The Catholic Confession

DEDICATION

...it is, as Jacques Auguste de Thou original: "Jacobus Augustus Thuanus" records in the 6th book of his Histories. Guy of Perpignan, in his book on heresies, even includes England, where the Waldensians taught in the year 1174. William of Newburgh testifies to this same fact in the 2nd book, chapter 13, of his English Affairs, where he also adds Spain and Italy. He reports that in the vast provinces of France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, so many adhered to their doctrine—which he, out of a preconceived opinion, calls a plague original: "pestem"—that they seemed, according to the Prophet, multiplied beyond the number of the sand of the sea.

Emperor Frederick II, in his Edict against the Waldensians, testifies that they spread their dogma throughout all of Italy as far as Sicily. Johannes Trithemius, in the Chronicle of Hirsau, records that some of them captured in the city of Strasbourg Strasbourg: Referred to in the Latin text as "Argentinensis." publicly confessed before all the people that their number was so great that if any of them decided to go from Cologne to Milan Milan: Referred to in the Latin text as "Mediolanum.", he would find a host from their own sect every single night.

The same author testifies that there were countless people of that profession in Austria, Bohemia, and neighboring regions. He notes that one of their preachers, condemned to the fire and brought to execution in Vienna, declared that more than 80,000 people in those regions had embraced that religion; many of these were handed over to the flames in various places.

Johannes Nauclerus, in volume 2, generation 41, records that this doctrine—which the language of the Roman Church calls heresy original: "haeresin"—increased wonderfully in Italy, both among the knightly order and the common people. Its confessors sent a certain collection to Milan every year for the support of their teachers. Finally, Matthew Paris is the authority for the fact that they even reached Bulgaria, Croatia, and Dalmatia. Furthermore, Matthias Flacius Illyricus, in his Catalog of Witnesses of the Truth, proves from fragments of Inquisitorial books that the doctrine of the Waldensians was propagated far and wide through Lombardy, Alsace, the entire Rhine tract, Belgium, Saxony, Pomerania, Prussia Prussia: Referred to in the Latin text as "Borussia.", Poland, Livonia, Swabia, Silesia, Bohemia, Moravia, Calabria, and Sicily.

Nor did they excel only in the multitude of those adhering to them, but also in the authori-