(A.D. 1300 TO A.D. 1500.)
Those primitive Christians, who have received the name of Vaudois, did not inhabit some of the valleys of Piedmont only, but also of France. Of what consequence were the boundaries of the two states to them? Their only desire was to live in tranquillity and in proximity to each other. We find them, from time immemorial, in the profound retreats of the Briançonnais as well as amongst the Alps of Italy.
The valleys which they appear to have most anciently inhabited are, on the side of France, those of Freyssinières, Val Louise, and Barcelonnette; on the side of Piedmont, those of the Po, of Lucerna, and of Angrogna, as also those of Pragela and St. Martin.
Val Louise is a deep and bleak ravine, which descends from Mount Pelvoux to the basin of the Durance. It was formerly called Val Gyron,[2] from the name of the Gyr, a torrent which flows in it. At a later period it was named Val Pute, in Latin Vallis Putoea, because of the great number of hills or puyts which it contains, as the names of its villages attest : Puy St. Vincent, Puy St. Eusebe and Puy St. Martin--puya, in the patois of the country, still signifying an eminence. As to the name Val Louise, it is generally said to have been derived from Louis XII, the father of his people, in commemoration of benefits which he had thought its inhabitants worthy to receive.[3]
They began to be persecuted between 1238 and 1243;[4] and again, a century after, in 1335, we find amongst the current accounts of the Bailiff of Embrun this singular article, Item, for persecuting the Vaudois, eight sols amd thirty deniers of gold;[5] as if the persecution of these Christians of the Alps had then become a regular part of the public service, a constant duty and always attended to. Alas! it was but the expression of that continual and increasing hatred with which Popery, based upon tyranny, has always regarded the gospel, the source of all kinds of liberty.
One of the Vaudois brethren of the valley of Lucerna[6] had purchased from the dauphin, John II, more than five hundred years ago, a good house in the Val Louise, which he had presented to the brethren of that neighbourhood, in order that they might be able to hold their religious meetings in a more becoming manner; but the Archbishop of Embrun caused it to be destroyed in 1348, excommunicating by anticipation anyone who should attempt to rebuild it; and twelve unfortunate Vaudois, who were seized upon that occasion, were subjected to all the tortures which superstition and cruelty could inflict. Conducted to Embrun, in front of the cathedral, in the midst of a great concourse of people, surrounded by fanatical monks, and clothed in yellow robes, upon which were painted red flames, symbolical of those of hell, to which they were deemed devoted; they had an anathema pronounced against them, their heads were shaved, their feet made bare, and ropes passed round their necks; after which, at the sound of the bells which tolled their funeral knell, the Catholic clergy raised a chant of execration and of death. The poor captives were dragged, one after another, to a pile, surrounded with executioners. O saintly souls! not captives but free indeed, filled by the Spirit of the Lord with a courage so strong and so meek, those pictured flames with which your tunics were covered, were the symbol only of those flames in which you were to be consumed! From the midst of death you passed not into the torments prepared for the slaves of the wicked one, but into the blissful serenity of that heaven which is promised to the faithful servants of the Lord, on the wings of your faith and of the prayers of your friends!
The fire was applied to the pile; and the martyrs, who had lived like the primitive Christians, were found able also to die like them. The executioners quickly strangled them; their bodies returned to the dust, of which they were made, and their souls ascended to God who gave them.
When a church is persecuted, we have a sure sign that it is a living church; that its progress in sanctification grates upon the wicked, disquieting and irritating them, and arming against it their selfish passions. The inquisitors even caused the bodies to be disinterred from their graves, of those who were named to them as having died without receiving the aids of the church, because they thought the Redeemer sufficient for them; and these exhumed bodies, after their memory had been cursed, were cast into the flames. Their ashes were dispersed to the four winds; and as fanaticism is always united, in the Church of Rome, with the most sordid interests and passions, all the property which they had left to their heirs was confiscated, insomuch that even the alienations which had taken place since their decease, to the prejudice of the archiepiscopal exchequer, were declared null. It may be imagined what trouble, what disorder, what desolation such animosities must have produced in families: but their most valued possessions were not those which were thus taken from them; and if the love of money leads to crime, the love of the treasures of heaven leads to holiness. All that could be done, however, to daunt simple and courageous hearts was tried upon this occasion. To these sacrilegious ceremonies of violating graves, breaking open coffins and publicly burning their contents, all the people had been convoked, in name of that fearful church which thus pursued its victims even in death; and still more powerfully to strike men's minds by this apparatus of terror, all persons present were adjured with imprecations to regard with abhorrence the doctrines on account of which these corpses had been deprived of the rest of the tomb; but they remained steadfast in their faith even when they beheld the bones of their fathers scattered. This steadfastness was afterwards to be put to sorer trials.
