Peter Waldo

The French religious leader Peter Waldo (active 1170-1184) believed in voluntary poverty and religious simplicity. His followers were considered heretics by the Church.

Some men's personal lives are eclipsed by the movements they start. Peter Waldo was such a man. He appears on the scene of history in 1170 in Lyons as a successful businessman who, touched to his core by a traveling minstrel's religious ballad, gave away his money to live in poverty as a preacher of the Gospel. Having persuaded a sympathetic priest to translate large sections of the New Testament from Latin into the regional language, Provençal, Peter wandered through Lyons, bringing the message of Christ to anyone who would listen to him. He soon had the Gospels memorized. A number of young men, impressed by his intelligence and sincerity, followed him in giving away their possessions and found a new joy and freedom in living according to the spirit of the Gospels.

Some priests of Lyons, disturbed by Peter's popularity, tried to curb his activities. Peter appealed directly to Pope Alexander III in Rome. The Pope responded in 1179 by praising the group's poverty but said that because they had no theological training they could preach only if the archbishop of Lyons gave them permission. The Waldenses, as they had come to be known, felt that their message was too important to be checked by traditional Church discipline, and they rejected the Pope's directive. They were excommunicated at a Church council in Verona by the next pope, Lucius III, in 1184.

The Waldenses continued to live by their understanding of the New Testament rather than by the procedures of the Church. They refused to accept the existence of purgatory because it is not in the Bible. They rejected the practice of venerating the saints for the same reason. Not just priests, they said, but any person can consecrate the sacramental bread and wine. They rejected the authority structure of the Church as unbiblical. Their refusal to take oaths and also to participate in war made them unpopular with the secular as well as the Church authorities. Peter Waldo himself was not heard from after his excommunication in 1184. His followers were harassed by the Inquisition. They escaped when possible to the nearly inaccessible mountain regions of northern Italy, where Waldo's ideas managed to survive over the centuries despite periodic attempts by Church authorities to eliminate them.

Further Reading

Gordon Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages (2 vols., 1967), examines the religious ideas in Waldo's movement. Walter L. Wakefield, Heresies of the High Middle Ages (1969), contains interesting documents pertaining to Waldo, including a profession of faith he once made.

Peter Waldo
Statue of Peter Waldo at the Luther Memorial at Worms, Germany
Born	1140
Died	1218

Peter Waldo, Valdo, or Waldes (c. 1140 – c. 1218), also Pierre Vaudès or de Vaux, was the founder of the Waldensians, a Christian spiritual movement of the Middle Ages, descendants of which still exist in various regions. He was originally named Waldo; the surname "Peter" came later, possibly attributed to him because, when a local archbishop of France told him to cease preaching, Waldo quoted a verse from the book of Peter: “It is better to obey God than man.”

Contents 1 Life and work 2 Further reading 3 References 4 External links

Life and work

Specific details of his life are largely unknown. The sources mention that he was a merchant from Lyon. However, inspired after hearing the story of St. Alexius,^[1] in around 1160 he began living a radical Christian life and gave his real estate to his wife, and the remainder of his belongings he distributed as alms to the poor.

Waldo also began to preach and teach on the streets, based on his ideas of simplicity and poverty, notably that "No man can serve two masters, God and mammon." By 1170 he had gathered a number of followers and they started to be called the Poor of Lyon, the Poor of Lombardy, or the Poor of God. They were also referred to as the Waldensians (or Waldenses), after their leader. They were distinct from the Albigensians or Cathars.

The Waldensian movement was characterised from the beginning by lay preaching, voluntary poverty and sticking to the "Word of God", the Bible. Peter Waldo commissioned a cleric from Lyons around 1180 to translate the Bible, or parts of it, into the vernacular, the Arpitan (Franco-Provençal) language.

In 1179, Waldo and one of his disciples went to Rome. They were welcomed by Pope Alexander III, and by the Roman Curia. They had to explain their faith before a panel of three clergymen, including items which were then debated within the Church, as the universal priesthood, the gospel in the vulgar tongue, and the issue of self-imposed poverty. But Waldo and his friend were not taken seriously. The meeting therefore resolved nothing, and Waldo’s and his followers’ ideas, initially regarded with suspicion, were condemned at the Third Lateran Council in the same year, though the leaders of the movement had not been yet excommunicated.

Driven away from Lyon, Waldo and his followers settled in the high valleys of Piedmont, and in France, in the Luberon. Finally, Waldo was excommunicated by Pope Lucius III during the synod held at Verona in 1184, and the doctrine of the Poor of Lyon was again condemned by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, and regarded as heresy. The Roman Catholic Church began to persecute the Waldensians, and many were tried and sentenced to death in various European countries during the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. The sect persisted by fleeing to the Alps and hiding there. Centuries after his death, the Waldensian denomination joined the Genevan or Reformed branch of the Protestant Reformation.

Further reading

• Audisio, Gabriel, The Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival, c.1170 - c.1570, (1999) Cambridge Medieval Textbooks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521559847

References

1. ^ M. Aston, Faith and Fire: Popular and Unpopular Religion, 1350-1600, (London, 1993) p.18.

External links

• Link to the Medieval sourcebook text about Peter Waldo

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