Follow the Ladies' Lead, Gentlemen

Innocent III blessing Francis and his
first Friars

I recently mentioned the Reformation of Innocent III as a model for Church Reformation that preserves unity in the Church while addressing the need to eliminate areas of Church life that have become a scandal because they are at odds with the Gospel. 

     Innocent was born into a noble Italian family, the counts of Segni, in 1160 and was elected pope in 1198.  He died in 1216.  His family’s stronghold was only about forty miles south-east of Rome and over the centuries there were nine popes from this family, among them being Innocent, Gregory IX, and Alexander IV.  They were a remarkable family and Innocent is often considered to be the most powerful pope in the history of the Church.  Fortunately, for the most part, he used power well.   His nephew, Ugolino dei conti de Segni, who became Gregory IX, was a great friend and patron of Francis of Assisi and also served the Church well both as a Cardinal and later as Pope. 

       There is basis for criticizing Innocent for some of his decisions—the Crusade against the Cathars (Albigensians), the categorization of the Waldensians as heretics at Lateran IV and subsequent persecution, and the Fourth Crusade which ended up attacking and sacking  Constantinople.  We will look at these events in future posts, but these events, flawed as they are from our contemporary perspective, should not be allowed to overshadow a magnificent program of Church Reform which probably prevented a Luther-style Reformation for several centuries. 

        When Innocent ascended the papacy in 1198 he inherited a Church that was deeply fractured.  Personal hostility between the Kings of England and France had overflowed into Church life and led to a deterioration of the state of the Church in the two kingdoms as Church offices were bestowed by the kings on candidates for no reason better than the political needs of the respective monarchs.  Moreover, a centuries-long feud between the papacy and the empire similarly was sapping energy, especially where the Emperor could hand out religious benefices to his political allies to cement their loyalty.       
        The politicalization of the Church was not only filling major posts with many unsuitable candidates, but was leading to a divide between the ordinary faithful and the hierarchy.  The political alliances of the bishops weakened their authority over the faithful who were looking for good and honest guides for their spiritual growth and, not finding it among the pastors of the Church were turning elsewhere.
        In the Rhineland and in the French Languedoc and Pyrénées massive numbers of Christians were deserting the Church for the gnostic Cathar movement. The rigid and austere morality ascribed to the Cathar Perfecti or Holy Men gave them a credibility that the wealthy and powerful Catholic prelates lacked.  Catharism, while strongest in the Rhine and South-west France, was spreading even into Italy, undermining the Church.
       Cathars were Gnostics and their beliefs were, from a Christian perspective, bizarre, but more orthodox were the Waldensians.  Peter Waldo was a wealthy merchant of Lyons France who took the gospel injunction to “sell all that you have, give to the poor, and follow me” seriously.  Doing precisely that, he ran afoul of Church authorities for preaching while not ordained.  Waldo’s charismatic personality and dramatic conversion gave him a credibility that brought him many disciples in France and northern Italy.  A lay movement, the Waldensians soon found themselves decried as schismatics and indeed were broken off from the Catholic Church.  Nevertheless, they grew and even many faithful Catholics admired them for their pacific ways, simple lives, and generosity to the poor.
       Among Innocent III’s reforms, and perhaps the most important of them, was the encouragement of new religious orders that were strongly evangelical in their simple life and service of the poor.  Francis of Assisi was introduced to Innocent who admired him greatly and helped advance the Friars Minor—Francis’ brotherhood of poor preachers who went out and worked with lepers, the lame, the sick poor and others on the margins of society. 
        Another order that Innocent encouraged were a society of priests under the leadership of Dominic de Guzman, a Spanish priest working in the south of France to win people back from the Cathar heresy.  Like Francis’ friars, Dominic’s priests and their coadjutor brothers lived lives of model simplicity.  Dominic, unlike Francis, stressed the importance of education and many of his priests were both brilliant scholars and good preachers. 
       The first new order that Innocent encouraged with the Trinitarians—a community of priests and brothers who were dedicated to freeing captives captured in the Crusades and held by the Muslims.  They raised money with which to buy Muslim prisoners and then exchange them for Christian prisoners.  Their kindness to the Muslim prisoners gave them great credibility on both sides of the wars. 
        The emphasis of these new communities was living a life in imitation of Jesus and his apostles in prayer, fellowship, and simplicity of life.  Perhaps what we need most in the Church today are new—or renewed—religious orders of men and women who take the gospel seriously.  Men and women who will lead simple lives, give themselves to prayer, and dedicate themselves to the service of the poor.  In the years since Vatican II many of the Sisters’ communities have done just that.  Now maybe it is time for the men to follow their example.      

