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

...began with his accomplices to lead an Apostolick life, with the cross, and poverty, and despising ecclesiastical men, associated many disciples to himself, who thereupon were called Poor Men of Lyons, and pretending to live under apostolical obedience, (yet separating themselves from it,) did stubbornly answer, when reproved, that they ought rather to obey God than man; for which they were at last, (and deservedly) condemned by the church militant. But not being fully extirpated, flying from Lyons, they betook themselves to the utmost parts of Dauphiné, in the Dioceses of Embrun and Turin, among the Alps, and in the caves of the mountains, (places exceeding difficult to approach) where more than It is, I presume, on this passage that Mr. Faber grounds his notion, that the fugitive Lyonese found persons like themselves in the caverns and wild places, where they went to hide themselves, by whom they “were cordially received as brethren.” I suppose Morland took it in the same way; for he could hardly be so absurd as to imagine that his readers would believe a story of 50,000 persons being expelled from Lyons, and footing it over France to Piedmont—almost equalling the ten thousand in their retreat, though less happy in an historian. This were rather too romantic; but the reader will observe that the Latin says nothing of the “fifty thousand.” Whether Morland put it in, or Allix left it out, I do not know; but the Latin merely says, that “plures ex ipsis” [many of them]—of these persons of whom he was speaking—dwelt there; and “by degrees” (not as Morland says, “in a short space of time”) increased to a copious number. But, in fact, the obvious purpose of the