They furnish means for publishing the Scriptures

A few years later (1535) the Waldenses by their liberal contributions

furnished the means necessary for publishing the translation of the Holy

Scriptures made by Pierre Robert Olivetanus, and corrected by Calvin,

which, unless exception be made in favor of the translation by Lefèvre

d'Étaples, is entitled to rank as the earliest French Protestant

Bible.² It was a noble undertaking, by which the poor and humble

inhabitants of Provence, Piedmont, and Calabria conferred on France a

signal benefit, scarcely appreciated in its full extent even by those

who pride themselves upon their acquaintance with the rich literature of

that country. For, while Olivetanus in his admirable version laid the foundation

¹ Crespin, fol. 89; Hist. ecclés., i. 22; Herminjard, iii. 66.

² Printed at Neufchâtel, by the famous Pierre de Wringle,

dit Pirot Picard; completed, according to the colophon, June 4, 1535.

The Waldenses having determined upon its publication at the Synod of

Angrogna, in 1532, collected the sum, enormous for them, of 500 (others

say 1,500) gold crowns. Adam (Antoine Saunier) to Farel, Nov. 5, 1532,

Herminjard, ii. 452. Monastier, Hist. de l'église vaudoise, i. 212. The

part taken by the Waldenses in this publication is attested beyond

dispute by ten lines of rather indifferent poetry, in the form of an

address to the reader, at the close of the volume:

"Lecteur entendz, si Vérité addresse,

Viens done ouyr instamment sa promesse

Et vif parler: lequel en excellence

Veult asseurer nostre grelle espérance.

L'esprit Jésus qui visite et ordonne.

Noz tendres meurs, icy sans cry estonne

Tout hault raillart escumant son ordure.

Remercions eternelle nature,

Prenons vouloir bienfaire librement,

Jésus querons veoir eternellement."

Taking the first letter of each successive word, we obtain the lines:

"Les Vaudois, peuple évangélique

Ont mis ce thrésor en publique."

See L. Vulliemin, Le Chroniqueur, Recueil historique (Lausanne, 1836),

103, etc. Bulletin de l'hist. du prot. français, i. 82.

Intelligence of the new activity manifested by the Waldenses reaching

the ears of their enemies, among whom the Archbishop of Aix was

prominent, stirred them up to more virulent hostility. The accusation

was subsequently made by unfriendly writers, in order to furnish some

slight justification for the atrocities of the massacre, that the

Waldenses, emboldened by the encouragement of the reformers, began to

show a disposition to offer forcible resistance to the arbitrary arrests

ordered by the civil and religious authorities of Aix. But the

assertion, which is unsupported by evidence, contradicts the well-known

disposition and practice of a patient people, more prone to submit to

oppression than to take up arms even in defence of a righteous cause.²

For a time the persecution was individual, and therefore limited. But in

the aggregate the number of victims was by no means inconsiderable, and

the flames burned many a steadfast Waldensee.³ The Dominican De Roma

enjoyed an unenviable notoriety for his ferocity in dealing


¹ "D'un commun accord," says an able critic, "on a mis Calvin à la tête de tous nos écrivains
en prose; personne n'a songé à méconnaître les obligations que lui a notre langue. D'où
vient qu'on a été moins juste envers Robert Olivetan, tandis qu'à y regarder de près,

il y a tout lieu de croire que sa part a été au moins égale à celle de Calvin dans la réformation

167. By successive revisions this Bible became that of Martin, of Osterwald, etc.

of this charge of rebellion, "C'est l'accusation qu'on intente

maintenant le plus communément, et qui a quelque chose de plus odieux que véritable."

