The question about the early date of the' Nobla Leyeon; the Vaudois confession, and the other manuscripts above mentioned, is of consider able importance in an historical as well as a religious point of view. There is however further evidence brought forth for the antiquity of the Vaudois doctrines. The name of Valdenses does not appear in historical records till the end of the 12th or early part of the 13th cen tury, but we find allusions as early as the 9th century to the existence of non-conformist churches on the borders of Italy. Jonas, bishop of Orleans, in his work De Cultu Imaginum; addressed to Charles the Bald, A.D. 840, speaks of Italian chfirches which he accuses of hetero doxy because they refused to worship images, and he charges Claudius, bishop of Turin, with encouraging the people of his diocese in their separation from the Catholic unity.
The fragments existing of the works of Claudius show his opinions concerning faith and merits, prayers after death, the worship of images, the invocation of saints, tradition, and church authority, to have been the same as are expressed in both the old and modern Vaudois cate chisms, as well as in the catechisms of the modern reformed churches. And it is worthy of remark, that Claudius in his epistle, Ad Theode mirum; says, in reply to the charge of promulgating novelty in religion, " I teach no new sect, but keep myself to the pure truth, and I will persist in opposing to the uttermost all superstitions and schisms." Claudius died about A.D. 840, and contemporary with him Agobardus, bishop of Lyon, as appears by his Treatise against l'ictures,' edited by S. Baluze, was also preaching against the worship of images. The valleys of the Cottian Alps must have been under one or the other of these bishops. In the synod held at Arras, A.D. 1025, it was repre sented to the president, Bishop Gerard, that certain persons had come from the borders of Italy and had introduced heretical dogmas about the nature of justification, the real presence, and against images, relies, — — taws, &c. About 1140, Bernard of Clairvaux, in his sixty-sixth sermon upon the Canticles, speaking of heretics who then were disturbing the church, mentions, among others, "a sect which calls itself after no man's name, which affects to be in the direct line of apostolical suc cession, and rustic and unlearned though it is, yet it contends that we are wrong and that it only i3 right. It must derive its origin from the
devil, since there is no other extraction which we can assign to it." The Valdenses have always rejected any distinctive sectarian appella tion, and have boasted of adhering from age to age to the primitive faith. In the bull of Pope Lucius, A.D. 1183, four years after the Lateran council, in which the Albigenses were anathematised, several sorts of heretics are mentioned, Cathari, Paterini, the Poor Men of Lyon, and the Passagini, or men of the passes, as lying under a per petual anathema. And in 1194, Alfonso, king of Aragon and marquis of Provence, issued an edict, "commanding the Valdenses, the Insab batati, who otherwise are called the Poor Men of Lyon, and all other heretics, to depart out of his dominione." About 1230, Reinerus, Dominican, who states that he had been himself a heretic, wrote a treatise against heretics, Opusculurn de Hicreticis; in which ha speaks, among others, of the Leonists, or Poor Men of Lyon (" Secta Pauperum de Lugduno qui etiam Leonistx dicuntur "), and describes their tenets, which are exactly the same as those contained in the old records of the Valdenses as well as in their modern catechism. Tho Valdenses and the Poor Men of Lyon (Valdenses sivo Lugdunenses) are confounded together in the chronicles of that age ; and in the Chronicon of Abbas Ursbergensis (A.D. 1212) the Pauperes de Lugduno are represented as an ancient order which arose in Italy long ago. Reinerus begins by saying, that these Leonists or Pauperes were tho most pernicious of all the sects, for three reasons : 1, because they are the most ancient—more ancient than the Manichmans or Arians, dating their origin, according to some, from the time of Pope Sylvester 1., and according to others from the time of the Apostles ; 2, because they are more universally spread ; 3, because they have the character of being pious and virtuous, as they believe in the Apostles' Creed, and are guilty of no other crime than that of blasphemy against the Roman Church and clergy. This book of Reinerus is very important, but we must refer those who wish for further information to the Rev. W. S. Gily's Second Visit to the Vaudois of Piedmont,' section where the author has placed in parallel columns paaaages from Reiner's text, the corresponding opinions of Italian writers previous to the 12th cen tury, and those of the ancient and modern Valdenses concerning the same topics.