A young inquisitor, named Francis Borelli, obtained from Pope Gregory XI urgent letters addressed to the King of France, to the Count of Savoy, and to the governor of Dauphiny, calling upon them to unite their forces for the purpose of extirpating this inveterate heresy from the Alps. But it was stronger even than kings, for it was the word of God, the gospel of the earliest times, the counsel of eternity. The inquisitor as to religion undertook the charge of the carnal weapons which were intrusted to him; and the persecutions directed by Borelli did not leave the most secluded village out of their net. Like the fabulous robe of the centaur, which consumed the body upon which it was flung, it laid hold of entire families, of the populations of whole districts, of those who were not perfectly submissive everywhere, and very soon the prisons of these vast provinces were not sufficiently spacious to contain the multitude of prisoners. New dungeons were constructed for them, but with such haste that they wanted everything but what was necessary to cause suffering to the captives.
The valley of the Durance, with its side valleys of Le Queyras, Freyssinières, and Val Louise, was more shockingly decimated than any other district. It might have been thought that the plague had passed over it: but it was only the inquisitors!
Borelli commenced by causing all the inhabitants of these valleys to be summoned before him. They did not appear, and he condemned them for not appearing. Thenceforth, always liable to be surprised by his assassin bands, they suffered doubly from their own dangers and from the distress of their families. One was seized on the road, another in the field, another in his house. No one knew, when he embraced his father at worship in the morning, if he would see him again at evening prayer; and the father who sent away his sons to the harvest field could have no confidence that they would eat of that which they went to reap.
We may imagine what painful anxieties must then have succeeded, under the domestic roof, to the peace of former times! For fifteen whole years this work of depopulation, misery, and bloodshed, was carried on in these mountains in name of the Catholic religion. The deadly breath which laid so many low, which ruined so many families, and made so many hearts desolate, was breathed from the Vatican--that dreadful mount, which resembles Olympus only in its false gods, Sinai only in its thunders, and Calvary in bloodshed.
At last, on the 22d of May, 1393, all the churches of Embrun were decked out as for a great solemnity; the Church of Rome had a festival, for blood was to flow. The pagan images, which load her altars with their gilded insensibility, remind us of those idols at whose feet human victims were wont to be immolated. All the clergy, covered with their theatrical ornaments, were congregated in the choir. Double ranks of soldiers kept the people within the nave and surrounded a troop of prisoners. And who were they? Soldiers of Christ who came to contend for the faith. What was their crime? That faith itself. How many are there? Listen! their names are just to be read, and their sentence pronounced. What is that sentence? The same for all; condemned to be burned alive. The list is read, and eighty persons from the valleys of Freyssinières and Argentière are already devoted to the pile. But no inhabitant of the Val Louise has yet been mentioned--that quiet retreat, opening amongst the rocks like a dove's nest--will it be spared? No. Popery does not forget it; her watchword is Death : she can admit of no alternative but to be burned alive upon the earth for resisting her, or to serve her and go to hell. The Vaudois had thought it better to resist, and a new catalogue of one hundred and fifty names, all belonging to the Val Louise is read over in that church, now no longer the house of God, but rather a den of infamy, a cave of hangmen : and after each name there sound, like a funeral knell, those fatal words which crown them all--"condemned to be burned alive!" It was the half of the population of that unhappy valley; and in these lists--which appear to us so execrable, but to the Church of Rome so natural--might sometimes be found, one after another, the names of all the members of the same family. In this horrible solemnity, no fewer than two hundred and thirty victims were devoted at once to the stake, in the name of the God of the gospel. And for what reason? For having been faithful to the gospel.
But the secret of these numerous condemnations is still more shameful than even their cruelty; the property of the condemned was confiscated for behoof of the bishop and the inquisitors. The spoils of these poor people went to provide for the junketings of the clergy.
Beyond all question, unity of faith must at that time have made great progress in that afflicted country; but it was the solitude of the desert that long prevailed in these depopulated mountains, which the inquisitors professed to have reduced to the peace of the church; they should have said to the silence of the tomb. But everything comes to an end upon earth--even fanaticism; as the wolves abandon a charnel-house which they have emptied of its contents, so the inquisition retired from these impoverished valleys.