³ Professor Jean Montaigne, writing from Avignon, as early

as May 6, 1533, said: "Valdenses, qui Lutheri sectam jamdiu sequuntur

istic male tractantur. Plures jam vivi combusti fuerunt, et quotidie

capiuntur aliqui; sunt enim, ut fertur, illius sectæ plus quam sex

millia hominum. Impingitur eis quod non credant purgatorium esse,

quod non orent Sanctos, imo dicant non esse orandos, teneant decimas

non esse solvendas presbyteris, et alia quædam id genus. Propter quæ

sola vivos comburunt, bona publicant." Basle MS., Herminjard, iii. 45.

with the "heretics," whose feet he was in the habit of plunging in boots full
of melted fat and boiling over a slow fire. The device did, indeed, seem to

the king, when he heard of it, less ingenious than cruel, and De Roma

found it necessary to avoid arrest by a hasty flight to Avignon, where,

upon papal soil, as foul a sink of iniquity existed as anywhere within

the bounds of Christendom.¹ But other agents, scarcely more merciful

than De Roma, prosecuted the work. Some of the Waldenses were put to

death, others were branded upon the forehead. Even the ordinary rights

of the accused were denied them; for, in order to leave no room for

justice, the Parliament of Aix had framed an iniquitous order,

prohibiting all clerks and notaries from either furnishing the accused

copies of legal instruments, or receiving at their hands any petition or

paper whatsoever.² Such were the measures by which the newly-created

Parliament of Provence signalized its zeal for the faith, and attested

its worthiness to be a sovereign court of the kingdom.³ From its

severe sentences, however, appeals had once and again been taken by the

Waldenses to Francis, who had granted them his royal pardon on condition

of their abjuration of their errors within six months.⁴
Inhabitants of Mérindol cited.

The slow methods heretofore pursued having proved abortive, in 1540 the

parliament summoned to its bar, as suspected of heresy, fifteen or

twenty⁵ of the inhabitants of the village of Mérindol. On the

appointed day the accused made their way to Aix, but, on stopping to


¹ Crespin and the Hist. ecclés. place De Roma's exploits before, De Thou relates them
after the massacre. As to the surpassing and shameless immorality of the ecclesiastics
of Avignon, it is quite sufficient to refer to Crespin, ubi supra, fol. 97, etc., and

to the autobiography of François Lambert, who is a good witness, as he

had himself been an inmate of a monastery in that city.

² Crespin, fol. 103, b.

³ The Parliament of Provence, with its seat at Aix, was

instituted in 1501, and was consequently posterior in date and inferior

in dignity to the parliaments of Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, and Rouen.

⁴ By royal letters of July 16, 1535, and May 31, 1536. Histoire ecclés., i. 23.

⁵ There is even greater discrepancy than usual between the

different authorities respecting the number of Waldenses cited and

subsequently condemned to the stake. Crespin, fol. 90, gives the names

of ten, the royal letters of 1549 state the number as fourteen or

fifteen, the Histoire ecclésiastique as fifteen or sixteen. M.

Nicolaï (Leber, Coll. de pièces rel. à l'hist. de France, viii. 552)

raises it to nineteen, which seems to be correct.

obtain legal advice of a lawyer more candid than others to whom they had

first applied, and who had declined to give counsel to reputed

Lutherans, they were warned by no means to appear, as their death was

already resolved upon. They acted on the friendly injunction, and fled

while it was still time.

Finding itself balked for the time of its expected prey, the parliament

resolved to avenge the slight put upon its authority, by compassing the

ruin of a larger number of victims. On the eighteenth of November, 1540,

the order was given which has since become infamous under the

designation of the "Arrêt de Mérindol." The persons who had failed to

obey the summons were sentenced to be burned alive, as heretics and

guilty of treason against God and the King. If not apprehended in

person, they were to be burned in effigy, their wives and children

proscribed, and their possessions confiscated. As if this were not

enough to satisfy the most inordinate greed of vengeance, parliament

ordered that all the houses of Mérindol be burned and razed to the

ground, and the trees cut down for a distance of two hundred paces on

every side, in order that the spot which had been the receptacle of

heresy might be forever uninhabited! Finally, with an affectation which

would seem puerile were it not the conclusion of so sanguinary a

document, the owners of lands were forbidden to lease any part of

Mérindol to a tenant bearing the same name, or belonging to the same

family, as the miscreants against whom the decree was fulminated.<sup>1


1</sup> Histoire ecclés., i. 23; Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta,

