VAUDOIS (Waldenses, or Valtlenses; in Latin trailed ; in Valdes in their own dialect), a remarkable people, who form a communion separate from the Church of Rome, and who live in three high valleys of Piedmont, on the eastern or Italian side of the Cottian Alps, between Mount Viso and the Col de Sestrierea, iu the province of Pignerol. Tho valleys are-1, that of Lucerne, through which flows the Felice, an alpine torrent which rises in the Col de la Croix, near Mount Viso, and flowing eastward, falls into the river Clusone ; 2, Valley of Perosa, through which passes the Clusone, which rises in the Col de Sestrierea, flows in a southeast direction by Feuestrelle, Penns, and near Pignerol, and, after receiving the Felice, joins the Po a few miles further down; 3, Valley of San Martino, which branches out of the valley of the Clusone, along the course of a torrent called German. asca, which rises in the Col d'Aliries. The Vaudois are distributed in thirteen parishes, each having its pastor, called barbe in their dia lect. One of the pastors bears the title of moderator, being superior iu authority to the rest. In former times, when the Vaudois commu nion was much more extended than it is ntw, they had bishops, who are mentioned in several old documents. In every parish there is a Vaudois church and a school, besides a church for the Roman Catholic population. The Vaudois clergy are allowed to marry. They take no fees for burials, baptisms, or marriages. The Liturgy now in use is that of Geneva, in the French language : formerly they made use of a Liturgy in Italian. The spoken dialect of the people resembles the other dialects of Piedmont. The origin of the name Valdeusea, or Valdesi, ie found in the word rallis, aud means inletbitanta of the valleys. Its derivation from Peter Waldo, or Vnldo, of Lyon, a mer chant of the 12th century, who was a religious reformer, caused por tions of the Bible to be translated into French, and was the founder of the sect called the Poor Men of Lyon, is now abandoned. Waldo, being condemned by the archbishop of that city, A.D. 1172, and after wards by l'ope Alexander III., emigrated to Germany, and is said to have died in Bohemia. The Vaudois of Piedmont however existod as a religious community long before Waldo, whom Ben even suspects of having derived his tenets, if not his name, from them. From him, however, the separatists from Rome in the south of France have been called Waldenses, and this has caused them to be confounded with the Vaudois, or Vaud6s, of the Alps, although the doctrines and discipline of some of the former were not always in accordance with those of the Vaudois. The real Vaudois remained in the valleys east and west of the Cottian Alps. The Albigenses properly so called m cr.° quite distinct from the Vaudois. [AssfoENsEs.] This little community is remarkable for having kept itself from time immemorial separate from the Church of Rome, in ages when that church is generally considered as having been the only existing church in the West, and for being the only Italian church which continues to this day separate from Rome. We have memorials of the doctrines of the Vaudois written in the early part of the 12th century : their tenets were then such as they are now. The Nobla Leycon' is a sort of abridgment of the history and doctrine of the Old and New Testa ments. It speaks of the mission of the Apostles and of the primitive
church, and of certain practices that were introduced afterwards in its bosom : of simony, the institution of masses and prayers for the dead, of absolution, and other tenets of the Church of Rome, which it rejects. It is a poem in the Vaud6s dialect, nearly the same as that which is spoken at the present time, and records in the text its having been composed in the early part of the 12th century.
There is also a confession of faith of the Valdenses, bearing date A.D. 1120, acknowledging the Apostles Creed and the canonical books of the OId and New Testaments, recognising no other mediator and advocate with God the Father but Jesus Christ, denying purgatory, admitting only two sacraments—Baptism and the Lord's Supper—as signs or visible forms of the invisible grace, discarding the feasts and vigils of saints, the abstinence from flesh on certain days, the mass, &c. And another manuscript dated 1100, speaks of the Valdenses as having maintained the same doctrines from time immemorial in continued descent from father to eon, even from the times of the Apostles. Besides these, there are two controversial treatises, one entitled Of Antichrist,' and the other upon The Invocation of Saints,' which seem to bear this internal evidence of their antiquity, that in enumerating the various tenets and practices of the Roman Church which the Val deuses reject, they speak of the doctrine of the real presence, and of the adoration of the Virgin Mary and the Saints, but in so doing they do not use the words transubstantiation and canonisation. Now the term transubstantiation was first introduced under Pope Innocent III., and confirmed in the council of Lateran, A.D. 1215, and the first papal bull iu which tho word canonisation occurs is dated 1165. Nor do these treatises speak of the devotional exercise of the Rosary introduced by St. Dominic, nor of the Inquisition, which began in the 13th cen tury. Had those institutions existed when the treatises were written, they could hardly have escaped the notice of the writer. Manuscript copies of these and other ancient documents relative to the Vaudois, amounting to twenty-one volumes, were brought to England by Sir Samuel 31orland, who was sent by the Protector Cromwell as envoy to the Duke of Savoy in 1655, and were by him presented, in 1658, to the library of the University of Cambridge.. Morland wrote a' History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont,' London, 1658, giving a transcript and English translation of the Noble Leycon.' P. Allix, D.D., who published Remarks upon the Ecclesiastical History of the Anticnt Churches of Piedmont,' in 1690, notices the manuscripts brought by Morland. But now only fourteen out of the twenty-one volumes are existing in the University Library, and nobody can tell what is become of the rest. The Noble Leycon' is one of those which are missing. In 1669, Jean Leger, a pastor of the Valdenses, published at Leyden, Histoire C6n6ralo des Eglises Evangdliques des Vall6es du Pidmont,' in two books, the first of which treats of the early date and continuity of their doctrine, and he gives transcripts of several of the manuscripts brought to England by Morland.