THE ANTIQUITY OF THE WALDENSES.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In the cause of justice I beg for a short space in your valuable columns, while I endeavour to correct a mistake made by the reviewer of the late Mr. Bradshaw's " Collected Papers," which appeared in the Spectator of March 8th. The reviewer drew attention to Mr. Bradshaw having discovered the six long-lost and long looked-for manuscripts on the Waldensian Church, which Sir Samuel Morland placed in the Library of Cambridge. University in 1658. And he alludes specially to one, the " Nobla Leyczon," which bears the date of 1100 (mil e cent), and says that Mr. Bradshaw, by the aid of a powerful glass, found an erasure before the cent, making the date 1400 ; and he adds, somewhat needlessly : " Consequently demolishing the argument for the antiquity of the Vaudois and the derivation of their name." I can say nothing about the truth of the erasure, not having seen the manuscript myself, though I am inclined to think that Mr. Bradshaw's glass misled him. But as to the antiquity of the Vaudois, any one reading the three chapters on that subject in Leger's " Histoire des Eglises Evan geliques des Vallees de Piemont on Van- doises," will be simply overwhelmed by the weight of evidence in their favour. The Vaudois themselves maintain that they have handed down unimpaired the pure gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ from father to son since the days of the Apostles ; but they do not base this assumption on the date of the "Nobla Leyczon," or on the dates of the other manuscripts in the same library. There is abundant evidence from the writings of their enemies to prove the fact. I will select a very few out of a great many.
The celebrated monk, Belvedere, who was sent to the Valleys by the Pope to inquire into the origin and progress of their heresy in 1630, says that " this heresy is too deeply rooted in these parts to think of making an end of it, as the Valleys of Angrogna have been inhabited by heretics for ever" (ogni t rap . The inquisitor Reinier Sacco says : " The Vaudois is the most pernicious of all sects, first because she is the oldest of all, for some say she has stood from the times of Sylvestus ; others give her her origin from the times of the Apostles." Eberard de Bethune, writing about 1160, says " Certain heretics call themselves Vallenses (from vallis, 'a valley '), because they dwell in a vale of sorrow." Bernard de Foncald, about 1180, says : " They were called Vallenses (from yells densa, a shady valley') because they were enveloped in deep and thick darkness." Strange to say, according to tradition, the Val Martino was called in old times Val Ombreuse.
The Abbot Radulph, of the Monastery of St. Thron in Belgium, writing between 1108 and 1136, speaks of a country he was to visit when he crossed the Alps on his way to Rome, and describes it as a land " polluted with an inveterate heresy." I will pass over the time of Claud, Bishop of Turin, whose diocese included the Vaudois Valleys, and conclude with a short extract by Jerome, who writes towards the end of the fourth century :—" I saw a short time ago that monster, Vigilantius. I would have bound that madman by passages of holy writ, as Hippocrates advises to confine maniacs with bonds ; but he has departed, he has hurried away, he has escaped, and from the space between the Alps where Cottus reigned and the waves of the Adriatic, his cries have reached me. 0, infamous ! he has found even amongst the Bishops accomplices of his wickedness." Could a stronger proof exist, not only of the antiquity of the Vaudois, but of their existence in the fourth century ? I would add that the copy of the " Nobla Leyczon" in the Cambridge University is not the only authentic one existing. The historian Leger placed another in the library at Geneva.—I am, Sir, &c.,
[We fail to see any mistake in the article on the late Mr. Bradshaw's " Collected Papers." If, as Bradshaw alleged, he discovered the date of the "Nobla Leycon " to be 1400 instead of 1100, it would seem that this clearly demolished the argument arising from the date in question for the antiquity of the Vaudois and the derivation of their name. This discovery was given to the world as far back as 1862; it has been frequently quoted, and, so far as the reviewer is aware, never contradicted; and as Mrs. Wainwright has not seen the manuscript, it is difficult to accept her suggestion that " Brad- shaw's glass" misled him. There are an abundance of other arguments for the antiquity of the Vaudois and the derivation
of their name from the valleys, wholly untouched by Bradshaw's discovery, some of them more weighty than any of those adduced by Mrs. Wainwright ; indeed, it is not easy to see how her quotation from Jerome bears on the question. The copies of the "Nobla Leycon " of Cambridge and Geneva are not the only two existing ; one is to be found in the library of the University of Dublin; but in Bradshaw's judgment, the Geneva and Dublin copies are of later date than that of Cambridge.—En. Spectator.1
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