Tag: Waldensians

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The Year 1209 and the Repetition of Violent Intolerance

An evil, power-hungry authoritarian garners support for a full-scale invasion. He appeals to a powerful religious figure for justification for his actions. His imminent invasion targets a group that speaks a similar but distinct language and nurtures their own culture. The result is several years of protracted, unbridled warfare that eliminates hundreds of thousands of the authoritarian’s neighboring ethnic group and permanently squelches that culture.

Surely, you say, my description refers to Vladimir Putin and his right-hand religious leader, Patriarch Kirill. The two have recently expressed their desire to force Ukraine into the Russian orbit of political and religious control at the cost of Ukrainian culture and identity. We read daily accounts of the slaughter of innocents as they wait at train stations, ride their bikes, or sleep in their apartments. Ghastly news continues unabated and the world wonders at the horror. How could this happen? How can a modern society sit back and allow such atrocities? The crisis in Ukraine is just one more example of how mankind refuses to learn from history.

The first paragraph of this article refers to the Albigensian Crusade, a major political and religious pacification that took place in what is now southern France over 800 years ago. The book Hills of Zion covers the first intensely violent month of this period that lasted from 1209 to 1223 and resulted in the annihilation of nearly a million civilians.

At the dawn of 1209, a flourishing culture existed along France’s Mediterranean coast. The regions of Languedoc and Provence possessed their own culture, territory, and language (related to Parisienne French),. Their political allegiance loosely answered to the King of Aragon, but they were left to manage affairs almost autonomously. Although they did not subscribe to a particular religious affiliation, this southern district of Francophones countenanced all Christian denominations and even Jews. The cosmopolitan rulers openly allowed Cathars, Gnostics, Waldensians, Albigensians, and other sects to teach in public spaces and among the nobility.

This openness and desire for freedom of expression eventually caught the unwanted attention of Catholic authorities. For years, the Pope sent delegations to the region to preach against these “heresies”, but to no avail. Local barons continued to support religious rights. Then, a powerful noble from France by the name of Simon de Montfort, who already controlled lands on both sides of the English Channel, decided the situation was ripe for a power grab.

Montfort enlisted the support of the King of France, but more importantly, from the Pope in Rome. With the most powerful monarch in western Europe and the most powerful religious leader sanctioning his moves, Montfort declared war on the freedom-loving Occitans, the name given to the inhabitants of Languedoc and Provence. The result was utter carnage, as French mercenaries by the tens of thousands descended upon the peace-loving and liberal-thinking Occitans.

Farms and vineyards were laid waste, towns sacked and destroyed, leaders killed in battle or arrested and murdered on false charges, women raped, and children slaughtered, simply because of their professed nationality and culture. The destruction was complete, and no neighboring nation dared interfere because Montfort had played the “nuclear” card- support from Pope Innocent III, a man who had the supposed power to send people to hell for their intransigence or beliefs.

Fast forward to today’s crisis in Europe. Have we learned anything at all in 800 years? The civilized world watches in disbelief as Ukrainians experience the terror of having their beloved culture, and life itself ripped from their grasp. If the Occitans had made a treaty with a stronger overlord, their culture would not have been so utterly decimated. If Ukraine could only have joined NATO before Putin enacted his evil plans, a people and culture could have been preserved for posterity.

No, we have not learned from history. And apparently, we never will.

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Are Christians Dedicated to Truth or Integrated with Society?

Perhaps the fiercest religious debate of the Middle Ages was whether Christianity should be nurtured by the populace or controlled by the governing powers. In ancient Rome, the government had a monopoly on religious practices. They sifted out those religions deemed too dangerous or divisive for societal cohesion and embraced those which enhanced the senate’s, and later, the emperor’s power. When Christian thought collided with the empire, these considerations were taken into account.

Christianity thrived in the first centuries after Christ’s ministry because Christians adamantly opposed being absorbed by the worldly system. Their kingdom was not of this world. The Church maintained her peculiarity at a time when other religions melted into a hodgepodge of confusion. During plagues, wars, and earthquakes, Christians reached out to their fellow men and showed them God’s love in a very tangible way.

Along came Constantine, who saw in Christianity a valuable tool to manipulate for his political benefit. Luring a majority of Christians into the public arena, he successfully united church and state into a beast that he could control. For the next thousand years or more, the European states maintained control of the populace by controlling the thoughts and beliefs of their citizens. Cultural cohesion was considered paramount to independent thought. The nobility and upper classes used this religious manipulation to keep the peasants under their control, but free-thinkers persisted in an underground movement that sought to return Christianity to its unfettered roots.

Christianity was synthesized into a system inseparable from culture and society, and thereby the Roman church lost the vision of the kingdom of God. Instead of maintaining a strict separation based on the free exercise of conscience and will, Papal forces exerted constant pressure on the people of Europe to conform for the sake of societal unity. Believers were now fully committed and integrated into this monolithic system.