The Cathars--The "Perfect Ones"

The wealth of the Church was a

lightening rod for grouips such as

Cathars

Well, it was way back in September—September 20^th to be exact—that we left off our series on Church Reform.  We had been talking about dissent in the medieval Church with the sagas of Peter Waldo and the Umiliati—two different expressions of frustration and anger with the wealth and power of the Church.  The sagas ended up quite differently if you remember, Waldo and his followers were forced into schism by a medieval papacy unable to grasp that genuine Reform might come from lay leadership and the Umiliati ended up becoming a religious order due to a papacy that knew how to harness lay charisms for the good of the larger Church.  We will talk more about the very charismatic pope, Innocent III, who cut through the morass of canon law to empower laity to take an active voice in preaching the Gospel, but first we need to look at another group around at the same time, the Cathars.
       The Cathers (Catheri in Latin) were also known, popularly, as the Albigensians because there were so many in and around the city of Albi in France, but its influence spread far beyond the Languedoc.   Cathars were prominent not only in the South of France but the Rhineland and Italy and not unknown elsewhere.  It is a mystery to historians how the sect originated but, although there is no historical connection,  it does bear certain similarities to the Manichean sect to which Saint Augustine had belonged before his conversion in the fourth century.  Like the Manicheans, the Cathars proposed the idea that there are two Gods—a spiritual god who created our spirits and an evil god who created the material universe into which human spirits have been tricked and entrapped.  The soul must escape this created universe and return to its pure spiritual nature.  It does this by renouncing material realities, especially any of those things that have to do with sexual intercourse and generation as it supposedly is by a sexual curiosity that souls are entrapped into generation into the physical/material world.  Another ancient heresy that taught this same doctrine as the Manicheans is Priscillianism but there is no historical evidence for a survival of either Priscillianism or Manicheanism that would explain the Cathars.  By the way—both Manicheanism and Priscillianism were Gnostic sects and Catharism, while a medieval and not an ancient theology, should also be seen to be in the Gnostic tradition.  
       Another ancient heresy with which Catharism shares some similarity of doctrine is Donatism.  Donatism taught that the validity of the sacraments as channels of grace depended on the worthiness of the minister.  A bishop or priest who was himself sinful therefore could not effectively minister to others.  Donatism was widespread, especially in North Africa, in the fourth and fifth century but this particular doctrine about the worthiness of the ministers resurfaced among the Cathars as it would surface again during the Protestant Reformations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
        Catharism spread like wildfire in the eleventh century in great part due to dissatisfaction of the common people with the wealth of the institutional Church and lax morality of the clergy.  The use of Latin in liturgical celebrations had reduced the rites of the Church to vague and unintelligible rituals that appeared as superstitious and even magical.  That these rites—baptisms, marriages, funerals, blessings of fields and crops and other rites of everyday life—required offerings of either money or in kind to an often undisciplined clergy from ordinary and even impoverished faithful while the wealth of the Church was vigorously displayed in its buildings, art, vestments and vessels eroded the faith of intelligent if uneducated people.    Lay ascetics who practiced the highly disciplined life of the Cathar holy men—sexually abstinent, economically poor, vegan in diet (food coming from sexual congress—both meat and dairy—being forbidden) impressed many far more than did the too often indolent clergy.  The simple rites—a “baptism” by laying on of hands and a holy communion of bread blest only by the recitation of the Lord’s Pryer—spoke effectively to simple people.  While most converts were unwilling to accept the full discipline of the sect—vegetarianism and celibacy being two of the notable stumbling blocks—large numbers of initiates flocked to the movement remaining at a catechumenal stage until their last moments of life when they would seek the  “consolementum” or laying on of hands.  Of course, it should not be presumed that all Cathar holy men lived up to the demands of their ascetic vocation any more than all priests live up to theirs, but there is a consensus that the rumors of debauchery and charlatanism were more polemics by the institutional Church to destroy the credibility of the movement than serious and credible charges.  While there certainly would have been some charlatans among them, their widespread success in making converts indicates greater credibility than some Catholic historians allow. 