fol. 90; De Thou, i. 536; Nicolaï, ubi supra; Recueil des anc. lois

françaises, xii. 698. See the arrêt in Bouche, Hist. de Provence, ubi

supra. The last-mentioned author, while admitting the proceedings of

the Parliament of Aix to be apparently "somewhat too violent," excuses

them on the ground that the Waldenses deserved this punishment, "non

tant par leurs insolences et impiétez cy-devant commises, mais pour

leur obstination à ne vouloir changer de religion;" and cites, in

exculpation of the parliament, the "bloody order of Gastaldo," in

consequence of which, in 1655, fire, sword, and rapine were carried into

the peaceful valley of Luserna (ibid., 615, 623)! The massacre of the

unhappy Italian Waldenses thus becomes a capital vindication of the

barbarities inflicted a century before upon their French brethren.
It is condemned by public opinion.

A more atrocious sentence was, perhaps, never rendered by a court of

justice than the Arrêt de Mérindol, which condemned the accused

without a hearing, confounded the innocent with the guilty, and

consigned the entire population of a peaceful village, by a single

stroke of the pen, to a cruel death, or a scarcely less terrible exile.

For ten righteous persons God would have spared guilty Sodom; but

neither the virtues of the inoffensive inhabitants, nor the presence of

many Roman Catholics among them, could insure the safety of the

ill-fated Mérindol at the hands of merciless judges.¹ The

publication of the Arrêt occasioned, even within the bounds of the

province, the most severe animadversion; nor were there wanting men of

learning and high social position, who, while commenting freely upon the

scandalous morals of the clergy, expressed their conviction that the

public welfare would be promoted rather by restraining and reforming the

profligacy of the ecclesiastics, than by issuing bloody edicts against

the most exemplary part of the community.²
Preparations to carry it into effect.

Meantime, however, the archbishops of Arles and of Aix urged the prompt

execution of the sentence, and the convocations of clergy offered to

defray the expense of the levy of troops needed to carry it into effect.

The Archbishop of Aix used his personal influence with Chassanée, the

First President of the Parliament, who, with the more moderate judges,

had only consented to the enactment as a threat which he never intended

to execute.³ And the wily

discussions of the kind. It may be remarked that the Archbishop of Aix,

who was the prime mover in the persecution, had exposed himself to

unusual censure on the score of irregularity of life.

ipsi tale fecissent, eo consilio factum potius, ut Lutheranis, quorum

multitudinem augeri quotidie intelligebant, metus incuteretur, quam ut

revera id efficeretur quod ipsius decreti capitibus continebatur."

Crespin, ubi supra, fol. 98.

prelate so far succeeded by his arguments, and by the assurance

The unexpected deliverance is said to have been due to the remonstrance

of a friend, M. d'Allens. D'Allens had adroitly reminded the president

of an amusing incident by means of which Chassanée had himself illustrated the

The delay thus gained permitted a reference of the affair to

obtains a historic importance, had been told by Chassanée himself. It

appears that on a certain occasion the diocese of Autun was visited with

the plague of an excessive multiplication of mice. Ordinary means of

stopping their ravages having failed, the vicar of the bishop was

requested to excommunicate them. But the ecclesiastical decree was

supposed to be most effective when the regular forms of a judicial trial

were duly observed. An advocate for the marauders was therefore

appointed--no other than Chassanée himself; who, espousing with

professional ardor the interests of his quadrupedal clients, began by

insisting that a summons should be served in each parish; next, excused

the non-appearance of the defendants by alleging the dangers of the

journey by reason of the lying-in-wait of their enemies, the cats; and

finally, appealing to the compassion of the court in behalf of a race

doomed to wholesale destruction, acquitted himself so successfully of

his fantastic commission, that the mice escaped the censures of the

church, and their advocate gained universal applause! See Crespin, fol.

