Chapter II · FRANCE. (continued 2)

How completely the Waldenses dropped out of sight in the struggles of the Great Schism is seen in a bull of Alexander V., in 1409, to Frère Pons Feugeyron, whose enormous district extended from Marseilles to Lyons and from Beaucaire to the Val d’Aosta. This comprehended the whole district which François Borel and Vicente Ferrer found swarming with heretics. The inquisitor is urged to use his utmost endeavors against the schismatic followers of Benedict XIII. and Gregory XII., against the increasing numbers of sorcerers, against apostate Jews and the Talmud, but not a word is said about Waldenses. They seem to have been completely forgotten.[177]

After the Church had reorganized itself at the Council of Constance it had leisure to look after the interests of the faith, although its energies were mostly monopolized by the Hussite troubles. In 1417 we hear of Catharine Sauve, an anchorite, burned at Montpellier for Waldensian doctrines by the deputy-inquisitor, Frère Raymond Cabasse, assisted by the Bishop of Maguelonne. The absence of persecution had by no means been caused by a diminution in the number of heretics. In 1432 the Council of Bourges complained that the Waldenses of Dauphiné had taxed themselves to send money to the Hussites, whom they recognized as brethren; and there were plenty of them to be found by any one who took the trouble to look after them. On August 23, of this same year, we have a letter from Frère Pierre Fabri, Inquisitor of Embrun, to the Council of Basle, excusing himself for not immediately obeying a summons to attend it on the ground of his indescribable poverty, and of his preoccupations in persecuting the Waldenses. In spite of the great executions which he had already made, he describes them as flourishing as numerously as ever in the valleys of Freyssinières, Argentière, and Pute, which had been almost depopulated by the ferocious raids of François Borel. He now has in his dungeons of Embrun and Briançon six relapsed heretics, who have revealed to him the names of more than five hundred others whom he is about to seize, and whose trials will be a work of time, but as soon as he can absent himself without prejudice to the faith his first duty will be to attend the council. Evidently the harvest was abundant and the reapers were few.[178]

In 1441 the Inquisitor of Provence, Jean Voyle, made some effort at persecution, but apparently with little result, and the Waldensian churches seem to have enjoyed a long respite, for the terrible episode of the so-called Vaudois of Arras, in 1460, as we shall see hereafter, was merely a delirium of witchcraft. In France, so completely had the Waldenses monopolized the field of misbelief in the public mind that sorcery became popularly known as vauderie and witches as vaudoises. Accordingly, when, in 1465, at Lille, five “Poor Men of Lyons” were tried, and four of them recanted and one was burned, it was necessary to find some other name for them, and they were designated as Turelupins.[179]

It is not until 1475 that we find the inquisitors again at work in their old hunting-ground among the valleys around the headwaters of the Durance. The Waldenses had quietly multiplied again. They held their conventicles undisturbed, they dared openly to preach their abhorred faith, and their missionary zeal was rewarded with abundant conversions. Worse than all, when the bishops and inquisitors sought to repress them in the accustomed manner, they appealed to the royal court, which was so untrue to its duty that it granted them letters of protection and they waxed more insolent than ever. In vain Sixtus IV. sent special commissions armed with full powers to put an end to this disgraceful state of things. Men at this time in France recked little of papal authority, and the commissioners found themselves scorned. Sixtus, therefore, July 1, 1475, addressed an earnest remonstrance to Louis XI. The king was surely ignorant of the acts of his representatives; he would hasten to disavow them and lend the whole power of the State, as of old, to the support of the Inquisition.[180]

The correspondence which ensued would doubtless be interesting reading if it were accessible. Its purport, however, can readily be discerned in the Ordonnance of May 18, 1478, which marks in the most emphatic manner the supremacy which the State had obtained over the Church. The king assumed that his subjects of Dauphiné were all good Catholics. In a studied tone of contemptuous insolence he alludes to the old Mendicants (vieux mendiens) styling themselves inquisitors, who vex the faithful with accusations of heresy and harass them with prosecutions in the royal and ecclesiastical courts for purposes of extortion or to secure the confiscation of their property. He therefore forbids his officers to aid in making such confiscations, decrees that the heirs shall be reinstated in all cases that have occurred, and in order to put a stop to the frauds and abuses of the inquisitors he strictly enjoins that for the future they shall not be permitted to prosecute the inhabitants in any manner.[181]

