HUGUENOTS-WALLOONS-EUROPE-L Archives

From:
Subject: [HWE] Waldensians
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 19:00:39 -0700 (PDT)

Hello Listers,

I seem to remember a post some time ago about this
belief and so I began to do some light reading.

It would appear as though the belief would eventually
be absorbed into the Reformation and / or the Huguenot
- Wallon theology.

Am I correct ?

Now most certainly the Catholic faith did not even
remotely like Peter Waldo and some of his ideas.
However they appear to follow very much the thoughts of
Luther, Zwingli et al who would come later.

This text seems to set the tone of some of Waldo's
thoughts.

"And during the same year, that is the 1173d since
Lord's Incarnation, there was at Lyons in France a
certain citizen, Waldo by name, who had made himself
much money by wicked usury. One Sunday, when he had
joined a crowd which he saw gathered around a
troubadour, he was smitten by his words and, taking him
to his house, he took care hear him at length. The
passage he was reciting was the holy Alexis died a
blessed death in his father's house. When morning had
come the prudent citizen hurried to the schools of
theology to seek counsel for his soul, and when he was
taught many ways of going to God, he asked master what
way was more certain and more perfect than all others.
The master answered him with this text: thou wilt be
perfect, go and sell all that thou hast,"

SOURCE:- Anonymous Chroncicle written about 1218 and
translated in J. H. Robinson, Readings in European
History, (Boston: Ginn, 1905), pp. 381-383

It is this text that must have really annoyed the
powerful over in Rome. There is much more but I have
only included the first section for brevity. I am sure
you see how Waldo differed from the thinking of the
time ?

"First They say that the Romish Church, is not the
Church of Jesus Christ, but a church of malignants and
that it apostatized under Sylvester, when the poison of
temporalities was infused into the h. And they say,
that they are the church of Christ, because they
observe both in word, and deed, the doctrine of Christ,
of the Gospel, and of the Apostles"

SOURCE:- Reinerius Saccho, "Of the Sects of Modern
Heretics" (1254), in S. R. Maitland,trans.,History of
the Albigenses and Waldenses (London: C. J. G. and F.
Rivington, 1832), pp. 407-413.

So! Can Waldo be included as one of the initiators of
the Reformation which go to Lutheran to Huguenot /
Walloon ?

Kind Regards,
Peter Leroy

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