99; De Thou, i. 536, Gamier, xxvi. 29, etc. Crespin, writing at least as

early as 1560, speaks of the incident as being related in Chassanée's

Catalogus Gloriæ Mundi; but I have been unable to find any reference

to it in that singular medley.

the king. It is said that Guillaume du Bellay is entitled to the honor of having

informed Francis of the oppression of his poor subjects of Provence, and

invoked the royal interposition.¹ However this may be, it is certain

that Francis instructed Du Bellay to set on foot a thorough

investigation into the history and character of the inhabitants of

Mérindol, and report the results to himself. The selection could not

have been more felicitous. Du Bellay was Viceroy of Piedmont, a province

thrown into the hands of Francis by the fortunes of war. A man of calm

and impartial spirit, his liberal principles had been fostered by

intimate association with the Protestants of Germany. Only a few months

earlier, in 1539, he had, in his capacity of governor, made energetic

remonstrances to the Constable de Montmorency touching the wrongs

sustained by the Waldenses of the valleys of Piedmont at the hands of a

Count de Montmian, the constable's kinsman. He had even resorted to

threats, and declared "that it appeared to him wicked and villanous, if,

as was reported, the count had invaded these valleys and plundered a

peaceful and unoffending race of men." Montmian had retorted by accusing

Du Bellay of falsehood, and maintaining that the Waldenses had suffered

no more than they deserved, on account of their rebellion against God

and the king. The unexpected death of Montmian prevented the two

noblemen from meeting in single combat, but a bitter enmity between the

constable and Du Bellay had been the result.²
Du Bellay's favorable report.

The viceroy, in obedience to his instructions, despatched two agents

from Turin to inquire upon the ground into the character and antecedents

of the people of Mérindol. Their report, which has fortunately come down

to us, constitutes a brilliant testimonial from unbiassed witnesses to


¹ De Thou, i. 539.

2 This striking incident is not noticed in the well-known

Memoirs of Du Bellay, written by his brother. The reader will agree with

me in considering it one of the most creditable in Du Bellay's eventful

life. Calvin relates it in two letters to Farel, published by Bonnet

(Calvin's Letters, i. 162, 163-165). The reformer had had it from Du

Bellay's own lips at Strasbourg, and had perused the letter in which the

latter threw up his alliance with Montmian, and stigmatized the baseness

of his conduct.

the virtues of this simple peasantry. They set forth in simple terms the

affecting story of the cruelty and merciless exactions to which the

villagers had for long years been subjected. They collected the

concurrent opinions of all the Roman Catholics of the vicinity

respecting their industry. In two hundred years they had transformed an

uncultivated and barren waste into a fertile and productive tract, to

the no small profit of the noblemen whose tenants they were. They were a

people distinguished for their love of peace and quiet, with firmly

established customs and principles, and warmly commended for their

strict adherence to truth in their words and engagements. Averse alike

to debt and to litigation, they were bound to their neighbors by a tie

of singular good-will and respect. Their kindness to the unfortunate and

their humanity to travellers knew no bounds. One could readily

distinguish them from others by their abstinence from unnecessary oaths,

and their avoidance even of the very name of the devil. They never

indulged in lascivious discourse themselves, and if others introduced it

in their presence, they instantly withdrew from the company. It was true

that they rarely entered the churches, when pleasure or business took

them to the city or the fair; and, if found within the sacred enclosure,

they were seen praying with faces averted from the paintings of the

saints. They offered no candles, avoided the sacred relics, and paid no

reverence to the crosses on the roadside. The priests testified that

they were never known to purchase masses either for the living or for

the dead, nor to sprinkle themselves with holy water. They neither went

on pilgrimages, nor invoked the intercession of the host of heaven, nor

expended the smallest sum in securing indulgences. In a thunderstorm

they knelt down and prayed, instead of crossing themselves. Finally,

they contributed nothing to the support of religious fraternities or to

the rebuilding of churches, reserving their means for the relief of tho

poor and afflicted.<sup>1


1</sup> De Thou, i. 539; Crespin, ubi supra, fols. 100,

101.--Historians have noticed the remarkable points of similarity this

report presents to that made by the younger Pliny to the Emperor Trajan

regarding the primitive Christians. Plinii Epistolæ, x. 96, etc.

