History of the Waldenses

Peter Waldo was a wealthy merchant of Lyon, France, who, around 1173, renounced his possessions and devoted himself to preaching the Gospel. He arranged for portions of Scripture to be translated into the vernacular and encouraged the laity to study and proclaim God’s Word. His followers were known as the Waldenses or Poor Men of Lyon. Although the name Waldenses has often been attributed to Peter Waldo, there is evidence the name points to a movement much older.   

Bernard of Fontcaud, a medieval Catholic writer who opposed the Waldenses, offered an alternative explanation for their name. He wrote that the Waldenses were called so “from a dense valley” (a valle densa), suggesting that the name referred to their dwelling place rather than to Peter Waldo. This testimony is significant because it comes from a writer close to the movement’s beginnings and provides an early example of a valley-based explanation of the name.

Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay was a Cistercian monk and chronicler who wrote his Historia Albigensis in the early thirteenth century. His work is an important contemporary source for the religious conflicts of southern France, including the Waldenses.  Here he comments on the Synod of La Vaux which remarked on their ancient origins.   

Reinerius Saccho was a thirteenth-century Dominican inquisitor who wrote against the Waldenses and was therefore one of their determined opponents. Yet his testimony is striking: he called the Leonists (Waldenses) the most dangerous of the heretical sects, in part because they were believed by some to be extremely ancient—some tracing them to the time of Pope Sylvester and others even to the apostles.

The Council of Friuli, held in northern Italy in the late eighth century, provides important evidence that seventh-day Sabbath observance had not disappeared from Western Christianity. Canon 13 acknowledged that local peasants still observed the last day of the week—the Sabbath—and sought to direct Christians instead toward observance of Sunday. The canon is therefore significant because, even while attempting to suppress the practice, it inadvertently records the continued presence of Sabbath-keeping Christians in northern Italy.

Here we see evidence from the primary manuscripts at the Vatican of Reinerius testimony that these Waldenses recognized that the Roman church is the church of the beast and harlot of the Apocalypse.

The Waldenses placed the authority of Scripture at the center of their faith, treating the Bible as the supreme rule by which doctrine and Christian practice were to be tested. Their emphasis on making Scripture available to ordinary believers and their willingness to challenge ecclesiastical traditions that conflicted with the Word brought them into direct conflict with Rome. Historical accounts describe them as adhering closely to the literal teachings of Scripture and emphasizing its use among the laity in the vernacular.

The Waldenses practiced a disciplined and often simple way of life, emphasizing temperance, self-denial, and freedom from excess. Medieval sources also record Waldensian practices of fasting and their distinctive approach to food and bodily discipline.  Their emphasis on temperance and simple living provides an interesting historical parallel to later Christian health reform.

Some Waldensian communities rejected the necessity and efficacy of infant baptism, emphasizing instead the biblical connection between faith and baptism.  Their own preserved prose teaches that infant baptism was a work of antichrist.  This has led Baptist historians to regard the Waldenses as an important pre-Reformation witness to believers’ baptism, although the evidence indicates that views differed among Waldensian communities and periods.

The Waldenses were known by many different names, reflecting their geographical locations, practices, and the descriptions given to them by both friends and opponents. They were called Waldenses, Vaudois, Valdesi, Leonists, Poor Men of Lyon, Poor of Christ, Insabbatati, and Sabbatati, among other names. Medieval sources sometimes used these names interchangeably, making the historical record more complicated.

Moneta of Cremona, a Dominican inquisitor writing around 1241–1244, provides one of the important medieval testimonies concerning Waldensian Sabbath observance. In Adversus Catharos et Valdenses, Book V, chapter 10, De Sabbato et de die Dominico, Moneta responds to objections from Waldenses and Cathars concerning the Catholic observance of Sunday rather than the seventh-day Sabbath. His arguments show that at least some medieval Waldenses were appealing to the Fourth Commandment and challenging the authority of the Church to substitute Sunday for the biblical Sabbath.

Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange (1610–1688), the renowned Catholic medievalist and compiler of the Glossarium, identified the Passagini as a branch or sect associated with the Waldenses. Under Passagini, he described them as “Haeretici Valdensium Sectarii”—heretics who were sectarians of the Waldenses. This is significant because Du Cange was working from medieval ecclesiastical sources and recognized a connection between the Passagini and the broader Waldensian movement.

Melchior Goldast (1576–1635), a Swiss Calvinist historian and jurist, rejected the charge that the people called Insabbatati were named because they practiced circumcision. Instead, he explained that they were called Insabbatati because they “kept the Jewish Sabbath” (in Sabbato judaizarent). He therefore understood the name as referring to their Sabbath observance rather than to circumcision. Significantly, Goldast associated these people with the Waldensian tradition, providing an early-modern testimony connecting the Waldenses with seventh-day Sabbath keeping. 

The Tourlupins, a fifteenth-century Waldensian-associated group in Picardy, northern France, provide another striking testimony to medieval Sabbath observance. A company of Tourlupins was arrested in 1420, and surviving inquisitorial manuscripts report that they “upheld that the Saturday must be celebrated instead of Sunday.” Most historians identify the Tourlupins with the Picardian branch of the Waldenses. 

Even Ignaz von Döllinger (1799–1890), a prominent Catholic theologian and church historian, acknowledged historical evidence that some Waldenses observed the seventh-day Sabbath. In his Beiträge zur Sektengeschichte des Mittelalters (1890), Döllinger reproduced a fifteenth-century inquisitorial report concerning Waldenses in Moravia, stating that “not a few indeed celebrate the Sabbath with the Jews.”

The Corpus Documentorum Inquisitionis Haereticae Pravitatis Neerlandicae, edited by Paul Frédéricq from medieval inquisitorial records, preserves documentary evidence of religious dissent in the medieval Netherlands. Among these records are cases in which individuals were arrested and accused in connection with Sabbath observance, providing another indication that seventh-day Sabbath keeping persisted among medieval dissenters. The significance of the testimony lies in its inquisitorial character: these were records of people investigated or prosecuted by ecclesiastical authorities, rather than later Protestant claims about medieval Sabbath keepers.

The inquisitorial manuals of the Middle Ages preserve important testimony about the beliefs attributed to Waldensian and related dissenting communities.  Such evidence is significant because these records were produced by their opponents, who were documenting beliefs they regarded as heretical.

The Waldenses were also subjected to economic restrictions designed to isolate them from wider society. In areas where anti-Waldensian measures were enforced, they could be prohibited from engaging in commerce and from conducting ordinary business with Catholics. Such restrictions deprived them of lawful means of livelihood and reinforced the broader policy of excluding them from civil and religious life.

The restrictions imposed upon the Waldenses have a striking medieval precedent in the policies associated with William the Conqueror. In both cases, prohibiting heretics from engaging in commerce functioned as a means of civil and economic exclusion: religious dissent was not merely condemned as a theological error but was treated as grounds for restricting a person’s ability to participate in ordinary economic life. This illustrates how medieval authorities could use commercial disabilities alongside ecclesiastical penalties to pressure religious dissenters into conformity.