The Waldensians in the Alps

A century and more after being condemned, the Waldensians had become something no medieval dissent was supposed to be: a durable, organized, underground church. Its members lived openly as ordinary Catholic parishioners and privately as something else, in the high valleys of the Cottian Alps between Piedmont and Dauphiné, and in scattered communities in Provence, in Calabria and Apulia, in Germany and Bohemia. What held it together were the barbes — 'uncles'. Itinerant preachers who travelled in pairs, memorized large amounts of scripture in the vernacular, carried small hand-copied books, and worked a circuit of the households. Their existence was known and repeatedly attacked; in 1487 Innocent VIII proclaimed a crusade against them, and the campaign that followed tore through valleys on both sides of the Alps. They survived it.