commandments of God; that they carefully observed the Lord's day; and that the Word of God was purely expounded to them. Parui a Jacobin monk, confessor to the king, testified also as much, who had been joined in commission by the king, with the said master of requests: "His auditis, Rex jurejurando addito inquit, Me et cætero populo meo Catholico meliores illi viri sunt"—which the king having heard, he declared with an oath, that they were more pious, honest, and religious persons than himself, and his catholic subjects. That persecution being stayed, and restrained by Louis XII. they continued unmolested till the reign of Francis I.; and when there was a talk in France, about the reformation in matters of religion, they sent two of their barbes or pastors, George Morel into Dauphiny, and Peter Bourgogne to John Oecolampadius, minister of Basle, to Capito and Martin Bucer at Strasburg, and to Richard Haller at Berne, to confer with them about their religion, and to ask their advice and counsel, about several points, in which they desired to be instructed. The letters which Oecolampadius and Bucer wrote to them, have already been inserted; when we endeavoured to prove, that several eminent persons among the professors of the Reformation have given testimony to their piety and probity. Therefore we will only lay before you those of the said Waldenses. "Salut a Monseignor Oecolampadio. Car moti racontant, a sona a nostras oreillas que aquel que po totas cosas, te a reple in de la Benediction del seo Sperit, coma se cognois per li frue. Emperco nos sen vengu de region lognana a tu de corage ferment alegre, sperant et nos confidant mot que lodict sperit enlumenare nos per tu, et nos esclairare motas cosas lasquals son a nos en dubi, et ferment cubertas per la colpa de la nostra ignoranca, &c." Letter of the Waldenses of Provence to Mr. Oecolampadius." HEALTH BE TO YOU MR. OECOLAMPADIUS: "Whereas several persons have given us to understand, and the report hath reached our ears, that He who is able to do all things, hath filled and replenished you with the blessings of his Holy Spirit, as it conspicuously appears by its fruits-we therefore have recourse to you from a far country, and with stedfast hope and confidence, that the Holy Ghost will enlighten our understanding by your means, and will reveal to us, and let us into the knowledge of several things, wherein we are now doubtful, and which are hid and concealed from us, by reason of our ignorance and remissness; and as we have reason to fear, to the great damage and disadvantage, both of ourselves and the people of whom we are the unworthy teachers. That you may know at once how matters stand with us; we, such as we are, poor instructors of this small people, have undergone for above these four hundred years, most sharp and cruel persecutions, and not without great and signal marks and instances of Christ's favour, as all the faithful can easily testify; for he hath often interposed for the deliverance of this people, when under the harrow of the said cruel and severe persecutions. And therefore we come unto you for advice and consolation, in this our state of weakness." a Vesembec in Oratione de Valdensibus. They wrote another much to the same effect, to Martin Bucer; wherein they say, that they had written to their brethren of Neufchatel, Morat and Berne, concerning the same subject; which shows with what care and diligence the said Waldenses always endeavoured to understand more and more the mysteries of godliness, in order to their salvation: especially since they pitched upon that time, openly to exercise their religious worship before all the world, when the flames of persecution raged throughout all France, against the professors of their religion, who were at that time called Lutherans. The more zealous therefore they were, the more they incurred the spite and fury of their adversaries, and threw themselves into extreme perils and dangers. But as all are not victorious by faith, so there were found some weak and infirm persons amongst them, who following the instigations of the flesh, persuaded themselves, contrary to all reason, that they might innocently bow themselves in those places, where God is offended by idolatry, by preserving their heart pure and undefiled before God. Oecolampadius took occasion thence to write the following letter, to be communicated to those hypocrites, who walk not uprightly before God. Letter written by Oecolampadius to the Waldenses of Provence, who thought they might serve God, by bowing before popish idols, 1530. Oecolampadius desires the grace of God, through Jesus Christ his son, and the Holy Ghost to his well-beloved brethren in Christ, called Waldenses. We understand that the fear of persecution, hath caused you to conceal and dissemble your faith. Now with the heart we believe unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation; but those wh⚫ are afraid to confess Christ before the world, such shall find no reception from God the Father. For our God is truth, without any dissimulation; and as he is a jealous God, he cannot endure that any of his servants should take upon them the yoke of antichrist; for there is no fellowship or communion with Christ and Belial: and if you communicate with infidels, by going to their abominable masses, you will there hear blasphemies against the death and passion of Christ: for when they boast, that by the means of such sacrifices, they make satisfaction to God for the sins both of the living and the dead, what naturally follows thence, but that Jesus Christ hath not made sufficient expiation and satisfaction by his death and passion, and consequently that Christ is no Jesus, that is, no Saviour, and that he died for us in vain? Thus if we participate of that impure table, we declare ourselves to be of one and the same body with the wicked, although it be never so contrary to our wills and inclinations. And when we say amen