Note 123 — Chapter I · (continued 2)

At Arras, for instance, in 1460, a number of men and women were burned alive as Vaudois, after having been entrapped into an admission of their guilt by a treacherous advocate. Too late they exposed the deceit practised upon them, and protested their innocence. The alleged crimes were: flying to their place of assembly by witchcraft, adoring the devil, trampling upon the cross, blasphemy, riotous feasting, and vile offences against morality—staple charges recurring again and again, ad nauseam, whenever persecuted men and women have been compelled to meet secretly for God's worship. See L. Rossier, Histoire des protestants de Picardie (Paris, 1861), 1-4; and more at length, Chronicon Cornelii Zantfliet, which styles the sufferers heretics a hundred times worse than Waldenses. Martene et Durand, Vet. Scriptorum ampliss. collectio (Paris, 1729), vii. 501.