The Humble and the Proud--Popular and Institutional Views of the Church

The Basilica of Sant' Ambrogio in

Milan, the center of the Umiliati

movement

Peter Waldo wasn’t the only evangelical voice in the twelfth century Church protesting the clerical monopoly on preaching the Gospel and complaining about the Church’s alliance with the rich and powerful in their exploitation of the Christian poor.  The Umiliati were a movement among the working classes centered in northern Italy in the twelfth century.   They don’t seem to have had a founder but to have risen somewhat spontaneously among the dislocated workers who turned to one another for support and help.  The rich merchants and manufacturers had their guilds in which they offered each other collaboration and support but the workers were left each one for himself (or in some cases, herself).     
     The twelfth century was a time that the cities of Europe were expanding with unparalleled rapidity.  After the year 1100, much like the urban centers of the Northeast and Midwest United States would see after World War II, the cities of Italy and France—and to a lesser extent, Germany and England—saw in influx of people moving to the cities and towns from the rural areas looking for work.   Farmers left their farms and villages in search of city work that would give them a better life and a brighter future.  But in the villages and on the farms they had traditional networks of family and neighbors who were there for them in times of need.  Should a breadwinner be injured or become sick or die, the social network of families connected by blood and marriage would close in around the victim and offer him and his family the support they would need to carry on.  In the cities, however, there were no such networks.  The families and friends were back in the village or scattered among various towns and cities.  Sickness and death in the city meant poverty and starvation.  And it was in this environment that communities began to spring up “in a Christian spirit” among the new urban working class, communities of people who without the obligations of blood or marriage or ancient friendships voluntarily were there for one another in mutual support.  Inspired by stories of how the early Christians were of one heart and one mind and that there was no one in need among them for they shared all things in common (Acts 4), they banded together in mutual prayer, fraternity, and support.  They met together for prayer and meals, priests among explained the scriptures to them in their own language, and using the scriptures as a reference point, they discussed matters of life that were important to them.   Unmarried members of the movement often lived together in communities that resembled small monasteries or convents.  They tried to shape their lives to their faith.  They resolved not to swear oaths but let their yes be a yes and their no, a no.  (Matthew 5:37)  They turned their poverty from a distress into a sign of unity.  They opted to live as simply as they could, getting the name umiliati or the “humble ones” from their plain undyed clothes.  They often left their employment and started what we might call workers cooperatives and, so many of them being workers in the cloth industry, gained fame for producing an inexpensive (and lower quality) wool affordable by the poor.   
     This was very spiritually enriching for them, but it was threatening to the manufacturers who employed them.  This movement  empowered the working classes, uniting workers in mutual support and making them less easy for their employers to exploit.  The Archbishop of Milan—a Umiliati stronghold—and other bishops as well as the political and social leaders of the city panicked at the growing strength of the Umiliati.   Milan had had a history of the working classes opposing the Archbishop and the upper classes in the Patarene movement and the Umiliati were suspected of undermining the political dominance of the rich merchants.  
     The group was brought to the attention of Pope Alexander III in 1179 and he commended their piety but forbad them to continue their meetings and what he perceived to be lay preaching.  They did not conform to his restrictions and Lucius III excommunicated them along with the Cathars, the Arnoldists, the Waldensians and other groups at a Council at Verona in 1184.  A reconciliation was effected with Pope Innocent III but that is a story to come in a few days.  

Peter Waldo--A Protestant 350 years before Luther

Peter Waldo, statue on the Luther

Memorial in Worms, Germany.  Waldo

lived three centuries before Luther but

anticipated his call for reform.

