Our history naturally reverts to the fatal crusade against the Albigenses in the thirteenth century. That once beautiful region, in some respects the richest and most civilized province in the spiritual empire of St. Peter, we have "seen depopulated and desolated. The peaceful inhabitants had presumed to question the dogmas of the Vatican and the authority of the priesthood, which was sin unpardonable against the majesty of Rome. The edicts of Innocent, the sword of De Montfort, the fires of Arnold, the treachery of Fouquet, and the Inquisition of Dominic, did their terrible work. But the combined powers of Europe, with fire and sword and suffocating dungeons, failed to touch the root of that which Innocent called heresy. The divine, vital principle of Christianity was far, far beyond his reach. The sword may hew down the branches, and the fire may consume them; but the living root is in the truth and grace of God, which can never fail. The spirit of Christianity is stronger than the sword of the persecutor, and the arm on which faith leans is more powerful than the combined forces of earth and hell. The weakness of the papacy was manifested in its apparent triumphs in Languedoc. The heretics, as Jezebel thought, had been drowned in blood; but a bleeding remnant was spared, in the good providence of our God, to bear testimony in every part of Europe to the injustice, the cruelties, and the spiritual despotism of papal Rome.
The exiles from the south of France who had escaped the sword went forth to the utmost limits of Christendom preaching the doctrines of the cross, and testifying with holy indignation against the falsehoods and corruptions of the dominant church. In different parts of France, in Germany, Hungary, and the neighboring regions, the sectaries appeared in great numbers. And the popes found many of the kings little inclined to exert themselves for the suppression of the Cathari, as they were called, or the various religious sects. It is also more than probable that many of the persecuted about this time sought a place of rest in the quiet valleys of Piedmont. The more secluded of these regions appear to have been a secure asylum for the witnesses of God until the fourteenth century. Though known to Claudius, bishop of Turin, in the ninth century, they seem to have escaped notoriety and conflict till about the thirteenth, if not later. But as the darkness of popery thickened around them, the brightness of their example became more seen and felt. Calumnies were invented, and the godly Waldenses were singled out as reprobate schismatics. They were spread over the valleys on both sides of the Cottian Alps—Dauphiny on the French side, and Piedmont on the Italian side, of the mountains.
From time immemorial these Alpine regions had been inhabited by a race of Christians who continued the same from age to age; who never acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff, and who had been through all periods of ecclesiastical history, a pure branch of the apostolic church. But their peaceful retreats, their happy homes, their simple worship, and their industrial habits, were soon to be invaded and desolated by the Roman inquisitors. The tragedy begins. From the fifteenth to the present century, their history is a narrative of sanguinary struggles for existence, with few intervals of repose. They were often driven to desperation, yet the church of the valleys lived through it all. Like the flaming bush, it has burned but has not been consumed. Its stronghold was not merely the Alpine mountains, but the truth of the living God.