Such was the outcome of the efforts which, for two hundred and fifty years, the Church had unremittingly made to obtain despotic control over the human mind. For far less than such defiance it had destroyed Raymond of Toulouse and the civilization of Languedoc. It had built up the monarchy with the spoils of heresy, and now the monarchy cuffed it and bade it bury its Inquisition out of the sight of decent men. This put an end for a time to the labors of the Inquisition against the Waldenses of Dauphiné, but the troubles of the latter were by no means over. The death of Louis, in 1483, deprived them of their protector, and the Italian policy of Charles VIII. rendered him less indifferent to the wishes of the Holy See. At the request of the Archbishop of Embrun, Innocent VIII. ordered the persecutions renewed. The Franciscan Inquisitor, Jean Veyleti, whose excesses had caused the appeal to the throne in 1475, was soon again at work, and had the satisfaction of burning both consuls of Freyssinières. Though the Waldenses had represented themselves to Louis XI. as faithful Catholics, the ancient errors were readily brought to light by the efficient means of torture. Though they believed in transubstantiation, they denied that it could be effected by sinful priests. Their barbes, or pastors, were ordained, and administered absolution after confession, but the pope, the bishops, and the priests had lost that power. They denied the existence of purgatory, the utility of prayers for the dead, the intercession of saints, the power of the Virgin, and the obligation of keeping any feast-days save Sunday. Wearied with their stubbornness, the archbishop, in June and July, 1486, summoned them either to leave the country or to come forward and submit, and as they did neither he excommunicated them. This was equally ineffective, and he appealed again to Innocent VIII., who resolved to end the heresy with a decisive blow. Accordingly, in 1488, a crusade on a large scale was organized in both Dauphiné and Savoy. The papal commissioner, Alberto de’’ Capitanei, obtained the assistance of the Parlement of Grenoble, and a force was raised under the command of Hugues de La Palu, Comte de Vanax, to attack them on every side. The attack was delayed by legal formalities, during which they were urged to submission, but refused, saying that their faith was pure and that they would die rather than abandon it. At length, in March, 1489, the crusaders advanced. The valley of Pragelato was the first assailed, and, after a few days, was reduced to the alternative of death or abjuration, when fifteen obstinate heretics were burned. In Val Cluson and Freyssinières the resistance was more stubborn and there was considerable carnage, which so frightened the inhabitants of Argentière that they submitted peaceably. In Val Louise the people took refuge in the cavern of Aigue Fraide, which they imagined inaccessible, but La Palu succeeded in reaching it, and built fires in the mouth, suffocating the unhappy refugees. This, and the confiscations which followed, divided between Charles VIII. and the Archbishop of Embrun, gave a fatal blow to Waldensianism in the valleys. To prevent its resuscitation the legate left behind him François Ploireri as Inquisitor of Provence, who continued to harass the people with citations and pronounced condemnations for contumacy, burning an occasional barbe and confiscating the property of relapsed and hardened heretics.[182]

With a new king, in the person of Louis XII., there came a new phase in the affairs of the Waldenses. A conference was held in Paris before the royal chancellor, where envoys from Freyssinières met Rostain, the new Archbishop of Embrun, and deputies of the Parlement of Grenoble. It was resolved to send to the spot papal and royal commissioners, with power to determine the status of the so-called heretics. They went to Freyssinières and examined witnesses, who satisfied them that the population were good Catholics, in spite of the urgent assertions of the archbishop that they were notorious heretics. All the excommunications were removed, which put an end to the prosecutions. On October 12, 1502, Louis XII. confirmed the decision, and Alexander VI., to whose son, Cæsar Borgia, Louis had given the Duchy of Valentinois, embracing the territory in question, was not disposed to run counter to the royal wishes. The Waldenses were, however, unable to loosen the grip of the Archbishop of Embrun on the property which he had confiscated, in spite of positive orders for its restoration from the king, but at least they were allowed, under the guise of Catholicism, to worship God after their own fashion, until the crowding pressure of the Reformation forced them to a merger with the Calvinists. In the Briançonnais, in spite of occasional burnings, heresy continued to spread until, in 1514, Antoine d’Estaing, Bishop of Angoulême, was sent thither, when the measures he adopted, vigorously enforced by the secular authorities, put an end to it in a few years.[183]