The Catholic Confession

...and the Ten Commandments Ten Commandments: Referred to in the original as the Decalogue. were taught, the Lord’s days were religiously observed, the word of God was explained, and no sorcery or adultery existed among them. Furthermore, in their temples they found neither images nor any ornaments of the Mass The King's investigators were surprised to find a simple form of worship that lacked the statues and elaborate ritual items typical of the Roman Catholic Church at the time.. Upon hearing these things, the King was so far from wishing to attack them in war that he declared with an oath: "They are better than both me and the rest of my Catholic people."

Claude de Seyssel Claude de Seyssel: Archbishop of Turin (c. 1450–1520), a prominent theologian and diplomat who wrote a famous polemic against the Waldensians., Archbishop during the time of the same Louis XII, wrote specifically against the Waldensians, but in that same writing, he confesses that they were honest, upright, and innocent people, blameless in their conduct and diligent observers of God’s commandments. This same fact was also acknowledged by Guillaume Paradin in the Annals of Burgundy, who states that he had read histories in which both the Albigensians A group often associated with the Waldensians in Southern France, also targeted by crusades for their differing religious views. and the Princes and Lords who supported them were cleared of all these slanders; he says they were harassed in so many ways for this reason alone: that they publicly criticized the traditions of the Roman Church. The first origin of those accusations leveled against the Waldensians seems to be attributed to Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay: A Cistercian monk and chronicler of the Albigensian Crusade., a Cistercian monk, who dedicated a History of the Waldensians—thoroughly stuffed with slanders—to Pope Innocent III. From him, others who produced hostile judgments in their writings against these Confessors In this context, "Confessors" refers to those who maintain their faith under persecution. took up their store of prejudices.

Nor is there any reason for the supporters of the Pope to object that they were a tiny handful, a despised gathering, or a faction that had only recently arisen. In truth, their assembly was most numerous, spread through many regions from the Alps all the way to the Pyrenees mountains. Regarding this, we have heard Reinerius Reinerius Saccho: A 13th-century Inquisitor and former member of the sect who wrote about their widespread influence. complaining: that there is almost no land in which this sect does not crawl. For they first held a place in the mountains and valleys of the Allobroges A region roughly corresponding to modern-day Savoy and Dauphiné., in the provinces of Narbonne, Aquitaine, Albi, Rodez, Cahors, and the Diocese of Agen, as Jacques de Reviers testifies in his Collections on the City of Toulouse. From this homeland, Peter Waldo traveled into Belgium and found many followers in Picardy. From there, he crossed into Germany and lived for a long time among the Vandalic cities original: "Vandalicas civitates". This refers to the Hanseatic or Baltic cities of Northern Germany, such as Lübeck and Wismar, which were historically associated with the Vandals.,