to their prayers, do we not deny Christ? What death ought we not rather to undergo? What torture and torment ought we not rather to endure? Nay, into what abyss of woe and misery ought we not rather to plunge ourselves, than by our presence to testify our consent to, and approbation of the blasphemies of the wicked? I know that your infirmity is great, but those who have been taught, that they were redeemed by the blood of Christ, ought to be more courageous, and always to fear and stand in awe of him, who can cast both body and soul into hell. And what? Is it enough for us to have preserved this life alone? Shall this be more precious to us than that of Christ? And are we satisfied with having enjoyed the delights and pleasures of this world? Are there not crowns laid before us, and shall we flinch back and recoil? And who will believe, that our faith was ever true and sincere, should it want zeal and ardor in the time of persecution? We beseech the Lord to increase your faith. And certainly it is better for us to lose our lives, than to be conquered and overcome by temptations. And therefore, brethren, we advise you thoroughly to weigh and consider the business; for if it be lawful to conceal our faith, under the tyranny of antichrist, it will be as lawful so to do under that of the Turk, and with Dioclesian, to worship a Jupiter or Venus: it would then have been lawful for Elijah to worship the calf in Bethel and what then will become of our faith towards God? If we do not pay to God that honour which belongs to him, and if our life be nothing else, but hypocrisy and dissimulation, he will spue us up like base and lukewarm wretches. And how shall we glorify the Lord in the midst of sufferings and tribulations, if we deny him? We must not, brethren, look back, when once we have put our hand to the plough: neither must we give ear to the dictates and instigations of our flesh, which moving and enticing us to sin, notwithstanding it endureth many things in this world, yet it suffereth shipwreck in the haven." Those pious instructions and admonitions tended very much to the strengthening and confirmation of the more weak and infirm, and came in good time for those who were soon after harassed and oppressed with several outrages and cruelties; and even one of the messengers who brought the said letters, was put to the necessity of making use of them, Peter Masson, who was taken at Dijon, where he was condemned to die as a Lutheran. George Morel made his escape with his letters and papers, and arrived safe into Provence, where he successfully laboured to re-establish the Waldensian churches. Some member or other of which was daily summoned before the parliament of Aix, and were condemned either to be hanged or burnt, or dismissed with marks of infamy in their forehead; until in the year 1540, when five or six of the principal persons of Merindol being summoned to appear, instead of the rest of the inhabitants, at the instance and importunity of the king's attorney in the parliament of Aix, and at the solicitation of the arch-bishop of Arles, the bishop of Aix and other ecclesiastical persons, sentence was given against them; the most exorbitant, cruel, barbarous and inhuman that was ever pronounced by any parliament; resembling in all respects the edict of king Ahasuerus, given out at the request of Haman against the people of God, as we read in the book of Esther. For not only the persons summoned to appear, were condemned by the said sentence, for their obstinacy to be burnt alive, and their wives and children to be banished, but it was moreover ordered, that the country of Merindol should be laid waste and rendered wholly uninhabitable; the woods cut down, and levelled with the ground, for the compass of two hundred paces round about it: and all this without permitting them to be heard or to speak in their own defence. The king being informed of the rigour and severity of that edict, sent the Sieur du Langeai into Provence to inquire into the manners and religion of the said Waldenses, and having understood that those people had been charged with many things which they were not guilty of, King Francis the I. sent his letters of grace, not only for those who had offended by obstinacy and contumacy, but also for all the rest of the inhabitants of Provence, expressly commanding and enjoining the parliament not to proceed for the future so rigorously in such cases, as they had formerly done. These letters were suppressed. Those that were cited to appear in person, desired leave to answer by a proctor. Francis Chai and William Ormand appeared in the room of the rest of the said people, desiring in their names, that they might be informed wherein their error lay, by the word of God, being ready to renounce and abjure all heresy, if it could be made out and proved to them that they were fallen into any. To that purpose they delivered the confession of their faith in writing, that if they found any thing therein worthy of reproof, when compared with the holy scriptures, they might be instructed what it was they were to abjure; or if the contrary, that they might not any more be disturbed and molested by so many persecutions, for fear, lest supposing that they made war only against men, they should be found to oppose God and his truth, in the persons of those who maintained it. All their requests served only to fret and irritate them the more; for the judges being prepossessed with the opinion, that they were heretics, without taking the pains to search into the truth of it, concluded all in favour of the priests, their accusers. So that when the cardinal of Tournon had by surprise obtained the king's letters for the execution of the said sentence, notwithstanding the pardon and revocation before obtained, it was executed and performed. In the year 1545, the president Opede, governor of Provence, in the absence of the earl of Grignan, deputed for commissioners the