albigenses were, in the thirteenth century, compelled by the Crusaders to emigrate from the land of their ancestors. Thus circumstanced, they sought refuge, as we learn from the direct testimony of an ancient contemporaneous Inquisitor, among their Vallensic brethren: and thus the two churches became territorially and ecclesiastically united, so that the one could not be extirpated without the other.” p. 39.

In a note on this passage, he adds:

“The testimony, to the emigration of the Albigenses and to their junction with the ancient church of the Piedmontese Valleys, is so important, in regard to the accomplishment of prophecy, that I shall give it at large in the precise words of the original.”

This testimony might be briefly disposed of by saying that, so far from being that of “an ancient contemporaneous inquisitor,” it is, on the face of it, the work of some person living in or after the year 1489, for it recites matters which occurred in that year 1. I do not know why Allix should have called this document “Writing of some anonymous Inquisitor concerning the Waldenses.”; for whoever the writer