In Hills of Zion, the Roman Catholic church actively engages those who feel that their freedom of conscience is paramount to civil freedom. The Waldensians, Albigensians, and others readily offered their lives to torment and death to preserve that freedom of conscience. Cardinal Michaud finds difficulty in understanding Jean’s resistance to integration. Beulan’s personal interpretation of Scripture causes him to be ostracized by his colleagues at the monastery. Marie’s parents are murdered for accepting a baptism not acknowledged by the authorities.

In his book The First Amendment and the Remnant, Leonard Verduin clearly delineates this titanic struggle between those who supported a plural society, free from the fetters of religious dogma, and those who sought to merge truth with politics, thereby diluting true faith in favor of absolute control. Mode d’integration is discussed at length, and Verduin deftly explains how these “heretical” groups were early supporters of religious freedom.

We have heretics to thank for giving us the right to worship freely and live in a free society. They were tortured, harassed, belittled, and burned at the stake or drowned for our present freedoms- and they accomplished this amazing work without violence. Today, Christians face the same threat from potent humanism, but the remedy remains the same. Are we willing to follow the way of the cross that Jesus taught?

The early Christians overcame by being themselves, simply practicing the gospel that they preached and refusing to get sucked into politics. When the Church finally succumbed to this pressure in the Fourth century, she lost her identity and merged with the worldly system. What will our generation do?

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Who were the Waldensians?

The novel Hills of Zion covers the religious upheaval of 1208-1209 in Western Europe. Pope Innocent III primarily targeted the Cathar movement in Languedoc and Provence; however, many dissenting groups existed during this period.

Among these were the Cathars, Albigensians, Waldensians, Humiliati, Henricians, Paulicians, and Beghards. Further confusing the student of history is the term Albi-Waldensian. This last group seems to denote Waldensians who had settled in this region of conflict, but they remained distinctly different.

The exciting part about this area of study is that the verdict remains fluid. Almost all commentary on the events surrounding the Albigensian Crusade was produced by pro-Catholic sentiment. Not surprisingly, we find all these groups clumped together, as if religious confusion were homogeneous. The reality is that belief systems were widely varied and highly developed by the early Thirteenth Century.

The novel portrays mainly the Waldensians and Cathars, in that order. An Albigensian group, with less distinction, is mentioned in Chapter Nine, when Beulan stumbles upon the galley slave, Luc. Jean is a barbe, the title given to itinerant Waldensian preachers .

Peter Waldo (Pierre Valdes in the native French) was a wealthy merchant from Lyon. According to tradition, around 1170, he witnessed the death of a close friend during a banquet. The victim likely died from a heart attack. The grim occurrence set off a series of actions in Pierre’s life that would culminate in the Waldensian movement.

Feeling that his soul was endangered, he employed a local scribe to translate the Scriptures from Latin into French. Delving into the Bible for a time, he concluded that Christians of his day were not living in accordance with God’s Word. He began to preach the message of repentance in individual households, expanding eventually to street corners.

His studies finally led him to sell his earthly possessions and embark on a lifelong ministry of preaching to the poor. His accentuated drift from Catholic orthodoxy brought him into conflict with the local bishop, who ordered that he cease his activities or suffer consequences. When the noose tightened, he journeyed to Rome and appealed to Pope Alexander.

Initially, he was granted an “unwritten” charter to continue his activities. But when thousands rallied to his pleas of salvation through repentance and faith, the Roman church lashed out, banishing Pierre from Lyonnais and threatening him with further discipline if he failed to adjust.

Valdes fades slowly from the pages of documented history, but evidence indicates that he survived well into the first decade of the Thirteenth Century. Men with higher education took the mantle and assisted in structuring the Waldensian Church on a Biblical model. By the 1220’s, though, most of the educated leaders had defected to the Catholic camp. The prime example was Durand d’Osca, who abandoned his Brethren around 1210 and is featured in the coming sequel Fields of Zion.

Confusion abounds in the many texts written about the early movement. Some sources even disagree whether Valdes was actually excommunicated. Further complications arise when the student realizes that Catholic authorities consistently confused the many groups, lumping belief systems together arbitrarily to suit their arguments.

By the Fourteenth Century, Waldensian doctrine and practice had spread throughout Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Poland. Small numbers were found in Illyria, Slovakia, and England. The movement gradually became monolithic with prescribed practices and ordinances.

Like all Spiritually led movements, the Waldensian faith had gradually lost the fervor of the original movement. At the dawn of the Reformation, they were ripe for disintegration. Having lost the conviction of nonresistance, the Genevan branch of Protestantism convinced them to defend themselves against Catholic encroachment.

Thus, the Waldensian, who had avoided the world and her trappings for over three centuries, were seduced into armed conflict. Many lost their lives during this period. With the successful rise of Protestantism, coupled with their lack of conviction and separation from the world, the Waldensians slipped into permanent obscurity.