With the twofold object of spreading the pure truth of the gospel, and of finding new and more peaceful settlements, many of them about the close of the fourteenth century left their native valleys and settled in Switzerland, Moravia, Bohemia, various parts of Germany, and probably in England. But the most extensive of these colonies was formed in Calabria in the year 1370. Being peaceable in their manners, industrious in their habits, and strictly moral in all their ways, they soon gained the confidence of their landlords, and the affections of their neighbors. The lords of the country saw their lands enriched and fertilized by the superior husbandry of the new colonists, and granted them many privileges.
They were allowed to invite pastors from the parent church in the Alps, and to introduce schoolmasters for their children. But such temporal and spiritual prosperity, with so much social comfort, was an intolerable grievance to the evil eye of popery. The priests growled and murmured exceedingly. They complained to the landlords that the strangers did not conform to the rites of the Romish church; that they had no masses said for the repose of their dead; that they were heretics. The lords, however, were not disposed to listen to the priests. "They are a very just and honest people," said they, "all know them to be temperate, industrious, and in their words peculiarly decent. Who has ever heard them utter a blasphemous expression? And as they enrich our lands and pay their rents punctually, we see no reason to condemn them."
In every country and in every age the priests of Rome have been the greatest enemies to the pure, simple, religion of the Bible; to education, toleration, light, liberty, and every social improvement. Their power, their interests, their sensuality, and every evil passion, are necessarily exposed and undermined by the introduction of light or the toleration of liberty. But the temporal interests of the lords led them to protect their tenants, and maintain them in their privileges. We have here one of the mysterious passages in divine providence, over which the mind loves to dwell a little. For nearly two hundred years these Nonconformists were allowed to remain and multiply in the districts of Calabria, in the very neighborhood of Rome itself. But at length the pope
listened to the complaints of the priests, and the dark cloud, which had long been gathering over the peaceful plains of Calabria and Apulia, burst upon them with all its fury.