I am anxious to do an entry on Lateran III but before we go there we should take a look at one of the most interesting people of the twelfth century, Peter Waldo.  We don’t have a lot of reliable information on Peter—even his cognomen “Waldo” or Valdes or de Vaux—is argued as to whether it was a cognomen or a name attributed to him afterwards from his followers known as Waldensians.  (Did they take their name from him or from the valleys—valles in Latin—in which they lived.) 
Peter was born sometime about the year 1140 in Lyon in what is today France.  At the time it was not yet incorporated into that kingdom but an autonomous county of the Holy Roman Empire with the Archbishop as both civil and ecclesiastical ruler. Peter was immensely wealthy—a cloth merchant—some say the wealthiest man in Lyon which, in turn, was one of the wealthiest cities in Europe.  He also was very devout.  He paid a priest to translate the gospels from the official Latin text into the French patois of Lyons  so that he could read and study them.  And he had a great devotion to Saint Alexis, one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages, whose story inspired many to acts of charity. 
     Saint Alexis was a fifth century Roman who left his wealthy family to become a hermit in Syria, living in great poverty while preaching the gospel to the poor.  He eventually returned to Rome in disguise where his parents—without recognizing him—took him into their household as a charity case.  He lived in a closet beneath some stairs—like Harry Potter—where he spent his life in prayer and teaching the faith to poor children.  Only after his death did his family discover his identity.
     One day, while at Mass, Peter heard the gospel text: if you would be perfect: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor—then you will have treasure in heaven—and come, follow me.  (Matthrew 19:21)  Peter came home and gave his wife a choice between his business and his cash.  She wisely chose the business—always choose the goose not the golden egg.  With his capital he endowed his daughters in the reformed convent of Fonterevault in Anjou and gave the remainder of his money to the poor.  Living in voluntary poverty he began preaching the gospel in the streets and markets of Lyons.  This did not delight the Count-Archbishop.  The last thing a wealthy prelate wants is for some layman in voluntary poverty to stand outside his palace talking about Jesus and his love for the poor.  It doesn’t look good when the laity take the gospel more seriously than the bishop.  Hmmm.  We should think about that. 
     In any event, the Archbishop forbad Peter to preach because canon law limited preaching to bishops, priests, and deacons and Peter was “only” a layman.  Lay people can’t preach.  Peter reminded him that Jesus told his disciples: "Take nothing for your journey, neither a staff, nor a bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not even have two tunics apiece" (Luke 9:3), arguing that a poor person had a great commission to preach the gospel than a rich priest or bishop.    That did not go over.  So Peter, in good faith, went to see the Pope, Alexander III.  Alexander was suitably impressed by Peter’s devotion but,  being a canon lawyer, agreed with the Archbishop of Lyons that Peter had no authority to preach.  Peter could not accept that.  He continued to preach and followers gathered around him impressed by his evangelical fervor in both his message and his life.  In 1184 Pope Lucius III excommunicated Peter and his followers.  As excommunicates they were harassed and even persecuted by both Church and civil authorities.  They fled from the cities and towns into the mountain valleys of Savoy and Lombardy where the isolation gave them peace and security. 
The Waldensians maintained the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.  Among Waldo’s followers were a number of priests but, at least as far as we know (and we know very little) there were no bishops.  There is just next to nothing when it comes to records.  It is unclear how sacramental ministry was maintained through this period.  In fact, we know very little about the doctrines of Waldo and his followers other than they maintained Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy.  They were not very sophisticated doctrinally—their emphasis was more on an evangelical fidelity in life than on doctrinal formulas, Catholic or otherwise.  Some sources say that they denied transubstantiation and other Catholic beliefs but it seems that their doctrines were more fringe-catholic than proto-protestant.  In other words, they probably maintained basic Catholic attitudes rather than developed sophisticated Protestant ideas.  However, in the 1520’s and 30’s they were quick to make contact with Calvin, Zwingli, and other Swiss and French reformers.  It is probably at this time, rather than before, that they accepted the ideas that have become the hallmark of the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition.
      Over the centuries the movement never grew dramatically but it did survive.  Over the centuries the Waldensians were subject to bitter persecution by Catholic Kings of France and Dukes of Savoy.  In April 1655 Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, ordered a horrendous massacre of the Waldensians in which countless people of all ages and both sexes were brutally killed.  It inspired Milton to write his sonnet On The Late Massacre in Piedmont. 


Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones;
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all th' Italian fields where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who having learnt thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.


The Catholic Church resented the Waldensians deeply.  Many Italian nationalists converted to Waldensianism during the Risorgimento  (the Italian Unification movement of the 19^th century).  When Pius IX lost Rome to the new Kingdom of Italy, one of the first acts of the anti-papal administration was to build several Waldensian churches in Rome.  (Under papal governance, no Protestant worship had been allowed in the city.)  One of those churches, albeit a small one, was built within site of the Pope’s window at the far end of the Ponte d’Angelo leading from the Castel Sant’Angelo across the Tiber.  It is now the English language Methodist Church in Rome, but a plaque on the façade recounts its history and ties to Garibaldi, the notoriously anti-Catholic leader of the Italian armies in the reunification of Italy.  The prejudice was so strong that as late as the 1950’s the normally urbane Pius XII refused to acknowledge the presence of Waldensian congregations in the city.  That began to change with the election of John XXIII and the convocation of Vatican II to which the Waldensians, like other Protestant Churches, were invited to send a representative.  Today there are approximately 50,000 Waldensians, nine tenths of whom live in Italy. 

Two Churches--To Serve or to Be Served

The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve
Matthew 20:28

I am anxious to move on to the subject of the Gregorian Reform but should finish exploring the need for Reform in the contemporary Church beforehand.  While I love the past and can regale myself—if not others—for hours with historical details, I firmly believe that history is not about the past.  Those interested in the past qua past are not historians but antiquarians.   History, on the other hand, employs the past as a means of discussing and understanding the present and constructing the future.   In the August 1  posting I made a claim that the conflicts over the “correct” interpretation of the Second Vatican Council have left us with a bifurcated Church,  with one branch looking backwards to a world of power and pomp and another looking forward into a new world and a new role for the church in the world.  Avery Dulles wrote in his book The Catholicity of the Church, (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1985.  p. 136):  
... papal primacy in the first millennium was envisaged principally as witness, and was closely linked to what had been called the apostolicity of the Church.  In the second millennium, until Vatican Council II, papal authority was understood as a matter of power, and was linked to the Church’s attribute of unity.  A more recent kind of theology, reflected in the documents of Vatican II, links papal primacy rather with service, and interprets it in relation to the catholicity of the Church.    
      It is an interesting observation and if there is a flaw in Dulles’ analysis it is that applies this three-millennia-schema to papal authority when in fact it actually fits the wider self-understanding not simply of the papacy but of the Church itself.  It was not only the papacy, but the Church itself that understood its apostolic mission to be kergymatic, that is to witness to the Gospel to the ends of the earth. That understanding of mission shifted as the first millennium gave way to the second, the very time of the Gregorian Reform of which we are soon to speak, and not only the papacy but the Church itself saw that its “mark” of unity required to have a universal dominion, i.e. a power that extended over all peoples of all times.  The transition was not a smooth one as well shall see—in fact well into the second millennium there were still voices such as Peter Waldo and Francis of Assisi—who rejected the power model in favor of the witness model.  Nonetheless, the power model won out and the Church fitted its structures to accommodate it.  The papacy picked up the trappings of monarchy, the bishops forged alliances with the princes—indeed were often princes themselves.  The hierarchical nature of the Church became more evident as ecclesial power consolidated itself in the hands of prelates and indeed as the evangelical concept of authority gave way to the notion of “power” in ways that Jesus had explicitly condemned.  The liturgy too evolved in ways that emphasized power and hierarchy.  Ecclesial and social hierarchies mutually collaborated to reinforce each other’s dominance over the working and peasant classes and the Church became hopelessly (though at the time it was seen not as hopeless but as the ideal) entwined with the civil powers to create the ancien regime.  When that regime came tumbling down with the Bastille in 1789 (and the subsequent decade) the Church worked for its reestablishment, despising democracy, trumpeting absolutism and monarchy.  If you recall the various entries in this blog about “Americanism” you will remember that the Holy See really didn’t know how to deal with the unique situation of the American Church with its republican convictions in a world of monarchial Catholicism.   
