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Waldo began to preach on the streets of Lyon in 1173. He was a wealthy merchant and decided to give up all his wordly possesions, he was sick of his own affluence, that he had so much more than those around him. He went through the streets throwing his money away and decided to become a wandering preacher who would beg for a living. He began to attract a following. Waldo had philosophy very similair to Francis of Assisi.
Preaching required official permission which he was unable to secure from the Bishop in Lyon and so in 1179 he met with the Pope at the Third Council of the Lateran and asked for permission to preach, and permission was denied. He continued to preach and by the early 1180s he and his followers were excommunicated and forced from Lyon. The Catholic church declared them heretics - the group's principle error was "contempt for ecclesiasticalEcclesiastical means pertaining to the Church (especially Christianity) as an organized body of believers and clergy, with a stress on its juridical and institutional structure. Also see Ecclesiology. power" - that they dared to teach and preach outside of the control of the clergy "without divine inspiration". They were also accused of the ignorant teaching of "innumerable errors" and condemned for translating parts of the BibleThe Bible (From Greek βιβλια biblia meaning "books", which in turn is derived from βυβλος byblos meaning "papyrus", from the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos which exported papyrus) into vernacularThis article treats vernacular language; see also vernacular architecture. The vernacular is the standard native language of a country or locality. In previous centuries scholarly work in western Europe was typically written in Latin, so the unusual works. None of the charges were heretical, nothing was against what the Roman Church believed, but rather because it went against the authority of the Roman Church rules.
Waldo and his followers developed a system where they would go from town to town and meet secretly with small groups of Waldensians. There they would confess sins and hold service. A traveling Waldensian preacher was known as a barba and could be either man or woman. (The idea of a female preacher was novel, almost revolutionary in and of itself, for the era.) The group would shelter and house the barba and help make arrangements to move on to the next town in secret.
The members of the group were declared schismatics in 1184Events Births Deaths Heads of states England Henry II Curt Mantle, King of England (reigned 1154 1189). France Philippe II, Auguste King of France (reigned from 1180 to 1223). in France and heretics more widely in 1215Events June 15 King John of England forced to put his seal to Magna Carta, outlining the rights of landowning men (nobles and knights) and restricts the king's power. August King John rejects Magna Carta leading to English civil war in the First Barons' W by the Fourth Council of the LateranThe Fourth Council of the Lateran was summoned by Pope Innocent III with his Bull of April 19, 1213. The assembly took place in November, 1215. It was the 12th ecumenical council and is sometimes called "the General Council of Lateran" due to the attendan's anathema. The rejection by the Church radicalized the movement, in terms of ideology the Waldensians became more obviously anti-Catholic - rejecting the authority of the clergy, declaring any oathAn oath is either a promise or a statement of fact calling upon something or someone that the oath maker considers sacred, usually a god, as a witness to the binding nature of the promise or the truth of the statement of fact. To swear is to take an oath. to be a sin, claiming anyone could preach and that the Bible alone was all that was needed for salvation, they also rejected the concept of purgatoryIn Roman Catholic theology, Purgatory is a place of cleansing after the particular judgment. One of the first documents to mention purgatorium was a letter from the Benedictine Nicholas of Saint Albans to the Cistercian Peter of Celle in 1176 (Haggh, 1997 and the idea of relics and icons.
Much of what is known about the Waldensians comes from reports from Reinerius Saccho (died 1259), a former Waldensian who turned state's evidence and wrote some reports for the Inquisition, Summa de Catharis et Pauperibus de Lugduno "Of the Sects of Modern Heretics" (1254) (first rediscovered and printed in S. R. Maitland, Facts and Documents Illustrative of the History, Doctrine, and Rites of the Ancient Albigenses and Waldenses, (London, 1832). Reinerius' lists of their tenets reveals that the heirs of Waldo considered themselves the true representatives of the apostolic Christian church, that statues and decorations were superfluous, that their obedience was to God, not to prelates, of whom the pope was the chief source of errors, and that no one is greater than another in the church, following Matthew 23: "All of you are brethren." The Waldensians believed that the Pope and bishops were guilty of homicides. They believed that the land and its people should not be divided up, that bishops and abbots ought not to have royal rights and that the clergy should not own possessions. They believed that none of the sacraments, including marriage, were of any effect.
They absorbed a number of other groups including the Humiliati and had their own internal split and reformation with the Lombards. Because the Cathars had also been condemened around the same time, the Waldensians became associated with them as part of the target for the Albigensian Crusade from 1208. However the Waldensians and Cathars were not similar in their core beliefs. Waldo possibly died around this time, possibly in Germany, but he was never captured and his fate uncertain.
As early as the twelfth century, the Waldensians were granted refuge in Piedmont by the Count of Savoy. While the House of Savoy itself remained strongly Roman Catholic, this gesture angered the Papacy. While the Holy See might be willing to tolerate the continued presence of large Muslim populations in the Normans' Kingdom of Sicily, it was less than willing to accept a new Christian sect in Piedmont.
The Albigensians and other Bogomil heretics were apparently believers in Dualism and denied the third person of the Holy Trinity. The Waldensians did not. However, both the Waldensians and Albigensians were folk movements that involved public preaching. In the thirteenth century, there was a substantial enough problem with clerical literacy that preaching to the laity in churches was hampered. Therefore, the field was somewhat clear for peripatetic evangelism of these heretical and protesting movements. At the same time, the lack of ecclesiastical structure and training meant that each sect could be at wide variance with others. The Waldensians maintained greater coherence than the Cathars by virtue of its spiritual leader.
Unlike the Cathars, the Waldensians survived elsewhere in Europe, remaining strong in France and also having a presence in northern Italy, southern Germany and down into central Europe. Particular efforts against the movement began in the 1230s with the Inquisition seeking the leaders of the movement, and the Church creating a new order of Poor Catholics that had some success in drawing back heretics. The movement had been almost completely suppressed in southern France within twenty years but the persecution lasted into the 14th century.
A final crusade against the Waldensians was declared in 1487, but Papal representatives continued to devastate towns and villages into the mid 16th century as the Waldensians became absorbed into the wider Protestant Reformation.