to hold up their heads and to plead the validity of treaties. Eight hundred thousand souls, separatists from the Roman Church, formed a population professing the faith of the reformed Church, in the Alpine provinces of Pinerolo, Salluzzo, Dauphiné and Provence, in the year 1550. The 20,000 Vaudois, are the only remnant that is left! Up to a certain period, (the persecution of 1655,) there were villages and hamlets in the valleys where no admixture of Roman Catholic families had ever been known. The whole population were professors of the primitive religion. In this, too, the book of edicts confirms the statements of the Vaudois historians, and the voice of tradition. "Secondly, His Royal Highness consents, that in those places only where all the inhabitants are heretics, dove sono tutti heretici," they may continue to elect syndics, procurators, notaries, &c. as they have done hitherto." Edict of March 1602 1. Another order of the year 1646, gives directions to have mass celebrated even in those communes where there are no Catholics 2. In this manner the very ordinances, which were issued to keep the Vaudois in check, seem to bear witness to the fact, that certain districts had been peopled immemorially by a race, who never were in communion with the Roman Church, and which were exempt even from the presence of Romanists.

1 Raccolta degl' Editti. p. 18.

2 Ibid.

P. 80.

From these inferential arguments in support of the antiquity of the Waldenses, I proceed to notice the direct testimony of History in favour of my hypothesis.

SECTION III.

THE TESTIMONY OF HISTORY, GATHERED FROM THE ADVERSARIES OF THE WALDENSES, OR FROM INDIFFERENT EARLY WRITERS.

Either the pages of history have not been enriched by any Waldensian authors of a very early date, or if there were any annals written by native chroniclers, previously to the year 1000, they have accidentally perished amidst the devastations committed in the valleys, or they have been purposely destroyed by their enemies. I am inclined to adopt the latter opinion, for these reasons. It is far from improbable, that the monks Belvidere and Rorenco, who made their inquisitorial visits to the valleys, and delivered official reports, touching the antiquity of the Waldensian Church, had more than tradition for their authority, when they agreed in stating that "heretics had been found at all periods of history in the valley of Angrogna," and that "nothing certain could be said of the Waldenses, furthermore than that they were not a new sect

The

in the ninth and tenth centuries." It is very likely that they had access to documents, which they did not permit the world to hear of any more. suspicion is confirmed by that which Claude Seissel, Archbishop of Turin, said of them about the year 1500. "The Vaudois sect, which originated with one Leon, a devout man in the time of Constantine the Great," &c. Every scrap of paper, and every book upon which the harpies of oppression could lay their hands, during the various persecutions of the Vaudois, were seized and sent to Turin, and nothing was permitted again to see the light, which did not please the court and the priesthood. Hence the noble and learned author of "Essai sur les Anciennes Assemblées Nationales de la Savoye, du Piemont, et des Pays, qui y sont ou furent annexées," has said in his introduction, that no history is less known than that of Savoy and Piemont; and speaking of Guichenon, whom he mentions as " le plus connu" of all the historians of these countries, he calls him a courtier and a mercenary writer, who did not dare to write a line which had not passed and re-passed through the crucible at Turin. See p. 3, 4.

Leger, the Vaudois historian of the seventeenth century, declared that there was no artifice, no exertion, no expence spared by the enemies of his church, both in quiet and troublesome times, to efface all records of the ancient Vaudois from the face of the earth; and added, that after he himself

had searched every where, and had collected what he could relating to the antiquity of the Waldenses, every book and every morsel of paper was taken away from him during the massacres of 1655, and carried to Turin'. Not the least scrap was left to him, and it was by incredible pains that he was able to gather the materials of his history, from relics that were preserved in the neighbouring provinces of France. An affecting memorandum of the spoliation of which Leger complains in his history, is preserved in one of the pages of an old Italian Bible, now in the possession of the Dean of Winchester. It was Leger's own Bible, and in it he traced these melancholy lines with his own hands.

"Questa S. Biblia e' l'unico tesoro che di tutti miei beni ho potuto riscampare dagl' orribile massacri è incomparabile incendie che la corte di Torino ha fatti eseguir nelle valli di Piemonte del 1655, ce per questo (oltre che vi sono piu nottule di mia mano) raccommando et commando a miei figli di conservarla come una preciosissima reliqua, e di transmetterla di mano in mano alla loro posterita. "GIOVANNI LEGERO, Pastore."

"This holy Bible is the only treasure which, of all my goods, I was able to rescue from the horrible massacres, and unparalleled destructions

I Leger, Histoire des Eglises Vaudoises. Liv. i. cap. 4.

which the court of Turin put in execution, in the valleys of Piemont, in 1655, and for this reason (besides that there are in it many small remarks in my own hand-writing) I recommend and command my children to preserve it as a most valuable relic, and to transmit it, from hand to hand, to their posterity.

"JOHN LEGER, Pastor."

The title-page of this Bible runs thus:

"La Sacra Biblia, tradotta in Lingua Italiana, e commentata da Giovanni Diodati, di Nazione Lucchese, Seconda Editione migliorata ed accresciuta con l'aggiunta di Sacri Salmi messi in rime per lo medesimo. Per Pietro Chovet, MDCXLI."

By the kindness of the Dean of Winchester I have been enabled to present my readers with a fac simile of this curious memorandum.

It is a singular thing that the destruction or rapine, which has been so fatal to Waldensian documents, should have pursued them even to the place of security, to which all, that remained, were consigned by Morland, in 1658, the library of the university of Cambridge. The most ancient of these relics were ticketed in seven packets, distinguished by letters of the alphabet, from A to G. The whole of these were missing when I made enquiry for them, in 1823. What these precious records were, may be seen by a reference to the catalogue given in "Morland's History of the