But modern criticism has so seriously undermined, as
practically to have demolished, this imposing genealogical structure. It
is not denied that voices of more or less emphatic protest against Rome
made themselves heard among these mountains and the neighboring Cottian
Alps during the earlier centuries. Can such voices be held to represent
any definitely-organized dissentient body of more remote origin than the
Poor Men of Lyons, led by Peter Waldo in 1172? The latest researches
give an apparently final negative answer to this question. At least,
however, it is beyond dispute that long before the Reformation the
valleys of the High Alps were a retreat for persecuted schismatics whose
opposition to the Romish Church anticipated Protestantism. As early as
the fifteenth century a papal bull denounced as _inveterate_ the
heretics of Dauphine and Provence, and about the middle of the next
century delegates from those provinces appeared at the first national
Protestant synod in France with the following declaration: "We consent
to merge in the common cause, but we require no Reformation, for our
forefathers and ourselves have ever disclaimed the corruptions of the
churches in communion with Rome." Enough is therefore certain as to the
antecedents of these Protestant mountaineers to surround them with an
entirely peculiar interest. The saddest feature, perhaps, of all their
history is the stunting of mind and character that has resulted from
centuries of oppression.
Pages:
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118