Other Anti-Roman-Catholic Views Of The Pre-Reformation Waldensians

I won't address all of them here, but I want to provide some examples. I discussed their opposition to praying to saints and angels and their opposition to some related Roman Catholic beliefs and practices in a post last week. Gabriel Audisio covers some other disagreements as well in his book I cited in that post.

He refers to widespread opposition to purgatory, for example (The Waldensian Dissent [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007], approximate Kindle location 1462). As with their views on prayer, however, he cites some inconsistencies and variations, such as Waldensians who said they doubted purgatory's existence, but made some provisions for its existence in case they were wrong (1489). Audisio writes, "I was able to trace 200 wills drawn up by Waldensians from the Luberon. About 80 per cent of these request such ceremonies [masses for himself and his relatives after death]." (1477) It should be kept in mind, though, that 80% isn't 100%; that such percentages varied across location and time; that the Waldensians often acted clandestinely, meaning that something like a will could be deliberately evasive; that such inconsistencies are commonplace among people in general, including among modern and past Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. On balance, there seems to have been a lot of opposition to purgatory among the Waldensians, though with qualifiers like the ones mentioned above.

On authority issues, Audisio writes:

Last but not least, the [Waldensian] preachers, who were dispersed in different regions, had no real, central organisation. Nor did they need one, since they had no particular doctrine to spread or uphold other than the holy scriptures themselves….

Finally, they [some Waldensians meeting in 1218] agreed unanimously that the holy scriptures were their ultimate source of reference; the supreme rule of faith and morality was the bible, the authority of which would prevail when judging any rule or tradition whose legitimacy appeared doubtful….

We can easily understand the interest the Reformation held for them [the Waldensians] if we consider the three founding pillars of reformist theology: justification by faith alone (sola fide); the priesthood of all believers, by which every person was entitled to examine the holy scriptures for himself; and the infallibility of the bible alone (sola Scriptura). The last two points were an exact echo of Vaudés's [the founder of Waldensianism's] stand four centuries before [in the twelfth century]. They were also fully in keeping with the tradition of Waldensian thought and practices as we have seen in the last two chapters….

They hold the bible alone as their reference on matters of faith and moral doctrine and read it literally.

(299, 447, 2422, 2484)