DEDICATION

...of war alone, but even the torches of the Inquisition were applied to them. Trithemius Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516), a German Benedictine abbot and historian in his Chronicle of Hirsau records that at Strasbourg original: "Argentinae" about eighty of their order were burned, and in the neighboring countryside about one hundred were slaughtered in a single day. In the same work, he critiques the headlong manner of proceeding against them with these words: For, as someone writes, on the same day that someone was accused—whether justly or unjustly—with no refuge of appeal or defense available to him, he was condemned and thrown into the cruel flames. Proscribed by Pope Clement, both their lives and their goods were exposed to the whims and the plunder of anyone at all, so that in one place where they had happened to take refuge, four thousand of them were crushed at once, with the survivors seeking the steep cliffs of the mountains and looking for hiding places within them.

In the previous century, in the year 1540, a sentence was passed against them at Aix original: "Aquis"; referring to the Parlement of Aix-en-Provence, that all should be suppressed without distinction, and that after their buildings were demolished, the village of Mérindol original: "Merindolum" (in which they lived) should be leveled to the ground, all trees should be cut down, and the place rendered completely deserted. But these injuries, these butcheries, and these onslaughts of war the Waldensians endured with a brave and undaunted spirit. By the grace of GOD, they sometimes even won miraculous victories over the enemies who attacked them without cause. A memorable example of this is recorded by Jacques Auguste de Thou original: "Jacob. Augustus Thuanus"; a famous 16th-century French historian and statesman in the 27th book of his History, on page 559. Only two of the Waldensians, he says, (in the battle with the troops of the Count of La Trinité) original: "Trinitensibus"; refers to the forces of the Count of La Trinité during the 1560-1561 campaign against the Piedmontese valleys were lost, while from the Count’s side there was a great and uncertain number, etc. Indeed, in so many preceding battles and skirmishes, they record that only fourteen of the Valley-dwellers original: "Convallensibus"; the residents of the Waldensian Alpine valleys were killed, a matter considered even by their enemies to be closer to a miracle. Thus, it was openly boasted in the camps of Savoy original: "Sabaudi" that it was now manifest that the war being waged against the Waldensians had been undertaken against the will of God. And indeed, they write that a certain Sebastian Virgilio, as he was heading into battle with far too much ferocity, was told by an innkeeper that on that day he would truly experience which cause—that of Savoy or the Waldensians—was more just. For if Savoy’s cause were more just, the victory would also be theirs. When, therefore, he was carried back to the inn wounded and almost dead, the same innkeeper then cried out, [that the cause of the] Wal-