The Waldenses, 1170–1530 : Between a Religious Order and a Church

These articles rely upon a wide range of evidence, trials and treatises relating not just to the Germanophone Waldenses of the 14th century but to the Waldenses throughout Latin Christendom between the 1170 and the 1530s.

The Waldenses, like the Franciscans, emerged from the apostolic movements within the Latin Church of the decades around 1200, but unlike the Franciscans they were driven underground. Not a full counter-Church, like the Cathar heretics, they formed a clandestine religious order, preaching to and hearing the confessions of their secret followers, and surviving until the Reformation. This volume begins by surveying modern historiography. Then, using both inquisition records from the Baltic to the Alps and the Waldenses'' own books, the author deals with the asceticism of the Waldensian order, its practice of poverty and medicine, the culture of the Brothers and the preaching of the Waldensian Sisters, the way both used and mythicised history to support their position, and the composition of their followers. The final chapters examine their origins and authorship of the inquisitors'' texts, and look through them to see how inquisitors viewed the Waldenses.