The Missionary by S. N. Haskell.

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Aug 9, 1883

The Missionary.

By S. N. Haskell.

Persecutions of the Waldenses.

“Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine Mountains cold.

\ \ \ in thy book record their groans

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold, Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven.”—Milton.

IT was the early part of the fourteenth century that marks the earliest dates of the martyr-history of this people. Persecution had already done its work in different parts of Europe. Pope John XXII. was desirous of carrying forward the work of Innocent III., and he ordered inquisitors to repair to the valleys of Lucerna and Perosa, and in this effort persecution reached the Waldensian Church. The Waldensian Church was strong at this time, and a knowledge of their faith was very extensive. They had sown seed before this that was now springing up, and thousands were embracing the truth of the gospel. Many of them hardly knew how they had first become interested. The different popes put forth special efforts to exterminate these religious people.

The closing days of the year 1400 witnessed a terrible tragedy, the memory of which has not been obliterated by the many greater persecutions which have followed it. It was on Christmas, when the Waldenses felt perfectly secure,—thought that they were sufficiently protected by the snows that lay deep upon the mountains; and by their secluded position; but they were destined to experience the bitter fact that the rigors of the season had not quenched the fire of their persecutors' malice. At the head of an armed troop Borelli broke suddenly upon them, designing to destroy them en masse. These poor people fled to the mountains, “carrying on their shoulders their old men, their sick, and their infants, knowing what fate awaited them should they leave them behind. In their flight a great many were overtaken and slain. Night-fall brought them deliverance from the pursuit, but no deliverance from horrors no less dreadful.” They encamped on a summit which has ever since, in memory of the event, borne the name of Alberge, or Refuge.

“Without shelter, without food, the frozen snow around them, the winter's sky overhead; their sufferings were inexpressibly great. When morning broke, what a heart-rending spectacle did day disclose! Some of the miserable group lost their hands and feet from frost-bite; while others were stretched out on the snow, stiffened corpses. Fifty young children, some say eighty, were found dead of cold, some lying on the bare ice, others locked in the frozen arms of their mothers, who had perished on that dreadful night along with their babes.” To-day the descendants of this people will tell the story.

Many were kidnapped by the inquisitors, who were ever on the track for them, or waylaid, whenever they ventured down into the plain of Piedmont, and were carried to Turin and other towns, and burned alive. But notwithstanding this terrible onslaught their numbers were not thinned by apostasy from the faith; their constancy was not shaken; they still refused to enter the Roman Church. They had been prepared by their early education for all kinds of torturings and burnings, and they offered a resistance as unyielding as the rocks of their mountains to the tempests of hail and snow which the whirlwinds of winter hurled against them.

In the fifteenth century another great blow was meditated. Plan after plan was devised to purge the valleys of this heresy. No accusation could ever be brought against them as being lawless, idle, dishonest, or disorderly. Their only fault was that they did not worship as Pope Innocent worshiped. A bull was issued against them in 1487, inviting all Catholics to take up arms against the heretics; and to stimulate them in this pious work, it “absolved from all ecclesiastical pains and penalties, general and particular; it released all who joined the crusade from any oaths they might have taken; it legitimated their title to any property they might have illegally acquired; and promised remission of all their sins to such as should kill any heretic. It annulled all contracts made in favor of Vaudois, ordered their domestics to abandon them, forbade all persons to give them any aid whatever, and empowered all persons to take possession of their property.”

This granted a pardon to all, and an unrestrained license to kill, plunder, or commit any wickedness against the humble worshipers of God in the mountains. This bull was talked of in all countries. It was not only on these mountains that this warfare was to be carried, but it was on the Waldensian race, wherever dispersed, in any part of Europe. All kings were invited to gird on the sword and come to the help of the Church. “Wherever a Vaudois foot trod, the soil was polluted and had to be cleansed; wherever a Vaudois breathed, the air was tainted and must be purified; wherever Vaudois psalm or prayer ascended, there was the infection of heresy, and around the spot a cordon must be drawn to protect the spiritual health of the district.”

A joint army of 18,000 regular soldiers was raised, and this number was greatly enlarged even by thousands of ruffians that flocked together, stimulated by the temporal rewards to be earned in this work of combined piety and pillage. This army was divided, to fall upon the Waldenses from two main avenues to their territory. A terrible slaughter followed this effort. Thousands of these innocent people retreated to the caves and dens of the earth, only to find these caves and dens to be their graves; for their persecutors, having found them in a cave, would build a fire at its mouth, so that a large volume of black smoke would roll into the cave, leaving the unhappy inmates to the miserable alternative of remaining in the interior to be stifled by this smoke, or to pass out through it into the hands of their persecutors. “When one large cavern was afterwards examined,” says Mr. Muston, “there were found in it 400 infants, suffocated in their cradles, or in the arms of their dead mothers. Altogether there perished in this cavern more than 3,000 Vaudois, including the entire population of Val Loyse.”

The property of these unfortunates was distributed to the vagabonds who accompanied the army; and to describe the persecutions that came upon these Christians at this time would only be stating the most terrible suffering that could be brought upon any class of people who fell into the hands of devils clothed with flesh. Another writer says: “Combustible materials were piled up, and fires kindled at the mouth of these hiding-places, and when extinguished all was silent within. Folded together in one motionless heap lay mother and

babe, patriarch and stripling; while the fatal smoke which had cast them into that deep sleep was eddying along the roof and slowly making its exit into the clear sun-lit summer sky.”

But this terrible persecution was brought to a sudden halt, for the inhabitants took heart, and finally turned upon their murderers and drove them from their valley, exacting a heavy penalty for the ravages they had committed in it.

S. N. HASKELL.