president Francis de la Fon, Honore de Tributiis and Bernard Badet, counsellor ; and the advocate Guerin, in the absence of the procurator general, despatched several commissions and proclaimed the war by sound of trumpet, both at Aix and Marseilles. The troops being thus levied, and the five ensigns of the old bands of Piedmont joined with them, the army marched to Pertuis. On the fourteenth day of April, they went to Cadenet, and upon the sixteenth, they began to set fire to the villages of Chabriers, Pepin, la Mothe, and Martin, belonging to the Sieur de Sental, then a child; where the poor labourers were slain without any resistance, their wives and daughters ravished, and women big with child, with little infants, were murdered, without any pity or compassion! Several women had their breasts cut off, after whose death, the poor children were starved to death; the said d'Opede ordering it to be proclaimed, that no body should give them any food or / succour, upon pain of the halter. They ransacked, burnt and pillaged, every thing that they found in those places, and left none alive but those whom they had reserved for the galleys. Upon the seventeenth, Opede ordered the old bands of Piedmont to draw near, and the day following caused the villages of Lormarin, Ville Laure, and Trezemines to be burnt, and at the same time on the other side of the Durance, the Sieur de la Rocque and others of the city of Arles, burnt Gensson and La Rocque. Opede, upon his arrival at Merindol, found no body there but a very ignorant and simple young lad named Morisi Blanc, who had surrendered himself to a soldier, with a promise of two crown pieces for his ransom. Opede finding no body to exercise his rage upon, paid the soldier ten shillings, and so commanding him to be bound to a tree, he caused him to be shot to death with harquebuses; then he commanded the said village, consisting of above two hundred houses, to be pillaged, burnt and razed. There remained the town of Chabriers, surrounded with walls, which they were battering down with cannon-shot. The poor people who were shut up therein, to the number of about sixty peasants, told them that they need not employ so much powder and pains to batter them down, since they were ready to open the gates to them, and also to leave both the place and the country, and go to Geneva, or into Germany, with their wives and children, leaving all their goods behind them, only desiring that a safe pas sage might be granted them. The lord of Chabriers interceded for them, that their cause might be decided by course of justice, without force or violence; but Opede getting within the city, commanded the men to be brought forth into a meadow, where he caused them to be hewed in pieces with swords, these valiant executioners trying their manhood and dexterity, in cutting off of heads, arms and legs. He caused the women to be shut up in a barn full of straw and ordered fire to be put to it, where many pregnant women were burnt. Upon which a soldier moved with pity and compassion, having made a place for them to creep out at, they were repulsed into the fire with pikes and halberds. The rest of those men who were found hidden in the caves were brought into the castle-hall, where they were most barbarously murdered and massacred, in the presence of the said Opede. As to the women and children that were found in the temple, they were exposed to the bands of ruffians of Avignon, who slew about eight hundred persons, without distinction of age or sex. Towards the end of that execution, the Sieur de la Coste, Opede's kinsman, came thither, who intreated him to send him some soldiers, offering to bring all his into Aix, and to make as many breaches in the wall as he pleased. Three companies of foot were sent thither, who pillaged and plundered whatsoever they pleased, burnt part of the village, ravished the women and virgins, and slew some peasants without meeting with any resistance. In the mean time the residue of the inhabitants of Merindol and other places, were pursued by Opede and his army through the rocks and mountains, and forced to great extremities and distress. They begged of him to give them leave to retire into Geneva, with the remainder of their wives and children. He replied that he would send them with their wives and children to dwell with all the devils in the infernal regions, so as to blot out the very memory of them from the face of the earth. King Francis I. being informed of the cruelties practised and executed in pursuance of the said edict, was extremely displeased at it, so that being at the point of death, and pricked with remorse of conscience, especially because the whole had been transacted under his name and authority: being sorry also that he could not before his death inflict any punishment upon the shedders of so much innocent blood, he charged and enjoined his son Henry to revenge it. In pursuance of which, after the decease of his father, he issued out his letters patent, in the year 1549, whereby he took upon himself the examination and decision of the cause of the Waldenses of Provence. The advocate Guerin was hanged because he misinformed the king, when he kept back the revocation of the first retention of the cause of the Merindolians, upon which followed shortly after the execution of the sentence passed by the parliament of Aix. All the rest who were guilty, escaped upon this consideration, that it was not expedient to proceed any farther in favour of the Lutherans at that time. As to the residue, who escaped the fury of this massacre, some of them retired to Geneva, others into Switzerland and Germany, others dwelt near thereabouts, and went thither sometimes by stealth to till and cultivate their lands, and so by little and little returned home to their own habitations, which they built and repaired whensoever they were permitted so to do by favour of the said edicts. They became afterwards the seed, the |