IHE BOOKS OF THE VAUDOIS.*
Tms work contains the record of a controversy carried on throughout a space of many years by men of ability. Dr. Todd and his friends, who seem to have been drawn together through their common interest in exploring the by-paths of ecclesiastical history, raised nearly four and twenty years ago a question as to the real antiquity of Waldensian Protestantism. They corre- sponded with each other through the pages of The British Magazine, and being "men honestly in search of truth" achieved more in the way of attaining it than is usually accomplished by controver- sialists. As a first result of their labours they established to the satisfaction of candid judges that the Waldensian manuscripts on which the whole history of religion among the Vaudois depends censist of two classes, the one certainly representing writings of a. date prior to the Reformation, the other as certainly bearing date after the rise of Luther and Calvin. The religious doctrines found in the earlier MSS. are, however, as might indeed be expected a priori, not the dogmas of the reformers of the sixteenth century, and hence Dr. Todd and his corre- spondents drew the inevitable inference that the ordinary Protes- tant view, which assumed the existence among the Vaudois of what may be called primitive Protestantism, was erroneous. Having drawn this legitimate conclusion, some of Dr. Todd's friends drew a conclusion which was by no means legitimate, that Protestant writers who, like Morland, conceived they found among the peasants of the Alps a Calvinism which was prior to Calvin, had not so much been dupes of their defective historical • The Books of the Vekabis. By James Henthorn Todd, D.C. London : Mac- millan and Co.
knowledge as deliberate impostors. For Morland himself, who went as Cromwell's Commissary to the Waldenses to collect infor- mation as to their history, and who published what may be termed an official account of his investigations, some of the writers in, The British Magazine have no mercy. In their eyes to have been an official of Cromwell seems to be in itself prima facie evidence of rascality. Morland is described as a " sleek and civil messenger," well calculated to " pump " the Waldenses, and oil every occasion in which any historical difficulty nee ds solution two at least of the correspondents are ready to solve it by the suggestipn that Morland lied or forged. It so happens, and this must be the excuse for the uncharitable and illogical assumptions made as to Dlorland's veracity, that there was at least one circumstance connected with his history of the Waldenses which greatly needed an explanation, and of which no explanation could till very recently be given. He has distinctly stated that he lodged in the University Library at Cambridge the MSS. which were the authorities for his history. These MSS. could not be found, and as far as was known had not been seen by any eye since Morland had them. There was, moreover, some apparent reason for supposing that some of the Morland MSS. were either at Dublin or at Geneva. It seemed therefore probable to persons to whom the very names of Cromwell and of his associates were odious that Morland, conscious of misrepresenting his authorities, had on Cromwell's death, in fear that his fault might be detected, "spirited away" the MSS.
A much more really important question than that of Alorland's personal character was, what was the true date of the one of the writings of the Waldenses, which undoubtedly belongs to a period
before the Reformation. " The Noble Lesson " is clearly the work of the so-called "Poor of Lyons." The following lines,— " Ben ha mil o cent anez compli entierament
Que fo scripta l'ora; car sou al denier temp ;" "Well has eleven hundred years been completed entirely
Which was the hour written; for we are at the last time," —apparently fix its date. Yet that date is almost certainly not the right one, since the whole of " the Noble Lesson" bears traces of the influence of the Abbot Joachim, who did not pro- mulgate his theories earlier than 1181. Over these lines all the writers in The British Magazine puzzle themselves, and some of them show extraordinary ingenuity in framing interpretations which tended to show that the 1100 years might be said to have been completed somewhere about 1260. And here, again, the want of Morland's MSS. was felt ; something might, it was hoped, have been elicited from their inspection. Curiously enough, two years ago Mr. Bradshaw made a discovery which at once vindicated Morland from the main crime laid to his charge, that of removing the MSS., and proved the sagacity of Dr. Todd and his friends in their scepticism as to the date of " The Noble Lesson." Mr. Bradshaw, on searching through the University Library, discovered the missing. MSS. exactly in the position in which Morland said he had left them, whilst a closer inspection of these very MSS. gave good ground for believing that the earliest version of the lines which had been the subject of so much criticiina
gave the date not to be 1100, but 1400. •
The results therefore of the elaborate investigation into the history of the Waldenses begun by Dr. Todd and his friends, and for the present at least terminated by Mr. Bradshaw, may be thus summed up. Morland and Protestants who, like him, have maintained the claim of the Waldensiau community to have held the pure Genevan doctrines before the time of Calvin, fell into a not unnatural historical error, and it is now proved that all the Walden- sian writings which bear an indubitably Protestant cktaracter were composed in the sixteenth century. On the other hand, the Pro- tector and his friends, if as historical critics they were imposed upon by the theories of their day, are proved to have shown a genuine zeal for historical investigation which would be creditable to the statesmen of any age. In the words of Mr. Bradshaw, " Whatever Cromwell and his friends were politically, it is at least certain that as a literary body we owe them a debt which it would take us a long time to repay, and which at present we refuse to acknowledge even in our annual commemoration of benefactors. We have for two hundred years ignored both the gift and the giver, and it is time that we should begin to make some repara- tion."
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