About the year 1560, Pope Pius IV. was seized with a fit of great zeal against the spread of heresy. It was reported to have taken deep root in several parts of Italy, besides the valleys of Piedmont. The subalpine communities and all infected districts were placed under papal interdicts. Another crusade was preached, and great preparations made for the complete extermination of the heretics. The Spanish Viceroy of Naples, commanding the troops in person, and assisted by an inquisitor and a number of monks, entered the Waldensian settlements in Calabria. Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, marched with an armed force on Piedmont; and the French King on Dauphiny. "The poor men of the valleys," with their wives and children, now saw themselves exposed to the hostile power of the French King on the one side of the Alps, and to that of the Duke of Savoy on the other. The industrious tillers of the ground in Calabria, with their ministers, schoolmasters, and families, were surrounded by the troops of the Spanish Viceroy.
Thus prepared for the slaughter of the saints, the Waldenses were commanded to banish their ministers and schoolmasters, to abstain from the exercise of their own forms of worship, and to attend the services of the Romish church. They nobly refused. Orders were now given for confiscation, imprisonment, and death. The merciless sword of persecution was openly unsheathed and did not return to its scabbard for more than a hundred years. The awful work of blood and carnage began. Two companies of soldiers, headed by the pope's agents, went on slaying, burning, ravaging the defenseless peasantry in Calabria, until the work of extermination was nearly completed. A remnant cried for mercy, for their wives and children, promising to leave the country and never to return; but the inquisitors and monks knew not how to show mercy. The most barbarous cruelties were inflicted on many, the whole apparatus of pagan persecutions was revived, until the Protestants were exterminated in the south of Italy. One of their chief ministers, Lewis Paschal, who affirmed that the pope was antichrist, was conveyed to Rome, where he was burned alive, in the presence of Pius IV., that he might feast his eyes with the sight of a heretic in the flames. But the piety and the sufferings of Paschal excited the pity and the admiration of the spectators.
Hundreds of Waldenses in the valleys perished on the scaffold, or at the stake; the villages swarmed with ruffians, who, in the name of officers of justice, plundered the helpless inhabitants, and haled them to prison, until the dungeons were choked with victims. The plains were deserted; the women, children, feeble, and aged, were sent for refuge to the heights of the mountains, to the rocks and the forests. The men, taking advantage of the nature of the country, determined on resistance. Every man and boy that could handle a weapon were formed into small brigades, and so planted as to defend themselves against the troops. The duke was not much inclined to carry on such a guerilla warfare, and shortly withdrew his soldiers; but only for a little while. According to ancient treaties, the men of the valleys had certain rights and privileges, which their sovereigns were reluctant to violate, but too often yielded to the importunity and the misrepresentations of the Romish hierarchy. From the following dates the reader will see how brief were their periods of rest:—"The years 1565, 1573, 1581, 1583, and the period between 1591 and 1594, are memorable as dates of religious and civil conflict. But never did the majesty of truth and innocence stand out more brightly to view than during the tempests of persecution which raged at intervals for the next hundred years and more."
The testimony of Dr. Beattie, who visited the Protestant valleys of Piedmont, Dauphiny, and the Ban de la Roche, about forty years ago, is to the same effect. "But the fierceness of the persecution seemed only to increase the measure of their fortitude.... Although marked as the victims of indiscriminate massacre, of lawless plunder, of torture, extortion, and famine; their resolution to persevere in the truth remained unshaken. Every punishment that cruelty could invent, or the sword inflict, had expended its fury in vain; nothing could subvert their faith or subdue their courage. In defense of their natural rights as men—in support of their insulted creed as members of the primitive church -in resistance of those exterminating edicts which made their homes desolate, and deluged their altars with blood—the Waldenses exhibited a spectacle of fortitude and endurance that has no parallel in history."
Having brought down the history of the witnesses to the sixteenth century, we will now leave them, in the hope of meeting them again, when we reach that period in our general history.
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