Francis signs a letter of pardon.

Although the enemies of the Waldenses were not silenced, and wild

stories of their rebellious acts still found willing listeners at

court,¹ it was impossible to resist the favorable impression made by

the viceroy's letter. Consequently, on the eighth of February, 1541,

Francis signed a letter granting pardon not only to the persons who by

their failure to appear before the Parliament of Aix had furnished the

pretext for the proscriptive decree, but to all others, meantime

commanding them to abjure their errors within the space of three months.

At the same time the over-zealous judges were directed henceforth to use

less severity against these subjects of his Majesty.²
Parliament issues a new summons. The Vaudois publish a confession.

Bishop Sadolet's kindness.

Little inclined to relinquish the pursuit, however, parliament seized

upon the king's command to abjure within three months, as an excuse for

issuing a new summons to the Waldenses. Two deputies from Mérindol

accordingly presented themselves, and offered, on the part of the inhabitants, to
abandon their peculiar tenets, so soon as these should be refuted from the Holy
Scriptures--the course which, as they believed, the king himself had intended
that they should take. As it was no part of the plan to grant so reasonable a
request, the sole reply vouchsafed was a declaration that all who


¹ Calvin's Letters (Bonnet), i. 228, 229. Strange to say, even M. Nicolaï, otherwise very fair,
credits one of these absurd rumors (Leber, ubi supra, xvii. 557). While the inhabitants of Mérindol entered into negotiations, it is stated that those of Cabrières,

subjects of the Pope, took up arms. Twice they repulsed the

vice-legate's forces, driving them back to the walls of Avignon and

Cavaillon. Flushed with success, they began to preach openly, to

overturn altars, and to plunder churches. The Pope, therefore, Dec.,

1543, called on Count De Grignan for assistance in exterminating the

rebels. But the incidents here told conflict with the undeniable facts

of Cardinal Sadolet's intercession for, and peaceable relations with the

inhabitants of Cabrières in 1541 and 1542; as well as with the royal

letters of March 17, 1549 (1550 New Style), and the report of Du Bellay.

Bouche, on the weak authority of Meynier, De la guerre civile, gives

similar statements of excesses, ii. 611, 612.

² Hist. ecclés., i. 24; Crespin, fol. 101; De Thou, i. 539;

Bouche, ii. 612. The last asserts that this unconditional pardon was

renewed by successive royal letters, dated March 17, 1543, and June 14,

1544; but that in those of Lyons, 1542, the king had meanwhile, at

Cardinal Tournon's instigation, exhorted the Archbishop and Parliament

of Aix to renewed activity in proceeding against the heretics. Ibid, ii. 612-614.

recanted would receive the benefit of the king's pardon, but all others would
be reputed guilty of heresy without further inquiry. Whereupon the Waldenses
of Mérindol, in 1542, drew up a full confession of their faith, in order that the
excellence of the doctrines they held might be known to all men.¹ The
important document was submitted not merely to parliament, but to Cardinal

Sadolet, Bishop of Carpentras. The prelate was a man of a kindly

disposition, and did not hesitate, in reply to a petition of the

Waldenses of Cabrières, to acknowledge the falsity of the accusations

laid to their charge.² Not long after, he successfully exerted his

influence with the vice-legate to induce him to abandon an expedition he

had organized against the last-mentioned village; while, in an interview

which he purposely sought with the inhabitants, he assured them that he

firmly intended, in a coming visit to Rome, to secure the reformation of

some incontestable abuses.³

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