Cattaneo’s first step was moderate enough: like the archbishop before him, he summoned the inhabitants of the valleys to give themselves up, to accept absolution, to be reconciled with the Church. But when he in his turn met with no response, he pressed for a military invasion of the valleys where the Waldensians had their stronghold; and his request was granted. By order of the parlement of Grenoble, and under the command of the lieutenant of the governor of Dauphiné, an expeditionary force set out in March 1488. Those who took part in it could look forward both to a plenary indulgence — which was promised by the pope — and to a share in the property of the heretics; and they were correspondingly zealous. The Waldensians were forced back to the icy mountain peaks, where after a gallant resistance they were overwhelmed. Scores were put to the sword or thrown from the rocks.
Many more were taken prisoner or gave themselves up; and while a few were burned as impenitent or relapsed heretics, the majority were received into the Church. Some fifty of these were interrogated by Cattaneo with the assistance of secular lawyers, including the chief magistrate of Briançon. Doctrinally these Waldensians turned out to be as close to Catholicism as their precursors two and three centuries earlier — professing all the principal Catholic dogmas, including the real presence in the Eucharist, and rejecting only the hierarchy of the Roman Church. Nevertheless the old slanders against the sect not only persisted but were reinforced. Already before the expedition some captured Waldensians, under interrogation, had talked of nocturnal orgies; and some amongst the new batch of prisoners spoke in similar vein.(19) While many indignantly denied that such things occurred at all, others were more forthcoming. In particular, they had much to say about the Waldensian preachers, or “barbes” (so called from the Piedmontese word for “uncle”). They stated that the “barbe” would commonly launch the orgy by crying out, “Let him who has, have. Let him who holds, hold. Whoever puts the light out shall have life eternal.”(20) This curious notion was not new — Antonio Galosna had produced it a century earlier — and its factual basis is known: at the end of a Waldensian service the preacher would say, “Let him who has grasped (the meaning), retain it”; after which the congregation would meditate for a few minutes in darkness before dispersing.(21)
The “barbes” were simple, uneducated men, mostly of Italian origin. They functioned not as resident priests but — like Catholic friars — as itinerant preachers. Disguised as merchants or pedlars, they were constantly on the move and covered vast distances on foot. It was a dangerous, nerve-racking existence; and though the Waldensian communities sheltered them loyally, from time to time one of them would be captured. It seems that four perished at Grenoble in 1492;(22) and in the same year two more were caught in the mountains north of Briançon. One of these, an Italian from Spoleto called Francis of Girundino, otherwise known as the “barbe” Martin, was tried at Oulx (now on the Italian side of the frontier). His interrogation, which was carried out not by an inquisitor but by a canon of the abbey of Oulx, assisted by a councillor of the governor of Dauphiné and the chief magistrate of Embrun, provided new and picturesque details concerning the imaginary orgies.(23)
Now it appeared that the orgy or “synagogue”** was held only once a year, always in a different region; but it was very incestuous indeed. If the presiding “barbe” was not a local man, he had to withdraw after delivering his sermon, before the orgy began; for only a local man would have relatives available to mate with. One is reminded of Tertullian’s ironic comment some thirteen centuries earlier: “Be sure to bring your mother and sister. But what if... the convert has none? I suppose you cannot become a regular Christian if you have neither mother nor sister?” Martin added that a male child conceived at this incestuous orgy was regarded as pre-eminently suited to become a “barbe” in due course. As for Martin’s companion, the “barbe” Pietro de Jacopo, he was interrogated separately, by the episcopal commissary at Valence. He agreed about the orgies — and added that at these gatherings the Waldensians worshipped an idol called Bacchus!
Incredibly, the very transcript of Martin’s interrogation contains a phrase which makes nonsense of the whole story: in the Waldensian view the Catholic clergy, from the pope downwards, were no true clergy precisely because they broke their vows of virginity and chastity. Other prisoners, interrogated in other places, are recorded as maintaining that the sacrament of matrimony is to be faithfully and firmly kept. And indeed the moral strictness of the Waldensians, even at this late stage, is beyond all doubt.
The statements about orgies nevertheless served their purpose. Widely publicized, they brought the Waldensians into general disrepute, so that the sectarians came to be regarded as the worst enemies of society, against whom fresh pursuits could be launched with general approval. Moreover, as so often, economic motives contributed to the dynamism of the persecution. A Waldensian who recanted and was absolved could still see anything up to a third of his property confiscated; a Waldensian who refused to recant was either burned or imprisoned for life — and in either case all his property was confiscated. The total confiscations were massive — in some valleys the land confiscated amounted to a third of all taxable land. It is not surprising that the beneficiaries — the archbishop of Embrun in the first place, but also the various local lords — did everything possible to keep their gains.(24)
Viewed from Paris things looked different. When Louis XII succeeded to the throne in 1499 he was not convinced that small groups of Waldensians in remote Alpine valleys really constituted a threat to French society; and with the pope’s agreement he sent his own confessor, the bishop of Sisteron, Laurent Bureau, to carry out an enquiry on the spot. It was the beginning of a gradual rehabilitation. In 1509 the grand council, sitting in Paris, annulled all the sentences passed by the late archbishop Jean Bade, the inquisitor Alberto Cattaneo and his successor Francois Plouvier, and restored all confiscated properties to the original owners or their heirs. This came about not because the persecuted were able to prove their orthodoxy — most of them certainly were Waldensians, not Catholics — but because the king had an overriding interest in establishing peace and unity within the kingdom, and was unimpressed by an inquisitorial institution which had lost almost all the power and prestige it had once possessed. Thereafter no more was heard of Waldensian “synagogues”.
For at least two and a half centuries tales of promiscuous and incestuous orgies and of Devil-worship had pursued this purely — indeed naively — Christian sect. Yet it so happens that in no single instance can one fill in all the details — who first voiced the charges, what sources he drew on, how much pressure was needed to obtain substantiation. However, the lacuna can be filled: one has only to examine the case of another group of poverty-loving Christians, the Fraticelli “de opinione” in fourteenth-century Italy.
In 1466 a score of Fraticelli “de opinione” were subjected to inquisitorial investigation in the papal prison in Rome, the Castel Sant’ Angelo.(25) Some of the accused made horrifying confessions; and down to the present day there have been serious and eminent historians, including specialists in this particular field, who have accepted these confessions at their face value.(26) For some five centuries, a cloud has hung over the reputation of the Fraticelli. In the following pages the case will be investigated afresh.