Assume for the sake of argument that the current Democrat party becomes able to completely eradicate the Republican party, and for the next five generations is able to systematically rewrite the history of this period, while destroying most if not all documentation that contradicts their official line? Do you think it would be easy to get an accurate picture of present day Republicanism? No, they demonize us now. Think what awful things they could say, and with a united front, if we were all forced into hiding and poverty and reduced in number to almost nothing, for generations.
So too the history of the Waldensians is a tangled muddle, and discernment of the truth is not about quick forum soundbites, but the hard work of sorting through many layers of source material, reaching back past the one-sided histories, the forced confessions, the misidentified heroes and villains, to discover, as much as is possible, what really happened. My own research so far suggests the Vaudois/Waldensians/People of the Valley were of greater antiquity than Peter Waldo's Poor of Lyons outfit, though the two doubtless interacted and shared many beliefs, and that their beliefs were more nearly orthodox than their assailants have led us to believe. And such assailants they had. Google for example "Piedmont Easter," and look at the variety of results.
Even Milton was moved by these events.
Were all those atrocities true as reported? Something happened. Where there's smoke there's fire. Once Rome presumes to itself a synthesis of ecclesiastical and temporal power, the game's afoot, because humans are, in one sense, irresistibly logical. If you create a condition that can be abused, it will be. Someone will try it. Jesus gave us a limit, denying such a synthesis, for now, for His spiritual Ecclesia, because God knows our weaknesses. We have a hard enough time applying the natural law to your question of horse thievery under the civil law. Add the capacity to apply the coercive means of the civil law to doctrinal disputes, and you have a recipe for famous acts of torture followed by a set of ready rationalizations, such as creating a new class of felons called "soul murderers," or believing the false accusations of civil uprising spun by the Duke of Savoy against the harmless people of the Piedmont, or distancing the civil pawns from the ecclesiastics who moved them about for the principle purpose of suppressing the enemies of papal tyranny.
The bottom line is this. You can bring from Scripture no example of, nor even any theoretical support for, the New Testament Ecclesia exercising civil coercion via temporal instruments such as capital punishment, over issues that reside within the sole jurisdiction of said Ecclesia, i.e., matters of doctrine and spiritual state. Not until the great sacral fusion event of Constantine's transformation of Christianity into a state religion do you have such confusion imposed on the faithful shepherds of Christ's flocks. By sacral I mean that fusion of religion and state into a single, monolithic entity which imposes on all members of the society an obligation to observe all the principles of said religion regardless of whether one is actually an adherent. You may recognize this in Islam. Their vision of sharia law is exactly that of a sacral culture, exceptions from orderly belief being as criminal as exceptions from orderly behavior, where the difference between a semipelagian and a horse thief is a practical nullity.
I should also point out that efforts here to advocate for a return to sacral society under Rome or any other religion is fundamentally at odds with the principle of freedom for which FreeRepublic stands. Our freedom is in large part owing to the teaching of Christ that we should render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's, in which Jesus Himself makes the break between the civil power and the religious, the result of which, over time, has produced a society with greater freedom, both in civil terms and in terms of voluntary devotion to and practice of Christian truth, than has ever been produced before, and which we are now at risk of losing, because of the impulse of Marxism to pull us back into an atheistic sacralism that brooks no dissent from it's evils.
Peace,
SR
Thanks to your provided link, I’ve found myself online beginning to read A History of the Vaudois Church, courtesy Princeton Theological Seminary.
Oh, that I would show other FReepers the same graciousness as did the author in his Dedication. Too often, I respond with do unto others as others have done unto me.
Churchill was right - History is written by the victors.
When the writings, records, documents, Bibles and other information is used as kindling for pyres, whatever escapes such destruction is rarely found. The "victor" is then free to write himself into history as the hero and the vanquished, as the devil. How can we possibly trust what such heroes proclaim is the truth?