Philip Schaff · 44 of 85

The Confession of the Waldenses. A.D. 1655.

[This Confession belongs to the Calvinistic family, and is in part an abridgment of the Gallican Confession of 1559. It is still in force, or at least highly prized among the Waldenses in Italy. The occasion which called it forth entitles it to special consideration. It was prepared and issued in 1655, together with an appeal to Protestant nations, in consequence of one of the most cruel persecutions which Romish bigotry could inspire. For no other crime but their simple, time-honored faith, the Waldenses in Piedmont were betrayed, outraged, mutilated, massacred, driven into exile, and utterly impoverished by the confiscation of their property and the burning of their villages. (See the frightful pictures of sufferings in the second vol. of Leger, an eye-witness.) The report of these barbarous atrocities roused the indignation of the Christian world. Oliver Cromwell, then Lord Protector of England, ordered a day of humiliation and fasting, sent Sir Samuel Morland as a special commissioner to the Duke of Savoy (Charles Emanuel II.), opened a subscription with £2000 from his private purse, and brought Protestant governments to a sense of their duty, and Roman sovereigns (even the proud bigot Louis XIV.) to a sense of shame. The dispatches were written by his foreign secretary, the great Puritan poet, in classical Latin and in the lofty spirit of his immortal sonnet, composed at that time,

'Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold.'

Cromwell died too soon to finish this noble work of intervention in behalf of humanity and religious liberty. Of the more than £38,000 then raised by public subscription in England alone for the poor Waldenses, only £22,000 reached them; the remaining £16,333 Charles II. unscrupulously wasted on his private pleasures under the pretext, worthy of a Stuart, that 'he was not bound by any of the engagements of an usurper and tyrant, nor responsible for his debts.' A fit illustration of the spirit of the Restoration.

The Confession was probably composed by Jean Leger, who was at that time the Moderator of the churches in Piedmont, and became afterwards their historian (d. in exile, 'un martyr sans sang,' as pastor at Leyden, about 1684); although he does not say so, and inserts the Confession simply with the remark, 'la derniere confession de leur Foy qu’ils publierent aprés leurs massacres de l’an 1655' (Vol. I. p. 112). It was brought to England by Morland, together with many valuable MSS., which he received from pastors Antoine and Leger, and deposited in the University library at Cambridge, in Aug., 1658.

The French text is found in Leger, Histoire des Églises l’audoises (Leyde, 1669, 2 vols. fol.), Vol. I. pp. 112–116 (where the Athanasian Creed is added in l’audois and French, as a part of their creed taught to the children); in C. U. Haun, Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter, Vol. II. pp. 608–673; Bert (Pastor of La Tour), Livre de Famille (Geneva, 1830). A Latin text, together with an English version, is given in Peyran, An Histor. Defence of the Waldenses or l’audois, with Introd. and Appendixes by Th. Sims (Lond. 1826), pp. 445—456, from the MSS. of Peyran, the Moderator of the Wald. Churches in 1819. The English text alone is printed in Dr. E. Henderson's The l’audois (London, 1845), pp. 251–259, and in William Hazlitt's translation of Dr. Alexis Muston, The Israel of the Alps: a History of the Persecutions of the Waldenses (London, 1852), pp. 300–306. I have taken the French original from Leger, with the old spelling. The English translation of Hazlitt is very imperfect, and has been corrected.

The older Confessions of the Waldenses, published by Perrin, Leger (Vol. I.), and Hahn (Vol. II. p. 647 sqq.), are partly of doubtful origin, and have merely historical interest. See Vol. I. pp. 568 sqq.]