     And so, according to Dulles, the time has come again to shift the paradigm—this time from power that guarantees the Church to be “one”   (though it never really did) to the catholicity of the Church marked by an upcoming millennium of service.  And here is where the conflict lies.  There are those who cannot let go of the “power” paradigm with its trappings of monarchy and lordly domination.  They love their Tridentine Mass which so clearly displays the hierarchy of persons in ecclesial society.  The Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest based at Gricigliano in Tuscany epitomizes this ecclesiology of obsolescent fantasy and the ostentatious displays of Cardinals Burke, Pell, and Castrillón Hoyos as they travel the world in their ermine trimmed cappae magnae keep alive the hope of those who believe in a world of kings and peasants and hope to see once again throne and altar united and Catholicism supreme throughout the world.  
      There is, on the other hand,  those who recall and regard as prophetic the speech by Bishop Emil deSmedt  in the first session of Vatican II calling for an end to “triumphalism, juridicism, and clericalism”  There are those in the Church today who have a radical vision of a Church putting itself at the service of the poor.  Some, like Mother Teresa, embraced this new vision from a very conservative perspective.  Others, like Dorothy Day came at it from a very left field.  Some, like Archbishop Helder Camara or the American bishop, Bernard Topel just walked away from cumbersome pomp of their office and became witnesses to a truly apostolic Gospel.  Others, like the martyred Oscar Romero had been “party men” who found themselves surprisingly, even against their own expectations, converted to a radical Christianity.  Some were simply hard workers who pitched in and got things done like the four American churchwomen (Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel, and Jean Donovan) martyred in El Salvador.  Some, like theologian Monika Hellwig,  left religious life in order to live the Gospel even more authentically than would have been possible as a religious.  Others—like Dulles himself—found that religious life and the institution of the Church gave them the better platform from which to make their contribution.   
       There are those who find this paradigm shift to be very difficult, indeed threatening, to accept and who do what they can to resist it.  Gamarelli’s stays in business supplying silver buckled shoes and purple stockings for those curial monsignori who are not about to give up the buttons and bows they’ve dreamed of since their seminary days.  Those members of the Roman Curia who are members of or have influence with the Congregation for Bishops try to insure that men named to the episcopacy today are not too inclined to the service model foretold by Dulles.  Certainly in the United States most bishops are quite friendly to be with and usually without much pretense,  but at the same time are corporation men through and through who will not effect any drastic social reformation within the Church or regarding the Church’s position in society.  But the wheels of history, while they do turn slowly, turn nonetheless and eventually one will come to the Chair of Peter who knows that humble service speaks the gospel more convincingly to our contemporary world than do the circumstances of pomp.  Dulles, I have no doubt, is right—service will mark the Church of the third millennium but we are only in the second decade of that epoch and there is much time to come.  The autocracy and the silk gowns alike will one day appear as ridiculous anachronisms  and the battles over models of the Church will be a historical footnote—at least until the paradigm must shift again. 

The Roots of the Reformation II: It's didn't start with Luther



A medieval burgher peeks out frin his
window beneath the pulpit of the
Stefansdom in Vienna--it was this class
that was drawn to the eachings of
Peter Waldo



Martin Luther was not the first voice to speak up against the Institutional Church and go his own way—and take followers with him.  Peter Waldo was one of the wealthiest cloth merchants in Lyons—itself one of the wealthiest cities in Europe.  On day, while hearing mass, he was struck by the Gospel Command: if you be perfect—go, sell all that you have (and you will have treasure in heaven) and come, follow me.  Waldo was probably in his early thirties at this time and, in the late twelfth century that was a somewhat more mature and advanced age than it would be now.  He was a serious man, a man of deep piety and the words struck to his heart.  He paid a priest to make him a translation of the gospels into his native Lyonnais patois—a sort of early medieval French spiced with some Provençal—and he began to study the gospels assiduously.  As he was married and had children—two daughters—the monastic life was not an option for him, but neither did he seem to be attracted to that form of Christian discipleship.  Like many of his religious contemporaries—Stephen of Grandmont (who was actually about two generations ahead of Waldo) or Francis of Assisi (who was actually a generation younger than Waldo), he simply wanted to follow the gospel.   He endowed his daughters as nuns in the reformed abbey of Fonterevault, turned his business over to his wife for her support, separated from her and gave his money to the poor.  He then began to preach in the streets of his native city.

