From a similarity of names, Peter Valdo, or Waldo, the reformer of Lyons, has frequently been spoken of as the first founder of the Waldensian sect. This we think a mistake, but one easily made, and one which the Romanists eagerly improved as an argument against their antiquity, and one which has been adopted by most of the general histories. But Mr. Elliot, in his "Hore Apocalypticae," and those mentioned in the note above, have examined the question with great patience and research, and, we believe, clearly established the conclusion of the orthodoxy and the antiquity of the "men of the valleys."*
At the same time Peter Waldo is worthy of all praise for his self-denying services in the cause of truth, and against error. His piety, zeal, and courage were most conspicuous at a period when the papal hierarchy began to persecute all who questioned its authority and infallibility. He was no doubt raised up of God just at that time to give greater distinctness to the testimony of the Alpine peasants. The simplicity of their worship, and the scene of their tranquility, appear not to have excited the jealousy of their neighbors or the suspicion of the universal church till about this time. It happened, under the hand of God, in this way.
About the year 1160 the practices of idolatry which accompanied the doctrine of transubstantiation deeply impressed Peter with an alarming sense of the wickedness of the times, and the dangerous corruptions of the papacy. This led to the true conversion of his soul to God. From that moment he was devoted to His service and His glory. He abandoned his mercantile occupations, and distributed his wealth to the poor, in imitation of the early disciples. Numbers gathered around him; he felt the need of instruction in the things of God; where was it to be found? He became deeply desirous to understand the Gospels which he had been accustomed to hear in church. He employed two ecclesiastics to translate them into the native tongue, with some other books of scripture, and some passages of the Fathers. This was Waldo's greatest work, for which he deserves the best thanks of posterity. The scriptures at that time were in a great measure a sealed book in Christendom, being only in the Latin tongue. The followers of Waldo, being thus provided with copies of the scriptures in their own tongue, they were able to explain to the people that they were not advancing doctrines of their own, but a pure faith as it really existed in the Bible. After the manner of the seventy, he sent out his disciples, two by two, into the neighboring villages to preach the gospel.
This awoke the thunders of the Vatican. As long as Waldo and his friends confined themselves to their own protest against the innovations, the hierarchy did not seriously molest them; but as soon as they employed that dreaded engine, the scriptures in the vulgar tongue, they were immediately anathematized and excommunicated. As yet they contemplated no secession from the church, but only its reformation. They persisted in preaching the glorious gospel of the grace of God to lost sinners: an interdict was issued against them by the Archbishop of Lyons. Waldo resolutely replied, "We must obey God rather than man." From that time "the poor men of Lyons," as they were called, were branded by the Clergy with obloquy and contempt as heretics. For three years after his first condemnation, which took place in 1172, Waldo contrived to remain concealed in the city of Lyons or its neighborhood, but Pope Alexander the Third fulminated his threats and terrors so effectually, not only against Waldo, but against all who should dare to hold the slightest communication with the reformer, that, for his friends' sake, he fled from Lyons, and became a wanderer for the rest of his life. After seeking a shelter in several places, but finding a resting-place in none, he passed from among the Bohemian mountaineers, the ancestors of Huss and Jerome, into his eternal rest about the year 1179.