Waldensian Digression

New visitor? There's more -- much more. Start here.

While pondering my naaktlooper ancestors, I caught up a bit with the Waldensians. Thanks to the troubled existence of this early Christian sect, the Holy Roman Church spent some 300 years honing methods of persuasion they then leveled against Anabaptists and other troublemakers practicing the theologickal arts.

One of the HRC's gentler techniques.

The surviving Waldensian expression of faith appears to be largely subsumed into a Calvinist variety of Methodism. The degree to which it resembles the expression of its originator, Peter Waldo, is debatable -- once Waldo thumbed his nose at the Third Lateren Council, the HRC effort to quash the movement was immediate, brutal and unrelenting. Waldensians were constantly on the run, a state that does not usually lead to a stabilized orthodoxy. After 800 mostly-tumultuous years, that any Waldensian expression survives at all is, you might say, a miracle.

HRC propaganda branded the Waldensians as the original Satanists -- a notion that successfully captured the public imagination. Waldensian women were among the first to be felled in the initial sweep of witch hunts.

Waldensian men and children fared no better. Because they were commonly held to be in collusion with the Devil himself, it was perpetually open season on this hapless bunch. Reading this thumbnail account of the Piedmont Easter of 1655 I am reminded, somewhat, of events currently taking place in a geography just to the southeast of France.

Ever after, when prosecuting Anabaptists and other Reformational types, the HRC would hike a thumb at the fabled Waldensian Satanists and accuse the current lot on the dock of being similarly committed to Deviltry.

The Waldensian symbol ("Lux lucet in tenebris" -- "Light glows in the darkness") caught my eye, and will serve as segue into the "Sigils" portion of these riffs.

Next: Aleister & Adolf.