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The Waldensians, for that is how they came to be known whether they liked it or not, and that is the name that lasted, gradually became marginalised before being openly condemned. The main obstacle, as might be expected, was not so much their poverty but their preaching. The stakes were high, as time would show. To be more precise, as I mentioned above, and as was borne out by the work of André Vauchez devoted to medieval sainthood, the Roman hierarchy had yet to settle the question of lay preaching: could laymen preach, or were clerics alone entitled to assume this public function? When Jean de Belles Mains succeeded Guichard at the episcopal see, the situation changed course. The new bishop was partial to the chapter to whom he owed his election. Less partial to clerical reform, he wished to bring the Waldensians back into line. Henceforth no one could preach in a diocese except on the authority of the bishop. A double refusal led directly to a crisis-point: the bishop refused to let the Waldensians continue preaching, while they refused to listen, choosing to pursue their mission, thereby showing that they considered their vocation more important than the duty to obey. In 1184, the pope Lucius III declared them “schismatic” for having usurped the ministry of preaching without a mission, which the emperor Frederick Barberossa confirmed. The Waldensians were henceforth officially excommunicated, rejected by the Christian community. We should note, however, that at this point they were being condemned for disobedience towards the ecclesiastical authorities, not for deviation from doctrine.
This situation went on for the next thirty years or so, both stable and ambiguous. The preachers were marginalised, having been condemned, which paradoxically encouraged them to expand outside the diocese of Lyons, yet at the same time they were popular, for the simple lives they led were in keeping with their word, which won them the approval of their followers. While there are no documents shedding light on what really took place, beyond the fact that they gradually spread towards Lorraine, Alsace, Italy and the south-west of France, relations between the Waldensians and the ecclesiastical authorities would seem to have gone on in the same way, never improving, never deteriorating. As for the internal evolution of the Waldensian community, their expansion could not fail, sooner or later, to create problems, and this indeed seems to be the case from 1200, although we have no need to elaborate on this here. Suffice it to say that the situation was curious, to say the least, for we find excommunicated preachers who are neither falling back in line, nor are they being checked and certainly not wiped out. Things became stranger still after the condemnation which occurred some fifteen years later.
It was during the fourth Lateran council in Rome in 1215 that all those found preaching without express authorisation of the apostolic see or the bishop were condemned; there is no doubting that the Poor of Lyons were included in the mass of those who, while “forbidden or not sent out to do so”, had been claiming the right to preach. Furthermore, although the Waldensians are not mentioned by name, just as no others are, canon 3, entitled De haereticis [Of Heretics] does condemn all those who had already been found guilty in the rescript of 1184, whose general structure and terms it takes up. This meant the Waldensians were now condemned not just as schismatics but as heretics, in other words deviating from the faith.
Divergences appeared and spread within the Waldensian community, although there is little detail to go by. Certain groups, the “Poor Catholics”, returned to the embrace of Rome, while others opted for increasingly radical positions on the question of the baptism of children, the Eucharist and purgatory. Thus, little by little, the course of those referred to by their adversaries under the umbrellaterm “Waldensians” irrespective of the various divergences in their opinions, led them away from the path of Rome. The Waldensians thus became heretics, answerable to the Inquisition, an exceptional jurisdiction newly created to stamp out heresies. Although the Waldensians had long been tolerated, for they had proved particularly efficient in the fight against the Cathars in the south-west of France, the first judicial procedures against them, of which we have trace, began in about 1230, once the Cathar issue had been settled by the treaty of Meaux-Paris in 1229.
The condemnation issued by Rome, and more importantly no doubt, the first legal pursuits against the Waldensians, led to major and lasting changes in the community of the Poor of Lyons. Indeed, hounded by lay and religious authorities alike, although not consistently nor with the same conviction in different places, they had to adapt to this situation having chosen not to return to Rome, but also not to finish as martyrs but rather to ensure the survival of their dissent which they deemed the pure word of the Gospel countering the deviations taken by Rome. No document has survived which expresses this double position which they may well have adopted solemnly, as a community; we can only surmise that this was the case, judging by practices and attitudes the Waldensians came to favour. Adapting to survive meant first and foremost dispersing, as members scattered. Quite rapidly, in fact, the first groups of preachers set out from Lyons into the surrounding area and then towards the south-west, but not as a result of constraint. In this region, they had acquired a reputation as efficient preachers against the Cathars alongside the Roman authorities. From the early thirteenth century, Waldensians had settled in the Quercy and Albigeois regions. In Montauban, for example, of the 200 heretics cited in 1241, 80 of them, or 40%, were Waldensians. In the same era, the Waldensians had spread to reach northern Italy, Burgundy, and Lotharingia, on the fringes of Germanic Europe. Once the Cathar question had been settled, and the Waldensian “witch-hunt” had begun, it was towards the east that the Waldensians began setting out.