France was then groaning under the pressure of her wars with the English, Dauphiny being one of the last provinces which remained faithful to the feeble king, Charles VII. A young girl, Joan of Arc, soon reopened to her the gates of Rheims and the path of victory. During this time the Vaudois churches slowly recovered a little. Like the flowers of their own rocks, made hardy by the storms, their energy increased in the midst of dangers; and as the winds bear the fragrance of flowers to a distance, so the gale of persecution propagated their evangelical faith. Thus the influence of these churches increased by reason of their very sufferings. The violent and ferocious animosity of the Popish paganism equally increased. Such was the state of things when the close of the 15th century approached, that epoch at which, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, Innocent VIII opened against the Vaudois a crusade of extermination.
It was in the month of June, 1488, that the papal legate, Albert Cattanée, having attempted in vain to subjugate the valleys of Piedmont, passed into France by Mount Genèvre, where he hanged eighteen of the poor people whom he had made prisoners. He descended to Briançon, a town which had been described to him as being then particularly infested with heresy; thence he marched upon Freyssinières, whose inhabitants, few in number and ill provided with arms, retired to the rock which rises above the church, but the troops surrounded it and made them prisoners.
Success inspiring these fanatical soldiers with courage, or rather with ferocity, they invaded, with great shouts, the deep ravine of Val Louise. The Vaudois, terrified and perceiving that they could make no resistance to forces twenty times their number, abandoned their poor dwellings, set the old people and the children as hastily as possible upon their rustic beasts, drove their flocks before them, and carrying with them what they could of provisions and domestic utensils, bade a last adieu to the homes in which they were born, and retired, praying to God and singing hymns, to the steep slopes of Mount Pelvoux. This giant of the Alps, which has been called the Visol of the Briançonnais, rises to the height of more than 6000 feet above their valley. At about a third part of this elevation there opens in the mountain an immense cavern, called Aigue Fraide, or Ailfrède, because of copious springs of water, fed by the snows, which continually flow from it. A kind of platform, to which there is no possibility of mounting but by fearful precipices, extends to the opening of the cavern, whose majestic vault very soon contracts into a narrow passage, and expands again into an immense irregular hall. Such was the asylum which the Vaudois had chosen. In the farthest part of the grotto they placed their women, children, and old men; the flocks were disposed of in the lateral apartments of the rock; the strong men placed themselves at the entrance, after they had built up the approach to it, filled the path with rocks, and committed themselves to the care of God. Cattanée says that they had carried with them victuals enough to maintain themselves and their families for more than two years. All their precautions were taken, their intrenchments could not be forced; what had they to fear?
Their danger was in the very confidence which these human precautions had inspired. Reposing securely in the means of defence which they had provided for themselves, they forgot too much that it is faith alone which will remove mountains and deliver from the greatest perils.
Cattanée had with him a bold and experienced commander, named La Palud. This captain, seeing that it was impossible to force the entrance of the grotto on the side by which the Vaudois had approached it, because of the intrenchments by which they had sheltered themselves, redescended into the valley, gathered together all the ropes which could be procured, and once more climbed the Pelvoux, promising to his soldiers a complete victory. Wheeling round the rocks, they clambered up the steep slope, and fixing cords above the opening of the cavern, slid down in full equipment right in front of the Vaudois. If the latter had put more confidence in the protection of God than in that of their intrenchments, they would not have been seized with fear when they saw these prove insuficient. Nothing could have been more easy or natural than to cut the ropes by which they saw their enemies descend, or to kill them in succession as they arrived within reach of their weapons, or to hurl them into the abyss which the platform overhung; before they had time to act upon the offensive. But a panic seized the unfortunate Vaudois, and in their distraction they precipitated themselves amongst the rocks. La Palud made a frightful slaughter of those who attempted any resistance; and not daring to enter into in the depths of the cave from which he saw these terror-stricken people issue, he heaped up at the entrance all the wood which he could find; the crusaders set it on fire, and all who attempted to come out were consumed by the flames or died by the edge of the sword. When the fire was extinguished there were found, says Chorier, under the vaults of that cavern, 400 little children smothered in their cradles, or in the arms of their mothers. There perished upon this occasion, he adds, more than 3000 Vaudois. It was the whole population of Val Louise. Cattanée distributed the property of these unfortunates amongst the vagabonds who accompanied him; and never since that time has the Vaudois Church arisen again from her ashes in these blood-stained valleys.
Thus the very men whom prayer made victorious in the most critical moments, were utterly destroyed in circumstances the most favourable for defence, in consequence of putting too much confidence in themselves. And how many may we every day see fall in consequence of distrusting themselves too little, which is, in fact, not trusting in God as they ought!
This terrible example shown to the other Vaudois churches, plunged them into grief, but led them also to prayer; and thereby their spiritual strength was renewed, so that, if some still died beneath the palms of martyrdom, the mother church made a successful resistance, holding up the standard of the cross.
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