BY THE SAME AUTHOR,

In Two large Volumes Octavo, elegantly printed by Whittingham, with a beautiful Burgeois Type, and embellished with Maps and Plates,

THE

BIBLICAL CYCLOPÆDIA,

OR,

DICTIONARY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES:

INTENDED TO FACILITATE AN ACQUAINTANCE WITH

THE INSPIRED WRITINGS.

IT has been the particular aim of the author in this publication, to collect, as it were into one body, the scattered rays of light which have been cast upon the Sacred Scriptures by the distinct labours of a host of learned men during the last century, particularly by travellers into the Eastern countries, by biblical critics, and by theological professors; and he flatters himself that, when compleated, it will be found to be no inconsiderable improvement upon every work of this kind that has hitherto appeared among us. In furnishing the Biography of the Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles, he has studied to unite conciseness with perspicuity; to seize the golden medium between the dry chronological details of Calmet and Brown, and the tedious declamation of Hunter and Robinson, The illustration of the various doctrines of divine revelation will, it is hoped, be found free from the leaven of either Arminianism or Socinianism, and to correspond with the sentiments of the most enlightened Evangelical writers that have appeared since the Reformation-with those of Calvin, Witsius, Owen, Booth, &c. &c. and as the work comprehends every article of the faith and practice of a Christian, it will comprise an entire BODY OF DIVINITY,

N. B. The work is publishing in Parts, or Half Volumes, price 7s. 6d. each, of which three are now before the public, and will be compleated in one more, which is in a forward state. When finished, the price of the work will be considerably advanced, as but few perfect sets remain on hand.

HISTORY

OF THE

CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

CHAPTER V.

THE HISTORY OF THE WALDENSES AND ALBI

GENSES, FROM THE TIME OF PETER WALDO, A. D. 1160, TO THE DAYS OF Wickliff, 1360.

SECTION I.

Etymology of the names WALDENSES and ALBIGENSES, with some account of Peter Waldo of Lyons, and the sanguinary edict of Pope Lucius III. against the disciples of Waldo.

HAVING sketched the more prominent features of the Christian Church, for the first ten centuries, and arriving at that period in which we are to give the reader some account of the Waldenses, it will be proper to introduce the subject by an attempt to ascertain the origin of their distinguishing appellation. The learned Mosheim contends with considerable pertinacity that they derive their name from Peter Waldo, an opulent merchant of Lyons, whose history will presently come under our notice; but in this he is contradicted by his learned translator, and, I believe, I may truly add, by most writers of authority

since his time.

The most satisfactory definition that I have met with of the term Waldenses, is that given by Mr. Robinson, in his Ecclesiastical Researches; and, in the confidence that it is VOL. II. B

the true one, and that I may not unnecessarily trespass on the reader's time and patience, I submit it to his consideration.

From the Latin word VALLIS, came the English word valley, the French and Spanish valle, the Italian valdesi, the low Dutch valleye, the Provençal vaux, vaudois, the ecclesiastical Valdenses, Ualdenses, and Waldenses. The words simply signify vallies, inhabitants of vallies, and no more. It happened that the inhabitants of the vallies of the Pyrenees did not profess the catholic faith; it fell out also that the inhabitants of the vallies about the Alps did not embrace it; it happened, moreover, in the ninth century, that one Valdo, a friend and counsellor of Berengarius, and a man of eminence who had many followers, did not approve of the papal discipline and doctrine; and it came to pass about an hundred and thirty years after, that a rich merchant of Lyons, who was called Valdus, or Waldo, because he received his religious notions from the inhabitants of the vallies, openly disavowed the Roman Catholic • religion, supported many to teach the doctrines believed in the vallies, and became the instrument of the conversion of great numbers; ALL THESE PEOPLE WERE CALLED WALDENSES.* This view of the matter, which to myself appears indisputably the true one, is also supported by the authority of their own historians, Perrin, Leger, Sir S. Morland, and Dr. Allix.

To the preceding account of the derivation of the term Waldenses, I shall now add the explanation given by these writers, of various other appellations that were bestowed on this class of Christians, and particularly that of Albigenses.

The names imposed on them in France by their adversaries, they say, have been intended to vilify and ridicule

Eccles. Researches, page 302, 303.

them, or to represent them as new and different sects. Being stripped of all their property, and reduced by persecution to extreme poverty, they have been called "the poor of Lyons." From their mean and famished appearance in their exiled and destitute state, they have been called in provincial jargon " Siccan," or pickpockets. Because they would not observe saints' days, they were falsely supposed to neglect the Sabbath also, and called "Inzabbatati or Insabbathists."* As they denied transubstantiation, or the personal and divine presence of Jesus Christ in the host, or wafer exhibited in the mass, they were called "Arians." Their adversaries, premising that all power must be derived from God through his vicegerent the Pope, or from an opposite and evil principle, inferred that the Waldenses were "Manichæans," because they denied the pope's supremacy over the emperors and kings

of the earth.

In Languedoc, the catholics pretended that the origin of these heretics was recent, and that they derived their name of Vaudois, or Waldenses, from Peter Waldo, one of their barbes or preachers, whose immediate followers were called Waldenses; but this was rather the renovation of the name from a particular cause, than its original: accordingly it extended over that district only, in France, where Peter Waldo preached; for in other districts the people who were branches of the same original sect, as in Dauphiné, were, from a noted preacher, called Josephists in Languedoc, they were called Henricians-and in other

* Dr. Mosheim traces the derivation of this word to a kind of slipper which they wore, as a distinguishing badge of the sect, and Gibbon has adopted his opinion. But I agree with Mr. Robinson in thinking it very unlikely that people who could not descend from their mountains into neighbouring states, without hazarding their lives, through the furious zeal of inquisitors, should tempt danger by affixing a visible mark on their shoes. The above opinion, therefore, appears much more probable.