The citizens of Lyons were amazed to see one of their wealthiest burghers standing in the streets of their city wearing shabby clothes and talking about Christian discipleship.  The bishop, in his palace and fine robes, was particularly unhappy.  The clergy in their elegant dress and with a comfortable life style were embarrassed by his zeal.  He was told that since he was not in Orders (a priest or deacon) he had no authority to preach.  Waldo’s response was that as long as he conformed to the Apostolic life—no purse, no sack, no walking stick, no change of clothes—the authority which Jesus gave his apostles in sending them out was sufficient (Matthew 10:9-10).  Well, the Gospel rarely suffices to prove much to the clergy who are impressed only with canon law and perhaps dogmatic theology and Waldo was told not to preach.  So he went to the Pope in 1179.  Alexander III was a canon lawyer.  He was impressed by Waldo’s earnestness and his renunciation of wealth and family for the sake of the Gospel but he was a canon lawyer and like many canon lawyers even today he could not think outside the box.  No, Waldo was not to preach.

Well this brought Peter Waldo to a crisis.  The Church told him he could not preach, the Gospel told him he could, and the Holy Spirit, or what he perceived as the Holy Spirit, told him he must.   About twenty years later another Canon Lawyer pope, Innocent III, would cut the Gordian knot and distinguish between what we call “witnessing” and formal canonical and doctrinal preaching—permitting the former to the laity.  Alas, by that time—as so often in the history of the Church—it was too little too late. 

Waldo and his followers found themselves outcasts from the Church.  The movement spread and actually took root in Lombardy in the areas around Milan.  Milan had a long history of tension with the Institutional Church going back to the Patarini controversies of the eleventh century.  The Milanese were not very tolerant of sloppy standards and thought that if the Church were going to legislate things like celibacy then they should enforce the rules.  Moreover, the Milanese had a long history of class conflict and the working class—mostly tied to the cloth industry (and remember Waldo was a cloth merchant) were among the strongest voices crying out against the wealth of the clergy and laxity of clerical morals. 

Waldo was excommunicated by Lucius III in 1184 but the movement was not condemned as “heretical” until Lateran IV in 1215.  Waldo and his followers were quite orthodox in both their Trinitarian and Christological beliefs.  In regard to their ecclesiology and sacramental theology they reflected many of the popularly held beliefs that were accepted by the Church prior to the extensive doctrinal clarifications of the Fourth Lateran Council which defined there to be seven sacraments, the necessity of auricular confession to a priest, and the precise nature of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.   Three hundred years later,  in the sixteenth century, when the Calvinist Reformation articulated many of the “Reformed Doctrines,” the Waldensians subscribed—more or less—to that theological trend though they would later affiliate with the World Methodist Council of which they are still members today, although not Methodists.   

The real issue was not “orthodoxy” as Waldo and his followers were well within the current boundaries of Catholic faith as it was accepted in the 12^th century.  Years ago I heard a noted Protestant historian say that “the Roman Church will accept almost any deviation from its doctrine as long as it doesn’t challenge the basic authority of the Church itself.”  As a historian, I have seen that time and time again.  Church authorities will rationally discuss any and all doctrines and examine the dogmas of the Church with the most critical scholarship as long as the authority of the magisterium is not brought into question.  Waldo’s challenge to the Church of his day was that he appealed against its authority to Scripture and individual conscience.   What should be noted in the situation behind Waldo and his break with the Church is the antagonism of many people to the wealth and power of the Institutional Church as well as the distance between the hierarchy and many of the clergy, on the one hand, and the working-class faithful on the other.  Peter Waldo had a credibility that many clergy lacked in the eyes of many because of the simplicity and earnestness of his life.  We are going to see this theme repeated in other circles as we build up to the Protestant Reformations.