Brakelite
Well-Known Member
Very good. We seldom give consideration to the original lives that people lived prior to coming to Christ. We load up excuses for ourselves for not living up to the great light we have been blessed with, and the generations of print material and modern technology available to us to study, investigate, and meditate on and still live worldly selfish lifestyles, while those we criticise before us relied on hand written copies of passages of scripture passed on from the parents and great grandparents etc, worn, hidden, searched for, illegal, yet what they had was powerful enough to change lives over time.not keeping up
Consider for example the many tribal Germanic nations who carved out a niche for themselves once pagan Rome had vacated what eventually became Europe. Most of those nations converted to Christianity, (sadly we don't have any record of the no doubt heroic evangelists that brought the gospel to these northern pagans in the first 4 centuries after Christ, except for Wulfilas) but most of them accepted an Arian (so we are told by their enemies, who branded them to this day as Barbarian ) view of the Godhead. One must wonder if
A. Arian meant the same to them as it does today...
B. Where did these evangelists come from all having the same "Arian" beliefs? ...
C. What else did they hold on common?
One thing is for sure. Not all those tribes got on. They were enemies before Christ became a part of their lives, and continued to squabble and fight afterwards. Yet despite that, reports from historical contemporaries give them kudos for being tolerant of other faiths while being intolerant politically, having clean tidy towns and cities and not the dens of iniquity as popularly portrayed. They took their religion seriously. They governed themselves with order and discipline. The disdain expressed toward them by their enemies, being the Catholics, was paralleled by the romanticising of Catholic Rome as the flower of Christianity and the only source of truth.
As for the antiquity of the Waldenses....
"These Christians of the Alps and Pyrenees have been called Waldenses from the Italian word for “valleys,” and where they spread over into France, they have been called Vaudois, a French word meaning “inhabitants of the valleys” in a certain province. Many writers constantly call them Vaudois. The enemies of this branch of the Church in the Wilderness have endeavored to confuse their history by tracing to a wrong source the origin of the name, Waldenses. They seek to connect its beginnings with Peter Waldo, an opulent merchant of Lyons, France, who came into notice about 1175. The story of this remarkable man commands a worthy niche in the temple of events. However, there is nothing in the original or the earliest documents of the Waldenses — their histories, poems, and confessions of faith — which can be traced to him or which make any mention of him.These Christians of the Alps and Pyrenees have been called Waldenses from the Italian word for “valleys,” and where they spread over into France, they have been called Vaudois, a French word meaning “inhabitants of the valleys” in a certain province. Many writers constantly call them Vaudois. The enemies of this branch of the Church in the Wilderness have endeavored to confuse their history by tracing to a wrong source the origin of the name, Waldenses. They seek to connect its beginnings with Peter Waldo, an opulent merchant of Lyons, France, who came into notice about 1175. The story of this remarkable man commands a worthy niche in the temple of events. However, there is nothing in the original or the earliest documents of the Waldenses — their histories, poems, and confessions of faith — which can be traced to him or which make any mention of him.
Waldo, being converted in middle life to truths similar to those held by the Vaudois, distributed his fortune to the poor and labored extensively to spread evangelical teachings. He and his followers soon met with cruel opposition. Finally, in desperation they fled for refuge to those Waldenses who had crossed the Alps and had formed a considerable body in eastern France. The great antiquity of the Waldensian vernacular preserved through the centuries witnesses to their line of descent independent of Rome, and to the purity of their original Latin. Alexis Muston says: The patois of the Vaudois valleys has a radical structure far more regular than the Piedmontese idiom. The origin of this patois was anterior to the growth of Italian and French — antecedent even to the Romance language, whose earliest documents exhibit still more analogy with the present language of the Vaudois mountaineers, than with that of the troubadours of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The existence of this patois is of itself a proof of the high antiquity of these mountaineers, and of their constant preservation from foreign intermixture and changes. Their popular idiom is a precious monument.”
Turning back the pages of history six hundred years before Peter Waldo, there is even a more famous name connected with the Waldenses. This leader was Vigilantius (or, Vigilantius Leo). He could be looked upon as a Spaniard, since the people of his regions were one in practically all points with those of northern Spain. Vigilantius took his stand against the new relapses into paganism. From these apostatizing tendencies the Christians of northern Italy, northern Spain, and southern France held aloof. The story of Vigilantius and how he came to identify himself with this region is perhaps for another time. From connections with him, this people were for centuries called Leonists, as well as Waldenses and Vaudois.